Quote:
Originally Posted by prdstmnky36
I’m not sure I follow your last sentence, Bruce? Phish didn’t play the first couple of Roo’s, I’d say Roo was carried by WSP the first couple years. Everyone I talked to was there to see Panic, it’s was pretty crazy (and shocking).
|
Quote:
Originally Posted by HoldemHart
Care to explain further?
|
You ask and you shall receive:
https://www.tennessean.com/story/ent...al/1304196001/
And from another article on Consequence of Sound:
"However, while Jazz Fest helped shaped the vibe of Bonnaroo from the start, it’s a far cry from what we think of most camping music festivals today. Instead, the Bonnaroo team also drew inspiration from this year’s returning headliners, Phish, who had been successfully hosting annual camping festivals since 1996’s Clifford Ball. In addition to proving the strength of jam band fans when they get behind an event, Phish’s hiatus in 2000 laid the groundwork to help Bonnaroo come to fruition.
Historically, when a major jam act disbands, it leaves a lot of lost jam band fans in the wreckage. When Jerry Garcia died and the Grateful Dead broke up in the mid-‘90s, many Deadheads jumped over to Phish to continue touring. During Phish’s first break, which spanned from 2000 to 2002, again, fans started searching out new summer plans. To an extent, Bonnaroo’s first year took advantage of this opening, tapping Phish frontman Trey Anastasio’s solo project to headline the festival alongside other touring bands that Phish fans had migrated to, such as Grateful Dead spin-off Phil Lesh & Friends, String Cheese Incident, Widespread Panic, Gov’t Mule, moe., the Disco Biscuits, and Umphrey’s McGee.
Besides bringing together the newly crowned heavy hitters of the jam band scene, the festival took cues from Phish’s pioneering presence on the Internet. When the World Wide Web was still in its fledgling incarnations, the Vermont quartet took full advantage of the medium, using it to directly communicate with fans, build fan communities, and support their touring. In turn, ‘Roo’s success in those first few years sans traditional marketing came, in part, from continued buzz generated online.
However, the hiatus also helped shape Bonnaroo more directly on a deeper level. Capps explained:
“By the time we actually got around to launching Bonnaroo, Phish was on hiatus, which enabled us to tap into their team. The people who had helped Phish create their festivals became the key leaders in helping us launch Bonnaroo, not only in the first year but in the first several years. They gave us a base of expertise that certainly was one of the key ingredients to our success in that first year — and I’m talking about nuts-and-bolts, operational things like the logistics of setting a festival up on the scale of Bonnaroo.”
Of course, Phish’s association with Bonnaroo extends outside the time of their first hiatus. While the members’ various side projects have always found a home at Bonnaroo, this year, the group returns to headline the festival for the third time. In 2009, the jam act debuted at the festival, making Bonnaroo one of their first stops after coming back from a second hiatus started in 2004. The band followed up their inaugural performance in 2012, when they served as headliners for the event’s most successful year to date with a staggering 100,000 people in attendance."