Aubrey and I just got back from Lollapalooza 2009, the latest chapter of Perry Farrell's on-again-off-again musical mega-fest in Chicago's Grant Park. Chicago is a long way away from home, but we lucked into some free lodging, and I personally haven't taken a proper vacation since seeing Pixies reunite at California's Coachella in 2004, (Apparently, I only allow myself vacations if they involve lots of sweaty struggling and zero relaxation time) so this was more or less a crazy-splurge-adventure weekend that I thought might merit a thrilling play-by-play, and an opportunity to put this new "company blog" to use. I'm still very much in recovery mode, so accept my apologies in advance if this ends up coming off like the incoherant ramblings of a tired, decrepit half-wit. (As of this writing, I can't walk completely straight, or faster than a large sea crab.) Here's a sum guesstimate of my quickly fading memories of my rock and roll weekend:
Thurs. 3:30PM - Head to Chicago with Aubrey and our third co-conspirator Max, after multiple other friends decided toward the last possible minute to spend their money on more useful things like not getting evicted from their homes. Gaining an hour through the time zone change barely softens the blow of the insanely long drive, but our musical selections are graciously overprepared. NPR's full-length stream of Brendan Benson's long-awaited fourth album gets multiple spins, for one, and in the tiny hours when I'm the only one left blinking, I check out some DJ mixes from Beck's recent website overhaul, and start catching up on my new favorite podcast, Scott Aukerman's hilariously off-topic Comedy Death-Ray Radio. A long line of terribly unhealthy food decisions kicks off with Arby's and Steak n' Shake. Both steak and shake are consumed at both locations. Before you get concerned, no, I am not this guy.
4:30AMish - First glimpse of legitimately amazing nighttime Chicago before arriving at our hotelpartment. We are staying, along with our pals Amanda and Bronson, with [a guy you may have seen in motion picture films]. I don't really know how or why I ended up becoming his acquaintance, except that it involved absolutely no special abilities of my own, just a weird friend-of-a-friend coincidence. Trust me, I'm not nearly interesting or important enough to make a habit of hanging out with popular and successful people.
Sleep.
Fri. Noonish - Stumble slowly awake to a grey, wet Chicago day. Trying to go see the highly entertaining rap-rockers The Knux at 1:00, and gradually realizing how unlikely that might be with so many bodies to manage. Once everyone's showered and properly ticketed and attired, our host drives us to Grant Park, where numerous security officers point us in different directions for half an hour, ruining any chance of catching the last bit of Knux. (I've heard since that the show was slightly stunted by stoned half-assery anyway.) Aubrey and I exchange our online tickets for a 3-day wristband. If the wristband rips or unfastens at any point over the whole weekend, our presence at Lollapalooza will no longer be required. I resign myself to being shackled by crinkly discomfort for 72 hours. I make sure the Knux aren't still kicking, then quickly check the next stage over for my B-choice Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears, who had an extra 15 minutes allotted. I know hardly anything about Lewis beyond hearing an excellent 30-second sampler in passing on the radio, plus the fact that my friend Scott assures me he's great, plus the fact that it's hilarious to call your backing band the Honeybears, but it's all a moot point because we're too late to catch it. We wander around some crowded merch tents as the rain comes down harder and harder and the ground gets slicker and nastier. Max, Amanda, and Bronson go home as fast as they can, leaving Aubrey and I to stubbornly peruse the increasingly-ill-attended park for something to do.
2:15 - We wander past the impressive Kidzapalooza, a gathering spot for free-entry children that puts up a mixture of music both by kids and for kids, and provides ridiculously fun-sounding activities like an Instrument Petting Zoo and a make-your-own-CD-single Hip Hop Workshop. If it weren't for the teeming mountains of pot smoke and loose skin at the rest of the festival, this might be the best place in the world to take a youngster. Secret Agent 23 Skidoo is on stage rhyming about giants or dinosaurs or some other bubbly nonsense. He sounds like a pretty good time, honestly, and later I find out he's from my occasional stomping ground Asheville, but we move on to Amazing Baby instead for some adult retro-glam. The Lollapalooza schedule this year is so packed with personal favorites that Amazing Baby turn out to be one of the only unexpected groups I get to stand and seriously consider for more than thirty seconds, and I can't say they impress. I've heard good things and their program booklet bio is promising, but we get bored pretty quickly and go line up for Heartless Bastards, the first show of the weekend that I'm really excited to see.
