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.

From the "Seemed like a good idea at the time" file

I saw this logo/tag on the side of a SW van this morning. Considering BP’s recent peccadOILlo, I’m surprised this wasn't sandblasted off the company fleet posthaste.

Out of the goodness of my heart, I am offering some alternative taglines they might consider should they choose to rebrand.

• Kill the otters
• Pump latex into the ocean
• Shove a ballgag in Mother Nature’s mouth
• Paint some fish gills closed
• Categorically eradicate all known flora and fauna
• Scumble the environment

Pitchfork 2010 - Sunday (Mazlin Edition)

Hey there. My dad asked me to review Sunday’s Pitchfork. I see he already used a Blues Clues joke in his Saturday review. That’s totally my purview, but whatevs.

The Early Bands

I know my Dad wants to see Girls and Beach House and Local Natives, but I need a nap, and Pitchfork still hasn’t updated their lame-o No Re-entry policy, so we’re screwed for a second year in a row. Maybe Pitchfork will wake up and fix this policy, say, by the time I can VOTE!

Surfer Blood

I’m excited to hear the distorted wonders of Surfer Blood, but by the time we roll through the crowds of skeletal mutants wearing really tight pants (What’s up with that? I freaking hate tight clothes), I realize I won’t be getting anywhere near the stage. The entry way is choked off by more of these rail-thin, desiccated, pasty-skinned youths. Is this a music festival or a Twilight convention? Hey-o!

Adding to my frustration is the sound bleed from some band that calls itself Lightning Bolt. Apparently, they like to scream and bang on objects and make a general racket. As a near two-year-old I can honestly say their stuff doesn’t even come close to matching the intensity of one of my tantrums.

All that said, we are able to plant ourselves in the furthest corner of the festival where at least I can hear Surfer Blood blast through “Swim,” a truly awesome song. I like it because it reminds me of the lake. And my little backyard pool. And my bathtub. Clearly, I am a key demo for Surfer Blood.

My Deep Thought

We stroll past several girls wearing the exact same heart-shaped sunglasses as me. I ponder the question: Am I trying to come across as more mature than I really am? Or do these girls just prefer to act like toddlers?

St. Vincent

I don’t know much about her, but St. Vincent makes a pretty good soundtrack for eating raisins and flicking water into Dad’s eye.

Major Lazer

This group is cray-cray. The one dude has some kind of a blonde Mohawk and keeps screaming that Major Lazer is in the house, which confuses me because we are outside. There are Chinese lion/dragon dancers, which must be pretty hot. I mean, it’s a scorcher of a day. I don’t even want to wear my headphones, let alone some heavy, traditional Chinese theatre outfit. Also, on stage there is simulated sex, but I don’t know what that is, and never will, at least until I am 19 and out of the house.

The Balloon

While I am dancing with my Dad, a balloon bops him in the leg. I say “balloon!” So Dad reaches down to grab it for me, but then he gets this funny look on his face and just lets it fly off. This saddens me. I cry out for the balloon repeatedly. I don’t understand why Dad would just let that balloon get away. It’s not like it was an inflated condom or anything, right?

The Late Bands

Sure, yeah, Dad wants to stay all the way to Pavement, but it’s getting close to my bedtime. And I’m sorry, but Malkmus is way overrated.

Pitchfork 2010 - Saturday

In preparation for Saturday's festival, I go to the beach and get a nice back sunburn.

Titus Andronicus

Great energy. Sloppy freewheeling rock. I learn more about the Civil War in an hour set than I did in high school. Apparently they said “f*ck” a lot back in the 1800s. Fourscore and seven f*ckin’ years ago, our f*ckfathers brought forth on this f*ckin’ incontinent a YOWL SCREAM GUITAR FEEDBACK trumpet tooooodle YOWL YOWL f*ck f*ck emancipation f*cklamation!

The lead singer shouts out libraries at the end of the set, which makes me happy because I married into the American Library Association. Let's hear it for libraries!

