Lollapalooza 2010 - Saturday

Harlem

Back to the alcove. This is my favorite stage at Lolla. Small, cozy, tree-lined. A good place to have your eardrums punctured by Fack Buttons. Seriously, why not fick? Or fuck? Artists are weird.

Anyway, today we start the day with Harlem, an endearingly sloppy little three-piece that plays songs with simple riffs and rhythms that feel like the 1950s chopped up by a buzz saw and then run through a meat grinder. We spot a girl holding a life-size inflatable alien (if life-size aliens are approximately the same size as humans). We spot a guy in a full Scooby-Doo costume (Have fun dying in today’s heat!). And we spot a shirtless bro (redundant) who is so squat, so bulbously muscular, so back-bepimpled, that my eyes throw up all over my face.

Harlem is good though.

The XX

The XX are riding such a wave of buzz that the entrances/exits to the north side have become choke points. My wife, on one of her patented portapotty runs, witnesses a man fall and crack his head on the asphalt, and the paramedics can’t make it through the crowd. But hey, don’t feel bad, because The XX are playing! I think. I can’t really hear them.

Have you ever had someone mumble something quietly to you and you’re like, “What?” and they repeat themselves but they don’t raise their voice AT ALL so you nod and pretend like you heard the second time but in fact you have no idea what they said? That’s kind of like seeing the XX live. It’s like the antithesis of Fack Buttons. I would love to see a double bill of Fack Buttons and the XX, where Fack Buttons plays first, followed by the XX, and everyone would be like, wait, are they playing? Is music being played? I see pasty people strumming guitars. And their lips are moving. OMG. I’m deaf. I’m DEAF!

On our way after the set, I get a high five from a dude for my Enfield Tennis Academy shirt. I can always count on a music fest to find someone equally as jazzed about Infinite Jest. My hipster card gets another punch in it. Only three more and I get a free ice cream cone.

Grizzly Bear

Another quiet band, but they fare better than the XX. Of course, I can’t really hear them because we decide it’s better to sit on the outskirts then risk more exposure to this odd smattering of indie-bros. Seriously, shouldn’t they be locked in a portapotty masturbating into a Black Keys t-shirt? Anyway, it’s hard to feel invested in an act when you can’t really see or hear them and you’re hyperaware of the sweat trickling into your ass-crack. I feel my Lolla afternoon squishing through my fingers and there’s nothing I can do about it. What am I going to do, walk to the south end and watch AFI? I’d rather eat my own eye puke.

Metric

We sit tight for Metric, literally. We are sitting. And these are some tight quarters, okay? Over there, three inches away? That’s an ass in my face. And the close proximity to more shirtless bros is getting to be a little much. I am yet again subject to the sights of sweat, bacne, armpit hair, nipples, beer guts, etc, etc, etbloooork. Gah. Sorry. For most of Metric’s set, I remain below sea level, where their thumping, energetic sound is muffled into innocuous beats. Have you noticed I haven’t talked much about music today? That’s because this three hours is lost in the sea of heat, sweat, dirt, flesh, and my wife’s tiny, tiny bladder. Good thing there’s…

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

We show up a half hour early and can’t get anywhere near the stage. But it’s this lovely tree-lined alcove once again, and there’s lots of room to spread out and still see some of the stage.

ESATMZ fill the stage with ten or so happy-hippy types, all of whom are having a grand old time. They play extended singalong clapalong tunes with an energy and verve rivaling Polyphonic Spree and I’m From Barcelona. This is a true festival band. A true festival experience.

And then the bros start climbing trees. Over there, a dirty-foot bro scales a tree. Over there, a guy I suspect of being a bro but can’t confirm because he’s wearing a shirt, gets wedged in the V of a tree for a good two minutes. And climbing that tree over there is a sombrero-wearing bro. These bros come in many different meaty flavors. Beef sweatinoff. Beef smellington. Beef beefybeef. I begin to forget about the wonderful music and focus on which bro will be first to plummet to the ground. It never happens, although one bro watches as his nasty flip-flop gets heaved into the crowd. It’ll have to do.

ESATMZ finish with rousing versions of Home and Om Nashi Me. A gaggle of bros launches into a full-scale chant, leaping around like gazelles and hugging and grabbing each other’s chests. What is going on here? And is it truly a gaggle of bros? A colony of bros? A herd of bros? A confusion of bros? That's it. A confusion of bros.