3:00PM - Heartless Bastards at the Vitaminwater tent. I love their new album The Mountain, and I'm happy to discover that their live setting maintains their delicate balance of heavy, slowly sneering rock riffage and slippery Southern blues. I was under the impression that Mountain was their apex as a band, but the new-to-me songs in the set sounded terrific, so I've got to dig into their back catalog soon. Basically a sounds-like-the-record performance, but no shame in that, and the sound at Vitaminwater might be the best at the festival, so it was crisp and thunderous, and frontwoman Erika Wennerstrom is formidably talented with her dead-on vocals and thick strumming. A weekend-long secret game of Biopic Cast List begins with my brilliant realization that Wennestrom looks a lot like Amy Ryan. The second half of the excellent set is largely interrupted by our very own Naked Man. This one does not get tazed like Coachella's recent victim, and is more the skinny meth-head type than the free-spirited cherub, and in general a little more creepy and potentially dangerous while still being kind of hilarious. He moves around like a crazed fighter pigeon, frequently millimeters away from accidentally slapping me, Aubrey, and anyone in the vicinity with his waggly manhood, a prospect that becomes more and more revolting the muddier he gets. He darts back and forth between "I'm a crazy subversive dancer!" mode, "Rape is my performance art" aggressiveness, and "I'm just here to watch the show" stand-stills before dropping hole-first into the deep, squishy muck. Thirty-five cell phones whip out like he's the Cloverfield monster. What was that last song again?
4:00PM - We fight some porta-potties and head to the food tents. There are two long aisles of fried slop-nuggets on either end of the park, but the spinach quesadilla and sweet potato burrito from Crescent Foods actually makes for some surprisingly delicious and not-entirely-unhealthy eating while we watch a little Ben Folds at the Budweiser stage. Folds hasn't done much for me since before I had a driver's license, but I don't dislike him either, and I hoped he'd learned how to put on a stellar show through his long, busy career. Indeed, he's a true pro, undeniably talented and eager to please. The only thing I recognize in the short time watching is proto-single "Rockin' the Suburbs," which is fun to hear bashed out on stage even while knowing it's pretty goofy and disposable. Aubrey gets a little tired of being cold and wet, so we go wait for about half an hour in some bakery only to be told that they're basically out of warm beverages. Oh well.
6:00PM - We get back to the Budweiser in time to see The Decemberists start. Neither of us is a particularly big fan, but we have a few minutes to kill before we need to head to the other side of the park. Colin Meloy's fragile, wordy compositions were a pleasant distraction when they first appeared on the market, but they sound duller on each new release, so it's not a huge surprise that they start their show with such a whisper. Beyond a suspiciously whimsical robed dancer, there's really nothing to look at, and the music wasn't doing anything for me, so we head to the Citi stage for our next scheduled show. We're booked solid for the rest of the night.
6:30PM - I seem to be the only person who calls Peter Bjorn and John's latest album their favorite, so I'm really excited to see them. We stand off to the side a little so we can leave early for of Montreal, but even without being able to see much, the band is instantly endearing, opening up with super-fun single "Nothing to Worry About" and graciously thanking the crowd in their adorably doughy Stockholm accents. I really hate to leave, but Kevin Barnes is my favorite thing in music right now, so we barely get to hear three songs before going right next-door to the Vitaminwater. They unexpectedly play my very favorite PB&J song, "It Beats Me Every Time," as I'm leaving. Sometimes I really can't figure out the scheduling here. Putting folk-hipsters Fleet Foxes up against white rapper Asher Roth makes a lot of sense, but why pit two precious indie-pop stalwarts against each other?