The Guy in the Turquoise Pleather Hightops

I wish I took a picture of this guy, but his awesomeness might have shattered the lens of my camera. His muskels are big, he has a large shoulder tattoo of Michael Jordan (I think) going in for a dunk from the perspective of the ceiling, several other seemingly unrelated tattoos, and those shoes, oh those shoes. These are the kind of shoes that deserve their own talk show.

The Sun

The sun buys a ticket and brings her friends Humidity, Red Face, and Sweaty Ball Syndrome.

How I Offset My Age With an Obscure T-shirt

Some girl recognizes my Enfield Tennis Academy shirt from Infinite Jest. (Second year in a row! Pitchfork is clearly the right demo for literary in-jokes). She asks me “Did you do that on purpose?” “Yes,” I say. “It’s from Wuthering Heights.”

Raekwon

Sound problems apparently delay 'Kwon’s set, but I wouldn’t know as I am devouring a vegan burger and pretzel with beer cheese. The pretzel tastes better than rap. The vegan burger tastes better than crap.

The Merch Booth

If you ever need a stuffed mustache, attend next year’s Pitchfork.

John Spencer Blues Explosion

The only reason I endure this set is to get a good spot for Wolf Parade. From what I can tell it consists of the frontman, John Something, I forget his last name, yelling over and over “Blues Explosion!!” I entertain myself by imagining him saying “Blues Clues Explosion!!” and then leading the whole park of hipsters in a spirited game of patty cake.

Wolf Parade

When I last saw Wolf Parade it was New Years Eve ’06 or so at the Viaduct Theater where they played every song in doubletime and I spent the better part of the set standing in line to pee while douchebags yelled at each other to “piss faster.” Awesome time, really.

Thankfully, they bust out of the gates with Cloud Shadow On the Mountain, transition to The Grey Estates and roll into Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts, essentially rolling backwards through their discography with an energy and confidence I’m not quite expecting.

The sun beats down on my neck, scorches everything in its path, which means these guys are playing right into the sun. And my only regret for the whole damn, beautiful set is that they don’t take advantage of this and rip out You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son, screaming out “Won’t make it through the high noon sun…”

Which we don’t. Halfway through the set we retreat to shadier pastures. As soon as we set up camp, Wolf Parade launches into I’ll Believe in Anything, easily one of my favorite songs EVER. If you haven’t heard it, buy it from iTunes. If you don’t like it, let me know and I will refund your 99 cents via a personalized haiku that is worth at least twice that.

Panda Bear

Hey everybody. Panda Bear is next! His album Person Pitch was #2 on my top albums list from ’07. This is going to be so great. No seriously, I know you don’t like Animal Collective, but wait. This is like Brian Wilson caught in reverb loopy land. Just wait until he plays Comfy in Nautica. Dude. Woo! Panda Bear! Here he comes. Okay get ready!

Okay, okay, no problem, this first part he’s just warming up. He’s building to something, okay? Yeah, I know it’s just a drone moving to another drone. Yeah, sure he’s screaming occasionally, that’s fine. No problem, he’s got a master plan. Just wait.

Just… wait.

No there will be some drum loops soon. I’m pretty sure.

Why are you looking at me like that? Look at the video screen. See there’s some trippy stuff going on. That dude is repeatedly punching a fish, that’s pretty cool, right? And that couple doing it on the roller coaster is from that one exploitation flick. Neat. No, the music will start soon. It will.

It will. I will it to. I will Panda Bear to not make me look like such an ass for talking him up. Here I am willing. I’m willing. Oh forget it.

I’m going to get some beer.

LCD Soundsystem

James Murphy washes the bad taste of Panda Bear off my brain immediately with Us V Them. I am pleased with his disco ball. I am pleased that he is quite possibly older than me. I am pleased with All My Friends. I am pleased to leave early to beat the mad crush of people all trying to board the same damn bus at the same time.

I’ll catch the whole set on your next tour, LCD! Wait, what? You’re breaking up? I… but… Aw fuck it, I’m catching the bus.

The Bus

Lainie and I have a spirited debate over whether or not jean jams and jorts are synonymous. I propose that all jean jams are jorts, but not all jorts are jean jams. She proclaims that jean jams are not jorts. They are too specific, too close to the knee. We wind up having a terrible fight and I haven’t spoken to her since.

