Recap Lollapalooza 2010: It's all about the spectacle

Lollapalooza returned to Chicago for the sixth time this weekend in its biggest incarnation yet: According to the Chicago Tribune, 240,000 descended upon an even bigger chunk of Grant Park—this year expanded west beyond Columbus Avenue—for three full days and nights of music. With friendly staff, water only $2, beer $5, and food vendors curated by rising star chef Graham Elliot, Lollapalooza maintained its status as a well-run, enjoyable mega-fest. The A.V. Club was well-represented at this year’s festival, and we can safely say that we had a great time—and are totally psyched it’s over. (For even more A.V. Club Lolla coverage, check out a stream of Associate Editor Kyle Ryan appearing on WGN’s Nick Digilio Show last night.)

FRIDAY

YES

• By far the biggest draw on Friday night was Lady Gaga, who last played Lollapalooza in 2007, on a side stage, to a reportedly unengaged crowd and mediocre-to-bad reviews. On Friday, she was a headlining superstar, and she never let the audience forget it; between songs, she rolled around on her back onstage in shredded fishnets and a coating of stage blood, delivering wandering, impassioned speeches thanking all us “little monsters” for freeing her from the tyranny of the judgments of people who thought she was too skinny, too weird, or was a “train wreck” in her last Lolla show. She urged us all to free ourselves in turn from anyone who would judge us—especially over our sexual orientation, a point she hit several times over the course of her two-hour show.

For a vindicated superstar, though, she put on an oddly hitchy show, what with the lengthy impromptu speeches and the periodic breaks for costume changes and (presumably) fake-blood cleanup. At each pause, a vast white curtain descended over the stage and everything came to a halt for several minutes at a time while recorded video played on the monitors and against the curtain. This might work in a more focused indoor setting, but outside, the audio on the sedate videos, featuring Gaga whispering confessionally about who-knows-what, was lost among the crowd noise, and when fireworks started going off to the south during one of them, everyone stopped paying attention entirely. Compared to most of Lolla’s shows, where performers dove in and never let up for an hour or more, this one seemed full of pauses and hiccups.

Still, whenever the curtain rose and Gaga reappeared, the energy picked up again immediately as the fans worked themselves into a swooning fervor. She encouraged audience sing-alongs, and they responded, belting out not just the biggest hits, but virtually all her work word-for-word. Some of her signature costumes were in evidence, including a getup that made her look like a vast lampshade, and another (for “Bad Romance,” her encore song) in which she resembled a spiky disco ball. But after debuting a flashy costume, she tended to strip back down to vinyl bra-and-bikini-bottom basics outfit (with giant stiletto heels, all the better to stomp on her piano keyboard), presumably so she could stay functional in the heat. She was physically active for most of the show, whether flailing around being attacked by “the Fame Monster,” a giant fanged, tentacled angler-fish puppet created by Jim Henson studios (she told the audience they could help her defeat it by taking pictures with lots of flash, which naturally led into “Paparazzi”) or receiving a libation of more stage blood from a gilt angel statue, “the only statue in the world that bleeds for you.” It was all fairly random, self-indulgent, and eccentric, but that’s what Gaga is known for—that, and those pounding, hooky, infectiously danceable songs. [TR]

• With 90 percent of the crowd across the park, snooping out what Lady Gaga was up to, The Strokes amped up the volume and energy to fill in the cracks. Not that the New Yorkers were energetic by any stretch of the imagination—the members, including frontman Julian Casablancas, mostly just planted themselves in one spot for the entire show—but the music didn’t require much embellishment. The Strokes powered through the majority of their discography, punching familiar moments extra hard so the crowd, eagerly scrunched toward the stage, would go nuts. The solos in “Reptilia” and “Vision Of Division,” for example, ran long and diverted from the band’s usual note-for-note tightness. As for banter, Casablancas was his usual dodgy self, muttering little more than a “Thank you” between songs. No matter: The Strokes write such short tunes, the lack of chit-chat simply meant the crowd got more music and a welcome respite from the Gaga gaga. [SH]

• Given The New Pornographers’ song choices, you’d hardly know they released a new album earlier this year. The Canadian supergroup started with “Sing Me Spanish Techno,” quickly moved to “The Laws Have Changed,” and even went as deep as “Mass Romantic.” Sure, they also hit “Crash Years” and “Your Hands (Together)” off May’s Together, but this was a show for longtime fans as well as new ones. Musically, they were as cohesive as ever, easily slotting Dan Bejar in for “Testament To Youth In Verse” (“This is a sing-along, and the only word is ‘no,’” frontman Carl Newman quipped) and weaving Kathryn Calder into the harmonies for older songs. [SH]

• Sometime just after 1 p.m., I was headed toward the office on Lake Shore Drive, listening to the excellent upcoming Walkmen record, Lisbon, due out Sept. 14. Then what should come wafting through the air but The Walkmen, performing at an hour far too early, at Lollapalooza—and precisely the same song! A good omen, I thought. The reason I wasn’t in Grant Park already to see the band was part of a pacing strategy that involved catching them at one of Lolla’s many officially sanctioned afterparties. So at Double Door, long after Lady Gaga had left the festival grounds, The Walkmen turned in an amazing, sweaty set that leaned heavily on new songs—which were met with plenty of love, even though most of the audience was presumably not familiar with them. The new album is a doozy, as live renditions of “Angela Surf City,” “Woe Is Me,” and the horn-heavy funeral march “Stranded” proved. Lisbon is best-of-the-year material. [JM]

• Market research dictated Devo’s recent makeover, and—in keeping with the title of its newest album, Something For Everybody—the band now pitches its de-evolutionary rap across all quadrants: For the diehards, it pulled out a block of familiar hits like “Uncontrollable Urge” (complete with choreography straight out of Urgh! A Music War), “Mongoloid,” “Jocko Homo,” and “Smart Patrol/Mr. DNA.” For those who demand something more than mere nostalgia to justify a band’s continued existence, Something tracks like “Don’t Shoot (I’m A Man)” offered proof that the group is still a functioning songwriting machine—albeit a somewhat creaky one: That refrain of “Don’t tase me, bro” hasn’t gotten any less cringe-worthy. And for the kids whose exposure to Devo is tangential at best, here’s Mark Mothersbaugh’s exhortation that the band is here to “‘Whip It’ all over again!” to grateful cheers of recognition. Each phase was marked by a costume change—and the transition from the familiar yellow jumpsuit/red energy dome ensemble to simple Devo T-shirts and kneepads marked the only time you were likely to hear someone yell, “Take it off, Devo!” If the set felt like a Devo revue more than an actual concert, that’s probably exactly what the band was aiming for: Since the very beginning, it’s pursued self-conscious branding as a form of clever postmodern commentary. But it must be said that, now that Devo’s recent rebirth is approaching its Las Vegas phase, that postmodern veil is slipping a bit. “I think we all know that de-evolution is real—the evidence is all around us,” Mothersbaugh said at one point, and it sounded less like the sarcastic accusation of yore than practiced, perfunctory shtick. Or maybe that’s the point? In a way, that’s the brilliance of Devo. [SO]

