[concerts] Lollapalooza Day One (7/23/2005)

Let me be up front about something here. I never went to Lollapalooza "back in the day." I don't have much of a frame of reference -- backstage passes for one HORDE tour and one trip to Bumbershoot notwithstanding -- for a big multi-band festival of any sort of musical aesthetic, alternative or otherwise, and no sense of nostalgia for a time when we all wore flannel because we wanted to, dammit.

Oddly enough, I wasn't exactly dying to see any of the band who played in Grant Park on Saturday, either, but I shelled out the $67 anyway. Maybe I felt guilty for missing the Intonation Festival last week, I don't know. It could just be that I knew people who were going, and it seemed like it would a good time. If this is the only time they hold it here, there's some sort of history involved. If not, then I was here when it started.

In retrospect, I should have taken the offer of a ticket for $50 as I was approaching the box office, but it's a little late for that now.

I met up with Kev and Joe at the Kaiser Chiefs, who, for the two songs I heard from them, sounded a bit better than their record, which I remember largely as riding the coattails of bands riding the coattails of Franz Ferdinand.

Then it was on to catch a bit of Liz Phair from afar. Clearly the SBC stages were for the big boys. And girls. So we mostly hung back by the beer tent and commented on how our cover band does at least as good a job on "Extraordinary" as the gone-L.A. Liz does. At this point, there was also the following (paraphrased) text message exchange:

ME: We're on the pitcher's mound of softball field #1, watching Liz.
FRIEND: Cool! How is she?
ME: Secretly in love with me.
FRIEND: I've heard that rumor!

Not being particularly interested in the ornery schtick of Brian Jonestown Massacre -- who seemed to mellow a bit, musically and in a good way, as their set wore on -- or emo heroes Dashboard Confessional allowed us to secure a pretty decent vantage point for The Bravery. Lead singer Sam Endicott looks like Morrissey and sounds like Robert Smith, and the overall vibe was very much of the latter's days with The Cure. That said, I don't really ever have a problem with a band not being original if they do what they do really well, and these guys look to be on their track. Like Kaiser Chiefs, this is a band who seemed a bit more compelling live than in my past experiences with their recordings.

The other thing I liked about these guys was that they seemed very excited to be playing this particular show, as compared to the Brian Jonestown Massacre, who seemed visibly upset they weren't playing Intonation last week.

Skipping ahead a bit, that was one of the captivating things about the big surprise and hitherto unknown artist of the day, Blonde Redhead. They seemed completely oblivious to the magnitude of the event and size of the crowd, focusing with an unparalleled amount of intensity on the ethereal music they were creating on stage.

This was a welcome change after brief exposure to the pat irony of Cake and the inexplicable popularity of Billy Idol. I couldn't tell if it was some sort of retro hipster irony, backlash against the competing anti-retro hipster irony, Buffy The Vampire Slayer fans, a whole lot of people who believed Perry Farrell's claim that Idol's legacy had to do with being a real original punk (and I'm not saying he wasn't, just that it's not his legacy) or if the eighties really are back, but the whole thing was sort of confounding. Not that he wasn't bad, I just don't get why so many people seemed so into it. Then it started raining.

Since I had seen Primus at least half a dozen times, and don't like the White Stripes enough to go see a band that sounds like them, and since you could leave and re-enter the concert grounds, and a friend of Kevin's had a hotel room at the Hilton Towers, we then took about an hour-long break. There was Old Style and shots of something called Parrot Bay and much rejoicing. When we got back, the beer lines had gotten much longer, and the Pixies were about to start playing.

To be honest, I saw the Pixies back in 1991 -- maybe 1992 -- in college, and don't wax nostalgic the way every other formerly altnerative thirtysomething does. So I would have preferred checking out The Walkmen, but at this point I was subject to the laws of large groups, and didn't feel like venturing over there by myself and having to then track down my friends with a dwindling cell phone battery. Although I did have enough power to snap a shot of a small group who were catching the festivities from just off of Lake Shore Drive.

Finally, Weezer. I knew more of their songs than I thought. The guys behind me know more songs than I did, and sang along with pretty much everything. Badly. We were far enough back at this point that the wind was playing havoc with the sound. Guitars kept floating in and out of the mix, which marked pretty much the only point of the day where I thought the sound wasn't at least good, if not really good. Not Radiohead in Grant Park good, but not terrible, either.

All in all, it was a thoroughly pleasant experience, which, if it sounds like it's daming with faint praise, is at least one or two steps beyond that. I had no grand expectations, so the potential for disappointment was slim, and I heard some bands I hadn't heard before that intrigued me. Yes, something should maybe be done to try to keep sound from the stages from bleeding over to one another, but that's a bit of a minor quibble.

You'll have to look elsewhere for reviews of Sunday. I had a bunch of links, but I'm so late in posting this that there's not much point. Others have bemoaned that this festival didn't measure up to the legacy of Lollas past, and doesn't deserve the name, but I have no problems with it, and I hope it stays.