Diarrhea Planet

Diarrhea Planet

Diarrhea Planet’s I’m Rich Beyond Your Wildest Dreams is a 2013 release I’m still meaning to catch up on. They’re also a band that I’ve been told, again and again, demands to be seen live, one of the main selling points being the strangeness of the fact that they are essentially a punk band with four guitars. I went to check them out after seeing Mastodon, in the mood for more gut-punching guitar music, and was just as impressed as everyone said I’d be. They played one of Bonnaroo’s bite-size stages, the Miller Lite New Music On Tap Tent, which looks more like the sort of place you’d film a band for some sort of radio show, with something like thirty people in the crowd. Well, there were a lot more people than that, crammed into a space far too small. (The Orwells apparently had a similar problem earlier, inciting enough rowdiness to have the plug pulled on them twice, which I’m told in turn incited a small riot.) There was a hilarious paradox to it, people perched wherever they could be within the tent, it all looking like a casual and passionate punk show flanked by corporate branding and hashtagged slogans. The band members themselves were totally obscured by those who had come to see them — many of whom were local friends, since Diarrhea Planet formed in Nashville — but they sounded great.