[concerts] Lollapalooza 2008 Day 2 (8/2/2008)

Much easier getting in on Saturday. Interesting to note that my AT&T service seemed to be working better from the time when I arrived up until about 3pm, which is where the crowd must have reached critical mass and jammed up the data network.

The Ting Tings
Massively entertaining set from yet another duo, with yet more backing tracks. I've seen Kate White be accused of not actually playing her guitar, but didn't see any evidence that this was the case. Were there more guitar parts than what she was playing? Sure, but she seemed to be contributing. Otherwise they would have only had to tape down the volume knobs and not the pickup switches. My one quibble -- and it's a smaller quibble than you would think given the particular complaint -- isn't that Kate White can't play guitar, it's that she can't sing. Most of the vocals are more sing-song talking/shouting, and the one time she tried carrying a tune on the title track from We Started Nothing, it sounded pretty terrible. That being the case, the set was short enough that the vocal stylings never got annoying, and again, the songs were pretty damn infectious. I turned one of them into a soccer cheer for the Fire, but more on that elsewhere.

Dr. Dog
My biggest problem with these guys is that the lead guitarist/vocalist seemed to spend more time on his impeccably retro look than he did on his guitar tone. I've seen other coverage bemoan the sound mix for these guys, but I don't think it was the fault of the front of house guys. Some of the tunes were engaging in that sorta bland, jangly indie pop way, but overall, nothing to write home about. This band did, however, inspire me to coin the notion of the "hipping point," which is the point at which a hipster combines so many different ironic elements to their style that they look utterly ridiculous, exemplified by Dr. Dog's drummer sporting what looked like a train engineer's hat, a handlebar mustache, and a sleeveless Journey concert t-shirt.

Ferras
I did technically see this band, but it was only about half of their last tune. Cute blonde playing guitar stage left, but that's pretty much all I've got.

The Gutter Twins
These guys, on the other hand, know guitar tone. A wonderful, if somewhat incongruous in the bright sunlight, set from Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli. The common theme I've seen in the reviews is just how evocative their music is. I think DeRogatis said they sounded like a whiskey-soaked NYC alley at 3 in the morning, but to my ears, it's more of a desolate, western highway at about the same time. I think "desolate" is the operative word here, but the music isn't as depressing as that would make it sound. The songs were well-written and well-played by a band that knew what it was doing. All of which reinforced the notion that Saturnalia will be somewhere at the top of my list of favorite albums at the end of the year.

MGMT
I had gotten a heads up from a friend that this indie buzz band wasn't quite as good live as they are on record, and I have to say, he was right. I saw an online review of this set point out that without the studio production, they sound like 10cc or maybe the Alan Parsons Project, but the name that came up in our group was Supertramp. Kudos for an indie rock band that actually has guitar solos in songs, though.

Booka Shade
Caught about five or ten minutes of the electronica duo in transition. Not really my thing even late at night in a dark club, let alone at 4pm in the afternoon.

DeVotchKa
Not being terribly impressed with MGMT, we headed north and caught maybe the last 15 or 20 minutes of DeVotchKa. Or maybe we stumbled into a Jewish wedding. It was kind of hard to tell, and I mean that in the best possible way. Lots of exotic instrumentation, and a female sousaphone player, which is something you don't see every day. With a bit of that gypsy vibe, I had to wonder if the band suffered from playing a day after Gogol Bordello, who may not have set the bar higher as much as in an entirely different ZIP code.

Explosions In The Sky
Sometimes I catch myself thinking I know enough about music to go into one of these festivals without reading any previews, and almost always regret it. This time I prepared myself enough to have seen this band mentioned several times, and I was rewarded with a wonderful set of expansive, atmospheric instrumentals along the lines of bands like Mogwai. Some friends and I just sat out on the grass and let the waves of crescendoing, reverb-drenched guitars wash over us. When you consider that the temperatures Saturday were much more reasonable than on Friday, this made for one of the more serene moments of the weekend.

Jamie Lidell
Then it was back to the south end of the park to catch just a bit of Jamie Lidell, who I had confused with Jason Collett for some reason. Totally different people. Collett is Canadian, and Lidell is the one who loops the crap out of his voice in real-time, which he balanced out with songs backed by a full, if somewhat oddly dressed, band.

Battles
I was really looking forward to the hyperactive math rock of former Helmet drummer John Stanier and his bandmates, but I absolutely could not get my head around it. I've seen a lot of breathless reviews of their set, and I feel like these people must have been on a different planet. Maybe I was too close to the stage, so that I couldn't hear the parts mesh together. Maybe I have to be in a certain frame of mind for that kind of crazy busy playing. It's not like I didn't know what I was getting into. I have the record. I like the record. Live, it just absolutely didn't work for me.

Broken Social Scene
After only lasting about fifteen minutes at the Citi stage, it was back to the north side of the park to catch some of the catchy Canadian collective and their indie rock stylings. I get the sense that I'd enjoy them more if I knew their material a bit better.

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
Had I not soured on Battles, I might have stayed on the other end of the park and camped out for Rage, but seeing Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings made me glad I ended up where I did. Classic, old-school soul, complete with the backup band starting out on their own before Jones made her entrance. After soaking up the soul for about a half-hour, I just had this big, stupid grin on my face.

Rage Against The Machine
I started out almost all the way house right back behind the soundboard, then edged a bit forward for the opening of the set, pretty far away from the maelstrom right up front Even so, there was this intense surge of bodies pushing away from the stage, either a result of the gate crashers on the west side of the park, or from the birth of a mosh pit up and to my left that required the displacement of at least a hundred people. After that happened, I was able to get about even with the front of the sound board, still way over to house right.

The show was incendiary, with the band alternately exhorting the crowd to rise up, then asking them nicely to stand back. Everyone talks about Tom Morello and his arsenal of weird noises from his guitars, but holy crap, that rhythm section is an absolute beast. Brad Wilk may be the second coming of John Bonham, he's simply that powerful and that totally spot-on in creating a pocket. This was probably the farthest away that I was for a set, and I still managed to get one or two mostly non-blurry pictures.

Bands I would have liked to have seen: Does It Offend You, Yeah?, Foals, Wilco