Cut Copy

We enter the grounds expecting another north side clusterfack, but the grounds are more open than I’ve seen them in a while. This opens up my ability to dance in place like an idiot. I regret leaving my glowsticks in the car. The lead singer triggers my gaydar, but then, my desire for glowsticks triggers my gaydar. My gaydar is jammed.

Behind us, I locate an artifact from the weekend. An abandoned flip-flop, mired in a mudpit. It looks like a fossil. Like carbon testing could place it in the 14^th century. I imagine somewhere, a bro, stumbling around in a single flip-flop, crying forlornly as he gives out random high fives.

Phoenix/Empire of the Sun

I make a game attempt to enjoy both of these bands, but it’s been a long day, and in neither case is the sound very substantial. It’s time to retire to the Hilton bar for multiple Half Acre beers and a cheese plate.

See you tomorrow for my Sunday Lolla review, where I take quality over quantity.

Lollapalooza 2010 - Friday

The Grounds

The first thing I notice when I walk in through the north entrance is that there is a north entrance. The line takes all of 30 seconds to navigate. Nicely done, Lolla.

The second thing I notice is that Lolla has expanded. Now encompassing a good portion of the land west of Columbus, it dawns on me that I will no longer be forced behind the clustered, bobbing swathes of humanity that flow like frozen molasses past Buckingham Fountain each year. All of Columbus lies open before me, lane after lane after lane, and I envision myself speeding down the road to whatever destination my greedy little heart desires.

Also, there’s a shitload of portapotties.

Ana Sia

I know little to nothing about dubstep other than it apparently hews to a constrained time signature. But the big, meaty beats that tiny, wiry, jogging-in-place Ana Sia drops don’t feel very constrained. This feels like the right way to start Lolla. So does a beer. The beer turns warm in 6.2 seconds flat.

The Big Pink

The field smells vaguely of manure, which turns out to be an apt description for the Big Pink’s sound mix. I like this band. I do. But the bass drum is turned up so high that I can’t hear anything else. Good songs like Velvet and Dominoes feel uninspired, muddy, vaguely manure-like. When they end their set a full fifteen minutes early, I am both annoyed at the short set-list, and relieved that it’s over.

Devo

There is nothing quite like a silver half-mask to accentuate one’s chin fat. But chin fat means nothing when you can bring the energy like these guys. I lose myself in the raucous pace, the frequent costume changes, the large video wall featuring a sashaying, bikinied ass that sprouts cartoon eyes that cry.

And then, from the corner of my eye, I see my wife make a run for it.

“Dude!” she is saying. “Dude,” as she chases after a shirtless, beefy guy who has somehow managed to loop our tote bag around his foot. He trudges along, an oblivious, fleshy juggernaut, as my wife makes faint slaps on his back-steak. I chase after thinking, “I may have to defend her.” He finally stops, turns, gives the fisheye, and disentangles his foot from the bag. Little do I know this will not be our last encounter with the special Lollapalooza Borg known as The Bro.

Devo are great though. Go Devo.

F*ck Buttons

Can you guess what the * is for? That's right. An "a." Who knows why they call themselves Fack Buttons. But whatever. They're unbearably loud. I fight to remain in the small alcove but I fear their volume may uproot nearby trees and cause my bladder to burst. So I take a quick detour to catch a couple of agile tunes by Dirty Projectors, snag something called a Dirty Dawg from Chowtown, then return to catch the remainder of the beautiful, scathing, wall of sound that is Fack Buttons. Only this time I sit all the way across Columbus Drive. It’s really facking loud.

Lady Gaga

After a brief sojourn home to nestle Mazlin into bed, I sprint back to try and “see” Lady Gaga. I wog like mad down Columbus drive, weaving in and out of random bros, twinks and teenage girls. It is Frogger 2010 and I am winning. I get to the South side and realize that to enter the teeming throng of Gaga watchers is to risk having the breath crushed from my chest. Verily. I stand on the far, far outskirts and am able to glean the following:

I am free to be who I want to be / Even if that means I want to dress like a curtain and eat unidentified viscera

Lady Gaga didn’t used to be so brave / She is brave now / This is due in some part to me / I have made her brave / And now she will be brave for me / By playing a giant obsidian pyramid keytar

Lady Gaga is a star / She made it, Dad.

One last observation: Little do I know that the best XX I will see this weekend is the white tape crosshatching Gaga’s nipples.

Coming up tomorrow: Saturday of Lollapalooza: Return of the bro.