[This month's Monthly Mix winner was "Riding in Cars With Boys" -- details on what the giveaway will be coming soon.]
Friday, 2:15pmSomewhere inside Grant Park, The Go! Team probably has their crazy backup dancers and recorder riffs getting started. I, on the other hand, am in the infamous one-hour line that has formed outside of Lolla. Getting through the entrance gate is akin to being stuck in four-lane highway traffic. The other side of the crowd appears to be moving faster than my side, but I'm sure that if I move over all movement will cease, and I will be stuck zig-zagging for another hour. The longest delay occurs as security dutifully searches our bags for reusable water bottles, outside food, and other sources of energy and hydration that would eat into on-site food and drink sales. Ironically, enough pot has probably passed through these gates already to record five Flaming Lips albums.
Friday, 4pm
My friend Maria has volunteered to stake out an area for three of us in the south lawn for Radiohead's headlining set. None of us really go to outdoor festivals very often, so the folly of staking out more than four cubic feet so early in the day is lost to us. Gogol Bordello takes the stage at 4:15 and makes me want to learn rock accordion. I am also grateful to be in a band with a violinist -- theirs is excellent and is sounding crystal clear, even from our spot right next to the soundtent.
Friday, 5:15pmMates of State were one of the first artists that came up on the Pandora station I created based off of
The Crater EP. I'd never heard them before, and though I never would have pegged them as being similar to my music, they
are a girl-guy piano-drum duo, and I'm a sucker for those. It's more pop than rock, but every once in a while I recognize a melody from only having heard it once or twice on the radio. With the amount of radio I listen to, your melodies have to be pretty damn catchy to stick out like that.
Friday, 5:45pmI rush to the next stage to catch some of Grizzly Bear, who I first heard of as a friend of Owen Pallett's and member of Animal Collective. The stage is temptingly near a row of food, and Grizzly Bear is not punch-you-in-your-face dance-rock, so I start to stray towards the junk food, but I'm immediately pulled back as soon as I hear the refrain from their latest single: "My god that's not the way to treat a woman." (I'm trying to find the name of the song, but Google is giving my results related to women being mauled by bears. Anyone?) My latest songwriting obsession is how to craft a line that stands up to a lot of repetition, and this song nails it.
Friday, 6:15pmI'm rushing back to Maria's little plot of land in Lolla-ville amid texts of "Oh my holy crowds" -- Bloc Party has brought out 95% of the shirtlessness that will soon fill Grant Park for Radiohead. In interviews, Bloc Party's frontman, Kele Okereke, has talked about the relative absence of overtly queer themes on their first album, but it still doesn't take more than five minutes of Googling to find mention of Okereke's sexuality. So while a lyric from "This Modern Love" like "Do you want to come over and kill some time/throw your arms around me" isn't an exclusively queer sentiment by any means, I like knowing Okereke is probably thinking of a boy when he's singing the ever-loving sweat out of it on stage (which he did). It's also secretly satisfying when groups of sweaty, shirtless straight boys are shout-singing those lyrics, as if they're ready to line up backstage for Okereke to sign their arm with a sharpie. Either none of these boys have heard of Google or there are a lot of rock-induced man-crushes here tonight.
Friday, 7:15pm
By the end of Bloc Party, a rational person would not see any additional room to move forward past the soundtent, but everyone in Grant Field is inching closer and closer to the stage. Maria has gone to the bathroom and essentially forfeited her position in sweatland for a higher vantage point behind the VIP cabanas. Text messages are delayed by about 15 minutes because of the local overload.
Friday, 7:59pmI can almost make out Steve Malkmus on the other side of the field finishing the last note of his set when a synth drum riff starts from the mainstage. Damn, that's good timing.
Friday, 8pm
Let me tell you something about Radiohead. People in Chicago talk about their last performance here, in Grant Park in 2001, as if Jesus and Buddha were in attendance giving them an extra push. A lot of reports of Friday's performance have been a "meh" compared to the "wow" of 2001. I was actually in Chicago the summer of 2001, and I was on dorm duty for a bunch of high school campers in Evanston. One of my students, bless his heart, broke curfew to go see the concert, and called from the concert to convince me he was stranded in a cab downtown and
not in fact enjoying Chicago's landmark musical event of 2001. He knew my brain would explode if I knew what I was missing.
Well, I don't care if Friday wasn't the legend that 2001 was. My brain still exploded. There were fireworks during "Fake Plastic Trees". It was awesome.
More Lolla coverage tomorrow. In the meantime, you can read Jim DeRogatis' Day 2 roundup, which gives a(nother) shoutout to Canasta. (Hooray!)Labels: chicago, lollapalooza, shows
