AP:
Kanye West rails against Bonnaroo criticism
Kanye West defended himself from criticism over his delayed performance at Bonnaroo, saying on his blog that the flak he’s taken has left him “the most offended I’ve ever been.”
West’s performance at the Tennessee festival was scheduled for 2:45 a.m. in the early morning of June 15. West didn’t take the stage until 4:25 a.m., angering much of the crowd who had stayed up late to see the rapper perform.
The delay was caused by problems setting up West’s elaborate stage set, which included an interplanetary landscape of a wavy black platform and a video screen above. Pearl Jam, who had performed on the main stage earlier that evening, also went an hour over its scheduled time. While waiting for West’s concert to begin, many in the crowd pelted the stage with glow sticks and beer.
At the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, which traditionally has favored jam bands, West’s delayed show became a kind of rallying point, leading to “Kanye sucks” chants and criticism from pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph, who played later the same day.
If you don’t know, Bonnaroo is a yearly music festival held in the month of June in Manchester, Tennessee. The CofCC’s 2002 National Conference was held in Atlanta at about the same time Bonnaroo was going on, and the route from St. Louis to Atlanta passes right by Manchester, TN. That happened to be one conference that I did not attend, but the caravan of St. Louis members that went to the Conference got stuck in I-24 eastbound traffic approaching Manchester. It took them EIGHT HOURS to travel 30 miles. The reason was that the Bonnaroo people set up their security checkpoints at the top of the ramp that led from I-24 to the road leading to Bonnaroo’s concert grounds. Therefore, any car going to Bonnaroo was stopped at the end of the exit ramp, backing up traffic on I-24 EB’s main lanes. Not only that, Phish was in the Bonnaroo lineup that year, which obviously drew all the Phishheads, and one of our people figured something was up when half the cars around them had “Phishhead” bumper stickers.
Federal law limits truckers to eight hour driving days, and I’m sure there were some truckers who used up that day’s allotment just in Bonnaroo traffic.
Needless to say, thanks to a few well-placed strategic phone calls to then-Governor Don Sundquist, reforms were made. Somehow, I get the feeling that Phil Bredesen got a lot of votes among the citizens of Manchester and Coffee County that fall.
