Present Tensed

Lollapalooza 2008 Recap: Part One — What it Was!

Here’s part one of my Lol­la­palooza 2008 recap!  (Note:  Offi­cial Setlists are avail­able here)

Fri­day August 1

The early morn­ing crowd on Fri­day was a sig­nif­i­cant sur­prise!  I’ve had this idea that dur­ing the past few years the Fri­day morn­ing crowd was light.  It cer­tainly didn’t seem that was the case this year!  Over an hour in the line to get in.  We heard a bit of “K’Naan” (from Soma­lia via Canada) and “the Black Lips” on the way in.

Rogue Wave — Dis­ap­point­ing.  They played their radio songs flatly, and didn’t seem to really have it going on. They had some noise in the back­ground from the next stage, and it might have rat­tled them.

Jeff Tweedy @ the Kids Stage — Great!  It’s a won­der how much older kidz seem to be nowa­days.  We, at least, had the temer­ity to watch this set from a hill in the dis­tance and not crowd out bona fide young­sters.  Can you say the same?  Tweedy played about 5 Wilco songs on his gui­tar, try­ing to make the lyrics more kid-friendly when­ever he remem­bered.   He’s really a hero in Chicago.

The Black Keys — I tend to think that the Black Keys have only 3 “sounds” that all their songs tend to fall into, but that they play that lim­ited range fan­tas­ti­cally!  I’ve seen them play four times now (three lol­la­paloozas and the metro) and they’ve yet to disappoint.

The Racon­teurs — Jack White’s genius seems to be get­ting more com­fort­able play­ing with a whole band and let­ting the oth­ers shine.  In par­tic­u­lar, he seems to have fig­ured out when to defer to Bren­dan Benson’s vocals.  Their “Con­sol­ers of the Lonely” is a won­der­ful album.  Sec­ond time I’ve seen them live (both at lol­la­palooza), both times they’ve been great.

Radio­head –  Can I get away with say­ing that they were won­der­ful but not to the level of the 2001 show at grant park?  That’s how I felt.  I enjoyed all the “in rain­bows” mate­r­ial.  Radio­head is not the sort of band that leads well to the drunken frat-boy sing-a-longs that the crowd really wanted, but the crowd was wise enough to under­stand that they were get­ting some high qual­ity stuff.  The light show and screen work for Radio­head was intense.  Third time I’ve seen Radio­head.  They’re some­where in my top 5 bands/musicians of all time.

Sat­ur­day August 2nd

Devotchka –  Like the amped up drunken wed­ding band you wished was play­ing at the last wed­ding you went to.  But bet­ter!  Both of their last two albums are very good.

Okkervil River — More rock (less coun­try) live than on their last album (the Stage Names).  This is a good thing.  They’re some­where in the space bounded by Wilco and the Decem­berists.  Good stuff.

Lupe Fiasco — It’s fun to see a per­former grow into his own skin.  Lupe’s been to three lollapalooza’s now (count­ing his walk-on appear­ance at Kanye West’s set in 06) and each time he’s shown us a lit­tle bit more of what he can do.  This year he had a tremen­dous con­fi­dence on the stage.  I’m on record as say­ing that his album “The Cool” is as good a hip-hop album as you’ll get.

Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings — Kudos to MPK for get­ting me started on SJ and the Dap Kings!  She’s enjoy­ing celebrity in her 50s and a very com­pelling live act.  She han­dled bring­ing an audi­ence mem­ber on stage very well.  A sur­pris­ing num­ber of young les­bian cou­ples were mak­ing out dur­ing the set.

Wilco (3 songs) — I was going to skip Wilco this year in favor of Rage, but the Tweedy kidz set left me want­ing more.  Wilco’s too good.  Lit­er­ally, they may be los­ing some of their every­man charm by becom­ing too tech­ni­cally pro­fi­cient.  We’ll see how this goes for them.  This only my fourth time see­ing Wilco (albeit briefly this time around).

Rage Against the Machine — DB and I ended up far away from the stage for the Rage set, as a result of stay­ing at Wilco for a few songs.  Appar­ently we also missed some starts and stops as they tried to reign in the cra­zies in “the pit”.  My two out-of-town friends were amongst the cra­zies in the pit and referred to the start of the set as merely an exer­cise in sur­vival.   Any­how, Rage was intense even where we were.  Very solid.  Very ener­getic.  I was happy that Zach de la Rocha took the only polit­i­cal posi­tion that he could… to remind the crowd that the democ­rats were in cahoots with the repub­li­cans on every­thing that’s gone down and that while Obama might be the bet­ter of the two choices that that wasn’t nec­es­sar­ily say­ing much.  I won­der if years from now we might be say­ing that the only two thor­oughly polit­i­cal bands of any main­stream sig­nif­i­cance through this era were “The Clash” and “Rage Against the Machine”?  Any­how, it was intense and I was happy for the expe­ri­ence of being able to see them live.   Lots of mate­r­ial from Bat­tle for Los Angeles.

