Lollapalooza 2009 Was For The Kids

Grant Park

Chicago, IL

on Aug 7 2009

Mike McCann (CHARTattack)

08/14/2009 3:54pm

Festivals like last weekend's Lollapalooza are supposed to be irresistible to music fiends. You know, like Yogi Bear can't say no to a picnic basket.

I attended the first seven Lollas back when it was a) a traveling carnival and b) more culturally relevant, so I've struggled the last few years between wanting to go to the new "destination" edition and running — fast — in the other direction.

I've survived the muddy orgy that is Glastonbury, witnessed Brit-pop's cord being cut at the Phoenix Festival and basked in the dry heat of Coachella four of the last six years. I'd even traveled cross-Canada with Edgefest twice, watching "the kids" get their first taste of a big rock show.

Part of me felt like these events should be the exclusive domain of those same kids — the younger generation finally forming their own opinions about what good music meant to them, without the assistance of older siblings or whoever programmed the music on The O.C. or Gossip Girl.

Maybe I was getting too jaded (read: old) for this sort of thing, and would look/feel like a narc the entire weekend, but I still felt honour-bound to zip down to Chicago and see how Perry Farrell's resurrected brainchild stacked up to those experiences.

Value for dollar rationalizations aside — "You'd pay thousands to see these bands play your hometown individually, assuming they'd ever come to your 'hood!" — there's no denying the allure of a multi-day fest. What's not to like about more than 130 artists, a carefully balanced collection of iconic kings (Depeche Mode, Jane's Addiction) and ironic heirs (Vampire Weekend, Crystal Castles) all aspiring to whip a city-sized mob of like-minded strangers into a frothy frenzy?

The idea that very few patrons will leave having navigated the exact same course as anyone else is likewise compelling.

There's just as much about it that blows, though, particularly if you don't dig spending a weekend packed like lemmings amongst your fellow humans or alternating between being rained on and marinating in your own juices as the temperature approached infinity.

Let's not talk about the vendor village full of homemade soaps and peasant skirts, or the on-site bank machines with $3.95 U.S. convenience charges (congrats on diversifying your business model, Ticketmaster!).

Forget about the front-row seat to an endless series of dubious fashion shows and the $9 beers. If you're willing to take the crunchy with the smooth, it's a trip. The majesty of Rock transcends it all, right?

For those who've never been, Chicago is a lot like Toronto if they hadn't fucked up the waterfront. It's a beautiful city with truly interesting architecture and a perfect grasp of how big places must adapt as trade, transportation and tragedy redraw the map over time.

Grant Park, Lolla's home since 2005, sits nestled along the shores of Lake Michigan and in the shadow of stunning but in some cases half-empty skyscrapers... stupid recession, stay out of my skyline! It's an impressive locale that yields some very cool views while you're watching those bands blessed with evening timeslots, especially at the north end of the park.

Here's how my weekend broke down:

Friday, Aug. 7
Zap Mama are a glorious stew of African, Brazilian and American soul, with a bigger brass section than the entire roster of Broken Social Scene. It's spectacular summer music — too bad they kicked ass in the rain, playing to a half-empty field.

I poured one out on the ground for John Hughes, and, contemplating the many stellar soundtracks to his films, wondered what a bossa nova version of "(Don't You) Forget About Me" might sound like.

White Lies fared a little better, as natural cloud cover and precipitation were the perfect accompaniment to their gloomy but sexy sound. I dig To Lose My Life..., their debut album, but found myself distracted by how much lead singer Harry McVeigh looks like Tom Brady.

The rain really came down by the time they finished and the VIPs draped off the second-storey poser deck onstage looked a bit bedraggled. It was the first true schedule conflict of the weekend, as they were playing opposite The Gaslight Anthem, who are outside my usual wheelhouse, but nonetheless have been known to blow my skirt up.

Chicago natives Dark Wave Disco, a three-man DJ team with serious credentials, tore it up in the dance grotto, trading mostly in 130+ BPM, heavily electronic remixes of indie darlings like Phoenix and Does It Offend You, Yeah? They got the blood pumping, but the DJ in me was skeptical of how much they're actually doing up there "live" besides some panning and manipulation of the EQ.

I took a pass on The Virgins in order to see Bon Iver, and it was a great call. They're fantastic and received thunderous applause after each lovely song. At the risk of offending big fans, their presence and timeslot rendered fellow beardy band Fleet Foxes' technically flawless yet lifeless performance one short hour later utterly irrelevant.

