For the second year in a row, the once-traveling music-and-culture festival Lollapalooza—a summer concert staple throughout most of the '90s—made its home in Chicago's Grant Park. This year's festival expanded the two-day event to three days, filling out the space with acts that made last year's star-heavy lineup look modest by comparison. Even had half the acts canceled, it still would have looked like an essential program on paper. But how did the event itself measure up? For the second year running, The A.V. Club offers a minute-by-minute report.
Friday, August 4
1:32 p.m. – A man passing out iTunes cards advertising "20 free songs" quickly gets mobbed. Alas, it isn't a $20 gift card, just a code to download a compilation of Lollapalooza artists. It's still a cool idea, but The A.V. Club really doesn't need any Blues Traveler songs, thanks.
1:36 p.m. – On the Q101 stage, Cursive plays "Sink To The Beat," and it's weird to see the Omaha post-punk band playing in this big setting to a massive audience. A three-member horn section and a cellist complement the core group. In his button-up shirt, black baseball hat, and sunglasses, guitarist Ted Stevens looks like he should be downing Bud Light at a Cubs game up on the north side.
2:17 p.m. – The A.V. Club sees its first person collapse. Temperatures are comfortably in the mid-80s (with a nice breeze off the lake), so this guy is in for a long weekend. Maybe it has something to do with the joint he smoked just before going down.
2:20 p.m. – The sound of The M's beginning their set on the nearby AMD stage wafts over to the Q101 stage. For the most part, Lollapalooza's new stage configuration keeps the bands from overlapping, though some quieter main-stage artists have to contend with their noisier counterparts on side stages. The M's side stage happens to face one of the drink-and-food areas, so they have a captive audience.
3:01 p.m. – Even from a few hundred yards away, Panic! At The Disco still sounds boring.
3:30 p.m. – The choices for the rest of the weekend are pretty clear-cut, but this time slot includes Stars, Editors, and Jeremy Enigk. Time to stage-hop.
3:31 p.m. – Editors sound like Joy Division and Interpol, and they wear all black. And they're pretty great. Someone might let them know that a light show doesn't mean much in the middle of the afternoon, though.
3:59 p.m. – Jeremy Enigk almost saved rock 'n' roll before Sunny Day Real Estate broke up for the first time, and though he plays to a sparse crowd here, he's still got the ability to send shivers up spines—though most of those shivers were inspired by songs from his incredible 1996 solo debut Return Of The Frog Queen. The members of his backing band seem to be older session guys, including a bass player who bears a striking resemblance to a bleached-out Elliott Smith. Let the rumors begin.
3:30 p.m. – Eels close out their set with a cover of "I Put A Spell On You," then a rousing rendition of "That's Life."
3:37 p.m. – Noting his image being projected on a big outdoor screen, Stars singer Torquil Campbell says he wishes he had gotten a haircut.
3:40 p.m. – It's definitely gotten hotter, and the audience in front of Stars' stage is getting the worst of the sun. A twentysomething woman staggers out of the crowd during Stars' first song. With all the color drained from her face, she looks like a walking corpse.
4:14 p.m. – The Raconteurs are having their picture taken in the press area. They have their own bodyguard, though no one seems poised to attack.
4:29 p.m. – If corporate synergy means ducking into an air-conditioned tent to check e-mail, then corporate synergy rules. AT&T, you're one of the best phone companies ever!
4:34 p.m. – Ryan Adams takes the stage, saying, "It's nice to be outside." Easy for him to say—he's probably been sitting in an air-conditioned trailer all afternoon. At least he looks like he's in a good mood—maybe he'll play an entire set without storming offstage!
5:18 p.m. – Lady Sovereign is now 18 minutes late. Her DJ spins some music to compensate, beginning with a Sov track. The continually growing crowd gets antsy.
5:20 p.m. – In a weekend full of dubious moments in ironic fashion, a hipster stands apart from all the Play-Doh and I [Heart] Hot Moms T-shirt-wearers by donning a "Bush/Quayle '92" shirt while watching Iron & Wine's set.
5:24 p.m. – Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" makes one of its many Lolla appearances, this time covered by Mates Of State. It will later be played by Gnarls, covered by The Raconteurs, and (sorta inexplicably) played by Kanye West's DJ, mid-set.
