Hullabalooza: Day 3

"I thought I had an Appetite for Destruction. But all I really wanted was a club sandwich."

3:30 - Perry Farrell feat. Paul Green's School of Rock All-Stars & Slash





























We started off the last day of the festival right. For some reason Claire had elected to receive text message spam from the festival, which mostly served to inform us about worthless product promotions, but did let us know that this afternoon the greatest guitarist of the hair metal era is going to be performing on the kids stage with the most effeminate lead singer of the alternative rock era. The set only lasted about 20 minutes and they played all covers. Perry and Slash did their best (which is to say, very little) to tone down their rock star ways. If you look closely in these pictures, Slash has a cigarette in his mouth for the entire show, and Perry would go over to the side of the stage between songs to have a glass of champagne. Perry would also introduce each of the songs for the children in a tone that was really more patronizing that child-friendly (like, before playing "Jane Says", he would remark, "this is a song about a girl that's very confused"). But even when it was clear that they were just phoning in the performance, they still rocked pretty hard, so I can't really complain.

4:00 - Chromeo

After we left the kids' stage, we walked by the neighboring stage where Black Kids were playing. Claire and I had both heard their single and thought they might be fun. We were mistaken. They sucked. So we went over to the next stage to see Chromeo, who were pumping out the good-time party jams without any of the Black Kids' bullshit hipster posturing. And I believe science has proven definitively that nothing gets a party going like a fat Puerto Rican guy on a vocoder.

5:00 - Saul Williams






























Saul Williams is a bit of an aberration in the world of hip-hop. He's a rapper (of sorts) who started out as a poet, and borrows as much of his style from industrial rock as he does from hip-hop (and is indeed produced by Trent Reznor). He could write lyrical circles around Jay-Z, Lil' Wayne, or pretty much any commercial rapper in the game. He writes about empowerment and unity without soundin naive, and can get angry without seeming militant. His set was certainly one of the highlights of the festival, coming out looking like an afro-centric version of Aladdin Sane-era Bowie, with his band dressed up like something out of an early-seventies Funkadelic lineup. He assaulted his audience with a barrage of break beats, guitar noise, and angry slam poetry. He also brought his 12-year-old daughter on stage as his only backup singer, and she was totally adorable.

6:15 - Gnarls Barkley












On my way to the next stage, I happened to catch the end of Blues Traveler's set and see enough to lament the tragedy of John Popper staving off death by losing hundreds of pounds and at the same time, lose all of his stage presence (though their cover of "I Want You to Want Me" sounded surprisingly good).

Dangermouse and Cee-lo arrived on stage dressed in tweed jackets and bow ties like a pair of stuffy boarding school teachers, with their band of students in khakis and maroon sweater vests. And while I'm always a strong supporter of bands in uniform, I was expecting a higher level of pageantry from the Gnarls guys. They put on a decent enough show, playing though most of their most recent album (which is pretty much just a more fine-tuned, less-inspired version of their debut). I'm far enough removed from the summer of '06 that I was able to enjoy "Crazy" without feeling suffocated by its overexposure, but certainly the highlight of their set was a cover of Radiohead's "Reckoner" that was easily on par with the version that Radiohead had played themselves two nights previous. Following the song Cee-lo made a bashful appeal for Thom Yorke's approval, which seemed completely unnecessary, but was certainly endearing.