• Genetic testing on Drive-By Truckers would reveal the unmistakable imprint of Uncle Tupelo, and it was easy to hear the alt-country forefathers’ more rocking moments coming through the PlayStation Stage’s speakers during DBT. The band opened with a slew of tracks from this year’s The Big To-Do: “Get Downtown,” “(It’s Gonna Be) I Told You So,” “The Fourth Night Of My Drinking,” “Birthday Boy,” and “This Fucking Job.” As a band, Drive-By Truckers strike a nice balance of twang and rock, with enough of the latter to keep country-phobes interested and just the right amount of the former to give the songs that salt-of-the-earth authenticity. Festivals don’t suit some bands, but the Lolla environment worked well for the Drive-By Truckers, who clearly won converts during their set. [KR]

• Brimming with the kind of confidence that only a year of best-of accolades and big festival dates can bring, Dirty Projectors seemed remarkably relaxed in front of a packed PlayStation Stage crowd. Maybe a little too relaxed at times, as when “Stillness Is The Move” settled into a lackluster groove early on and stayed there, robbed of its usual show-stopping bounce—although Amber Coffman may have been saving it up for her final, wild, melismatic vocal run, which has only gotten ballsier. But whenever the set threatened to dissolve into late-afternoon laziness, songs like “Knotty Pine”—where David Longstreth lost his guitar strap mere seconds into the song but continued unaffected anyway—and closer “Useful Chamber” exploded into noisy, energetic flailing that brought things back around. And apparently things weren’t too slow, as the group finished its set a tad too early and had to be brought back out for an unexpected encore: “I think maybe Brian rushed all the tempos,” Longstreth kidded his drummer, which was charming—untrue, but charming. Also untrue but charming: Longstreth’s between-song banter about how Chicago is great because “what other city has a font named after it?”—about which Monaco and Rome might beg to differ. [SO]

• In the five years since its rebirth as a weekend festival in Chicago, Lollapalooza has offered a growth chart for some acts who have played it multiple times. The biggest example would be Lady Gaga playing an under-attended (and poorly received) gig on the small BMI Stage in 2007—a slight that clearly fueled her fuck-you-I’m-a-star headlining performance Friday night—but others have ascended the ranks on a smaller scale. Where Gaga was defiant, Matt & Kim couldn’t have been more grateful or enthusiastic to play an evening slot on the big Adidas Mega Stage. “Three years ago we played at 11:30 to a crowd one-tenth of this size,” said keyboardist Matt Johnson. Playing to a surprisingly huge crowd clearly delighted him and drummer Kim Schifino. “It means more than the fucking world—it means the fucking universe to me!” Their sheer goofy enthusiasm rubbed some people the wrong way, but they were clearly having fun, especially with their silly between-song antics, from playing part of Biz Markie’s “Just A Friend,” to Schifino standing atop people’s hands to “booty dance,” to playing the opening notes of Gaga’s “Just Dance.” The set closed out with “Daylight,” from last year’s excellent Grand, and the kind of boundless enthusiasm that’s sadly rare. [KR]

• Another potential small-stage-performance-before-superstardom moment came Friday afternoon with rapper (and Jay-Z associate) J. Cole. On “A Star Is Born,” from last year’s The Blueprint 3, Hova put the young Cole in the same big league as Puffy and Drake, then gave him a verse of his own. The rags-to-riches story played out in “Dollar And A Dream,” from last year’s The Comeup, which Cole prefaced by saying, “When I was broke as FUCK, this was my jam.” He dispensed many bons mots between songs, like introducing “Losing My Balance” by saying “I need that white-guy-with-sunglasses feeling. Black people don’t act black on this one. Act white.” The songs sounded good, if oddly short, as if Cole were playing excerpts. But it still boded well for what comes next. [KR]

• I was excited to see Cymbals Eat Guitars for the first time, especially since they blew the doors off the A.V. Undercover round room the day before. They were loud and noisy and terrific, and reminded me much more of the rockingest Joan Of Arc moments than the bands they’re often compared to, like Modest Mouse and Pavement. They even busted out the cover they learned for Undercover, but I won’t spoil it for you. It’ll air on Aug. 17. [JM]

• Scheduled early in the afternoon on the first day of the festival, Mavis Staples played to a thin crowd made up more of curious onlookers than devoted fans, but those who were willing to take a chance on the 71-year-old R&B/gospel legend were rewarded with more than just idle amusement. Admittedly, an a capella gospel hymn isn’t the most rip-roaring way to start a rock ’n’ roll festival, and for the first 10 minutes or so, Staples’ between-song banter consisted mostly of her repeating the titles and lyrics of her Jesus-loving tunes, lending the set a vaguely sanctimonious air. But those who suspected that Staples’ association with Jeff Tweedy—who is producing her upcoming album, You Are Not Alone—might pay some interesting dividends were proven right three songs in, when Staples announced she was bringing out the frontman from “the Wilco band” to lend a hand for that album’s stellar title track. Tweedy left after only one song—though Staples cajoled him into returning a few songs later—but Staples took advantage of the crowd’s increased enthusiasm, breaking out a rousing cover of The Band’s “The Weight” and eventually crescendoing to an epic rendition of The Staple Singers’ biggest hit, “I’ll Take You There.” Staples proved to be a consummate performer throughout, leading her crack band and backup singers—including sister and fellow Staple Singer Yvonne—through extended jams and impressive vocal runs, and somehow managing to plug her new album in the most likable way possible. (“Christmas is coming up. You buy six CDs, you have six Christmas presents. You’re done!”) The crowd ate it up, prompting one twentysomething guy to yell, confusingly, “I want you to be a grandchild to my children!” The delivery got muddled through his drunken delivery, but the message was clear: Staples is the cool grandmother you wish you had telling you about Jesus’ love and singing you to sleep at night. [GK]

NO
• Akron, Ohio’s The Black Keys have built up a pretty substantial following over the past few years playing festivals and releasing adorable videos for cuts like “Tighten Up” and “Next Girl.” In turn, the crowd was massive, rabid, and incredibly dude-ish during their set Friday. For their part, The Black Keys turned in a set that anyone’s dad would love—bluesy guitar riffs and tons of noodling, with the occasional keyboard line thrown in. It’s nothing amazing, but it’s… music? Stylistically, it’s not a stretch to liken them to Ghost World’s classics-ruiner, Blues Hammer. At massive fests like Lolla, though, the crowd can make or break a scene, and this crowd essentially slammed the scales toward the negative. A haze of purple smoke and douchiness hung low over scores of off-beat clappers, shirtless bros, and grinding couples, all of whom were fist-pumpingly ecstatic to be there. Yuck. [ME]

