|
Day one, entry one
And so it begins: Three days of cross-promotional synergy and unrelenting
corporate hype masquerading as the jewel of Chicago’s summer concert season.
Welcome to the third year of Lollapalooza’s reinvention as a destination
festival drawing more than 35,000 people per day to Grant Park.
Same as it ever was
The concert’s Texas-based promoters, C3 Presents, have slightly altered the
orientation of the main stages in their third year in response to complaints
from the ever-contentious residents who live in the high-rises ringing the
park. But the first acts of the day soon made obvious that this has done
little to alleviate the biggest sound problem: bleed from one stage to the
next.
Otherwise, Lolla ’07 looks pretty much like Lolla’06, with even more of a
corporate promotional presence and expanded VIP sections. (More about the
latter shortly.) So much for heeding the complaints and suggestions of
concertgoers in years one and two.
Where have I heard that song before?
My Lolla experience began with the first band on one of the two main stages
in Hutchinson Field at the Southern end of the park. The Fratellis are a
Scottish trio that debuted with the 2006 album “Costello Music,” although
they are best known, appropriately enough for this event, for having
their song “Flathead” featuring in a TV commercial for an MP3 player.
They’re pleasant and jangly enough, but nothing to get excited about — and
nothing you wouldn’t see at any one of Chicago’s innumerable street fairs.
From next-door neighbor to Lolla performer
A few years ago, one of my next-door neighbors on the city’s Northwest Side
was an earnest young guy gearing up for his first year at DePaul University
and eager to make his mark as a musician. Every summer, he’d sit on his
front stoop at night and play his acoustic guitar, singing surprisingly
sophisticated originals, as well as covers by Pink Floyd and Dave Matthews.
Now, Tom Schraeder is preparing to release a debut EP, “The Door, The
Gutter, The Grave,” and in the tough-sell slot of Friday at 12:30, he held
forth on one of the smaller stages in the center of the park along Lake
Shore Drive, winning over early arrivals at the fest (who had to endure an
entry line three blocks long) and shining brightly as he delivered his
tunes with the exquisite backing of a seven-piece band that included
cello, violin, standup bass, drums, keyboards and, best of all, a singing
saw.
“God damn all you women who are the same,” Schraeder sang in an
endearingly gravelly voice and with a world-weary wisdom belying his age and
experience. Combined with a moving sound equal parts alternative-country,
cornfield psychedelia and Neil Young, tunes like this one marked him as a
real talent — and no, that observation isn’t at all influenced by the fact
that I can say I knew him when.
This ain’t no disco
But it could have been, if the punishing heat and blazing sun weren’t so
discouraging to dancers as Ghostland Observatory performed at the
southernmost stage in Hutchinson Field as the afternoon wore on.
In stark contrast to the heat, Austin, TX-based vocalist and guitarist
Aaron Behrens and his cohorts played an exceedingly cool set mixing analog
electronica, vintage ’70s disco and sly hints of heavy metal (most of the
latter courtesy of Behrens’ high-pitched vocals).
If I wasn’t already fearing the onset of heat stroke, I might have even
danced myself. But better anyway to save that sad spectacle for the night’s
headling set by one of Ghostland Observatory’s main influences, the
phenomenal Daft Punk.
This revolution will be corportized
Yes, it was odd to see heartfelt political punk Ted Leo and his rip-roaring
band the Pharmacists hammering out their smart, galvanizing call-to-arms
anthems in the couldn’t be more apolitical, oh-so-middle-of-the-road setting
of Lolla. But it’s a testament to the strength of songs such as “Bomb.
Repeat. Bomb.” and “Army Bound" and a credit to the fact that Leo never
fails to give less than 110 percent on any stage he takes that his set lost
none of the power it had two years ago at the Pitchfork Music Festival.
And speaking of the middle of the road
The high of Leo’s performance was soon dissipated by the next two acts in
Hutchinson Field: Jack’s Mannequin and Slightly Stoopid, both of which were
about as low as Lolla’s lowest points have ever gotten.
Jack’s Mannequin is a AAA radio-friendly combo from Orange County,
Calif., that seemed to be vying to become the next Maroon 5, churning out
generically jangly and instantly forgettable pop songs sure to be coming to
a TV commercial near you soon. Worst of all, vocalist and keyboard player
Andrew McMahon kept injecting inane stage patter about how thrilled he was
to be performing at Lolla and what a wonderful audience Chicago was.
A sample: “What is a festival without some f---ing hand-clapping?”
McMahon shouted. (Deafening silence resounded throughout the field.) “Yeah,
looking good!”
Slightly Stoopid also hailed from California (Ocean Beach, to be
precise), and they proudly describe their sound as “a fusion of acoustic
rock and blues with reggae, hip-hop and punk.” Frankly, I heard none of the
latter; this was a jam band, pure and simple, one of several Lolla has
endeavored to book each year in order to bring that scene into the mix along
with everything else.
