Surprising Top talent, 80000 fans at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival

Top talent, 80000 fans at Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival

Hot humor: Fans began lining up around 5 a.m. Friday for Conan O’Brien’s afternoon show at the comedy tent. The 1,800 who made it in greeted O’Brien with a standing ovation. “I see, like, six guys wearing shirts — and that’s it,” he said. Even with air conditioning, the tent was sweltering: “I’ve gone from hosting The Tonight Show to performing in a refugee camp.” Since leaving NBC, O’Brien has grown a scruffy beard that he says makes him look “like Paul Bunyan with an eating disorder” or “the Brawny paper towel guy just before his bone-marrow transplant.”

Kings on fire: Playing in front a massive rack of glowing lights, dynamic Tennessee rockers Kings of Leon kept 60,000 or more people captivated for two hours, whether previewing material from their next album (“If y’all hear something you don’t know, you’re one of the first to ever hear it,” said frontman Caleb Followill) or ripping into hits like set opener Crawl and Sex on Fire. KOL is Bonnaroo’s first to play a smaller stage, then move up to headliner. The significance clearly moved Followill: “There are very, very few times when I’ve felt really proud of what we’ve accomplished. This is one of those times.”

Dead Weather brings the rain: The Dead Weather took the stage just as the actual weather decided to snap out of a cruel heat wave Saturday evening. A storm rolled in as the alt-rock supergroup took the stage clad in black, save for Alison Mosshart’s leopard-print jacket. Luckily, the music proved much more menacing than the clouds, and the band ripped into the opening number of its nightmarish neo-blues rock as rain drizzled. “I want you to remember which band brought the rain to you, all right?” Jack White told his audience, taking center stage to sing You Just Can’t Win.

Stevie’s surprise-filled set: Shortly before Stevie Wonder began, Bonnaroo cameras briefly focused on his set list. That shot gave the 60,000 gathered a preview of what was to come — but anybody who got a good look soon found themselves surprised. The R&B legend started calling audibles just a few songs into his hour-and-a-half set, leaving his band members exchanging perplexed glances. Wonder broke out his harmonica during the unscheduled For Once in My Life and morphed Parliament’s Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker) into I Heard It Through the Grapevine and a slowed-down Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours). After getting the crowd to sing a couple of choruses of John Lennon’s Give Peace a Chance, Wonder brought out a gospel choir to help him perform A Time to Love.

Bonnaroo’s blueprint for hip-hop: ”Wait till I tell my mom Stevie Wonder stayed for my set!” Jay-Z announced. Wonder — and the 70,000 or so other people who watched the rapper’s hit-filled set — got an earful as Jay-Z tore through Big Pimpin’, 99 Problems and Hard Knock Life. Throughout, he tempered a well-deserved swagger with what seemed to be genuine enthusiasm to be performing in front of tens of thousands who likely had never seen him. “I wanna make Bonnaroo my second home, if that’s OK with y’all,” he said as he introduced his first home by way of Empire State of Mind, with Bridget Kelly on vocals.

Get a whiff of that: Indie popster Ingrid Michaelson got big cheers Sunday afternoon when she worked a few bars of Lady Gaga’s Poker Face into her opening number, Soldier. “We smell like a bunch of slightly dirty music lovers,” Michaelson told the crowd. “And what is better than that?” Regina Spektor came dressed for the occasion, wearing a summer frock and red high heels as she sat down to her grand piano for The Calculation. “I’ve been here for just a few hours,” she said after a false start on Folding Chair. “How do you guys do it?” She brought along a cellist, a violinist and a drummer to accompany her on a chamber pop set that included Eet, Samson and Better.