Lollapalooza Day 3

Ok. I better get to day 2 of Lolla before I just plain forget everything and move on. Lord knows I’ve got other news and goodies for you, but I want to get Lolla nailed down first. After the first night of Lolla, I was hoping that someone would be out selling their wristband and I could get one for like $20. Didn’t happen. I didn’t see anyone trying to sell a wristband and I really didn’t feel like standing there shouting out for people to sell me their wristband. Sunday rolls around. I get up, work out, hang out. My buddy gets up. We go grab some breakfast. We get back from brekkie and I’m about in a food coma. My buddy lays down on the couch and pulls a blanket over himself. I’m thinking he’s out. I had some other friends from High School that I promised I would meet at Lolla on Sunday. I wasn’t going to let them down. I also really wanted to see Hockey. Some time around 2, I told my buddy I was gonna roll. He’s like, ok I’ll come. Shocker. Very cool though. We cruised down to get tix and much like the previous day, no one was selling. Finally we stumbled upon some dude who was selling print outs for $60. He seemed legit. I asked him if he would walk us up to the gate (to prove the printout wasn’t a dupe). He said “no.” The he goes, “I’m a ticket broker, these are real. Do you want to take a picture of my driver’s license?” I was like, “no, not really.” So we bought the printouts and they worked. We cruised in and Minus the Bear was playing over on the south side, whereas Hockey were supposed to play up north. We went straight to Hockey.

The sun was just pounding down on us, so we managed to get a decent vantage point in the shade. We chilled there. Got a free show. Some woman with ginormous boobs was slathering sunscreen all over them in plain view of the crowd. Good times. Once Hockey started playing, she was jumping around so much I thought she was gonna injure herself or someone else due to the outrageous flopping. Def a good show. Hockey was solid too. They played all the stuff you’d expect, and some new stuff that wasn’t bad. I would put Hockey up there as one of my favorite performances of the whole fest. After Hockey, we had a short walk over to Yeasayer, so we went and checked them. I’ve listened to Yeasayer before and they get a lot of buzz, but they never did much for me (I would def be into them if they did my laundry or something). YS was ok. I have to admit that their closing song was good, and I may go online and try to figure out what it was. We stuck around in the same spot to check out Mutemath. This hour of the fest would’ve been so much better if The National, Wolfmother, MGMT, or Cypress Hill were playing. It was a lost hour and if any of those bands were playing, I would’ve avoided the major conflict that the rest of the show embodied. MM were good. They played rock. I thought that I didn’t like them cuz I thought they were Math Rock, and I really don’t like Math rock. I think I had Mutemath confused with Mogwai. Mm was good though and I might check out their stuff online. We bolted early from MM to run to the South stage to catch Wolfmother. The rest of the concert was a major frustration for me (until soundgarden anyway) cuz I wanted to see all of the bands and I just couldn’t bilocate even though I tried really hard. Wolfmother rock, they have like 5 songs that I know, but the one I really like is Woman. Well 15 minutes into the set they played Woman. After that, I was basically free to go. So I decided to run to the other stage, catch some of MGMT, See some of The National, then come back for Soundgarden.

We got to MGMT and they were just finishing up some crappy new song. Then they kicked into Kids which was really good, and the crowd went apeshit for it. That was cool. MGMT closed with some crappy new tune. Then we bolted over to the National. The National’s new record is uber mellow. I’m not really into crazy slow mellow stuff like that. But live I thought it was pretty kick ass. The only National album I have is Alligator. My fave tunes are Abel and Karen. I was hoping to catch Abel, cuz I knew they’d play it. The national is also one of those bands that will play their most popular song whenever, not necessarily at the end. Alas, we had to bolt to catch Soundgarden. The Nat played abel, but I missed it.