Perry’s perspective
Last year, I described the new Chicago Lolla as the concert equivalent of
Wal-Mart, and it is, in terms of offering lots of product for bargain prices
— but even moreso for its bullying business tactics and the negative impact
it’s having on the local music community.
Lolla requires exclusionary “radius clauses” in the contracts of every
act that performs on its stages, prohibiting them from playing a club or any
other venue in town for 60 days before and 30 days after the fest, thereby
decimating much of the rest of the city’s concert scene in the clubs and
smaller venues.
I briefly cornered Festival founder and figurhead Perry Farrell after a
“press conference” that was really no such thing (it was a
question-and-answer session moderated by a writer from Esquire, with no
questions from anyone else), and I asked him about this policy.
“That’s a standard business practice that they’ve had in place for 30
years,” Farrell said. “Ever since I started playing music, they’ve always
had that. [And] I think there’s, like, 10,000 bands in the world, right?”
I told Farrell that in fact, traveling tours such as Warped and Ozzfest
do not have these clauses; neither did the original Lollapalooza. Other
destination festivals like Coachella and Bonnaroo do have them, but those
are held, respectively, in the high desert of California and the woods of
rural Tennessee, and not in the heart of the greatest music city in America.
“If we had our headliners coming and playing before [our festival], that
would really affect our business wouldn’t it?” Farrell responded.
But Lolla promoters continually say there is no festival like this in the
world, I noted. If Lolla really is the best, why is it afraid of competition
from local Chicago clubs?
“I guess you’ve got me there, Jim,” Farrell said. “You got me.”
How the other half lives
As noted earlier, the VIP areas at Lolla seem to grow every year as C3
aggressively courts wealthier concertgoers and corporate groups willing to
pay more than $1,000 per ticket to experience the concert with slightly more
comfort than the have-lesses, who pay $80 a day or $195 for a three-day
pass. This is, of course, supremely undemocratic and the antithesis of the
egalitarian rock ’n’ roll attitude that prevailed at the original Lolla in
the mid-’90s.
As John Lennon famously said at the Royal Variety Performance for the
Queen in 1963, “Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All
the rest of you, just rattle your jewelry.”
So what do the VIPs get for the big bucks? Umbrellas shading plastic lawn
chairs; a wine bar; a tented “Lolla Spa” offering “refreshing massages”;
catered food (beef, turkey or Portobello mushroom wraps, salad and fancy
cookies for lunch) — and pretty much no sight line to the newly positioned
main stages. But hey, these folks are probably here to see and be seen
rather than actually watching the performers.
What the rest of us are paying
Lolla’s policy of prohibiting attendees from bringing in outside food and
drink would be much more egregious if the prices onsite weren’t fairly
reasonable as concert fare goes. Sample prices: a 22-ounce beer in a
“souvenir cup,” $7; a supersize, 26-ounce container of pinot grigio or
merlot, $24; bottled water, $3; soda, $2; a slice of pizza, $4; veggie egg
rolls, $5; jumbo hot dog, $3.
Gee, at these rates, I may still have some money left at the end of the
day for my commemorative Lolla T-shirt ($20 or $25, depending on the
design).
Day one, final entry
More patchouli-scented wankery
The jam-band vibe continued in Hutchinson Field as the afternoon wore on
with moe., the Buffalo, New York, band whose most distinctive aspect is the
lack of capitalization and the unnecessary period in its name. Though they
are much-loved in the post-modern hippie community, these Baby
Dead-challenged ears have never caught much to get excited about in the
music of bassist-vocalist Rob Derhak, guitarist-vocalist Chuck Garvey and
their three solo-happy band mates, and their seemingly unending set at Lolla
was no exception.
A slight improvement
... Came courtesy of the next act in the southern end of the park, Blonde
Redhead, the New York art-punk band that built to a climax with jamming of a
very different sort: swirling, psychedelic, heavily-echoed and truly
chilling space rock, delivered just as the sun was finally starting to set
and the temperature was cooling around 6:30 p.m. It was another of the day's
true musical highlights.
Perry's perspective, part two
During that non-press conference mentioned earlier, Lolla's leader railed
against the increasingly corporate nature of the concert industry, stopping
just short of calling out the giant national promoters Live Nation by name,
but positioning Lolla as the true alternative in the live music field.
Of course, throughout Lolla's original incarnation in the'90s, Farrell
was pretty much the poster boy for alternative ways of doing business,
espousing and actually creating a version of the concert experience that
made the music part and parcel of a true celebration of community.
Things are slightly different now. During our brief chat following the
non-press conference, I also asked Farrell about the two-tiered, VIPs vs.
regular concertgoers dichotomy at Lolla.
