Saturday, August 5
12:30 p.m. – The A.V. Club's day starts with Nada Surf, and the band appears happy to play both for the cult-like following tuned into its big-sounding, emotional power pop, and for early arrivers who know the group mostly for its novelty hit "Popular." (It's number two in the set.) Halfway through the set, singer Matthew Caws (it's his birthday today!) delivers the day's most literate shoutout: "How many of you have read Devil In The White City?" At least a dozen people cheer.
1:50 p.m. – Shortly before taking the stage on Saturday, Dresden Dolls singer-pianist Amanda Palmer talks to The A.V. Club:
The A.V. Club: Your song "Modern Moonlight" mentions watching people text-messaging in a café. Do you notice people doing that when you're on stage?
Amanda Palmer: Only when we're opening for Panic! At The Disco.
AVC: Do you say anything?
AP: No, I find that that's actually pretty useless, but God, it's so depressing.
AVC: Maybe you need to take out some aggression. Of the Lollapalooza lineup, whose ass could you kick?
AP: Oh, Feist's. [Laughs.] I could totally kick her ass. Any member of Panic! At The Disco would probably go down under my boot.
1:59 p.m. – As great as its club shows are, The Go! Team takes to a big outdoor festival stage like it was made for it. The group bounces around the stage constantly, clearly enjoying itself—and so is the crowd.
2:10 p.m. – Well, not everyone. Three stoner-rock dudes walk away, clearly turned off. The A.V. Club can't hear them, but we can clearly lip-read the word "shit."
2:30 p.m. – Weird, hairy, homeless-looking frontman number one: Doug Martsch of Built To Spill. The jam kids love Built To Spill, even though the vibe is kinda harsh for the patchouli crowd. Pleasant surprise: old nugget "Big Dipper."
3:20 p.m. – A festival with surprisingly muted politics finds an unexpected voice of protest in Built To Spill, which starts by jabbing at the sponsors ("Budweiser doesn't care about us? Adidas doesn't care about us?") and goes on to do a moving cover of The Gladiators' "Re-Arrange." ("Too much innocent blood has shed… Our hearts cry out / our souls grieve.")
3:38 p.m. – Hey, it's MTV dude Matt Pinfield! (Okay, the celeb sightings aren't that great.)
4:07 p.m. – Is G. Love & Special Sauce playing the PlayStation stage? Nope, it's just Lyrics Born. Yikes.
4:30 p.m. – Time for Sonic Youth, which plays as if connected by telepathy, alternating songs from the new Rather Ripped with unpredictable selections from the back catalog, including one which Kim Gordon describes to the crowd as "probably written before you were born." Sonic Youth is 25 years old now, and while it isn't here to put half the young pups on the bill to shame, it happens anyway.
4:31 p.m. – A massive crowd awaits Gnarls Barkley, who gets introduced by Lolla godfather Perry Farrell. Calling Gnarls Barkley his favorite band, he says its set at Lollapalooza will forever be known as the "Grant Park Groove." Um, sure. The band—featuring four string players, three backup singers, Danger Mouse on keys, a guitarist, bassist, and a drummer—opens with an instrumental version of "We Are The Champions," to the audience's delight. Decked out in matching white tennis outfits, the performers deliver a stirring set of haunted-house music that feels jarringly out of place in a sunny field full of drunken yuppies. The mass exodus following "Crazy" serves as a stark reminder that today's hottest band is tomorrow's group with a stupid name that did "Crazy."
5:50 p.m. – Dresden Dolls pianist-singer Amanda Palmer accidentally flashes her breasts at the crowd while attempting an ill-advised onstage clothing change. Drummer Brian Viglione proclaims, "We have a wardrobe malfunction!"
6:23 p.m. – The Dresden Dolls cover the Louvin Brothers' "Satan Is Real," pausing in the middle for Palmer to deliver a fiery faux sermon about the devil working through popular music. The worst offenders, she says, are The Flaming Lips, who will take the Bud Light stage at 6:30. Everyone cheers. The Dolls also perform a stirring cover of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs."
6:29 p.m. – Chicago scene poet-laureate Thax Douglas prefaces The Flaming Lips' set with one of his poems. Five minutes later, frontman Wayne Coyne emerges in his big inflatable bubble and walks on the crowd. It's a typical Flaming Lips show, with a packed stage: a group of women dressed as aliens, a group of guys dressed like Santa, four people in giant inflatable costumes (two astronauts, one alien, one Santa), and all kinds of props and toys.
6:40 p.m. – The A.V. Club gets a strong whiff of marijuana in the air. At a Flaming Lips concert? Now we've seen everything.
7:24 p.m. – The Flaming Lips transform the end of their strange breakout hit "She Don't Use Jelly" into a delicate piano ballad that has everyone singing along. Coyne references the new Middle East conflict a few times during the set. Songs won't stop wars, but The Flaming Lips' existence fosters peace between two opposing sides: hippies and hipsters, who sing along together. It sure sucks to be the band following this spectacle—in this case, Thievery Corporation.
7:47 p.m. – On the Q101 stage, The New Pornographers' Carl Newman references a band that played on the same stage hours before: "It's a little-known fact that our time signatures are more fucked-up than Coheed And Cambria's. So if you want to clap along, good fucking luck to you."
8:43 p.m. – Kanye West comes out on stage to "Diamonds From Sierra Leone." His microphone isn't really working, and it's a harbinger of things to come: The first half of his set is marred by technical problems and other mishaps, like DJ A-Trak going into "Crack Music" when he was supposed to go into "Spaceship." The immense crowd is nevertheless forgiving, even with the interminable silences between songs.
9:06 p.m. – Chicago rapper GLC comes out for "Spaceship," but his mic isn't on. Then it's too low. Kanye is irate afterward. "We done gone all around the world playing good shows, and y'all gonna fuck it up in Chicago? Y'all gonna embarrass me in my city?" West then warns of "repercussions." The crowd cheers.
9:13 p.m. – Considering Kanye West's well-known egomania, it's kind of cool that he allows himself to be upstaged by Lupe Fiasco riding in on a skateboard to perform a rapturously received version of "Kick Push." And it's neat to see special surprise guest Twista, but do they really have to perform that horrible song from Mission Impossible III?
10:00 p.m. – In spite of the technical problems, the set's energy builds toward a climactic "Touch The Sky" that has the crowd dancing beneath the Chicago skyline. In spite of the corporate trappings, the heat, and the lines, Lollapalooza's second day ends with a transcendent, almost utopian moment. Lots of people expected a great day of music, but did anyone anticipate that?
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