8:30 - Kanye West























































































Throughout the entire festival, rumors had been floating around that the Junior Senator from Illinois might be making an appearance sometime during the festival, possibly along fellow hometown heroes Wilco, or otherwise Kanye, and while Claire and I were staking out our spot for Kanye, it was all anybody was talking about. Of course, anybody following the news could see that it would me a monumental blunder for Obama to have appeared at a rock festival, given the recent attacks from the McCain camp on his celebrity status. And anyway, there's only room on Kanye West's stage for one oversized ego, which was very well represented. I was somewhat disappointed in his stage show, given how elaborate his set has been for his current tour and how elaborate Radiohead's light show was the night before. So with a stripped-down version on his full set, we had to settle for a mind-blowing light show clearly lifted from Daft Punk's show here last year. I'm still not sure if I would have been more impressed with Nine Inch Nails' set on the other end of the park, but I was still pleasantly surprised with Kanye's performance. For a brilliant producer that rarely ever gets any credit as an MC, Kanye totally owned that stage for the hour and a half that he was on. Of course, he was well supported by his arsenal of smoke machines and flood lights that kept the level of drama high and sent anybody with epilepsy straight to the hospital. Midway through the set, he went into a self-indulgent rant about his own place in history and the importance of progress in art, which would be easy to slag off as the crass narcissism of a man with a god complex, but it's hard to think of anybody else in hip-hop with as much appreciation for genuine creativity (even if he's often co-opting more than he is creating). Later he went to the side of the stage to take a breather while his band jammed on an abbreviated version of "Don't Stop Believing", and you could see him on the monitor smiling, not a smirk of self-satisfaction, but of a giddy child living out his dreams.

Hullabalooza: Day 2

"I used to rock and roll all night and party every day. Then it was every other day... now I'm lucky to find half an hour a week in which to get funky. I've gotta get out of this rut and back into the groove."

After Radiohead's ridiculous performance the previous night (and having to stand in one place for 4 hours to get a decent spot for it), we decided to take it easy today. Luckily, it seemed like most of the bands we wanted to see were the least popular acts for their time slot, so we saw a ton of amazing bands and somehow never had to fight for a good spot spot to watch them.

3:30 - Devotchka















Last year, when Juno was released, and the Moldy Peaches were unexpectedly transformed into a household name (at least among teenage hipster girls), they also instantly became the world's most overrated band. This was remarkable, not because they don't write good songs (even though Beat Happening does that schtick much better), but because they're not really a great band (the music supervisors on Juno were smart to find the only 10 songs in their repertoire that don't sound embarrassingly awkward). Which is why I find it odd that the previous year, when Devotchka provided the soundtrack to that year's indie darling, Little Miss Sunshine, the exact opposite happened. Their involvement in the film allowed people to slag them off as "the Little Miss Sunshine band" and stop listening to them as soon as liking that film ceased to be cool. They occupy an odd musical niche of being too harsh and slavic for the Starbucks/Barnes&Noble set and too clean and professional-sounding for the Pitchfork crowd. So most of the Lollapalooza audience did themselves the disservice of seeing hipster wunderkinds MGMT instead, which allowed me to score a perfect spot to see one of the best performances of the weekend. They rocked out out on some of the most badass gypsy spaghetti western music you've ever heard, with singer Nick Urata shredding the guitar, bouzouki, and the theramin just as effortlessly as he belts out Spanish love ballads. I think I read somewhere that early in their career these guys used to do the music for Dita Von Teese's burlesque show, which seems like maybe a more appropriate setting than the Grant Park bandshell, but they pulled it off well, and strangely never looked out of place wearing a heavy tuxedo jackets and chugging red wine from the bottle in the mid-afternoon sun.

4:30 - Explosions in the Sky

















With the afternoon sun at it's peak, we decided to just grab some beers and sit back on the lawn for this one. At first listen, Explosions in the Sky don't sound like a band of country-fried Texans that do soundtracks for high school football melodramas, but really I think it makes sense. They have a violent aversion to lyrics, melodies, and really anything that doesn't involve giant swells of wailing guitar fuzz. They're all about making the largest, most dramatic crescendos they can and challenging you to devour it like a 72 oz. sirloin. There's also no real breaks in their performance, so there's no way of telling where one song ends on another begins, which would have been pretty boring if I didn't feel like I was drinking the most epic pint of Bud Light that has ever been consumed.

5:30 - Okkervil River















I'm convinced that Okkervil River is actually just the bizarro version of Spoon. Both bands are from Austin, both clearly have an unhealthy obsession with Brian Wilson, and Will Shef kind of looks like an adolescent version of Britt Daniel. But in contrast to Spoon's sense of understatement and minimalism, Okkervil River seems intent on cutting open their carotid arteries and bleeding their hearts all over your speakers. And while sometimes their naked sentimentality is often a bit uncomfortable to listen to, you have to admire the sheer energy they exert in the process. When they went into "Our Life is Not a Movie" the crowd went wild, and the band milked it for everything it was worth.

