One of the more hyped bands at both Coachella and Bonnaroo this year was Brooklyn's MGMT. Although they fall outside the idiom of "jamband," MGMT claimed, backstage that not only were they aware of Bonnaroo's roots, but in fact they feel a sort of kinship to it.

"We discussed playing a 45-minute version of [the Grateful Dead's] 'China Cat Sunflower,'" joked guitarist James Richardson who, non-ironically, was decked out in a Grateful Dead t-shirt.

"We have pretty good taste," says founding member Andrew Van Wyngarden. "We're fans of the Grateful Dead and psychedelic music. We have crazy jams in our rehearsal space and we're trying to eventually bring that out more on stage."

There's no better place to do it than Bonnaroo. So when MGMT took the stage at 'This Tent' on Day One, the packed crowd was treated to jammed out versions of their songs, including a crowd-pleasing rendition of 'Electric Feel' from the band's critically-lauded 'Oracular Spectacular' release.

"I think that pretty much everybody in MGMT secretly loves jambands -- well, not so secretly. We always have," Richardson admits. "Around 2000 or something, everybody really wanted to be 'indie' and now it's just swinging back, I guess. I don't know if that's true, but I hope it is. I just want to break down those barriers. Segregation has existed too long between the jambands and the artsy-fartsy bands, and it doesn't need to be there."

As for why that barrier went up in the first place, Richardson makes the astute observation that "too many bad imitators of Phish ruined that whole thing." With Phish's own management in the wings watching MGMT, we'd have to say that Richardson is -- pardon the pun -- dead on.