7:00PM - of Montreal put on the sixth incredible show I've seen them do. I'd heard that Barnes had pared down their elaborate stage shenanigans a little bit, and I suppose there are a few less props and costume changes, but it's mostly the same tricks. I'm not sure anything with simulated pig death can be called sparse. I was also hoping for some sneak peaks at the already-in-the-works False Priest, but I keep forgetting that most of these Lolla shows cast their net to the widest audience they can. Even as a sort of "greatest hits" show, they've rarely sounded better, with many older songs reworked with some of the slower, darker energy of Skeletal Lamping. Barnes seems to make a calculated effort never to get bored on stage, and so far, it's keeping their presence pretty kinetic and vital. Still wish I could have seen the Swedes' whole set, but I'd still take an OM repeat over just about anything at this festival.
8:00PM - Headliner time. Max, Amanda, and Bronson returned during the last set, but they're already off to catch Kings of Leon on the other side. Aubrey has decided to stick with me at Depeche Mode for the first half before splittling the set with KoL. Ironically, she dislikes the redneck-rockers far more than I do (I'm pretty indifferent towards them), but she made some sort of birthday promise that I have no interest in piggybacking, especially once Depeche Mode makes it blisteringly obvious that they're trying to give me the show of my life. I'm certainly what you would call a casual fan - I've heard most of the key albums and singles, and I paid particular attention to their enjoyably campy new Sounds of the Universe, since my favorite producer and former Clor rocker Luke Smith manned some of the controls. So my expectations before the show were essentially, "Hey, this should be fun." Between the absolutely gorgeous and deligthfully bizarre screen visuals, the band's high-energy stage presence, and the slick, thunderous, unbelievably tight songs, I become at some point convinced that Depeche Mode is in fact the greatest band of all time. I knew the post-concert high would wear off, but I revelled in it while I could. This is literally the sort of performance where Aubrey and I look at each other at regular intervals and shout giddy cliches like "This is awesome!" and "I can't believe this is happening!" By the time Aubrey regrettably heads off (after staying a few songs longer than planned), my Lollapalooza ticket is paid off, as far as I'm concerned. Left to my own devices, I move a little deeper into the crowd to achieve maximum glory-basking. It feels like being at the biggest concert of 1986... the sounds are squelchy and vintage, but presented without irony (the aforementioned Universe tracks now sound more vicious and explosive than campy), and I'm eating it up with everyone around me. It's a truly great crowd, a little more polite and sober than the usual gang of animals, and the applause is insane as the band briefly pauses for an encore, which they cap off with "Personal Jesus." I know, what could be more obvious and placating than closing with "Personal Jesus," right? No. You're wrong. Screw off. It was mind-blowing, in no small part due to the crazy grindhouse-funk footage populating the massive Jumbotrons behind the band. This has been fantastic.
9:55PM - Since Depeche Mode finished a little earlier than the Kings, I'm able to catch the tail-end of Kid Cudi's set at Perry's, the dance-all-day DJ tent. I've liked all the little samples of his music that have been leaking online, so I was glad to hear him for a minute or two, and it sounded even better than I expected, enough to remind me to watch out for his album. Hundreds of pleased customers stream out the exit, getting a jump on the day-end rush as Cudi expertly chops up his "Day N Night" single in the background.
10:05PM - I begin the impossible task of finding the rest of my group through horse-mounted policemen, a bajillion confused party patrons, and all-too-quiet cell phones. An incredibly nice- and normal-looking gentleman waves me over familiarly, and I awkwardly try to figure out whether we know each other until he explains that he wants me to come party with him and a small army of girls that he's somehow amassed. I can only assume that "Rick" was planning on using me as a bouncing board to improve his chances in a look-at-me, look-at-him, look-back-at-me ploy, but I wasn't able to stick around to find out his intentions were sincere.
11:00PMish - Instead, after rejoining our posse, we take our own party to Qdoba, which happens to be my favorite eating establishment in the world. I'm sorry, Rick, but it's burritos before bros.
Eventually, sleep happens.