• The first onstage banter I heard came from a band I’d never heard of, and immediately realized I wouldn’t like. Paraphrasing, but the dude from American Bang said something like, “We’re playing an aftershow at House Of Blues tonight! C’mon down! Bring condoms! Yeah!” The band was later described to me as a total Kings Of Leon ripoff, but I never got close enough to find out. [JM]

MAYBE
• Had The Strokes drawn a huge crowd or even a small, rabid one, perhaps things would have been different. But as I watched them go through the motions, standing next to a bunch of twirling, hippie-type 14-year-olds and people idly chatting throughout some of the hits from Is This It?, I couldn’t help but find The Strokes totally depressing—more so than some of the other nostalgia-fueled picks playing that weekend. Julian Casablancas and Co. look and sound as they did 10 years ago, still playing a straight-from-the-album stage show that’s less forgiving than it was behind the awe of that first album. It was a neatly performed and packaged show, but this band belongs back in those smaller clubs, where its tight songs don’t just float away. [EW]

SEEN & HEARD
• Tattoo watch:
-Red flag, dudes: “Après moi, le deluge” in large type across the center of a petite blonde’s back. Not as ominous, but still kinda tacky: Her friend had feathers tattooed behind her left ear. [KR]
-“Blind Melon,” in the font from the band’s big album, across the lower tummy of a dude. I don’t know why I found it 100 times more disturbing on a guy than I would’ve on a girl, but there you go. Blind Melon tattoo. (Not that, say, a Pavement tattoo would be any better, but yeah, it might.) [JM]
-A sad looking Native-American brave, feather in hair, wearing 3-D glasses, spotted on a guy during The Big Pink. [ME]

• Seeing that fence-jumpers were having little success near the press area, a guy about 18 years old offered the security guard three crumpled one-dollar bills as a bribe to let him through. No dice. [EW]

• The Strokes/Lady Gaga headliner head-to-head was one of the biggest topics of conversation among festival-goers, with many coming down staunchly in favor of one or the other. I overheard several Strokes supporters bitching out friends who were considering defecting to The Monster Ball, including this little gem: “Bro, if you go see Lady Gaga instead of The Strokes, I will literally fuck you in the ass.” At one point during The New Pornographers’ set, Carl Newman made a passing comment about Gaga, which prompted a chorus of boos from the audience, leading a surprised Newman to defend Her Pantslessness: “She seems harmless to me. Cut her some slack.” [GK]

• Word has it that Lady Gaga made an unannounced appearance on the BMI Stage Friday for Semi-Precious Weapons’ set (they’re currently opening for her on tour), where she came out and danced for a bit and then stage-dove. None of your A.V. Clubbers witnessed this though, because that would mean we would have to see Semi-Precious Weapons. [GK]

• Much of the visual pop of Lady Gaga’s set got lost the farther back you went, but there was one moment that could only be appreciated from afar. During “Paparazzi,” Gaga told the crowd to take out their cameras—like they weren’t doing that already—and take her picture, resulting in a beautiful, strobe-light tableau that fit the song perfectly. [GK]

• At Lady Gaga, two twentysomething guys in it for the vague promise of boobs, not the music: “She almost fell out of her top just now when she was on her back!” “Dude, she’s almost fallen out of that thing like four times now.” “Well, she has great tits.” “Look, they almost fell out again!” And on and on in this vein, for a good five minutes. Kids, you’ll see those when she wants you to see them. Until then, the Internet is full of tits. Go find some. [TR]

• Police horses abounded on the back field, which meant scores of drunk ladies shyly working their way over to pet them. That’d be the third function of “To serve and protect”: “and be cute.” [SH]

• Every year at Lolla, there’s always someone carrying something strange, like a stuffed animal chicken to hold aloft during every performance. During J. Cole’s set, it was a headless white plastic duck decoy atop a long pole. Just a few yards away, a black owl with the same setup. Of course, anything went with the costume-heavy Gaga crowd Friday night. [KR]

• Heard pre-The Big Pink, as Lolla screened highlights from festivals past on video screens: “Oh, Ice-T! He’s on C.S.I.!” [ME]

 • Shirtless guy: “Are you having fun?” Me: “Uh, yes!” Shirtless guy: [HUMONGOUS PAINFUL BEAR HUG] [SH]

• Most obnoxious dude of the night: Giant, red-faced drunk wearing a Page/Plant World Tour T-Shirt walking from end to end on Columbus Avenue, stopping every 10 feet to yell “WOOOO!” in some poor girl’s face. [EW]

• “When did jazz hands become rave hands?”—overheard waiting for The Strokes [SH]

• On The Strokes taking a breather: “They’re taking a 10-minute break to do a line the size of a Toblerone.” [SH]

• Ed Kowalczyk, once the bald-headed singer of “spiritual” band Live was hanging out in the media area, granting a bunch of interviews about his new album, which is apparently Christian. I had no idea Live was a Christian band—I think I stopped paying attention when they were still spouting some sort of Eastern mystic business. (Did that happen? I have no idea.) Anyway, Kowalczyk was one of a couple of bygone artists who were for some reason relegated to playing the children’s stage—The Verve Pipe was another notable name over there. [JM]

FESTIVAL NOTES
• The big news this year was Lollapalooza’s expansion, both in ticket sales and physical area. Lolla stretched well beyond its normal Columbus Avenue border to the west, making the whole thing more spacious and easing the congestion of people traveling to different ends of the park. With Lolla’s new northern entrance at Monroe and Columbus, how long until the festival annexes Pritzker Pavilion? C3, the company that owns and operates the festival, has to be salivating over the idea of a Frank Gehry bandshell as the crown jewel of the festival grounds. Impossible or inevitable? [KR]

• That long fenced perimeter down Columbus Avenue is difficult to police, and fence-jumpers were even more numerous and brazen Friday night. Plenty of misguided people hopped the fence into the media area only to discover you can’t enter the festival grounds from it and were quickly escorted out. Still, plenty of them succeeded. Should we take this as a teaching moment about border security and illegal immigration? [KR]

• In addition to the expanded Chow Town—which was curated by Chicago chef Graham Elliot and featured food from Chicago foodie destinations like Kuma’s, Big Star, and The Southern—Lollapalooza this year featured a small side market called Green Street, which housed several vendors of the local/organic/fair-trade persuasion. The food portion of Green Street was touted as a “farmers’ market,” though one fruit stand selling peaches, blueberries, and apples from Wisconsin does not exactly a farmers’ market make. But who does their grocery shopping at Lollapalooza anyway? More pertinently, Green Street featured a selection of lighter fare like frozen kefir and mango-berry sticky rice for those festivalgoers burned out on pulled pork and face-sized hamburgers. And while coffee and 90-degree temps don’t really mix, the iced coffee on offer from Chicago roasters Metropolis Café provided a nice, caffeinated counterpart to the weekend’s beer buzz. [GK]

• Phone woes were as prevalent this year as sunburn and swamp ass. The AT&T network was obviously overloaded with the number of iPhones in such a small amount of space: Service was patchy, and data connections constantly cut out. More annoying was Lollapalooza’s promised free wi-fi this year, which didn’t work, even if you were able to connect to it. This was the worst thing ever!!! Okay, not really, but with delayed text messages it became difficult to connect with friends. [SH]

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SLIDESHOW: Lollapalooza 2010

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SATURDAY

YES
• Green Day’s headlining set just barely squeaks into the “yes” category by virtue of pure showmanship (and the rekindled junior-high crushes of the female A.V. Club staffers on Billie Joe Armstrong). Yes, yes, we know, the band sold out ages ago, but selling out buys you a shitload of pyrotechnics, and 15 years of playing venues bigger than skuzzy punk clubs means you know how to use them. (And hey, punk purists, Billie Joe did shout out Chicago punk legends Naked Raygun and The Effigies, but curiously, not Green Day idols Screeching Weasel.)