"Are you saying that you don't like rich people because they happen to be
rich?" Farrell replied. "Well, that's screwed!"
I told Farrell I was just asking if the VIP sections aren't a bit un-democractic
and anti-rock 'n' roll, a la Lennon's famous comment about clapping vs.
rattling one's jewelry.
"What are you talking about?" Farrell said. "Democracy is based on
capitalism, and if you don't have capitalism, you have communism. And
capitalism is going to help the world beat these a--holes, because you have
the right to take the money out of your pocket and say, 'I don't agree with
you, I don't like foreign oil and I'm not going to use it. I'm going to take
my money my capitalistic dollar, and put it down here.'
"All the people that come here are putting their money down here and
saying, 'I like it here,' so I don't know what you're on about, Jim."
I thought these were fair questions from the perspective of the paying
customers, and I just wanted Perry to have his say. I thanked him for doing
so. But he wasn't through yet.
Perry's perspective, part three
The alternative icon and his current band, Satellite Party, took the stage
in Hutchinson Field about an hour later. Though the group was stronger than
it was last year, before mismatched hair-metal axe-slinger Nuno Bettencourt
left the band, it was odd that Farrell chose to play less new material and
more tried and true oldies, heavily padding the set with hits by Jane's
Addiction ("Stop," "The Mountain Song," "Been Caught Stealing") and Porno
for Pyros ("We'll Make Great Pets").
But the most curious part of the performance was that the singer had one
more comment to add to our earlier interview.
"You guys want me to come back next year, don't you?" Farrell asked the
crowd of about 20,000 in between songs. "The Sun-Times doesn't want me back!
They don't think we have good manners."
Now, Perry: I never said that. I didn't misquote you; why were you
misquoting me?
The best for last
Day one of Lolla finally came to a spectacular conclusion (at least in the
southern end of Grant Park) with high-energy, thoroughly riveting sets by
two of the best dance-punk bands ever.
LCD Soundsystem, the group led by New York super-producer and DFA Records
co-founder James Murphy, were a raucous, riotous party band, merging
free-flowing punk aggression and irresistible, polyrhythmic dance grooves
from its first two albums, a stellar self-titled debut from 2005 and this
year's equally strong "Sound of Silver." And yes, the group nicely set the
stage for the final act of the day by playing its gleefully anthemic "Daft
Punk Is Playing at My House."
Revered in the electronic-music underground and throughout the
international dance-music scene, Daft Punk is a French group led by
Guy-Manuel de omem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter that draws equally on
elements of acid house music (as perfected in Chicago) and vintage punk rock
(stated heroes include the MC5 and the Stooges, as well as the Beach Boys),
delivering wonderfully over-the-top live performances. Unfortunately,
they've played in the United States only very rarely, and booking them as
Friday's headliner was the biggest coup of Lolla 2007.
As hoped, the show was powerfully motivating and exquisitely entrancing,
making anyone who caught it sure to question whether Lolla could be able to
top it on Saturday or Sunday.
Day two, entry one
The second day of Lollapalooza 2008 started slowly, both in terms of musical
highlights in Hutchinson Field — given the distance between the main stages,
I've ceded the northern platforms to my colleague Anders Smith Lindall, and
I'm eager to see if he heard anything better — and with concertgoers only
very slowly filtering back to Grant Park. (Promoters have said they will not
have a number available for festival attendance each day until late Sunday.)
What did the other 999 sound like?
My morning kicked off at 11:30 with the winner of the "Last Band Standing"
contest, Lolla's battle of the bands, which reportedly vied to find the best
group out of 1,000 that submitted its music for the chance of winning "their
dream gig."
Shock Stars is a Chicago sextet with a generic-circa-2006 sound — a mix
of shopping mall punk and electronic dance flavorings — that is nearly as
slick and polished as the aggressive marketing machine highlighted on its
MySpace page. The best I can say of the group's underwhelming half-hour shot
at stardom is: The other bands that fell over so this could be the last one
standing must have been truly lame in comparison.
As in forest?
Only marginally better was Sherwood, a quartet from northern California that
played more pleasantly jangling indie-rock, with a surfeit of memorable
songs to distinguish it from the pack.
Things finally started to pick up at 12:45 with Tokyo Police Club, the
ultra-melodic garage-rock band from Newmarket, Ontario. To date, the group
only has two short EPs to its credit, but both create the delightful buzz of
a great sugar rush, thanks in large part to Graham Wright's pumping organ
parts, which were as strong onstage as they are on record.
"It's really great to see so many of you here," bassist-vocalist Dave
Monks said, surveying the still sparse crowd. But those who did return early
were rewarded with a fine set.
Rock 'n' rock
The intensity continued to build in Hutchinson Field with a performance by
the Minneapolis indie buzz band Tapes 'n' Tapes, whose pulsating, angular
New Wave of New Wave dance-punk grooves were a highlight at the Pitchfork
Music Festival last summer and were even more propulsive this year at Lolla
as the group continues to grow more confident onstage.