Sat., Noonish - After another slow wake-up process, Aubrey and I decide to leave on our own as we're the only ones who have anything we know or care about before late afternoon. The first thing we know or care about is Miike Snow, the surprise indie band composed of the super-producers behind "Toxic" and a bunch of other girly pop songs that are a million times better than they have any right to be. Miike Snow's is sporadically amazing, but consistently decent, but more importantly, I feel sort of a connection to the guys for vindicating my closeted appreciation of so many zippy Britney Spears numbers by transferring their considerable gifts to something less patently ridiculous. So there's a bit of frustration as Aubrey and I try to work out bus schedules and walking directions in limited time. It takes some time, but we finally get close enough that we can simply play Follow the Wristbands to get to the park. Being late all the time wouldn't be so bad except that I struggled with the fact that Wizard's Chicago Comic Con is in town, featuring not only a Ghostbuster (Ernie Hudson), plus three mainstays of my new favorite show, Battlestar Galactica, plus, you know, billions of comic books, all for a pretty paltry price. Ultimately, we decided it just didn't make sense to try to split the time when there's so dang much to do at Lollapalooza, but now I'm thinking I should have just woken up at 9AM and crammed in some nerd-time.
2:00PM - We arrive about half an hour late for the Snowsters, but fortunately just in time to hear their insanely catchy mini-hit "Animal." We can really only stay for a tiny sliver of their set, since our next show starts imemdiately afterwards and we're both hungry. Based on incredibly little information, they seemed to put on a pretty good show, though it of course suffered from the infamous electro-pop problem of how to give people something to look at beyond knob-turning. They whipped out a guitar wherever applicable, but it still pretty much sounded like someone was playing their CD really loud. I'd still probably pony up to see a full show if they ever come near me, if not just to see them standing there looking all Bee Gees. By the way, they sounded understandably worn-out over their band name confusion: "We're Miike Snow. With two I's. We're not a person, we're a band. And we're not changing it. Because it's too late."
2:30PM - After grabbing some Connie's Deep Dish Pizza (which appears to be the average festivalgoer's food of choice all weekend) and some weird yogurt beverage I can't say I loved, we settle in the grass on the outskirts of Perry's for Animal Collective's DJ set. The beatdown heat today is making me nostalgic for yesterday's rain, and the exhaustion is pretty much back up to where it was by the end of Depeche Mode, so we don't even try to squeeze close, opting to sit in the shade and over-hydrate ourselves instead. Some of the effect is lost without living in the heat of the thump, but the mix is an obvious slow-burner from the start anyway, and I start wishing I had gone to see Atmosphere instead. I saw Slug rap at Coachella a few years ago and wasn't particularly impressed (especially since his amazing DJ Ant was kept buried in the back) but Atmosphere's been in a hell of a prime lately; I've been absolutely loving their seasonal "Sad Clown" EPs and their last couple albums. The Collective is building up a decent steam off glacial Eastern samples, but it becomes increasingly pointless to stare at the ground listening to something we can probably download later, so we go queue up for one of the biggest shows of the fest.
3:10PM - Los Campesinos!, my plan C if Animal Collective and Atmosphere had suddenly vanished from the face of Illinois, are playing on the Budweiser stage as we approach it an hour and a half early (the earliest we'll be for anything all weekend thanks to its generally air-tight scheduling). I've only barely listened to the band's album, mostly because I listen to soundalikes Architecture in Helsinki so very, very much, but the vibe coming from the stage as we get closer seemed awfully fun (Aubrey: "It sounds like they're having a puppet show over there"). I'd still stop short of calling their music great, and I won't be able to hum a bar of this as soon as it's over, but they're entertaining to watch for a while, and it was fun to see a group so nakedly excited to be playing there (they seem to be as shocked as anyone to be playing on one of the two main stages). I feel like I'm watching them have the greatest day of their lives. Once they finish, I move out of the way a bit so I can sit down while Aubrey eagerly awaits Arctic Monkeys. We have to attempt to get as close as possible to every show since Aubrey's such a small lass, but I already feel like there's knives in my shoes. The rest of our friends finally catch up to us, and I tighten up towards the front with them. It's a bit strange being in a concert crowd with a celebrity, watching a lot of "Don't I know that guy?" glances dart past your face.
