As usual, several staffers from The A.V. Club attended this year's Lollapalooza, a three-day celebration of music, questionable food, and the ego of founder Perry Farrell. This year found the festival settling in, for the third year running, in Chicago's Grant Park from August 3-5, where everyone from sweaty teens to Dennis Rodman had a part to play.
FRIDAY
4:56 p.m.: Outdoor festivals like Lollapalooza are a barrage of unintentional and intentional ass-cracks, cleavage, and crotch shots. We've been here five minutes, and the beer girl's incredibly low-cut tank-top (matched by equally short shorts) leaves virtually nothing to the imagination.
5:02 p.m.: Silversun Pickups begin on the Citi Stage. The sound is pretty thin, with the bass awfully low in the mix. Someone waves a stuffed rooster above the crowd during the entire set. The rooster will appear at numerous performances over the course of the weekend.
5:13 p.m.: It's surprising that Smashing Pumpkins are playing the Virgin Fest this weekend in Baltimore when the newly reunited Chicago group has yet to perform in its hometown. But when Silversun Pickups play "Waste It On" from last year's Carnavas, it's just as good.
5:41 p.m.: A guy watching Silversun Pickups has matching Pearl Jam tattoos on the tops of his arms near his shoulders. An hour later, we'll see two women with the same tattoos in their upper backs.
5:57 p.m.: The first entry in the Dumb T-Shirt File: A homemade white shirt with "PUT PAT SAJAK BACK IN OFFICE" scrawled on it in black marker.
6:31 p.m.: Satellite Party opens with Jane's Addiction's "Stop," the first of many Jane's songs Perry Farrell's band will play. By the end of the set, Satellite Party has played roughly four or five of its own songs. Every other song is by Jane's or, in two cases, Porno For Pyros. Oh, and an egregious cover of Rare Earth's "I Just Want To Celebrate."
6:36 p.m.: Was Perry Farrell always this annoying? Every time he opens his mouth, something annoying comes out. He prefaces each song with a forced allusion to the next song, to wit:
• "Getting drunk? Getting loose? Staying out of the sun? Are you kinky?" ("Kinky")
• "You know, they were callin' for rain. I don't see no rain from the heavens. So I declare today insanity rains!" ("Insanity Rains")
• "Are y'all ready to wish on a dog star?" ("Wish Upon A Dog Star")
• "I wish I could reach out there and pet you all!" (Porno For Pyros' "Pets"—featuring Pyros guitarist Peter DiStefano)
6:50 p.m.: After repeatedly whining about the Chicago Sun-Times for publishing a negative article about the festival, Farrell says, "You think you got it hard? We live on a bus with 11 people!" It's unclear whether he's kidding. "But we're having the time of our life!" Um, no one feels sorry for you, dude.
6:55 p.m.: Farrell tells another forced anecdote about being a bad kid who once was caught stealing, the band goes into "Been Caught Stealing" by Jane's. A couple of women in their mid-40s standing by us totally rock out and dance around. The alternative-rock generation has officially gotten old.
7:25 p.m.: Satellite Party plays a completely inessential encore: "Jane Says." A crowd waits in front of the MySpace Stage for LCD Soundsystem to begin. Various information flashes on the screen next to the stage, including this one, a "recipe for Lollapalooza":
Dance
Walk
Laugh
Eat at Chow-Town
Repeat
7:28 p.m.: Ironic Wardrobe File: Hipster staple D.A.R.E. T-shirt, which a woman has reconfigured as a tube-top.
7:33 p.m.: LCD Soundsystem opens with "Us V Them," beginning one of the weekend's best sets. The crowd, primed for the one-two punch of LCD, then Daft Punk (LCD naturally plays "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" later), stays pumped during the entire set, with beer and water constantly flying over people's heads.
7:51 p.m.: Even though he rocks out during his songs, LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy has a deadpan detachment in his stage banter. "I have nothing to say," he says before going into "North American Scum." "That's why people say [affects a rocker voice] 'Are you ready?!?!'" People cheer. "I'm not asking. What do you have to be ready for? We're playing. The question is, are we ready. That's why we lumber into songs."
7:56 p.m.: After "North American Scum," Murphy notes that the stage rush of dudes at the beginning of the song had him concerned about a mosh pit. "As a rule, if you can't see any girls around you, you're dancing wrong." The celebratory jam "All My Friends" follows, and it sounds even better live.
8:10 p.m.: There's a sizeable exodus, presumably people who want to jockey for a good spot during Daft Punk. Nonetheless, we decide that while LCD Soundsystem may look like middle-school guidance counselors, or, alternately, chubby versions of our own Josh Modell, they brought da funk and da noise like Stop Making Sense-era Talking Heads. These are some seriously funky white people.
8:33 p.m.: The stage still concealed by a curtain, Daft Punk begins its set with the spooky alien-communication melody from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. When the stage finally opens to reveal the French electronica duo's storied light pyramid, people in Hutchinson Field go from briskly walking toward the AT&T Stage to outright running.
8:41 p.m.: Daft Punk's light show slowly unfolds over the course of its set, growing more dazzling with each song. In true rave form, someone begins tossing dozens of light sticks into the audience. Presumably, the ecstasy is beginning to kick in for someone, somewhere.
8:45 p.m.: When Daft Punk's "around the world" hook from "Around The World" makes a quick appearance at the beginning of another song, the crowd goes nuts. The song won't really start for another few minutes, though. Daft Punk's stage show suggests that they're trying to signal passing UFOs with an elaborate light show out of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg's fevered imaginations. It was hard to tell exactly how much actual "performing" the Daft Punksters inside those robot spacesuits were doing, but the sound was huge, the lights hypnotic, and the overall effect trippy, mind-altering, and overpowering. You know, kinda like a more respectable version of Laser Floyd.
9 p.m.: Buckingham Fountain is the cacophonous epicenter of Lollapalooza. Chicago's famous fountain—immortalized, so to speak, in the opening credits of Married With Children—lies smack-dab in the middle of the festival grounds. Facing east, festivalgoers would get an ear full of Ben Harper on the left and Daft Punk on the right. Occasionally, the sounds sync, giving Harper's middling rock a dance-y makeover with house beats.
11:35 p.m.: Every year Lollapalooza returns, Grant Park people get savvier about after-parties. (Lolla itself ends around 10.) At super-comfy alt-country haven Hideout on Friday night, Ted Leo (who played the festival in the afternoon) manned the turntables and played some '80s electro and hip-hop; when he was through, Spoon's Britt Daniel took a turn.
- Comments