Wake me when it's over
Wanting to assure that I could stake out a good position near the smaller
stage at Jackson and Columbus in the north of the park, I arrived in time to
hear the dreadful singer-songwriter Pete Yawn — er, Yorn — close his set at
the Petrillo Band Shell with a cover of "Young Folks."
Ironically, the authors of that massive, irresistible hit, Sweden's Peter
Bjorn & John, have been confined by a booking blunder to one of the smallest
stages on Sunday, giving Yorn the unearned opportunity to rob them of their
moment of glory by playing their hit for the masses.
Following in Yawn's spirit on the Jackson Street stage was the
Montreal-based Sam Roberts Band. I've been searching all weekend for a name
for the gently lilting, vaguely rootsy genre that they represent, and "Sound
Opinions" producer Jason Saldanha finally provided one: "One Tree Hill"
acoustic rock.
Looking over the list of what I've seen so far in the fest, Anders'
accounts of what I've missed and what's still to come at Lolla's half-way
point, I have to say that more than a third of the acts booked this year can
easily be lumped into one of three thoroughly generic and instantly
forgettable sounds: this sort of "One Tree Hill" acoustic rock; pointless
jam-band wankery or pleasantly jangley indie-rock. Enough already!
Ah, well, next up on the intimate Jackson Street stage were two of the
Lolla acts I was most eager to see, and there was nothing generic about
either of them.
South Side's in the house
Although the start of his set was delayed 20 minutes by sound problems, and
the rain that had been threatening all day finally started gently falling
just as he began to perform, South Side rapper Rhymefest took the stage with
his usual high-energy assault.
The rapper, whose mom calls him Che Smith, proceeded to spin his
gruff-voiced rhymes about working-class life, including a new and
still-unnamed track recently recorded with Just Blaze and another with Kanye
West, over the accomplished but under-amplified and poorly mixed backing of
a big band that included a hype man, a DJ, two keyboardists, bass, drums and
a four-piece horn section.
Though his gig didn't quite match the intensity of last year's turn at
the Intonation Festival, it still had a large and enthusiastic crowd
shouting and clapping along as Rhymefest pulled out all the stops, rocking
up some of his material for the occasion, free-styling with no musical
backing at one point and taking a quick jog through the crowd at another.
We missed him, now he's back
Next up: psychedelic-rock pioneer and punk-rock icon Roky Erickson, the
Austin legend who has recently recovered from years of battling
schizophrenia to pull his life together and return to live performance. (He
also made a memorable appearance at Intonation 2006, his first ever visit to
Chicago.)
Erickson once again fronted a tight, hard-rocking three-piece band of
fellow Texans who allowed him ample room to shine on driving rhythm guitar
and powerful vocals that mixed equal parts Buddy Holly sweetness and Little
Richard fury as he tore through timeless classics such as "Don't Shake Me
Lucifer," "The Creature With the Atom Brain," "Starry Eyes" and, of course,
his signature hit, "You're Gonna Miss Me," which was still as ferocious as
it must have been in 1966, and lacked only the 13th Floor Elevators'
amplified jug.
"And now I'm home to stay," Erickson sang as he poured his soul into a
moving rendition of the Elevators' "Splash 1," and the fact that he looked
and sounded as if that was a truth after so many years of troubles was
reflected in the loving and joyful response of his fans.
Day two, final entry
Meet the new wave, same as the old wave
My second day at Lollapalooza ended back at Hutchinson Field in the southern
end of Grant Park, with two strong bands offering two more different takes
on that angular, jagged New Wave of New Wave sound, as well as the day's
nominal superstars.
Taking the stage in an eye-catching outfit of black fishnet stockings and
what appeared to be a latex dominatrix outfit, Karen O led her New York
art-punk band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs through a spirited performance that
channeled the electrifying attitude and energy of punk godmother Patti Smith
(who was about to perform an hour later in the north of the park, following
her second annual surprise appearance at Kidzapalooza earlier in the day)
through alternative-rock heroine PJ Harvey and into the present with her own
uniquely captivating sound and stage presence.
As always, Nick Zinner's effects-drenched shoegazer guitar was the
perfect musical foil and compliment for O's ululating vocals and flamboyant
stage moves, and the band proved to be playing together as a much tighter
unit in the wake of its second album, "Show Your Bones," released last year.
The New Yorkers were followed by another band from Austin, the
wonderfully clever and melodic art punks Spoon, who mixed songs from
throughout their lengthy catalog with material from the excellent recent
release, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga," which suffered only from the absence of the horn
section that pushes parts of that new album deliciously over the top.
