How to Do the 'Roo: Building the Perfect Bonnaroo Schedule

Friday

2:00-3:00 p.m. - Vieux Farka Touré
Here's a standing rule for festivals like this: Always see anyone who is traveling from another country. Never mind the fact that Farke Touré is the son of the late, legendary Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré — he's a genius in his own right. His breathless stacatto guitar runs and rich, soulful vocals pluck him cleanly from his old man's shadow and establish him as a legend-in-the-making.

3:00-4:15 p.m. - St. Vincent
Architect of one of the year's best records, St. Vincent (known to her parents as Annie Clark) is a tornado in a tight black top. Her odd, jagged songs sprout fangs live, the cockeyed synthesizers are replaced with feverish, gnashing guitars. She's a bit of a stoic presence, but that only makes her music feel that much scarier. She's the blank-eyed robot dishing out bad news one bitter note at a time.

4:45-6:00 p.m. - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The intensity and ferocity of Karen O cannot be overstated, and the trio's live shows have only gained in power over the years. The trick is going to be how they manage to replicate the synth-heavy It's Blitz! in the live setting, and how that shift in aesthetics will fiddle with their delivery.

5:15-6:30 p.m. - King Sunny Adé
To put it in basic terms, King Sunny Adé is like the Nigerian Phish. His endless, jam-oriented shows are nothing short of a marvel, and his loose, lucid guitar work has earned him a reputation as one of the world's greatest players. If there were a King Sunny Adé Guitar Hero, nobody would be able to play it. His Bonnaroo set time is merely a fraction of the length of his regular concerts, but in this case that's a good thing: forced to tighten up, Adé will have to pack in more thrills-per-second than usual.

6:00-7:30 p.m. - Al Green
We'll concede: this one is a crapshoot. You're never quite sure which Al is going to show up, or how many tangents he's going to indulge in the place of actual songs. Thing is, though, if he's on, he's on, and missing him would be one of your weekend's greater tragedies. Riding high off the flawless — and severely underrated — Lay it Down, Green is still the high archbishop of soul. When the spirit moves him, none of his peers come close.

6:45-8:00 p.m. - TV on the Radio
On the odd chance that the Reverend is having an off-night, your no-brainer backup plan is TV on the Radio. Rock, R&B, Afrobeat, jazz — there is no genre the group leaves untouched. But what makes them so remarkable is the way they synthesize them, writing songs that somehow manage to recall both Prince and Peter Gabriel. Live, the group is augmented by a brass section, ramping up the volume and making the songs sound positively regal.

7:00-8:30 p.m. - Amadou & Mariam
Be sure to book it from TVOTR to catch the last half-hour of blind Malian husband-and-wife duo Amadou & Mariam. Friday is inexplicably rife with expert African guitarists, and A&M are no exception. But where Vieux Farka Touré and King Sunny Adé stick mostly to traditional African music forms, Amadou & Mariam are more stylistically restless. Their latest album, the superb Welcome to Mali, features production work by Damon Albarn, and includes extended forays into electronic music and blues.

8:30-10:00 p.m. - The Beastie Boys
No matter their age or the length of time since their last masterpiece, the Beastie Boys still know how to work a crowd, and few things sound better at thousands of decibels than "Sabotage." Live, MCA, Mike D and Ad-Rock wisely stick to the hits, shaking things up with a brief instrumental set before diving back into their vast wealth of classics.

11:00 p.m.-2:00 a.m. - Phish
Duh.

12:30-1:45 a.m. - Public Enemy
The one act that's well worth ducking out of Phish for. Never mind the fact that Flav has willingly been transformed into a parody version of himself — 20 years in, PE are still a monstrous live force, ramping up the intensity of their no-compromise hip-hop to deliver a chest-pummeling show that has more in common with heavy metal than hip-hop. Chuck D's domineering delivery has only grown more urgent and angry with age, and even Flav's id-uncorked antics feel like one man's flailing against an impending apocalypse.

2:15-3:45 a.m. - Girl Talk
All of the chatter about Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, focuses on the way he flouts copyright law to make some of the dizziest and unlikely mash-ups imaginable. What few people mention, though, is how spectacularly this all works live. Gillis is a master showman, setting up tracks and then leaping into the audience, clapping and stomping and jumping in time with the beat. This is how you want Day Two to come down: breathless and sweating, grinding to the improbably perfect combination of Biggie and Bright Eyes.