Sun­day August 3rd

The Blakes (2 songs) — Briefly stopped by as an homage to FM’s son (also named Blake).  Not much more to say.

Kid Sis­ter — From the Kanye/Lupe fam­ily, Kid Sis­ter was fun!  Per­haps the best crowd ban­ter of the fes­ti­val.  Wacky dancers behind her.

What Made Mil­wau­kee Famous (2 songs) – They picked up as they went along, but appar­ently made the mis­take of play­ing their slower less imag­i­na­tive stuff up front.

Office – I’ve been mean­ing to see Chicago’s Office per­form after hear­ing about them over and over again on the inter­net and enjoy­ing their most recent album “The Ritz”.  They were good.

Amadou & Mariam – On par with their remark­able show at Mil­le­nium Park two years ago! It would be too easy to say that they’re the Best Blind African Duo that you’ll ever see per­form, because that would some­how imply that we weren’t objec­tively great.  Even the non-dancers had to dance to A & M.  Manu Chao pro­duced their last album “DiManche a Bamako” which is a fun mix of Amadou’s blues gui­tar and bass voice and Mariam’s hi-pitched vocals.  I’m going to start greet­ing peo­ple with “Do You Feel Alive”?

Iron & Wine (3 songs) — I wanted to stay and see more of Iron & Wine but had to leave to get to Saul Williams.  Damn the Con­cert fes­ti­val grid!  Damn it.  Sam Beam’s band is much more intri­cate now than two years ago which helps him in this atmos­phere, but truth be told, he’s doesn’t really need any of it. Iron & Wine has become one of my favorite acts over the past few years, I like the new-alt-folk sound and smart lyrics that Beam writes.

Saul Williams — This is the 5th time I’ve seen Saul Williams per­form and I’m torn about how I feel about how he’s changed as a per­former over the years.  He’s gone from poet to hip-hop poet to hip-hop to hip-hop indus­trial fusion.  I objec­tively like what he’s doing now, but I’m not sure I like it more than I liked what he was doing before.  The “Niggy Tar­dust” mate­r­ial worked bet­ter live than it did on file.  He opened his set with his ver­sion of NIN’s Hyper­power as an acknowl­edg­ment of the work he’s done with Trent Reznor.

Flosstradamus (briefly) – Like “Office” Flosstradamus is another Chicago act that I keep hear­ing about but had never seen myself until lol­la­palooza.  Stopped by the DJ tent to lis­ten in to their set.  The sound was good and the peo­ple were happy.

The National — I didn’t know much about The National (beyond a quick lis­ten to “Boxer”) before Austin City Lim­its last Sep­tem­ber, and was really taken by them.  They’re going to end up being huge sooner or later.  I can only imag­ine that they’d be great to see in a small club, and that “Boxer” is the sound­track to many an indy­rock break-up.

Mark Ron­son (2 songs) –  I’d have liked to see Rhymefest’s appear­ance at the Mark Ron­son set.  That said, I was surprised/impressed by the bit of the Mark Ron­son band that I saw.  Who knew that a famous pro­ducer would do alright on stage?

Kanye West –  The poten­tial for a Sen­a­tor Barack Obama appear­ance at Lol­la­palooza was cer­tainly a fac­tor in mak­ing the final deci­sion between Kanye and Nine Inch Nails, but for the most part I was hop­ing for a bit of redemp­tion for Kanye who’s last lol­la­palooza set was dis­jointed and marred by tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties.  He redeemed him­self and in the process set a new stan­dard for the main­stream hip-hop per­for­mance.  I really mean this, I don’t think that he could have per­formed any bet­ter.  I almost don’t think that the genre can really sup­port a per­for­mance that’s any bet­ter.  It was like he was chan­nelling James Brown or a host of the great show­men of his­tory.  He was that good.  Add to that a well put together light and smoke show and the finest camera-work that we’ve ever seen at a Chicago lol­la­palooza, and you’ve got a wor­thy closer to the festival.

That’s the nitty gritty of the per­for­mances that I saw.  What does it all mean?

(You’ll have to wait for Part II of my Lol­la­palooza 2008 recap for that)

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