Nevertheless, guitarist-vocalist Britt Daniel's haiku-like choruses were
as effective as ever as they pulsed through the now sporadic rain driven by
Jim Eno's machine-like drums and the group's throbbing keyboards, a sound
that brings vintage '70s Wire and Talking Heads in exciting new directions.
Black holes but no revelations
Finally, day two ended in Hutchinson Field with the weekend's most mediocre
headliner (though Interpol in the north was barely more worthy), the English
quartet Muse.
The inferior English answer to America's similarly theatrical,
atmospheric but much more clever My Chemical Romance, core band members
Matthew Bellamy, the group's philosophically minded guitarist-vocalist,
bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard attempt an unlikely
merger of radio-friendly alternative, vintage symphonic/pomp-rock (heavy on
the imitation Queen), funk, electronica and hair metal. Live at Lolla as on
the group's most recent album, last year's "Black Holes and Revelations,"
the whole mess just falls flat, toppling under the weight of its own bombast
and pretensions.
The band kicked things off with a bit of taped oratory by John F.
Kennedy, and that was the most coherent and eloquent part of its show.
Keyboards tinkled, Bellamy trilled, a synthesized orchestra swelled, drums
boomed and guitars laid useless, flashy filigrees atop it all, making my
head hurt, my ears ring and my second day at Lolla end with a pompous
whimper rather than the bang I really could have used.
Of course, there's always tomorrow.
Day three, entry one
The third and final day of Lollapalooza's reinvention as a destination
festival in Grant Park began on Sunday with the oppressive heat and humidity
back and worse then ever; Grant Park thoroughly drenched by late-night and
early-morning thunderstorms, and threats of more to come later in the day.
Good thing I brought my plastic poncho. Now, as our ace photographer
Marty Perez said, if only someone would invent a portable personal air
conditioner.
More generic jangle
Once again, my music experience began in the southern end of the park as the
New York sextet White Rabbits took one of the two big stages in Hutchinson
Field to spew more of this festivals omnipresent generic indie-rock jangle.
After three days of this, I'm beginning to think there's really just one
band that keeps changing names and outfits to deliver the same mildly
pleasant but instantly forgettable jingle-jangle song.
The next Hutchinson act, Indiana native Dax Riggs, a former member of
last year's Lolla performers deadboy & the Elephantmen, rose above another
of Lolla's ubiquitous genres, "One Tree Hill" acoustic rock, while
stretching one song out into a grungy guitar work-out worthy of Neil Young
and Crazy Horse. Unfortunately, the rest of its set was instantly
forgettable.
It's all about you know
An interesting footnote: Riggs is one of several acts managed by Lolla's
Austin-based promoters, C3 Presents, which explains why he was booked this
year and why his old band played last year. Their management roster also
includes Sparklehorse, which played on Friday; last year's acts Blues
Traveler and Ben Kweller, among others — and the next band in Hutchinson
Field on Sunday, the Heartless Bastards, a Cincinnati power trio that was
none too potent as it put its own stamp on generic indie-rock jangle (should
I just start calling it GIRJ?) via a slight hint of the blues and
the vaguely Chrissie Hynde-style vocals of front woman Erika Wennerstrom.
Kick, push, dig it
Both the music and the weather brightened considerably by the time Chicago
rapper Lupe Fiasco took the main stage in Hutchinson Field in mid-afternoon
to fulfill the promise he showed last year when his cameo appearance was a
highlight of Kanye West's headlining gig.
A huge crowd, one of the biggest of the fest, filled the once-again
sun-drenched softball field to hear the unapologetically geeky, politically
and socially conscious middle-class everyman rhyme. He played his hit "Kick
Push," of course, but he also took some chances by unveiling some unfamiliar
but strong new material, just like Rhymefest did on Saturday, and the fans
were with him every step of the way.
"Can you dig it?" Lupe continually asked between tuneful mid-tempo jams,
and thousands roared back, "Yes I can!" A rumored appearance by Kanye never
happened, but Lupe did bring out another Chicago hip-hop hero, Twista, whose
always startling display of rapid-fire verbal gymnastics wowed the crowd and
offset the indignity of his recently being kicked off a corporate
promotional tour sponsored by a fast-food franchise because his material was
potentially offensive to
children — a real injustice, since his rhymes are barely in the same
realm as many chart-topping gangsta rappers championing sex, drugs and
violence. Lupe did risk offending some listeners, but his edgy introduction
of the song "American Terrorist" actually seemed to energize the crowd and
stood out as a rare political statement at Lolla. "Do you all know George
Bush?" Lupe asked. [Long pause.] "You may know him as the President of the
United States of America. [Another pause.] Well, I know him as the President
of the United States of American terrorism." And once again the crowd
cheered.
Day two, final entry
Meet the new wave, same as the old wave
My second day at Lollapalooza ended back at Hutchinson Field in the southern
end of Grant Park, with two strong bands offering two more different takes
on that angular, jagged New Wave of New Wave sound, as well as the day's
nominal superstars.
