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The Boss

Break out the Sharpie and circle your calendars. The lineup for the 2009 Bonnaroo Festival has just been announced, and suffice to say Woodstock and Lollapalooza have nothing on this. Just when you thought the four-day music and arts extravaganza, held on a farm in rural Tennessee, could get no bigger, the promoters snag Bruce Springsteen--fresh off his Super Bowl halftime performance--as their headliner, earning much more "cool points" than the Coachella Festival, which recently announced Sir Paul McCartney (yawn) as their lead act.

As the 'Roo's PR announcement put it, "Every year Bonnaroo seeks to make history by offering unique and exclusive performances by rock's greatest legends as well as its most significant newcomers."

Joining Bruuuuuuce at the 'Roo will be a smorgasbord of music acts from every genre known to humankind (including some not yet invented). Tickets go on sale this Saturday, Feb. 7, and though they ain't cheap--$250 not including service fees-- at what other festival do you get to see Snoop Dogg, David Byrne, Femi Kuti, Merle Haggard, TV on the Radio, Erkyah Badu, The Mars Volta, Lucinda Williams, Phish, Vieux Farka Toure, the Beastie Boys, Al Green, Bela Fleck, Santogold, and about 100 other artists on 13 stages in a 96-hour period?

Our only reservation is perhaps that Raphael Saadiq will be the only Bay Area-identified artist represented (so far), but admittedly, that's a minor gripe in a festival of this magnitude. Luckily, there's another local angle: Promotion company Superfly--who teamed with Another Planet Entertainment to bring you Outside Lands, is now based in SF. So if you see Superfly's chief rocker Rick Farnan at your local neighborhood watering hole, buy him a drink, then hit him up for backstage passes. For a cool animated Bonnaroo preview, click here.