4:30PM - The place is truly packed by the time the Monkeys arrive. With everyone's body heat swirling with the rays of the sun, I feel like my head is inside an oven. With no rain to drive people away, on the biggest day for 1-day-pass-holders, the differences between a semi-cultist festival like Coachella and a populist madhouse like Lollapalooza are on full display. There's a lot of shirtless, sweaty, closely-chopped fratboy types here, with sideways caps and little regard for personal space. They've been showing up to everything all day, no matter how strange or obscure the group might be. As for Arctic Monkeys, I actually used to kind of hate these guys. I thought their first album was obnoxiously neat and self-aware, but when I found out how young they all were, my dislike turned to indifference. When I heard their darker, rowdier follow-up Favourite Worst Nightmare, I was downright hooked, and bringing on Queen of the Stone Age Josh Homme to produce their next album Humbug feels like yet another step in the right direction. The Homme touch is deeply felt in their concert, actually, as Nightmare cuts like "This House is a Circus" and "If You Were There, Beware" sound a little more calculated and moody than they used to, and new songs "Pretty Visitors" and "Crying Lightning" bear that rare chugging metal sound that QOTSA revel in. It's a pretty thrilling show all around, though the songs start to bleed into one another at some point, where I could almost legitimately ask "Didn't they already play that one?" Man, this stage seriously has the most ridiculous view of Chicago. It looks like the band's playing in front of a greenscreen with an insert marked "Generic Metropolis."
5:30PM - Everybody seems to dart off in different directions to prepare for the busy evening. We fortunately stay in the area long enough to at least hear a good portion of Santigold's set, even if I couldn't see most of it. I thought her debut had some really great tracks along with some filler, but everything she played sounded fantastic. Santi's a gloriously odd duck who seems like she could take her music in some weird directions if the mood struck her, and she's probably the only person at this festival who could pull off a tremendously funky dance song and then segue into a long stage banter about Weekend at Bernie's II before thanking all her "dancing bitches."
6:30PM - All the milling around keeps us pretty far back for the highly anticipated TV on the Radio, which wouldn't be so bad except that the Budweiser stage sounds suspiciously inferior to many of the smaller set-ups, especially at a distance. The wall of wind between us and the band didn't help either, so the songs sound like they were being filtered through a conch shell in a hurricane. It's easy to pick out the hot funk in the mix though, and Tunde Adebimpe is awfully fun to watch bounce around like a Talking Head. We get to watch about half the set before Aubrey and I have to take off to get ready for Animal Collective's full show. The wind stops and the show gets louder towards the end, and it sounds more and more exciting as we leave. I'm pissed off that I don't get to hear "Dancing Choose." I hear maybe thirty seconds of Lykke Li, who I like a lot but can't possibly fit into my schedule this time. It's a busy day, man!
7:30PM - After waiting about twenty minutes (which didn't help us get anywhere close to the stage), Animal Collective kicks off. This is the show I've been most excited about, though I've heard mixed things about how their live set-up compares to their meticulously prepared records. Things start slow, like their DJ set earlier today, and when I realize that they've been playing the fine track "Guys' Eyes" for about three minutes without me even realizing it, I finally start altering my expectations to try and appreciate their rhythmic re-imaginings instead of bouncing along to my favorite songs as I know and love them. It's still an intermittently restless show leaning on their older, more formless material, but the second half starts to build intensity as the sun goes down, and epic, glorious, super-stretched-closers "Fireworks" and "Brothersport" start to match my initial anticipation levels. When they start going over their allotted time, it starts to feel like they could do this all night, and I'm ready to let them, but Tool starts blasting one stage over, and that particular dream dies a noisy death. It turns out the only thing wrong with Animal Collective is they need a lot longer than an hour to get a real stew going, but the effect of the last 20 minutes or so is effectively elating. As we rush to the already-in-progress Yeah Yeah Yeahs (and for me at this point, rushing probably looks like a man having a heart attack while falling down a mountain), I overhear some random dudes behind me perfectly describe the bizarre set we've all just witnessed, so I'm going to messily paraphrase him instead of figuring it out myself: "I thought that this would finally be the show where they just gave everybody what they wanted, just play all the new, catchy stuff, but that's just not who they are. They won't play to the crowd like that. It's like a letdown and a happy surprise at the same time." Nailed it, stranger.