Taking the stage in an eye-catching outfit of black fishnet stockings and
what appeared to be a latex dominatrix outfit, Karen O led her New York
art-punk band the Yeah Yeah Yeahs through a spirited performance that
channeled the electrifying attitude and energy of punk godmother Patti Smith
(who was about to perform an hour later in the north of the park, following
her second annual surprise appearance at Kidzapalooza earlier in the day)
through alternative-rock heroine PJ Harvey and into the present with her own
uniquely captivating sound and stage presence.
As always, Nick Zinner's effects-drenched shoegazer guitar was the
perfect musical foil and compliment for O's ululating vocals and flamboyant
stage moves, and the band proved to be playing together as a much tighter
unit in the wake of its second album, "Show Your Bones," released last year.
The New Yorkers were followed by another band from Austin, the
wonderfully clever and melodic art punks Spoon, who mixed songs from
throughout their lengthy catalog with material from the excellent recent
release, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga," which suffered only from the absence of the horn
section that pushes parts of that new album deliciously over the top.
Nevertheless, guitarist-vocalist Britt Daniel's haiku-like choruses were
as effective as ever as they pulsed through the now sporadic rain driven by
Jim Eno's machine-like drums and the group's throbbing keyboards, a sound
that brings vintage '70s Wire and Talking Heads in exciting new directions.
Black holes but no revelations
Finally, day two ended in Hutchinson Field with the weekend's most mediocre
headliner (though Interpol in the north was barely more worthy), the English
quartet Muse.
The inferior English answer to America's similarly theatrical,
atmospheric but much more clever My Chemical Romance, core band members
Matthew Bellamy, the group's philosophically minded guitarist-vocalist,
bassist Chris Wolstenholme and drummer Dominic Howard attempt an unlikely
merger of radio-friendly alternative, vintage symphonic/pomp-rock (heavy on
the imitation Queen), funk, electronica and hair metal. Live at Lolla as on
the group's most recent album, last year's "Black Holes and Revelations,"
the whole mess just falls flat, toppling under the weight of its own bombast
and pretensions.
The band kicked things off with a bit of taped oratory by John F.
Kennedy, and that was the most coherent and eloquent part of its show.
Keyboards tinkled, Bellamy trilled, a synthesized orchestra swelled, drums
boomed and guitars laid useless, flashy filigrees atop it all, making my
head hurt, my ears ring and my second day at Lolla end with a pompous
whimper rather than the bang I really could have used.
Of course, there's always tomorrow.
Day three, entry one
The third and final day of Lollapalooza's reinvention as a destination
festival in Grant Park began on Sunday with the oppressive heat and humidity
back and worse then ever; Grant Park thoroughly drenched by late-night and
early-morning thunderstorms, and threats of more to come later in the day.
Good thing I brought my plastic poncho. Now, as our ace photographer
Marty Perez said, if only someone would invent a portable personal air
conditioner.
More generic jangle
Once again, my music experience began in the southern end of the park as the
New York sextet White Rabbits took one of the two big stages in Hutchinson
Field to spew more of this festivals omnipresent generic indie-rock jangle.
After three days of this, I'm beginning to think there's really just one
band that keeps changing names and outfits to deliver the same mildly
pleasant but instantly forgettable jingle-jangle song.
The next Hutchinson act, Indiana native Dax Riggs, a former member of
last year's Lolla performers deadboy & the Elephantmen, rose above another
of Lolla's ubiquitous genres, "One Tree Hill" acoustic rock, while
stretching one song out into a grungy guitar work-out worthy of Neil Young
and Crazy Horse. Unfortunately, the rest of its set was instantly
forgettable.
It's all about you know
An interesting footnote: Riggs is one of several acts managed by Lolla's
Austin-based promoters, C3 Presents, which explains why he was booked this
year and why his old band played last year. Their management roster also
includes Sparklehorse, which played on Friday; last year's acts Blues
Traveler and Ben Kweller, among others — and the next band in Hutchinson
Field on Sunday, the Heartless Bastards, a Cincinnati power trio that was
none too potent as it put its own stamp on generic indie-rock jangle (should
I just start calling it GIRJ?) via a slight hint of the blues and
the vaguely Chrissie Hynde-style vocals of front woman Erika Wennerstrom.
Kick, push, dig it
Both the music and the weather brightened considerably by the time Chicago
rapper Lupe Fiasco took the main stage in Hutchinson Field in mid-afternoon
to fulfill the promise he showed last year when his cameo appearance was a
highlight of Kanye West's headlining gig.
A huge crowd, one of the biggest of the fest, filled the once-again
sun-drenched softball field to hear the unapologetically geeky, politically
and socially conscious middle-class everyman rhyme. He played his hit "Kick
Push," of course, but he also took some chances by unveiling some unfamiliar
but strong new material, just like Rhymefest did on Saturday, and the fans
were with him every step of the way.