Soundgarden. We got back a few minutes before Soundgarden came out, we managed to meet up with our friends and we were all systems go. When Soundgarden played their first reunion show, back in Seattle in April, they busted out Beyond the Wheel. If you know the song BTW, you know it’s the song in which Chris Cornell wails like a motherfucking banshee on crack. SG posted footage from the Seattle show on their website and their performance of BTW just blew me away. It was like CC hadn’t aged in 20 years. Let’s go into the time machine. It’s 1990, I was into Soundgarden when they first came out, I was cool like that. I liked that it was metal but it wasn’t, it was punk but it wasn’t, it was grunge. Whatever, so SG came to Chicago and they opened for Danzig. The show was at the Riviera in Chicago, and I couldn’t get anyone to go. There was no way I was gonna miss it, so I went alone. I had to know if Cornell could hit those notes in person, if he could replicate the wail. I was blown away. He was hitting the notes higher than on the record. He was like a vocal freak. It was amazing. I’m just laying the foundation, cuz we’ve got a vocal freak on our hands for sure, and he put in a solid showing at the reunion show back in April. He didn’t have it for Lolla. I have to go on record and say that his voice wasn’t there like it used to be. I think they even played a set that sidestepped some of the more difficult tunes for CC to sing which meant, much to my chagrin, they didn’t play Beyond the Wheel, Hands all over, or The Day I tried to Live. I needed one of those songs. I would’ve loved to have heard, room a thousand years wide, although they did play searching with my good eye closed (opener). I thought the band sounded a little loose at the beginning, but by the end, they were really tight. Some of the highlights: Ugly Truth, Fell on Black Days, Blowup the outside world, Fourth of July, and Gun. The drummer never gets enough credit imho, and I have to say, the true freak in Soundgarden is Matt Cameron. He still has it, and he might even be better than he used to be. Obviously playing in Pearl Jam has kept him sharp. Unlike Green Day who went 15 minutes over, Soundgarden ended 10 minutes early on a weak tune. Kind of a bummer. I would def see SG again, and they went old school, they let the tunes do the talking. No elaborate lights, no fireworks, no goofy antics, just classic iron-forged rock.

Some random notes and thoughts from Lolla. Right before soundgarden, a woman came up to my buddy and said, “I have a friend who is really into ‘the green lantern’ can I take a picture of your shirt?” My buddy was wearing a green lantern shirt. How random is that though? I mean I can’t think of the last time someone asked to take a picture of my shirt prior to Saturday, and then the next day someone asks my buddy the same thing. Too weird. I guess we have good taste in Ts. The green lantern shirt is cool, and GL is kinda obscure so that’s good, but who is really a green lantern fan? I think maybe the woman was just putting the moves on him. I’m pretty sure that The green Lantern was the one super hero that was openly homosexual. Which was quite a milestone back in the day. The biggest bummer of Lolla had to be the conflicts. I guess they have to do it that way, but there were so many bands that I only caught a piece of cuz I had to get somewhere else. This really doesn’t fit well with my personality. It’s like when a band comes to town that I want to see, I feel bad when I don’t see them. If there was a band I wanted to see at Lolla, I had to see them, even if it was only for 15 minutes like MGMT. I would rather do it that way than feel like I missed something. The hipster of the show, the award winner, was wearing greenish faded black super tight cutoff at the knee jeans, a yellow obscure t shirt cut into a tank top, a black belt with a giant Frankenstein head belt buckle, and this really odd leather cap that had a curled up brim. Lot’s of other hipsters with funny mustaches curled up, tight pants, etc. A lot of the young kids were painted up like they wanted to be on the cover of an MGMT album. A lot of dudes were going shirtless. Not enough women were going shirtless. On a whole, the people-watching was an extreme disappointment. I’m not sure what the deal is, but if you are not a hipster, it seems the style is to look as shitty as possible. A lot of people with headbands, bandannas tied around their heads, stupid hats, stupid shoes, I dunno, there was a definite dearth of sartorial awareness. Ok. Creepy moment of the whole show. This guy dressed all in black stands right next to me at the beginning of Soundgarden, he’s short, red hair, red beard, looks dirty. Then I notice, he has open sores all over his arms. I don’t know what it was, but I didn’t want to catch it. I’m pretty tolerant, but I really wanted this guy to go away. Thankfully he did.