The legend started three years ago, on a muddy day in March, over a plate of lukewarm pasta in the Brody Hall cafeteria.

My roommate and I, freshmen at the time, had just sat down to eat when a friend and fellow Brody dweller rushed over to our table.

"Do you have tickets yet?" he asked excitedly.

My roommate and I looked at him blankly. Tickets to what?

"The next Woodstock!" he said, flailing his arms as if offended that we didn't know what he was talking about. "Bonnaroo!"

And our response, like so many other people's responses when first hearing the name of the then-underground summer festival, was a mix of confusion and excitement.

"Bonna-who?"

I had no idea then that the mouthful-of-a-name, deriving from a Creole term meaning "good times," described a then-fledgling summer concert that would be one of the best times of my life.

But now, three years later, I'm concerned about the future of this fair festival.

Because there had been no commercial advertising for the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, my friends and I had not the slightest inkling of what to expect. The mystery of it all just added to the excitement. And the more we found out about it, the more we couldn't believe how amazing it all sounded: a three-day, round-the-clock concert featuring an endless list of phenomenal musicians on sprawling 700-acre farm in Manchester (a.k.a. The Middle of Nowhere), Tenn.

Once we were there, the energy was almost tangible. When I wasn't spellbound by the acts on stage, I was marveling at the almost 90,000 music fanatics getting down in the dust. It was so amazing, the music was so incredible, the fans were so kind and enthusiastic that even before I left, I had decided that I would return next year.

I did return in 2003 as a volunteer for the festival's organizers. But already, the energy was different. Word had gotten around about the three-day party in Tennessee. The crowds were bigger and less patient.

During one of my volunteer shifts at an information booth, a tubby, shirtless, sunburned man shoved his arm in my face and yelled that his festival wristband had scraped his skin. As he bellowed at me in a drunken rage, I glanced at his teetering, glossy-eyed comrades behind him. Something in me believed they were there more for the scene, more for the drugs and drinking, than the music.

And it dawned on me: The legendary 'Roo was on it's way to being 'Roo-ined.

A few weeks ago, the festival promoters announced the artist lineup for Bonnaroo 2005. Each year, the artists have grown increasingly mainstream, but this lineup takes the cake. It's more than the jammy roots music - jazz, folk, country and otherwise - that dominated the first two years. Now there's rap, hip-hop and even pop music.

And headlining? Dave Matthews Band.

Now, I'm all about sharing a beautiful thing. But having one of the most mainstream acts in America headline a festival that was once underground ruins the magic.

Props to the Bonnaroo crew for making their festival one of the better summer concerts for the last four years in a row. Props as well for wanting to incorporate different genres of music, mainstream included, so the festival appeals to different kinds of fans.

But the way I see it, bigger is not always better. The more people who are there, the less likely that most of them actually care about the music.

If you've already got tickets, go. Experience the summer festival before it completely melts into mainstream, commercialized crap. But for me, the thrill is gone for good.

State News music reporter Emily Bingham will not be going to Bonnaroo 2005. E-mail her other festivals at binghame@msu.edu.