Sure, Billie Joe was shameless in his pandering to the crowd: I lost count of how many times he said “Chicago!” and “Lollapalooza!” around 20 or so. And yes, there was a completely unnecessary half-hour digression that featured the band wearing silly hats and playing a bunch of covers ranging from “Highway To Hell” to “My Kind Of Town (Chicago Is)” (of course) to “Hey Jude.” But the set also featured fireworks every 20 minutes, Billie Joe shooting a firehose, toilet-paper gun, and T-shirt cannon at the audience, and some charming bits of crowd participation, including an audience member who come onstage to rip through “Longview” with the band, receiving Billie Joe’s guitar as a reward for his balls-out performance. (Reportedly this happens at all of Green Day’s shows, but that doesn’t make it any less affecting in the moment.) Even if you were rolling your eyes half the time, it was impossible not to be entertained throughout the band’s 2.5-hour-plus set, which cavalierly blew right past the city’s 10 p.m. curfew. Of course, Green Day could have cut out a good 45 minutes of dicking around and avoided whatever fines they incurred from going over, but what fun would that be? [GK]

• Although Phoenix has been around for years, it’s only last year’s Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (specifically “1901”) that catapulted the French group into the mainstream consciousness. So yes, they played every song from the album and opened with “Lisztomania” into “Lasso,” a combination already recorded on their giveaway Live In Sydney EP. The beginning of this set would have stuck Phoenix in the “Maybe” category, but of course playing Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix in its entirety meant “Love Like A Sunset,” a rich collage of tommy-gun synthesizer and stadium-sized drone that the band let settle on the crowd for much longer than the usual running time. Then there was that hit “1901,” the show closer, which found frontman Thomas Mars sneaking into the crowd with a glow-in-the-dark microphone cord. Phoenix’s headlineing set had the details of a smaller show, and pleased the crowd with big hits and pint-sized favorites like “Rally.” [SH]

• Backed by a horn section that made even straight-up rock numbers like “Jonathon Fisk” sound like lost Stax-era nuggets, Spoon played to a sprawling crowd on the Budweiser Stage that singer Britt Daniel proclaimed way better than the one it had recently seen at Coachella. (Not mentioned: how it compared to playing Madison Square Garden the night before.) Maybe that had something to do with sights like those in the front row doing a bit of synchronized snapping to “I Summon You.” Or maybe it was the cheers of awed recognition that greeted the unexpected appearance of the band's version of Wolf Parade’s “Modern World,” which, judging by the #lolla Twitter feed, ended up being the most talked-about cover of the festival. (Sorry, Blues Traveler doing Radiohead’s “Creep.”) It was a masterful set, building from a sparse, acoustic version of “Me And The Bean” to a full-on blitz of brass and burbling electronics then back out again on a sentimental “Black Like Me” as the sun went down. [SO]

• A Lollapalooza slot, especially one on the jam-packed north field, isn’t a time to hold back, and thankfully Emily Haines and Metric didn’t. Wearing one of two pairs of sunglasses (“My only costume change,” she said), Haines leapt around the stage with her hands in the air. The rest of the band rose to the frontwoman’s infectious energy level, starting with super-tight renditions of “Satellite Mind” and “Black Sheep”—from the upcoming film Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World—then later letting themselves be playful. They threw in a slow “My My Hey Hey” intro to “Gimme Sympathy,” and guitarist James Shaw went nuts during a “Gold Guns Girls” solo. The band’s slowed-down rendition of “Combat Baby” to close the set was a welcome respite from the rambunctious set, but it was the only pause necessary. [SH]

• Though the middle of the day at a huge, crowded festival populated by various shirtless dudes loudly urging each other to chug brews and, for some fucking reason, breaking into impromptu renditions of Shawn Mullins’ “Lullaby” is a less-than-ideal situation to take in Grizzly Bear, the band has grown into its newfound role as a festival band—and it manages to be far more overpowering than the gossamer sounds of its records suggest. The group threatened to drift away on more ghostly songs like “Cheerleader,” “Fine For Now,” and “Ready, Able.” But a surprisingly hefty rendition of Horn Of Plenty’s “Showcase”—which, like the similarly revived “Fix It,” is almost unrecognizable in its revived version, with its heavy minor-key guitar chords and martial drum beats—and the crashing choruses of “I Live With You” proved that the band can transcend the rabble (especially when most of said rabble leaves after “Two Weeks”). Besides, compared to the will-o’-the-wisp sounds of The xx immediately preceding, Grizzly Bear was practically Megadeth. [SO]

• Gogol Bordello returned to the same stage it ripped apart during its 2008 Lolla set—back then it was the AT&T, this year, the Parkways Foundation—to do pretty much the exact same thing. Eugene Hutz and Co. put on a reliably excellent show, which can easily sweep up even those unfamiliar with the band’s manic gypsy-punk. The large crowd in front of the stage was a roiling mass of pumping fists and pogoing, while farther back, families and good-natured drunkards came together to form joyous dance circles. With the exception of a couple of new songs from this spring’s Trans-Continental Hustle, it was pretty much more of the same from Gogol Bordello; but when the same is so exciting and celebratory, why wouldn’t you want more of it? [GK]

• I know I’m biased on this matter, but all festivals need more punk. Last year, Rise Against killed it at Lolla—proceeded by an interminably tedious set from Animal Collective—and Saturday kicked off with Rise Against’s former labelmates, Against Me! The Florida band went from underground heroes to traitors after signing to a major and swinging for the fences with producer Butch Vig, who helmed 2007’s New Wave and the excellent new White Crosses. The whole sellout argument is pretty laughable in the new millennium—this coming from a guy who felt betrayed when Jawbreaker signed—but name another band at this year’s Lolla who opened with a song that references Robert McNamara? It’s not exactly “Just Dance.” The band’s set understandably focused on the new one and New Wave, but dropped a few older jams with “Don’t Lose Touch,” “Walking Is Still Honest,” “Sink, Florida, Sink,” and “Baby, I’m An Anarchist!” (which closed out the set). Adding another layer to all the songs was the keyboard and accordion (?) accompaniment of Franz Nicolay, formerly of The Hold Steady, though Against Me! didn’t play “Because Of The Shame,” a song from White Crosses that could have fit on the new Hold Steady album. [KR]

