[Bonnaroo '09] Phoenix (Friday – 11:30 PM) + Live Bootleg

After David Byrne finished rocking my ears into a blissful coma, I headed over to catch some of Phish’s set. Like I said before, the chances to see Phish are (still) plentiful and I wanted my first full-on Phish experience to be with my Phish-headed friends. I did catch three songs, though, that translated to about 45 minutes in Trey Anastasio time. I loved watching his shredding skills solo at Bonnaroo 2005 and with Oysterhead in 2006, but this year around there was another band of phonetic similarity I had to see: Phoenix.

I definitely did not get behind the French movement known as Phoenix until earlier this year. It was all my fault as I never gave the band the proper amount time inside my ears to get their sound across. Better late than never, as they say, and for a moment in the afternoon I thought it’d be never! Earlier in the day, Northwest Airlines cancelled a flight with 60 musicians bound for Bonnaroo with Phoenix on board. Luckily they were rerouted and made it to the festival for an energetic set.

The had a large turnout considering they were going up against the likes of Phish, many of the people I ran into throughout the day claiming they were looking forward to the French band rocking out – and rock out, they most definitely did. Their instrumental precision was near-perfect live, with Thomas Mars vocals serving as the highlight for me. He yelped, hopped around on stage, and interacted with the audiences in a charming way, which I’m sure some (including myself) thought was more charming since he was foreign.

My favorite song of the set was probably “Lisztomania” but I discovered some new tunes I previously hadn’t heard. You can do the same with another great live bootleg:

[ZIP] Phoenix – Bonnaroo – 6/12/2009