I dropped by the Kidzapalooza stage in time to see what amounts to Mr. Farrell's Neighbourhood. The guy who dreamed the festival up back in 1991 was holding court onstage, where he and a backing band populated by members of the real-life School Of Rock played to an audience of soggy parents and elated kids stomping around in the puddles.

Totally bizarre special guest LeAnn Rimes suddenly appeared and the duo ran through the age-inappropriate Tom Petty/Stevie Nicks hit "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" and a wonky but sweet version of "Here Comes The Sun" (complete with a well-intentioned but appallingly inaccurate Perry preamble about The Beatles aimed at the younglings).

Ben Folds is still a charmer, and despite the miserable weather he had a ton of people grinning and singing along to his nerdy jukebox. "Rockin' The Suburbs" and "Army" both soared, but it was the now-obligatory cover of Dr. Dre's "Bitches Ain't Shit" that seemed to most delight the crowd. The only minor bummer was that Regina Spektor wasn't here to duet on "You Don't Know Me."

The Decemberists decided to pull out all the stops and attempt to steal the show back from the elements. Colin Meloy and his merry band of D&D players treated the "Northapalooza" main stage like their own private Renaissance Fair, and it was surely entertaining if a bit plodding.

It all felt a little pedestrian (if that's even possible for a concept album about hot, dirty shape-shifter love) until Shara Worden took her turn on lead vocals. Wow. It would be nice to hear more of the old stuff, but when they're touring an album whose entire sequencing tells a very linear story it's tough to fault them for sticking to the plot.

Local boy Andrew Bird was an acquired taste, what with the prominent troubadour whistles and the liberally-applied jaunty violin., Like our own beloved Final Fantasy, however, he was also friggin' awesome live and benefitted from being the act onstage when the rain finally decided to give everyone a break for a while. I was deeply saddened that I missed his Lolla after-show concert at Schubas the next night, which boasts the best sound in the city and the capacity of a school bus.

A quick stroll for food resulted in a lobster corndog with lemon aioli and a crepe with chocolate, banana and whipped cream — try ordering that at the Molson Amphitheatre, bitches! Seriously, they do food right at Lollapalooza, and it's actually not obscenely priced either. Even the water's only $2 a bottle, and there are public fountains everywhere for free refills.

The dinner break also revealed Peter Bjorn And John playing the same underwhelming set I witnessed two weeks earlier in Toronto, and Of Montreal being their usual weird selves but with a bigger stage to hold their props.

The crowd was growing by about 1,000 people every few minutes in the lead-up to Kings Of Leon.

After toiling away anonymously for most of the decade, the Followill boys are finally getting some respect in North America. They've headlined huge stadium and outdoor gigs in Europe, opened for U2 and Pearl Jam and set sales records in the U.K., but only recently jumped up to arenas at home.

They knocked it out of the park on Friday, delivering a solid 19-song set that drew nicely from each of their four albums. It must feel good hearing 60,000 people scream the chorus of your hit single back at you, but it pleased me to see people singing along to deep album cuts, too.

Kings Of Leon more than held their own when faced with the unenviable task of competing with Depeche Mode.

Hello, organizers — I get the crowd control aspect of counter-programming, but come on — even big Mode fan Matthew Followill was disappointed at the conflict, sporting a Violator-era t-shirt onstage during KOL's set. My only complaint was with a teenage boy standing in front of me whose aroma was, shall we say, off-putting; his entire being was sautéed in wrong sauce, and an ill wind doth blew.

We strolled out of the park to the sounds of Depeche's encore. An epic "Stripped" led into the twang-stomp singalong of "Personal Jesus," and the crowd ate it up. It was a truncated tracklisting that deprived the Lolla crowd of back-catalogue gems performed on other tour stops, including "Master And Servant" and "Strangelove," but nobody seemed to be complaining. I only hope it wasn't just the over-30 set that watched the living legends put on a clinic.

Saturday, Aug. 8
Despite the miserable persistence of the rain on Friday, the venue was in remarkably good condition the next morning when the gates open at 10 a.m.

The same couldn't be said for me, as I was gripped by a deadly combination of indifference to most of the lineup (I'd seen nearly everyone playing today in other venues, some of them several times) and open hostility towards the thousands of teenage girls flitting about, dressed as though their sole musical reference point is that trippy MGMT video. I kicked into grumpy old man mode each time I picked up a snippet of their speech. The art of conversation is, like, kinda dead and stuff.

The day's schedule was a bit of a logjam so I elected to see portions of many sets rather than a few complete performances. The Delta Spirit and Constantines both gave solid showings, and I again found myself wishing I didn't have prior commitments when the Cons played a club gig a few blocks from my crashpad the night before.