8:45PM - Hobbling across the park as fast as my angry, swelling feet will take me, we finally hear "Phenomenon" breaking through the industrial, dated sounds of Maynard and Co. I was not a big fan of the YYYs' latest, a slow and plastic synth-goth throwback that lacked the orgasmic oomph of their first two albums, so I use anything less than 100mph as an opportunity to drop to the ground in pain. This includes an unfortunately rejiggered "Maps" that sounded so softly angsty that I thought I had been time-transported to Lilith Fair for a moment. But make no mistake, these people put on a show. Karen O is legendary for her stage presence, and dear lord, she does not disappoint. On loud block-rockers like "Pin" and "Y-Control," the whole band is a fierce machine, and she's at the front of it, warping herself around like a deranged rain dancer, without ever sounding the least bit winded or over-rehearsed. Awesome.
11:00PM - We eat at a place called the Melrose. I get a blackened chicken sandwich, as well as what feels like my 700th milkshake of the weekend, because everyone else is doing it. I'm sure we did some other stuff at this point which I was too tired to register. Then, sleep.
Sun., 11:00AM - Everyone is really feeling the burn of the two days prior, but Aubrey, Max, and I manage to get on the bus again for our earliest day yet in order to see a 9-year-old heavy metal guitar virtuoso named Yuto Miyazawa, who actually holds the Guiness World Record for Youngest Professional Guitar Player. We don't get to see much of him, unfortunately, but I can say without question that while approaching him and hearing his beedle-deedle-dees, you could on no way guess that he was not a fully grown man. Watching him play is pretty much absurd since he looks like he could barely grip a cereal spoon much less rip out Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner." Yeah, I should do something with my life. In the same vein, Yuto's quickly followed up by Care Bears on Fire, a brood of young teenage girls bashing out old-school pop-punk, and of whom Aubrey is a staunch MySpace fan. They seem less impressive after watching a Little Leaguer make lightning come out of his chords, but I think they know that. Actually, they seem to be smartly approaching longevity by not writing a bunch of novelty songs about what it's like to be a teenager. If they work hard, maybe they can bang out their Rocket to Russia before they graduate. At this exact moment in time, though, it's not quite exciting enough to keep us from getting a head start on Ra Ra Riot.
12:30PM - For some reason, it's hard not to think of Ra Ra Riot as "another of those bands," possibly because they share so much common ground with Vampire Weekend. It doesn't take much of this concert to become a permanent reminder of how much I actually like them. They're actually a fairly eclectic mix of electronic bug-a-thump, cinematic orchestration, and hummable yacht-rock. It's a big batch of musicians up on stage and they all seem fresh, humble, and ready for greatness. I realize how much I love each song as they play it to the hilt. I wish I wasn't so deadly tired so I could appreciate it more. Singer looks like Emile Hirsch.
2:00PM - I get some sort of brisket sandwich from a smokehouse tent (which I think may be an oxymoron) because I like things that say "brisket" in them. Aubrey orders what could easily be called a whole mess o' sweet potato chips, most of which I eat. The sun is deadly. I wait in a long water refill line to save $3, and hear a bit of The Greencards behind me. They sound pleasant enough, but I think my official new discovery count here is going to stay at zero. I'd like to catch just a little of Cage the Elephant and Portugal. The Man, two bands I know almost nothing about but imagine I might like, but I'm too exhausted to dart around, and Aubrey wants to get to Kaiser Chiefs as soon as possible.
2:30PM - I end up ducking to the back of another show to avoid a repeat of the sweaty, claustrophobic mess of Arctic Monkeys. I watch enough of the Kaisers to get an image in my head before sitting down and listening for a while. I realize that I've always unconsciously thought of the band as cartoony small children - dirty waifs in Dickensian attire with stolen loaves in one hand. Newsies, basically. I think that's how I got past their blatantly smart-alecky "vintage" sound, by picturing them as snot-nosed punks from another time. Watching them live, I get the first flash of understanding how so many people find them obnoxious. Singer Ricky Wilson certainly rides the line between infectious hypeman and insufferable prick, always shouting out some sort of audience participation command or general band advertisement. At some point, they just click back into place for me though. There's a slight scent of douchery onstage, but at their core, these guys really do legitimately sound like the Kinks and the Jam and the Clash and everyone else they're ripping off. I can't help it, I love this stuff. At some point, Wilson drops the news that it was one member's last show (I didn't catch who), and from then on, it sounds like they're honestly trying to give the best show of their lives, and their own hype feels a little more real. After a by-the-books version of "The Angry Mob," one of my favorite songs on my favorite of their albums Yours Truly, Angry Mob, they go absolutely hog-wild on "Take My Temperature" and "Oh My God," bringing the house down, deservedly so. I can't imagine someone leaving unimpressed.