Lainie, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry we fought about jorts.

Stay tuned for Sunday’s Pitchfork review by special guest columnist, Mazlin!

Pitchfork 2010 - Friday

I think this may be the first Friday of Pitchfork that I’ve ever attended. Leaving the wife and child at home because one of them doesn’t like Modest Mouse and one of them is already asleep. Can you guess which is which?

The Beer Line

I stand in line and purchase my beer tickets. Then I stand in a longer line to purchase beer. The line moves at a glacial pace. After about ten minutes I realize my phone is dying so I choose to stare at all the dirty feet in the vicinity. Man, there are a lot of dirty-footed people here.

Then I see the wristband on the guy in front of me. Turns out I need a wristband, but I can’t get one in this line. I need to get one from the previous beer ticket line. So I secure an uneasy agreement from the folks in front of me that they will pretend to know me when I come back to recut my way into line. We will high five, chortle about some old in-joke, reminisce over that one time that we ate a pound of raw cookie dough on a dare.

The nice Russian lady at the beer ticket line tells me that the wristbands have “disappeared.” Oh good. Nearly 15 minutes of waiting time, missing Broken Social Scene, and I am close to losing my spot in the beer line. I run to another beer ticket tent, weaving in and out of a gaggle of anorexic youths, find a wristband, run back, and barely wend my way back into line.

Two beers achieved. Half hour spent. A fair trade. It’s boiling hot and I need this.

Modest Mouse

They disappointed me back at Lolla 07, so I’m not sure what to expect, but they instantly win me over with a brilliant opening trifecta: Tiny Cities Made of Ashes, Here it Comes, and The Devil’s Workday. I am putty in Isaac Brock’s yowling, full-throated hands, if hands could yowl and have throats.

Brock has clearly been freebasing whiskey all day as he makes some of the most bizarre and wonderfully entertaining banter, from “Take half a breath. Half. Wither. Wilt. And buy some name brand water,” to “I thought if I bit this glow stick it would make my mouth glow but it was already broken and now my spit glows and my mouth tastes all chemically. These things glew, glow, gloweth,” to “Thanks to all the bands that graced the stage before us, no that sounds presumptuous, slur, slur, slur…”

Anyhow, MM sounds great. By the time they rip through a massive version of Dramamine and then Parting of the Sensory, all is right with the world.

My joke I made up that I'm pretty sure many other people have made up before me but I'm going to pretend is original

As I walk around looking at all the young, cool, young, skinny, young kids, I think "I need a hipster replacement."

Good, right? Never heard it before have you? Right. Awesome. Stay tuned for the report coming out of Saturday.

Read 'em and weep

As far as fiction goes I tend to fall on either end of the spectrum: utter butter pop novels or insanely ungainly tomes. Neither side tends to trigger my blues. I'm either turning the pages too fast or too busy looking up the word enfilade to get sucker punched by some subtextual dark cloud. But the following works linger somewhere in the middle, accessible enough to pull you in, dark enough to push you back.

5. The Information by Martin Amis – A superbly funny and smart story about a bleak and unhappy protagonist who loses at life. The night after I finished this, I leapt out of my bed, convinced that a gigantic black spider had dropped from the ceiling onto my stomach.

4. The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall – Crammed with wordplay, including a shark built out of letters that floats through the pages, this book is like Memento starring Will Shortz. Just thinking about it makes me dizzy. What a wonderful construct. But somehow, some way, it pushed me into a deep little hole of alienation.

3. And Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris – An entertaining read. A familiar setting. A moving experience. But the final sentence, which has nothing to do with plot and everything to do with how one has internalized the book, hit me in the gut with a sledgehammer.

2. The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno – A very quick read, thank God, as the entire time I felt like killing myself.

1. Oblivion by David Foster Wallace – An absolutely brilliant collection, stuffed with so much sadness above and below the text that I felt genuinely depressed for about a month after putting it down. To this day, I still refuse to read the final story, The Suffering Channel, about a man who shits out works of art, as I’m worried it will complete some horrible circuit in my brain.