Bands don't come any buzzier than Miike Snow these days, but the trio were phenomenal live and more than lived up to the hype. "Animal" and "Burial" sounded particularly sharp. It was an excellent set, although a friend noted that singer Andrew Wyatt bears a resemblance to Kenny Loggins and that distracted me for the last few songs.

Ida Maria was up next, and I saw her literally giving people chills at the Citi Stage. That voice was something else, and the live show generated more visceral power than the album, which suffers from a case of overproduction. I decided to skip hyperactive Welsh urchins Los Campesinos! and sit on one of many City of Chicago buses that were idling in the park with the air conditioning blasting. A Chill Station, they call it — nice touch on a sticky day.

By 3:30 I was feeling like a piece of wilted leaf lettuce, so I regrettably missed both Chairlift and Gomez who were duking it out in that timeslot. Next up were Arctic Monkeys, who won the crowd over with a high-energy romp that included a healthy dose of their upcoming third album Humbug. It's frightening to think that these guys are still really young.

It seems like half the attendees were going to watch Glasvegas. I passed, having seen them earlier in the year and deciding at the time that while they made a good record they relied a little too much on sheer volume live.

In fact, a quick glance at the schedule reveals that the remaining acts are all either not my bag or someone I've seen recently. It's very humid and I'm DJing at a party downtown, so I stick a fork in day two. If only the Beastie Boys hadn't cancelled.

Sunday, Aug. 9
I gatecrashed to see the Sam Roberts Band blast through a spectacular set of hook-ridden feelgood rock anthems. The Canadian flags were out in full force, Dave Nugent wore a vintage Labatt's Blue tee and Sam drew a very respectable crowd despite the fact that it was close to 90 degrees before noon. Why he wasn't performing later in the day when some of the stages will lay completely fallow is beyond me, but he made the best of a shite timeslot.

The toughest decision of the weekend awaited me: Do I see the slick synth-pop of Friendly Fires or the cerebral indie rock of Ra Ra Riot? I choose the latter and as much as I enjoyed their show I found myself wondering how things were going at the other end of the park. The fairly frequent whiffs of wafting garbage juice contributed to my "grass is greener" leanings, but by this time I'd missed the remainder of FF's set if I made the trek to the opposite end of Grant Park.

Having watched a recent Kaiser Chiefs concert on TV, it dawned on me that I don't like them as much as I thought, so I gave their set a wide berth. Lunch and another spell on a Chill Station were much more appealing. I checked out The Raveonettes, who sound great as usual, but something about seeing them in broad daylight surrounded by shirtless boys with Ken doll physiques watered down some of their potent sonic wallop.

Neko Case is always a treat live, but for some reason I wasn't feeling it — maybe it was the extra-sleepy nature of her latest album, maybe it was the secret wish that she was here as a component part of The New Pornographers rather than as a solo artist.

I wandered over and see the tail end of Vampire Weekend, but I was so far away from the stage I didn't feel like a part of the show. Call me crazy but even in a swarm of 225,000 people I like to feel connected to what's happening onstage.

Passion Pit were much more engaging if a little obnoxious. Apart from the squeaky vocals, their particular brand of indie dance owes more to the Pet Shop Boys than The Rapture, but it's working for them with the relatively young audience.

I skipped Cold War Kids since I find them hit-and-miss live and the last show a few months ago was a definite miss. Where did I find that lobster corndog again?

Here's where my Lollapalooza finally came apart like a favourite shirt you've washed and worn one too many times. I'm embarrassed to say that I had the chance to see a set from one of two truly iconic performers at 6:30 and flaked out big time.

I had the choice of Lou Reed or Snoop Dogg, and I selected neither. I didn't even go see creepy-but-awesome Deerhunter to avoid making a decision between the two. You know what I saw instead? A taxi parked outside the gates.

Yup. I took stock of the situation, including the heat that just wasn't breaking, my sore feet and the remainder of the lineup, and realized that my weekend was done.

Jane's Addiction? Just saw 'em in June.

Tool? I already know what Maynard's back looks like.

The Killers? Ever since that second album something about them has just rubbed me the wrong way.

Perhaps it was latent remorse about missing the two legends, or knowing that I was too hot and tired to enjoy Silversun Pickups or MSTRKRFT, but it was definitely time to go. You tell me if I burned out or faded away.

I hopped in that cab, basked in some extreme air conditioning, then hit an intimate club gig by Scottish pop craftsmen The Trashcan Sinatras — where I'm delighted to say I was nowhere near the oldest guy in the room.