3:30PM - This might be the most unfortunate block of the weekend, with Dan Deacon, The Raveonettes, and The Hood Internet all going at once. Normally, Deacon would probably take it, but Aubrey and I saw him in Asheville only a couple months ago (and to be honest, as impressive a show as it was, I found his "everybody dance!" shenanigans slightly annoying). Aubrey, a rabid mash-up fan if there ever was one, heads off to hear Hood Internet drop 50 Cent rhymes over Neutral Milk Hotel or whatever the hell they do, while I tried to watch at least a few Raveonettes songs before joining her. How much I love the Raveonettes sort of depends on what mood I'm in, and lately I've been sort of weary of just how freely they ape the production sound of Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine. On stage, they sound pretty nice, if exactly what I expected. They play in sort of a stilted single-file line, which feels like an odd move for spontaneity, and they sound a little practiced and bored at times. I'm still excited to hear them play the tastefully wonky "Love in a Trash Can," the song I discovered them on, but when Aubrey comes back to grab me (apparently going by yourself to the dance tent isn't particularly exciting), I don't shed any tears as I walk away, though their layered, feedbacky songs actually do sound a little better at a distance. The fire department has set up a giant mist cannon (it's officially the hottest day so far), so the sprinkly breeze and newly arrived free water bottles start to make it kind of hard to leave the area for Vampire Weekend.
4:15PM - On our way to VW, we see that people are eagerly gathered around the Vitaminwater stage as a jumbo orchestra blasts out gorgeously weird compositions that sound vaguely familiar. Whoa, why don't we know about this? Oh, it's freakin' Dan Deacon. He's up to something almost completely different than the time we saw him. It looks elaborately incredible, and I feel a big lump of regret forge its way into my increasingly withered skeleton. Unfortunately, he's almost done.
4:3oPM - Everbody is at Vampire Weekend. Everybody. It's the most people I've seen in one place all weekend. Fortunately, people seem to realize the irony of pushing and squeezing into a warm, pleasant band such as this, so it's more like 150,000 casual listeners, lazily sprawled out in every possible direction as far as the eye can see. Still, I duck back again to avoid the high-pressure front-row types, especially since I've already seen the band last year. They surprised me quite a lot last time, since the music doesn't particularly sound like it would gain anything from being played in person, but the members are all so quick and talented, and they come across as incredibly friendly and flattered by everything that happens. I know they got a lot of grief for being overnight success stories, but anyone who thinks they knew they'd light the world on fire with warm and splashy smart-pop is crazy. I think they worked better in a more intimate setting; the measured pluckiness of their tunes escapes a little in the open air, and the flow of mutual appreciation gets a little disrupted when there's a bajillion people on one side (my Atlanta show was small enough that nearly everyone in the audience rushed the stage for "Walcott.") Still, I can't imagine not having a good time watching these guys, even if I'm more than ready for some new material.
5:30PM - It feels like a very long weekend is winding down, and oh, how I feel each second in every muscle. At this point, I start walking like some type of mummified ox because it hurts to move properly. I can hear Cold War Kids doing everyone a huge favor by playing the tiny handful of songs everyone likes right up front. We head to Lou Reed before the filler starts. I believe Reed was going to be the last "group effort," but I think Amanda fell asleep in the V.I.P. tent, a phrase I doubt will ever apply to me.