• With Against Me!, Green Day, and Social Distortion on the bill, Saturday belonged to the punks, and it was nice to see Social D play to a big crowd on the giant Parkways Foundation Stage. Frontman Mike Ness is the personification of the punk lifer, and not just because he’s covered in tattoos and still looks like a badass as he nears 50. He’s led Social D for more than 30 years, playing no-frills, country-tinged punk that serves as a sort of North Star for punk rock: a fixed point in the sky you can count on when the world around it changes. That may sound like a slight, but it’s not: Songs like “Story Of My Life” (which opened the set) and “Bad Luck” sound timeless because they have a classic sound, much like the music of Johnny Cash, whose “Ring Of Fire” Social D covered during their set. And tracks like “Mommy’s Little Monster” are punk-rock classics and timeless in their own right. [KR]

• Neo-folk collective Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros has cultivated a cultish following for its lovey-dovey, psychedelic live show, and the tree-lined enclave of the horribly named Bloggie Stage was the ideal space to get swept up in it. The tiny side stage was so packed that spectators took to the trees to get a look at Alex Ebert and his shambolic band, whose large size and love-everybody expressions are more than a little reminiscent of The Polyphonic Spree. But the combination of the secluded space and the celebratory, communal atmosphere was a perfect complement to the music, and by the time the group wound its way toward the set-closing crowd-pleaser “Home,” it was hard not to get swept up in the good vibes. [GK]

• The crowd hovering around the Bloggie Stage was primed for Deer Tick after Dawes, whose folky rock segued well with Deer Tick’s more aggressive Americana. Frontman John McCauley was decked out in a matching button-up-shirt-and-shorts combo apparently purloined from the gift shop on a Carnival cruise, which suited Saturday’s balmy temperatures. One of the biggest responses from the crowd came from “Baltimore Blues No. 1,” which the band played on Letterman in June. The relentlessly self-effacing McCauley prefaced “20 Miles” by describing it as the new and only single from this year’s The Black Dirt Sessions, “So it’s the closest thing we have to a hit single.” (Check out Deer Tick’s website, which was apparently created in 1995.) [KR]

• I intended to see The xx, along with a gazillion other people apparently, but was lured in by a Fuse TV taping of two acoustic Phoenix songs in the media area. They played “1901” and “Lizstomania” to a crowd of about 30, even though Against Me! were raging hard in the background. It was charming, unsurprisingly. Only a guy as French as Thomas Mars could get away with his leather boots. [JM]

•With a absolutely ferocious drummer and psych-trance tunes, Warpaint somehow managed to turn the Bloggie Stage into dingy nightclub for an hour Saturday afternoon. The all-female four piece from Los Angeles droned and pounded through songs of its EP, as well as tons of new material off an as-yet-unannounced full-length. Stella Mozgawa pounded away sweatily cut after cut, proving herself to be not only one of indie rock’s best up-and-coming drummers, but also a total badass. [ME]

• “We really do appreciate you watching us,” said Royal Bangs keyboardist-vocalist Ryan Schaefer toward the beginning of his band’s set on the modest BMI Stage. “I know there’s lots of other stuff you could be doing. You could be watching Grizzly Bear. You could standing in line for an Italian sausage.” The group, now pared down from a quintet to a trio, sounded like a funkier reincarnated Koufax with its literate lyrics and heavy emphasis on keys. Sam Stratton often treated his guitar like a bass, playing simple top-string notes that provided just the right amount of low end against Schaefer’s keys. Royal Bangs debuted several new songs, as the band is heading straight into the studio post-Lollapalooza to record the follow-up to 2009’s Let It Beep. [KR]

NO
• The xx sounds much perkier in their recordings than it did onstage Saturday, in what was probably the flattest, one-note show of the day—and it wasn’t for a lack of an enthusiastic crowd. Before the band came on, the tightly packed audience went nuts whenever the camera showed an image of the empty stage. Romy Madley Croft, Oliver Sim, and Jamie Smith moodily glared at the crowd throughout the show, wearing melodramatic emotion on their sleeves and slumping through a set that simply crawled to a stop during “Fantasy,” the anticlimax by way of an extended a cappella solo that was barely audible or intelligible 75 feet back. This black-clad group seemed closer to a bunch of teenagers shooting their first heartfelt, angsty video than it did a bunch of professional musicians playing a festival show. [EW]

• Slightly Stoopid’s street team invaded the comments section of our Lolla guide with not-at-all-obviously forced praise for a band no one was talking about, but I ended up hearing much of its set Saturday night while waiting for Green Day. One of my least favorite genres of music is Sublime-indebted dub-funk-punk, one of the primary types of SoCal dude-bro rock, which happens to be Slightly Stoopid’s specialty. Sure, SS plays the style competently and enthusiastically, but it actively grates on my nerves. The cover of Nirvana’s “Territorial Pissings”—dedicated to “my man Kurt” toward the end of Slightly Stoopid’s set—just twisted the knife, especially when someone from SS yelled “Yeah bitch!” at the end of it. [KR]

Lollapalooza has origins as a happy hippie love-fest, and anyone doubting it had only to hit the art market, which skewed heavily toward flowy dresses and organic fabrics, beaded accessories, dangly jewelry, psychedelic posters, and T-shirts with messages about love, peace, and the environment. And it’s true that people are surprisingly polite at Lollapalooza, even when they’re trying to shove through a packed crowd to get to an already-teaming dance pit. (Also, there tends to be more pot smoke then oxygen over the fields during the headlining acts.) So it’s always jarring when something breaks the mellow vibe. When French DJ Joachim Garraud took the stage Saturday afternoon with his bright pulsing lightshow, one man waved a towel-sized French flag in appreciation, and a small knot of people apparently stuck in the “freedom fries” era took exception, chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” and then trying to take the flag away from him until people nearby intervened. Apparently the French were undaunted; the flag reappeared at the Phoenix concert that night. This time, someone countered by waving an equal-sized American flag of their own. [TR]

MAYBE
• Cut Copy may have been too mellow for the Lolla crowd, or maybe just too mellow for its just-before-the-headliners slot at 7:30 Saturday night. Or maybe the volume was just too low—its set sounded more like chill-out music than danceable ’80s revivalist electropop. Or maybe that was just the crowd vibe, as people took a break while waiting for Phoenix to start on the nearby Budweiser Stage. In front of the stage, the usual sea of energetic dancers bounced and waved their arms, but a hundred feet back from the stage, a man napped with a Mountain Dew bottle for a pillow, girls hula-hooped, a hacky-sack game broke out, a flag-spinner idly spun, and a hundred casual conversations took place among people sitting on towels and blankets, eating dinner and storing up energy. It felt more like a laid-back Ravinia set than an opener for the main act. [TR]

