Yes, this seven-year-old, 80,000-spectator festival is a headbanging, sweaty mess, but it belongs on your "do once before I die" list. Thirteen stages' worth of great music booms across rolling farmland 60 miles south of Nashville. Check out the Silent Disco, where a DJ pumps music into your headphones and hundreds of people dance in silence.
Don't Miss Bruce Springsteen, the Beastie Boys, Andrew Bird, MGMT, the

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"Playing with Edgar Meyer at Bonnaroo in 2008, in the blazing heat, when the rains came down and destroyed the stage and sound system but we kept playing... Something magical was going on." —Béla Fleck (BONNAROO)

punky White Rabbits (whose new album was produced by Spoon's Britt Daniel), and African-kora-playing Toumani Diabate's set with Béla Fleck. Four days, $250; bonnaroo.com.
Intermission Bring your road bike and hook up with the wooded 444-mile Natchez Trace Parkway for a ride among the salt licks of verdant central Tennessee (nps.gov/natr).