6:30 - Broken Social Scene















After seeing Okkervil River spend the last hour losing half their body weight in sweat, I have to admit that I found Broken Social Scene a little boring. I've always considered BSS to be a bit overrated, which is not to say that I think they aren't a solid band. They are. But that's all they are. They're like Ayn Rand's Canadian indie rock nightmare, with so many members that it's almost impossible for any single member to stand out and do anything truly great. And indeed all of the members of the band that actually want to do anything interesting have to break away to do it. They opened with "Pacific Theme" which seemed to match the mood of the lazy, slightly overcast summer evening, but mostly just made me sleepy. The show got a little more lively when they invited Torquil Campbell and Amy Millan from Stars onto the stage, but really I think I would have rather just seen them play a set of Stars songs. When I finally realized there was no chance that Leslie Feist was going to be joining them, I decided this would be a good time for me to get a jug of wine and meet back up with Claire and Joe for Sharon Jones.

7:30 - Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings















Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings might be the least original musical group of all time, and indeed probably make the strongest possible case against artistic innovation. They pretty much don't acknowledge the the existence of any pop music made after 1975, with Jones strutting about the stage, calling directions to the band with the attitude and intensity of a coked-out James Brown, and the Dap Kings laying down the groove so tightly you'd sware they all thought the Godfather himself was gonna rise from the grave and give them a beating if they didn't land on the one. The showmanship was remarkable, and Jones even found some time in her hour of nonstop funk to belt out a couple gospel tunes with enough soul to rival Aretha. If not the best, this was certainly the most dancable performance of the festival.

8:30 - Wilco















I would personally like to thank whoever planned the festival and decided to schedule Wilco at the same time as Rage Against the Machine. Like a lightning rod for macho douchebags, RATM drew all the most obnoxious members of the crowd away from this end of the park, allowing me to enjoy Wilco in peace, and with a pretty decent view of the stage. The band came out wearing suits that looked like some kind of cheeky Takashi Murakami interpretation of Glen Cambell's wardrobe, which, it goes without saying, was awesome. The band ran through a good mix of songs spanning their entire discography (they even played a song off A.M.). I was a little surprised at how little they played from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but the version of "Jesus, Etc." they played couldn't have complimented the glowing Chicago skyline more perfectly. I was also surprised that they played "Spiders", the 10-minute kraut-rock noise jam on A Ghost is Born, and I could go on about all the great songs I wish they had played, but really I was just mad that they had to get cut off after an hour and a half.

Hullabalooza: Day 1

"My kids think you're the greatest, and thanks to your gloomy music, they've finally stopped dreaming of a future I can't possibly provide."

Let me start by apologizing for my recent lack of updates. Let me further apologize to anyone who I've unwittingly convinced to enjoy or otherwise look forward to posts on this blog. This was not my intention. As a result of having a job I no longer despise, I've found myself working longer hours and often in good enough spirits to actually leave my apartment and interact with the outside world. Also, I bought Rock Band for my Wii. . .

At any rate, I spent this past weekend in Chicago, hanging out with my sister and enjoying some of the best, greasiest food this country has to offer. While I was there I caught a Cubs game that was delayed by thunder storms and a tornado warning, and, more importantly, I spent three days watching the world's greatest mainstream-alternative rock acts find new and innovative ways of selling out. . .

3:00

Claire, Joe, and I entered Grant Park alongside Buckingham Fountain (also known as the Married With Children fountain) and got the luxurious cloth wristbands that they've introduced for this year's festival, which we would be wearing for the next three days. We were hoping to start our day off with hipster cheerleading squad known as The Go! Team in order to hype ourselves up for the weekend. Unfortunately we only made it for the tail end of their last song promptly turned around and headed to the other end of the park since none of us had any interest in seeing the poor-man's-Amy-Winehouse playing at the adjoining stage.