"Can you dig it?" Lupe continually asked between tuneful mid-tempo jams,
and thousands roared back, "Yes I can!" A rumored appearance by Kanye never
happened, but Lupe did bring out another Chicago hip-hop hero, Twista, whose
always startling display of rapid-fire verbal gymnastics wowed the crowd and
offset the indignity of his recently being kicked off a corporate
promotional tour sponsored by a fast-food franchise because his material was
potentially offensive to
children — a real injustice, since his rhymes are barely in the same
realm as many chart-topping gangsta rappers championing sex, drugs and
violence. Lupe did risk offending some listeners, but his edgy introduction
of the song "American Terrorist" actually seemed to energize the crowd and
stood out as a rare political statement at Lolla. "Do you all know George
Bush?" Lupe asked. [Long pause.] "You may know him as the President of the
United States of America. [Another pause.] Well, I know him as the President
of the United States of American terrorism." And once again the crowd
cheered.
Day three, entry two
Crashing back to Earth
Alas, my Lupe high was soon bummed while enduring parts of the sets by
Blue October — yet more GIRJ with a slight gothic tinge — and, as I made my
way to the northern end of the park, more jam-band b.s. from Toronto's
Apostle of Hustle at the Jackson and Columbus stage, followed by more "One
Tree Hill" acoustic-rock crap from Scottish-Italian crooner Paolo Nutini on
the Petrillo Band Shell.
All three dismissible genres here in one half-hour stretch! But that
wasn't why I went hiking through the oppressive heat: I made the trek for
what I hoped would be an explosion of violent, cathartic energy from some
reunited proto-punk gods, and I wasn't disappointed.
Raw power
No, Iggy and the Stooges didn't play that one — guitarist Ron Asheton
refuses to perform anything from the legendary band's third album, for which
he was relegated to bass once James Williamson came onboard — but Iggy Pop
hit the stage like a tornado, and the intensity only built from there.
"Hello, motherf---ers!" Iggy shouted after opening with "Loose," which
was followed by "1969," "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "TV Eye," making for four
of the most incendiary rock songs ever written in row. "We are very happy to
be here at f---ing Lolla-pop-apalooza!"
While families straggling over from Kidzapalooza may have cringed at all
of the cussing, I for one was glad to have the Stooges in all of their
vulgar, deliciously dirty, incredibly ugly, blood pressure-raising power,
and even the songs from their lame comeback album, "The Weirdness," sounded
good live, especially "My Idea of Fun (Is Killing Everyone)," which Iggy
sang from the midst of the stunned, somewhat frightened but nonetheless
energized crowd. All oldies/nostalgia acts should be this good — and for
that matter, so should many of the current up-and-comers a quarter the
Stooges' age who polluted the park throughout the weekend.
The climax of the band's set: "No Fun," during which Iggy invited the
crowd onstage, and hundreds of fans jumped the security fences and climbed
up to dance beside him in a wild frenzy, thoroughly freaking out security
and the promoters, just like great rock 'n' roll should. No fun? No way;
quite the opposite! Though I couldn't help but wonder what the Stooges' No.
1 fan and original champion of punk rock, rock critic Lester Bangs, would
have thought about seeing his heroes here, at this time and in this most
corporate-rock of settings. It would probably have killed him, if he wasn't
dead already.
Day three, entry three
The final day of Lollapalooza Mach III began to wind down for me back in
the southern end of Grant Park, where I knew it would be difficult if
not impossible to top the high point of Iggy and the Stooges — or, for that
matter, LCD Soundsystem and Daft Punk on Friday or Roky Erickson and
Rhymefest on Saturday.
I got back to Hutchinson Field just in time to hear the last half of the
mostly Brooklyn-based band !!! presenting the weekend's least distinctive
take on that New Wave of New Wave groove. (Yeah, I know I've been repeating
myself with these shorthand genre descriptions — but not nearly as much as
Lollapalooza has.) Basically, !!! was more like ??? or.
Oh to live on Sugar Mountain (again)
Next up were the Louisville, Ky., alt-country cult favorites My Morning
Jacket, who churned out their ersatz Neil Young grooves and in the process
impressed only those who had never heard that giant himself. Then the group
promised to offer something a bit more than its ordinary musical Xerox act
by joining forces midway through its set with the Chicago Youth Symphony
Orchestra.
Unfortunately, the young classical musicians were very poorly amplified,
and band leader Jim James hadn't really thought out beforehand how to
utilize them to best effect — a problem he shared with the Decemberists when
they joined forces with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra at Millennium Park
a few weeks ago. But the band almost redeemed itself with its final song
when it covered Kanye West's "Touch the Sky," an appropriate and fitting
tribute to Chicago, and the sort of simple but moving effort to acknowledge
the festival's home that too few bands made this weekend.