• The Laurel Canyon influence that has taken hold of some L.A. bands in recent years has also ensnared Dawes, a pleasant roots-rock outfit whose songs never seem interested in going beyond a mid-tempo amble. When they increase the mellow and folk out, the songs start to lose my attention, and Dawes’ Saturday afternoon set sagged when they slowed down. Again, it was pleasant enough, but not terribly memorable among the seeming bounty of bands drawing from the same inspirational well these days. [KR]

SEEN & HEARD
• Tat watch: We have a winner! The world's biggest Rancid fan:

-Also: on an upper shoulder: “SPONGE.” As in the band that had two hit singles in 1994 and then, to the masses anyway, disappeared from the planet. Was this guy in the band? According to spongetheband.com, there’s exactly one Sponge gig coming up—September 25 at Bobby McGee’s in Chicago Ridge. Tickets are $10. [JM]

-More unfortunate ink: an arm-sized pig, divided into cuts of meat. Also, a his-and-hers back-of-the-neck set on a couple putting sunscreen on each other at Against Me! Hers: three blue hearts with black bat wings. His: just a single set of the bat wings. Get out of that relationship while you can, lady, he isn’t feeling it the way you are; it’s right there on his neck. [TR]

• Guy who eagerly awaited the Against Me! hit “Thrash Unreal,” trying to get his friend excited when the band finally played it:
“Here it is!”
“Is this it?”
“Yeah!”
“This was on the radio?”
“Yeah, don’t you recognize it?”
“Not yet!” [KR]

• This year’s festival uniform for guys: old basketball jerseys. They were everywhere. I saw two Hakeem Olajuwons on Saturday alone. [KR]

• Phoenix had some of the more dramatic lighting for a group not playing a DJ set on Perry’s Stage: neon towers, heavy reliance on strobe lighting, green lasers, red stripes chasing each other up the set, and a tendency to go utterly dark between songs. Then, the crowd-cams would pull back to show a field that was completely black except for red indicator lights on equipment and a sea of little blue squares, the screens on hundreds of cameras and phones. It looked like a field of wavering stars—one of the few pleasant images to come out of an era where a lot of concert-goers focus more on capturing a crappy reproduction of an event than on experiencing it. [TR]

• Twenty minutes into Phoenix’s set, one guy to his friends: “That was great! Want to go see Green Day now?” [TR]

• “God, can you imagine getting your penis sunburned?” —Woman passing me after Against Me! [KR]

• Among the most popular pastimes this year, apparently: Stopping off at the promo tent belonging to a local radio station to slather on the body paint, whether it’s your college mascot or the ever-popular “Free Hugs” or just random Jackson Pollock splatters. Or the guy we saw who gave himself a full, thick beard rendered in bright blue and yellow in the midday heat of Friday. Hope he likes pimples. [SO]

• Guy waving a French flag jumped on stage with Green Day. Um, Phoenix was playing on the stage at the other end of the park. [KR]

• More items-on-sticks being waved around: a small, very fat inflatable black-and-white cat in B. Kliban mode; a bright green rubber brontosaurus that looked like an old Sinclair Oil giveaway; a stuffed plush pony head on a hobby horse stick. Also, one couple brought human-sized inflatable monkeys, which they waved wildly above their heads for the first few songs of Gogol Bordello’s set, sometimes banging them together to simulate hot inflatable-monkey sex. A blow-up sex doll also made the rounds during Phoenix’s set, bouncing among the crowd up front until it went limp. [TR]

• Protesting in front of the festival: An angry Christian group in full-on Fred Phelps mode, holding up signs like “Ask me why you deserve hell” and “Women are to be keepers at home” (held up by a woman who apparently didn’t live up to her convictions) and “Rock and roll will damn your soul.” Friday night, a man with a bullhorn alternately baited and screamed at a handful of rubberneckers and hecklers who didn’t seem to have any interest in the festival, but had plenty in responding to accusations that they were damned and knew it; on Saturday morning, catching the crowd going in, they drew a larger band of gawkers. “If my message doesn’t mean anything to you, why are you still standing here?” Bullhorn Man yelled over and over. “You know I’m right or you wouldn’t still be here!” [TR]

• The Lolla screens promised “instant karma” all weekend to return items to lost and found. I passed on this one: [EW]

FESTIVAL NOTES
• The 2010 award for Lollapalooza’s Most Irritating Stage Name goes to the Sony Bloggie—sorry, “bloggie,” because today’s web-savvy kids don’t use capital letters!—whose meaning was lost on everyone in the crowd. Turns out it’s basically a Flip camera (also made by Sony), but, um, bloggier? One thing is for certain: Sony is totally down with the kids! [KR]

• The north end of the park suffered from huge crowds on Saturday before Metric went on, made worse by the decision to briefly shut off one of two exits. People tried to rush the security guards as they blocked it off. The otherwise happy-go-lucky Lolla crowd (it was rather polite this year) turned nasty, yelling things like, “Someone’s gonna get burnt with this cigarette!” [EW]

• Players like Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul, Arrested Development’s Alia Shawkat, and Har Mar Superstar made Saturday’s “celebrity” kickball game a pop-culture hipster’s wet dream. Throw in a bunch of local bloggers and all of the fur-vest-wearing members of Foxy Shazam, and the term “celebrity” gets a little diluted. Orchestrated by event networking start-up Do312, the game was a classic example of fun event gone press crazy. With only 100 spectators allowed (though maybe 40 showed, tops), a shortened game, and cameras on the field the whole time, this event was obviously made for TV. Har Mar Superstar, photo-whore extraordinaire, played most of the game clad only in a faded pair of red jockey shorts and tennis shoes. To anyone watching, the whole thing was a boring mess, but to anyone watching an edited version or checking out photos online, it’ll look crazily spontaneous—wacky kids hanging out, kicking the ol’ ball around—and that was the point, right? [ME]

• Thanks to Lolla’s “Rock And Recycle” program, the festival grounds were surprisingly trash-free for the first three-quarters of the day; festival-goers were invited to pick up trash bags at various recycling centers, fill them with discarded recyclable cans and bottles, and turn them in for a free T-shirt with a green tree on the front. For most of the day, the festival was criss-crossed with bag-toting garbage-pickers snatching trash off the ground almost as soon as it hit, and the only visible litter in the widely trafficked areas was cigarette butts. By nightfall, the recycling centers all had massive mountains of full bags piled up in back, and a handful of people were already proudly wearing their shirts, but the garbage-grabbing had ended, and Phoenix’s audience was standing in a sea of crumpled cans that showed what the rest of the festival grounds might look like without the T-shirt initiative. [TR]