5:26 p.m. – Lady Sovereign finally shows, belting out "Yoooooooooooooooo Chicaaaaaaaaaagooooooo!" She sounds hoarse, and when she stops playing just after 6, The A.V. Club suspects she started late because she couldn't make it through an entire set. During her performance, a member of her crew paints on a canvas, occasionally pausing to drink champagne. Maybe it's a British thing. Also, Sov's accent is so strong that when she angrily demands that fans form a mosh pit, it kind of sounds like she's asking for a washpit or a saucepat. Someone really should tell her that mosh pits never quite made it out of the '90s here in the colonies.5:32 p.m. – Iron & Wine main-man Sam Beam makes the mistake of opening his set with an acoustic song; from her stage, Lady Sovereign almost completely drowns him out. Awesome Lollapalooza bonehead: "Sing louder, bitch!"
5:50 p.m. – After getting pummeled by bleed from the Sov set across the way, Beam battled back with two percussionists, an accordion, a violin, and electric guitars, adding a little muscle to a pleasing set.
6:16 p.m. – Off to the right of the PlayStation station, people are relaxing in the shade. A drunken woman in shorts and an ill-fitting bathing-suit top keeps shouting obnoxious things at her friends, prompting another woman to say, "Get a bikini that covers your boobs!"
6:25 p.m. – The Chicago sketch-comedy group Schadenfreude performs a funny, profanity-laden set at the Mindfield stage in front of an audience packed with alternately mortified and delighted children. The highlight: "Done With Sergio," a fake one-man show about Perry Farrell.
6:30 p.m. – The Raconteurs play to a massive crowd, charging the songs from their pretty-good Broken Boy Soldiers into something more lively and exciting. It feels like Jack White is sacrificing weirdness for comfort, but he's got a great coppertop guitar, and he seems to love the crowd. And the group does justice to Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy."
6:40 p.m. – The Grant Park sprawl victimized several bands more used to filling out modest club spaces, but My Morning Jacket has been touring arenas and open-air events for months now, and is completely in its element here. For those of us who always wondered what rock shows sounded like before prefixes like "post" were added, it's an exhilarating hour.
6:54 p.m. – My Morning Jacket sounds perfectly suited for the festival. Its sound is perfectly expansive for the environment, and nothing is lost on the big, outdoor stage.
7:04 p.m. – Guy standing in line waiting for food talking to his friend: "After a while, I honestly felt, 'Why is this fun?' There's tons of people, it's hot…" We feel you, pal.
7:22 p.m. – A guy waiting for Sleater-Kinney to start wears a shirt that says "BEN GIBBARD MAKES CUTE HIPSTER GIRLS PATHETIC." Maybe he can show it to Gibbard himself when Death Cab For Cutie plays at 8:30 p.m.
7:24 p.m. – Sleater-Kinney guitarist-vocalist Carrie Brownstein emerges to do her instrument-and-vocal-line check. A minute later, drummer Janet Weiss joins her onstage to check her drums. Guitarist-vocalist Corin Tucker soon comes out as well. It's cool that, even when they're playing a big festival as one of their last shows, all three of them are out doing the grunt-work themselves.
7:27 p.m. – A guy in the crowd cheers when he sees Weiss. "Janet, I love you! AAAAAHHHHH! All night! All night!"
7:30 p.m. – Violent Femmes trot out some really old songs. Yawn. Do the kids think that "Gone Daddy Gone" is a cover of a Gnarls Barkley song?
7:36 p.m. – Weiss, Tucker, and Brownstein stand offstage, looking impatient as My Morning Jacket goes over its allotted time. Because Sleater-Kinney's stage faces MMJ's, they can't start until MMJ finish.
7:40 p.m. – Famous St. Louis scenester Beatle Bob introduces Sleater-Kinney. Cheers erupt and are practically constant during the band's set. Surprisingly, Sleater-Kinney throw few bones to old-school fans; their set mostly focuses on material from The Woods. They even play the long, extended jam part of "Let's Call It Love" from The Woods. That's cool and all, but a few songs from Dig Me Out would have been nice.
8:37 p.m. – Wish granted. Sleater-Kinney play "Turn It On" before walking offstage for the last time outside of their hometown of Portland, Oregon, where they'll play a couple farewell shows.
8:42 p.m. – Death Cab For Cutie opens its set with "Marching Bands Of Manhattan." The group played a sizeable crowd at the end of Lollapalooza's scorching second day last year, but this year, this crowd is massive. Who says signing to a major label is always a death sentence?
9:21 p.m. – Death Cab For Cutie should be commended for pulling old tricks ("President Of What?") out of its hat along with new ones. Also, it may be the only arena-sized band to successfully sell the most depressing song of recent memory ("What Sarah Said") as a cell-phone-waving anthem.
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