3:20 - The Kills

We instead decided to see the Kills, which was probably a mistake (and if I was paying closer attention to the schedule we totally would have gone to the kids stage to see Tiny Masters of Today). The Kills are, of course, a solid band, and I might even have a slight crush on Alison Mosshart, but they are not band that looks good in direct sunlight. They are a band whose entire existence is dependent on their seeming cool (in this case, literally). So when I can see sweat dripping onto the scarf that Jamie Hince in inexplicably wearing in the 90-degree Chicago heat from 40 feet back, the facade is ruined and I have to actually start paying attention to the music, which doesn't have near enough energy to sustain the festival-sized crowd they're playing to, nor is it earnest enough for me not to feel ridiculous that I'm standing behind third base of what is normally used as a baseball diamond. Luckily, they ended a few minutes early to beat a hasty retreat to the chic Soho loft from whence they came, giving us some time to get a spot for Gogol Bordello.

4:15 - Gogol Bordello

At first listen, Gogol Bordello seems like some sort of bad joke, as if Yakov Smirnoff had reinvented himself as the lead singer of a hardcore band. But as you keep listening, you realize that the singer's broken English and dropped articles are 100% serious, and his handlebar mustache is 100% awesome. It would probably be a gross over-simplification to say that they're a gypsy punk band in the way Flogging Molly is an Irish folk-punk band, but it's probably the best comparison I can come up with. And true to their gypsy heritage, they are a band without nationality. With a Ukrainian singer, two homeless Russian guys playing violin and accordian, an Ecuadoran percussionist/rapper, two half-Asian cheerleaders, and a giant Ethiopian bass player holding the ensemble together, the band is indeed a multi-cultural cluster-fuck of the highest order. If Joe Strumer were still alive, he'd probably throw away all his old records and listen to them exclusively. Needless to say, these guys are extremely entertaining and also a bit obnoxious. For the finale of the show the lead singer threw a metal bucket over his mic stand and played a drum solo on it that drove the crowd nuts. That's showmanship. . .

5:15

We probably would have tried to go to the neighboring stage to see Mates of State at this point, though it was becoming clear that we would have to fortify our position here if we wanted to have even a halfway decent spot for Radiohead. So we killed an hour, and luckily the next band was someone we wanted to see.

6:15 - Bloc Party















I tend to agree with Noel Gallagher's argument that Bloc Party is just a pretentious college band that becomes less and less appealing the farther removed you are from any sort of academic institution, or as Noel puts it, "indie shit." But they do have at least a couple of songs that make me wish I was in an warehouse club in Manchester popping ecstasy tablets like tic tacs, and I have to admit that I was pretty impressed that they don't use drum machines at all for their show (though I'm not ruling out the possibility that Matt Tong is a robot). Also when they started playing "Hellicopter" it was funny seeing all the frat guys, who had clearly played the song dozens of times on Guitar Hero, light up as they watched Kele Okereke's play it for real.

7:15

In preparation for Radiohead, and in order to kill an hour, we sent Joe out to get some wine. Our anticipation grew as stagehands began deploying Radiohead's massive lighting array and Claire, Joe, and I collectively downed two bottles of the Blackstone Winery's most mediocre riesling and pinot grigio out of plastic jugs.















8:15 - Radiohead

I've seen Radiohead once before. It was at Red Rocks in Denver, where the band ditched their entire stage set in favor of the natural ambiance of the amphitheater, and it was possibly the greatest show I've ever seen. This time around, they went completely overboard with their lighting and video setup, and, with a little help from the Bears training camp, who were setting off fireworks behind the stage, blew my mind all across the grounds of Grant Park.

For all their slow droning and odd rhythms it's easy to forget how much Radiohead just fucking rocks. I remember watching Radiohead's tour documentary Meeting People Is Easy, in which Thom Yorke spends about an hour whining about how depressed and lonely America makes him feel, and wanting nothing more than to smack him upside the head and tell him to man up. So it was refreshing to see the band quit with all the politics and melodrama and just have a good time. It made my 8th grade self happy that Radiohead has somehow become the most important rock band in the world (even if the signicance of that title has been somewhat diminished over the last decade), though it made me feel totally old when I looked around and saw the crowd of college kids singing along to all of the In Rainbows songs and then looking dumbfounded when the band kicked into anything off The Bends or OK Computer.