• Water stations throughout the festival grounds were a nice touch as far as keeping festivalgoers hydrated without requiring them to constantly lay out cash for bottled drinks, but free water tended to mean people didn’t care about hoarding it, and water-spraying became part of the celebration: People in dance pits waved open water bottles over their heads to splash the overheated dancers. A few people with CamelBak-style beverage backpacks with spray-rod attachments turned them into impromptu sprinkler systems. Walking through crowds occasionally meant taking a stream of water full in the chest. Oh well, at least it wasn’t all beer. [TR]

SUNDAY

YES
• Lollapalooza broke with precedent this year by having two bands close out the festival’s final night, instead of one. It made for a weird pairing: the reunited Soundgarden vs. the indie heroes in Arcade Fire. The crowd for the latter began amassing early during The National’s set across the field on the PlayStation Stage, and a big stage crush greeted the band when it opened with “Ready To Start,” from the excellent new album The Suburbs. In a weekend that was all about spectacle, the Arcade Fire brought its own, with a stage design that coincided thematically with the album: a giant banner covering the back stage of two tall highway ramps; a giant screen in the middle that looked like the ones that give traffic updates on expressways; and a set of lights on a pole similar to the ones that illuminate high school football fields.

Arcade Fire played only a few songs from 2007’s Neon Bible, focusing—nervously—the rest of the set on The Suburbs: “I can’t tell you how intimidating it is to be in front of this many people and play all these new songs,” frontman Win Butler said after “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” before adding he needn’t have worried. Everyone knew all the words. Still, the band offered plenty of fan favorites, primarily from 2004’s Funeral: “Neighborhood #2 (Laika),” “Haiti,” “Crown Of Love,” “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels),” “Neighborhood #3 (Power Out),” “Rebellion (Lies),” and finally, for the encore, “Wake Up.” The crowd went ballistic for those last two, especially “Wake Up,” when it drowned out the band during the song’s signature whoa-oh-ohs. [KR]

• “This is like the millionth time we’ve played Lollapalooza,” Chris Cornell said, ticking off the various appearances Soundgarden had played in its history, as though this reunion were just another stop on its never-ending Superunknown tour. In fact, the band played it off as though the last dozen years had never happened—as though we were in an alternate universe that had never known Audioslave or heard Cornell singing over Timbaland beats—with Cornell shrugging, “We stopped for just a little while and now we’re back again.” Adding to the time-warp vibe, the screens to the left and right of the stage broadcast everything in black-and-white, as though this were just some leftover outtake from Hype!. It was easy to believe: There was Cornell, his face concealed once more behind long drapes of black curls, hitting the high notes of old, flanked by the ever-stoic presence of Kim Thayil (who retains a bit of grandfatherly dignity these days), bassist Ben Shepherd, and drummer Matt Cameron, who never seemed to stop smiling. The group ran through a straight charge of past hits like “Spoonman,” “Rusty Cage,” “Blow Up The Outside The World,” and “Jesus Christ Pose” and they sounded raw and new again—no longer the perfunctory performances of frustrated dudes trudging through an endless, band-destroying world tour. When Cornell threw himself into the crowd and raised his messianic arms for the sing-along chorus of “Outshined” (“I’m feeling Minnesota”—the rallying cry of a generation, somehow), he seemed like a different person than the gelled-up industry professional he’s been for the last decade. He was a dirty, grungy kid again. And thus they were Soundgarden again, and for the millionth time, it was pretty fucking great. [SO]

• The National’s music makes the most sense in a dimly lit club (or gorgeous old theater), not in the bright light of day in front of revelers. The band’s Lollapalooza set did indeed get more powerful as the sun went down, but that was mostly due to the pacing and song selection, which moved from somewhat sedate to incredibly intense. Singer Matt Berninger spent most of “Abel” between the barrier and the stage, relying on those down front to keep him from falling into the crowd. Later, he eyed up a line of planters jutting out vertically from the stage area, and proceeded to climb over to them and walk the length before spilling himself into the audience, all without missing a lyric to “Mr. November.” It was incredible. [JM]

• For someone who looks so tiny, Erykah Badu has an intimidating presence. When she strode onto the adidas stage—20 minutes late, of course—her face betrayed no hint of emotion, just an imperiousness that said, “You may gaze upon me now.” She was a sight to behold: elaborate green dress, giant earrings, and a huge blonde mohawk. She opened with “20 Feet Tall,” the short first track of this year’s New Amerykah Pt. 2: Return Of The Ankh but quickly settled into a rhythm that she stopped, shifted, and dictated on a dime. “Damn, y’all don’t feel that?” she asked during “...& On,” though the set’s high point came from another song from Mama’s Gun, during the big swells of “Penitentiary Philosophy.” [KR]

• Wolfmother was scheduled to begin on the nearby Parkways Foundation Stage at 6 p.m., but Badu’s late start pushed her past the hour mark. Wolfmother at first seemed to wait a couple of minutes for her to finish, but then seemed to realize, “Oh right, we’re a fucking hard-rock band. Prepare to be blown out of the water, Erykah.” Badu wisely didn’t carry on much longer after that. [KR]

• MGMT’s first two albums have fallen into a classic pattern: The debut, Oracular Spectacular, delivered the crowd-pleasing, and crowd-moving, goods while this year’s Congratulations fit the mold of a difficult, crowd-thinning follow-up. But it’s difficult in the best possible sense, expanding the sound and experimenting in ways that redefined what MGMT was all about, and which made it seem as if the band would be in it for the long haul. MGMT’s late-afternoon set gracefully integrated both the trippy sonics of its new material with the more instantly winning Oracular tracks and the audience responded to both halves, putting hands in the air for “Time To Pretend,” “Kids,” and “Electric Feel” then easing back for “Song For Dan Treacy” and the like. One Congratulations track, “It’s Working,” asked repeatedly if it was working. The performance answered the question itself. [KP]

• Frightened Rabbit’s set was all about the sing-alongs. It started with “The Modern Leper” and the supportive audience—packed tight but not too tight in the shaded Bloggie Stage—providing ambient oohs. Then “The Loneliness And The Scream” asked people to wail along a more complicated melody; by the time the Glasgow boys got to “Good Arms Vs. Bad Arms,” the entire audience was chiming in. It helped that lead singer Scott Hutchison was in his usual good spirits (always surprising given the somber material of the songs), joking about how festivals are for “clapping—well, there are two kinds of clap at festivals” and singing until he was literally red in the face during, appropriately, “Living In Colour.” Hutchison’s ease with the crowd and raw gusto made each rendition—from unrested rockers like “Nothing Like You” to the understated emptiness of “Poke”—feel like the first time. [SH]

• Yeasayer’s recent Odd Blood is a shoo-in for our best-of-2010 list, but I had my doubts about it translating well in the Lollapalooza environment. I shouldn’t have worried: Odd Blood’s stomping beats provided a thunderous low end that carried well from the Budweiser Stage. “O.N.E.” and “Ambling Alp” (the set closer) were unsurprisingly the crowd favorites, with “Stick up for yourself, son!” providing one of Lolla’s best sing-along moments. [KR]

