Metallica were one of the headlining acts at this weekend’s increasingly less jam-band-focused Bonnaroo festival. Club Kingsnake contributing photographer “Moondog” got these shots and more.

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So the helicopter has landed, and I’m back in NYC. And while it might have sounded like it from the tone of my blogs, my entire experience down at Bonnaroo didn’t just revolve around dust and sleep-depravation. I also had a pretty great time, and I wrote about it all here. As I say in the piece, to me, Bonnaroo might just be the best summer fest in the U.S. Thoughts?

So, you learn two things before noon at Bonnaroo: First, hippies don’t translate well to daylight. A girl who’s a swirling mass of neon and whimsy at night turns into an over-tanned, dead-eyed zombie come morning. And second, there is nothing to do here in the a.m. Nothing.

Since the sun starts beating down on the campsites at 7 a.m., everyone is inevitably awake by 8, which means that there’s roughly 80,000 super-bored concertgoers sitting around, lounging under trees or lying in the dirt.

We’re all a little more civil, so we just pour ourselves into folding chairs and try to squeeze into whatever shade we can find. Oh, and I finally took my first real shower of the festival, which was sublime in ways you cannot even imagine. Being clean ’round these parts is a foreign concept indeed.

Right now, myself, Monty and B-Kennedy are — you guessed it — waiting for our 1:30 interview with Feist, then we’re gonna go out and shoot me doing some more dumb stuff once the heat breaks.

If it ever does, that is.

The Police, in two perspectives: 1) Being escorted to the photo pit 10 feet in front of the stage, 80,000 screaming fans completely losing their collective minds as Sting and Co. launch into “Message in a Bottle” = Awesome. 2) Watching Sting and Co. sorta go through the motions throughout the rest of their set (albeit in a super-tight, really sharp way) from about a mile away = Not so awesome.

Yeah, that’s sorta how the much-hyped headlining set from the Police went down on Saturday night. Sure, they were pretty great (seriously, Sting’s voice is beyond crystal), but the whole thing sort of, well, happened. There were some really enlightening moments, like Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland finding their way through a rabbit hole in an ultra-extended “Roxanne,” but there was also a whole lot of audience-losing sorta-atmospheric sections, and an overall “just here for the check” feeling to the set, something out-of-step with the whole Bonnaroo vibe.

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Right now, Franz Ferdinand are positively KILLING it on the Which Stage. (All Bonnaroo stages, by law, are required to be named in a similar manner, which leads to discussions like this: “Yo, Deepfried Funk are playing right now on What Stage.” “I don’t know.” “No, What Stage.” “Dude, I have no idea.” “OK, let’s go pass out under a tree.”) And we’re about to log our fourth — and final — interview of the day, with Brooklyn’s finest beer-rockers, the mighty Hold Steady.

Earlier, during the Steady’s set, a couple of super-drunk guys from Kentucky tried to fight us, which was both terrifying and sort of awesome. Surprisingly, it all ended in hugs (ah, the power of alcohol), which was almost as surprising as how well the HS’s barroom missives translated to the dusty fields of the ‘Roo.

Also, earlier (way, w-a-a-y earlier, it seems now), Girl Talk — he of the legally contentious ultra mash-ups (please check out his Night Ripper album if you haven’t already) — sat down with us for possibly our best interview of the whole festival, touching on a whole range of topics: Kanye West possibly jacking his steez, watching the Smashing Pumpkins rock Barcelona, and, uh, the Pittsburgh Pirates.

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Alex and Bob from Franz Ferdinand braved life outside their air-conditioned tour bus for a few minutes to talk about a couple of songs from their upcoming, still-untitled new album, which they’ve slowly been premiering at secret shows in their hometown of Glasgow and in New York.

Take a look, then thank your lucky stars that you’re sitting someplace with central air.

OK … Here’s the thing about the String Cheese Incident: they’re actually kind of great. Well, maybe not great, but pretty good. You know, for a band with an electric mandolin player, a super-old guitarist and a keyboard guy who wears rhinestone-covered suits.

Tonight, after a downright scary set by Tool (think thunder and lightning, hellfire and brimstone, but with cartoons playing on two huge screens flanking the stage), String Cheese took the stage and chugged their way through a rambling, shimmering (and, at the time of this writing, still ongoing) performance. And it was pretty great — mostly due to the 30-something-thousand fans who writhed, slithered and tossed a galaxy’s worth of glow sticks skyward.

I can’t really explain it, but for a second (during a mandolin solo nonetheless) I sort of got it. The whole thing. Why people go nuts for Bonnaroo and jam bands, why they chuck glow sticks into the air — all of it.

Of course, I can’t explain it. It just sorta happened. And then it was over, gone into the night. It was kind of awesome, and kind of scary too. But mostly just kind of awesome.

So I was wrong about Lily Allen. She wasn’t delaying our interview for reasons of general divatude; she really did lose her backstage laminate and spent an hour looking for it all around Bonnaroo.

When she finally DID arrive (barefoot, despite her fear of “Tennessee scorpions”), we had a great chat — lots of dispelling of rumors, lots of fake Southern drawls, plus a bit on her new album (expect a full report when I’m back in the office on Tuesday) — and all was cool, except that she TOTALLY hated my tie-dyed T-shirt.

And she gave us some solid camping advice (while making fun of P. Diddy, which is a double bonus). Read more…

It’s hot.

So, so hot.

Someone camping next to us said that the “heat index” will be, like, 100, and while I have no idea what that means, I can tell you that it’s BRUTAL down here.

We’ve been waiting to talk to Lily Allen for about an hour now, sitting here in the (sorta) shade. I was told that the delay is due to Lily either A) wanting to get something to eat, or B) losing her all-access laminate, but regardless, no one seems to know what’s up.

In the meantime, I got to take some cuts in Major League Baseball’s batting cages, then watched the Cold War Kids and the guys from Hot Chip eat popsicles.

Soon we’ll head out into the main festival grounds to catch some bands (provided Lily doesn’t want to get a quick massage or anything like that).

I’m writing this by the light of a citronella candle, all the bros in various states of bro-ing down around me, back at base camp as Thursday night bleeds into Friday morning here at Bonnaroo.

Spoke to the National earlier, and they gave us camping survival tips: Bring a tarp and eat plenty of energy bars — neither of which we really have, meaning either A) we’re doomed, or B) the National don’t know jack about camping. Checked out a spooky, ethereal set by Austin, Texas, droners the Black Angels, who blared on as helicopters hovered in the night sky (Vietnam flashbacks aplenty), ate an arepa and then settled in to watch the Nats, who may not be camping experts, but DO know how to work through an intricate, explosive set of rock. Read more…