For much of this fest, if you didn't happen to be facing the skyline or
Lake Michigan and were simply standing in a crowded, dusty softball field,
you'd have seen or heard nothing that indicated that all of this music was
happening in Chicago. You might as well have been plopped down in a corn
field in Iowa or a dust bowl outside Oklahoma City.
TV on the radio in the park
Though these Brooklyn experimental rockers are certainly a buzz-worthy act,
they were hardly deserving of the penultimate slot of the fest before the
big headliner. One suspects that their prominent booking was a response to
the fact that this was the one Lolla act that last month's much more
adventurous and musically rewarding Pitchfork Music Festival was sorry to
lose to this bigger and much better funded shindig.
TV on the Radio's polyrhythmic rock only really got the massive crowd in
Hutchinson Field (which was rapidly filling up for Pearl Jam) moving and
cheering when it played its best known — and just plain best, period — song,
"Wolf Like Me." In fact, the rest of the quintet's set was so underwhelming
that it was drowned out several times whenever a Pearl Jam guitar or drum
tech simply walked onstage to check the Seattle grunge band and festival
headliner's equipment.
Still no numbers
Despite numerous requests for attendance figures throughout the weekend, as
in the last two years, Lolla publicists did not make these available to the
press as of Sunday night. Early on, they said they expected "as many as
60,000" per day. But to these experienced concert-going eyes — as well as
the estimates of police officials, stage production veterans and security
workers — the total probably only reached that peak on Sunday.
And, finally, Eddie comes home
Although I get grief from fans complaining that I'm holding them up to an
impossibly high standard (even though it's a standard they set) whenever I
mention this, my benchmarks for a great Pearl Jam show are the two I caught
at the Blossom Arts Center outside Cleveland and what was then the World
Music Theatre in Tinley Park when the group performed as part of
Lollapalooza 1992, and Evanston native Eddie Vedder literally climbed the
rafters of those outdoor venues during the shows as a very physical
expression of how exciting the band's music was back then.
It's a different Pearl Jam 15 years later, better in some ways — the band
is certainly more subtle and varied in the differing textures it brings to
its songs — but not nearly as good in others. There was a time when Vedder
was as exciting to watch and listen to as Iggy Pop, at age 20 or at age 60.
I won't apologize for saying I miss that.
To its credit, though, Pearl Jam delivered one of the most intense and
hard-rocking shows I've seen it deliver since Soldier Field in 1995, when
everything seemed to be on the line for the band as it played one of the few
American gigs it was able to during the midst of its battle with
Ticketmaster. This was especially true during a hard-charging opening that
included "Go" and "Do the Evolution," and it was possible to accept, as
Eddie sang in "Corduroy," that "Everything has chains ... absolutely
nothing's changed."
"It needs to be said that as a young man who used to spend many a day
riding on the 'L' train, listening on his Walkman to bands like Patti Smith
and Iggy Pop, it means a lot to be playing here," Vedder said, eloquently
voicing a passion missing in far too many acts this weekend.
Other magical and inspiring moments during Pearl Jam's set:
* The fireworks show in Soldier Field that erupted in the midst of
"Evenflow."
* Vedder urging concertgoers to boycott BP/Amaco until it abandons its
plans to further pollute Lake Michigan: "Think of it like a girlfriend or
boyfriend who never brushes their teeth: You wouldn't kiss them. So don't
show BP/Amaco any love until it cleans up its act!" (Tens of thousands
responded by chanting "No BP!" as Vedder proceeded to improvise a short song
with that lyric on the spot.)
* A gorgeous, acoustic-guitar-driven version of "Daughter" that merged
after a while into Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall, Part II," with
Vedder segueing from the massive, crowd-aided sing-along chant of "We don't
need no education / We don't need no thought control" into "George Bush,
leave this world alone!"
* The blast from the past that was "Alive," which Vedder introduced by
saying how much its appearance on Lollapalooza 1992 meant to the band.
* And the group's moving cover of Victoria Williams' "Crazy Mary." Pretty
great stuff, all of it.
A FINAL THOUGHT. FOR NOW
Although this was the third Grant Park Lolla, it was the first year as
part of a five-year, $5 million contract between Austin, Texas-based
promoters C3 Presents and the Chicago Park District. This means the fest
will be back every summer for the next four years — and it needs to do
better to provide the festival experience Chicago deserves.
In addition to strengthening the bookings by cutting down on quantity and
concentrating on quality — a move that would also eliminate the distracting
and pervasive sound bleed — C3 should heed the complaints of many
concertgoers and cut down on the obnoxious corporate hype and snooty VIP
areas, which claim the best parts of the park at the expense of the average
paying customers.
BACK |
|