• X Japan’s first U.S. show—the group is massively huge in its native country—was a fantastic curiosity, from the first moments of epic choral music that preceded the band’s entrance to the wailing vibrato of lead singer Toshi Deyama and beast of a drummer Yoshiki Hayashi to the intense pyro that lit up the afternoon stage. For the uninitiated, the set was all over the place, as hair-metal/glam-rock should be, really. One moment Toshi was issuing blood-curdling screams alongside thrashing guitars, and the next, his voice was operatic and sailing over the field. The group drew a tight band of superfans up front, who were equipped with X memorabilia and schooled in the art of coordinated jumping, fist-pumping, and when exactly they should all shout and make the X symbol. (It was somewhat unpredictable.) Toshi’s stage banter pulled from a set of clichés like “Are you ready to rock?” and “Are you hot?” But put anything in crazy black-leather costume and throw on a Japanese accent, and it’s charming as hell. [EW]

• For its late Sunday aftershow, the Frenchmen of Phoenix did something they apparently hadn’t done before: They played last year’s excellent Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix live from start to finish. That’s not a particularly monumental thing, considering that the album is pretty short, and they’d probably been playing most of it anyway. (And not only that, the big hit singles, “Lisztomania” and “1901” are tracks one and two, which represents an early climax if ever there was one.) Those are minor quibbles, though, considering how much fun they still seem to be having playing these songs. And it’s a fine reminder of how great the record is. I don’t know if they went beyond it for an encore—I left after the final track, “Armistice,” because three days of Lollapalooza finally caught up with me. [JM]

MAYBE
• When a band inspires spontaneous hootenannies, that’s generally a good thing, especially when it’s Brit-folk upstarts Mumford And Sons. Performing Saturday on the PlayStation Stage and the scorchingly hot concrete below it, the band conjured contra dancing with “Little Lion Man” and opener “Sigh No More.” Rambling through some new material, though, the band fell flat. “Lover Of The Light,” one of those cuts, ventured quickly into Dave Matthews Band adult contemporary, ill-advised horns and all. Another was charmingly airy to start, but ultimately bland and forgettable. With only one full-length, the band might not have much material, but this doesn’t bode well for what comes next. [ME]

SEEN & HEARD
• Tat watch:
- tramp-stamp placement, cursive writing. “Everything happens for a reason.” [EW]
- complete, color-correct CTA El map down the left side of a guy’s torso. On his right shoulder: an image from The Nightmare Before Christmas. [KR]

• These “wives of famous rock stars” stumping for publicity in the press tent. I got up and followed them (who doesn’t just automatically follow an insanely large breast/hair combo?), as did many press types, taking pictures. I asked about five people who they were. No clue. A sixth person told me the one with the big hair was married to someone in Billy Idol’s band. [EW]

• “Festivals turn men into girls.”—a roving cigar salesman who saw me texting instead of listening to the show. [SH]

• Kid wearing nothing but a Speedo during Arcade Fire. The kicker: He had a tramp stamp. [KR]

• An honest-to-god conga line during MGMT. People were so serious about dancing that several of them got mad at the Arcade Fire campers, who were sitting on blankets. “Get up and dance!! How can you not want to dance?!” [EW]

• At the very back of the field for the MGMT show, well back from the press of fans, hundreds of people sat on blankets and talked and ignored the music altogether until “Kids” came up as the second-to-last song. Then the vast majority of them jumped up and bounced and sang along. “Everybody sing! Sing it from the heart!” frontman Andrew VanWyngarden shouted. But since everyone was mostly just singing the chorus’ electronic riff (as “woo woo woo woo woo woo woo woo wooooooo woo”), the attempt to sing it from the heart came across as a little odd. MGMT wrapped up with “Congratulations,” but a massive migration toward the neighboring stage, where The National was about to play, was already in progress. [TR]

• A bunch of us ended up in an elevator with Aaron “Jesse from Breaking Bad” Paul, who seemed in a particular gregarious mood. He played the elevator a song from his iPod and told us that he and the girl he was with had been jumping back and forth between beds. [JM]

• Guy to the Smoke Daddy tent employees: “You guys gonna be serving all night? …Yeah?? PORK! ALL NIGHT LOOOOONG!” [EW]

• At Frightened Rabbit, some guy was wandering around spraying water from a backpack tank into the air, misting anyone who looked his direction. He also was wearing a utility belt full of smaller water bottles—and we never heard from this mysterious hero again. [SH]

• “Living Single, Seeing Double”—T-shirt worn by a guy who didn’t look sad or alone in any way. [SH]

• Waiting for Arcade Fire, the dude next to me says, “No joke, there are days when I wake up and feel like I birthed a baby.” [EW]

• Thought I saw someone going up into a handstand in a crowd, turned out to be a dude pretending to make out with a plastic, naked blowup doll. [EW]

• The mass of humanity making its way west and into Chicago’s Loop after Sunday night erupted into spontaneous cheering several times. That’s the mark of a successful festival. [KR]

FESTIVAL NOTES
• Stop us if you’ve heard this one: It needs to be louder. The seeming No. 1 complaint about all summer festivals applies to Lollapalooza as well. I’m not asking for ear-splitting volume—just enough to help overcome up all the people talking during sets. While I’m sure the city mandates noise restrictions, it seems kind of odd that earplugs are rarely necessary. That’s the advantage of fests like Bonnaroo or Coachella—no surrounding municipality imposing curfews or other limitations. [KR]

• Next year, Lollapalooza needs to do something about the exit situation. I really like keeping Columbus open for foot traffic, but those of us cramped on the north stage were disappointed to find out we couldn’t exit out the northwest corner onto the street once the Arcade Fire finished. Rather than brave the narrow exit by the PlayStation stage, droves of people hopped over a fence and were able to exit easily after that. If the majority of the people in a huge field are doing something illegal because it’s infinitely easier, maybe it’s time to rethink things. [SH]

• Sunday I was disappointed to see the Rockit booth was out of truffle fries, then I realized what a ridiculous thing to be disappointed about.  [SH]

• Last year, the Perry's stage looked like a spaceship in the process of landing or taking off; it was a giant series of discs with waving arms and wild neon lighting. This year, it was a more prosaic affair, tucked back into a tree-lined grove that looked like a perfect mini-concert area, with plenty of screens for rave-ish lighting effects, a shady circular ridge where people could sit and watch, surrounding a natural pit for the dancers. (Or maybe it wasn’t a pit when they started, and three days of dancing just tamped it down.) The combo bowl-and-pit structure protected the area from breezes, though, so all the stage smoke tended to accumulate; at times on Sunday, when the air was mostly still, the Perry's stage area was just one hovering white ball of artificial fog among the trees. Not that that stopped the dancers, which skewed heavily toward the younger end of the festivalgoer range; the one stage with nonstop sets all three days tended to attract wannabe-dance-clubbers too young to get into clubs. [TR]