6:30PM - This is literally the first time anyone's started late all weekend, and it's hard to care since A) it's the last show I'll be seeing, and B) it's Lou Reed, arguably the most important rock star of all time. The crowd gets pretty restless while techies fool around with equipment, but I'm getting increasingly excited. I can't believe that I almost considered splitting the set with Deerhunter. My logic was that I had already seen Reed once a few years ago, and he was currently sitting in the lowest point of his career. He had nothing new to promote, and the last fresh material I heard about was some sort of bizarre martial arts training soundtrack. Meanwhile, Deerhunter is just coming off my favorite thing they've ever done, and one of my favorite releases of 2009, Rainwater Cassette Exchange. At some point, I wised up to the fact that Deerhunter's members are something like 13 years old, whereas Reed is an autumn god, sweeping through the final stretch of a career that had a significant part in shaping nearly every decent band in this festival. You can't help but feel the weight of his life as you wait for him to perform. And then he performs. When I saw Reed in Virginia, it was a sleepy semi-experiment for the fine-wine crowd, promoting his mostly-awful, occasionally brilliant Poe tribute The Raven. The show came complete with dramatic readings and quiet orchestration, and Reed farmed out all the "pretty" vocals to Antony of Antony and the Johnsons. It was highly memorable and exciting, but it was mostly a way to cross off "see Lou Reed before he dies" on my to-do list. This show is instantly different. It's a standing-room-only show. The orchestra has been replaced with grizzled traditional rockers, plus a young DJ and a wildly bleating saxophonist, and everything's on Reed. He snarls all his vocals, he abuses his guitar like it raped his mother, and he even seems like he's in a good mood, slipping the occasional smile and playing up his able bandmates. It's anything I could have hoped for: some choice Velvet Underground selections and a healthy smattering of his solo material, all played like he means it instead of going through the motions. He makes a centerpiece of two songs from his underrated 2000 album Ecstacy, "Mad" and "Paranoia Key of E," that sound better than I ever could have imagined, before dropping out to a long bout of metal-machine-music noise-throttling before rounding off with a pair of his biggest classics, "Waiting for the Man" and "Walk on the Wild Side." The whole show is unrelentingly intense, lean and mean, and every performer on stage brings something new to the compositions, particularly the impossibly manic screeching horn. If Reed has reached the cheeseball, washed-up corner of his career, then he refused to let it on stage. Legendary.
7:50PM - After Reed goes an extra 20 minutes, Band of Horses start up late. I actually feel pretty terrible for them, even though I don't particularly like their stuff, and I'd like to think I would only be honored to be sidelined by a Velveteer. Apparently, this caused a chain reaction of commotion when Band of Horses took their full time right over the Jane's Addiction set, leading to a lot of angry fans on both sides of the fence. He's Lou Reed, people, what can you do? I would normally like to see at least some of Jane's Addiction, especially since it is Mr. Farrell's festival after all, but I have spent a long time in this park and I am about to die. Anyway, I'd rather not be one of the people in the back secretly hoping they hurry up and play "Been Caught Stealing" so I could leave. We spend what feels like six hours trying to find a bus home while Michael and Amanda watch the Killers, one of those lucky "I don't even have to think about it" black marks on my personal itinerary.
What feels like six hours later - We get back to the room and order some decent-to-slightly-above-average pizza from a place called Rannali's or something. When Michael and Amanda arrive, they regale us with the story of how Amanda woke up to Snoop Dogg while I was enjoying possibly my favorite show of the festival. Hey, you know what's surreal? Watching somebody who was in JFK do an impression of Snoop Dogg. Anyone from JFK will do. Michael also reveals that he actually almost did a presentation with Mr. Reed once a few years back. It occurs to me that in a slight twist of events I almost could have met the guy tonight, though I imagine it might have ended with me getting punched in the face by a legend and becoming a Doug Yule fan. So it's probably for the best. Michael cuts off my wristband with a giant knife. Freedom?
And so, we sleep.
Monday: We race across the ridiculously confusing Chicago streets because Max and Aubrey, both Harry Potter superfans, have tickets to see a local exhibition in Chicago. I don't particularly need to finger costume fabric for $25, plus I'm hoping to have a real "Chicago experience" by walking the streets. This works perfectly great in New York, where every square inch is covered in some sort of absolutely ridiculous person or object, but it doesn't work so well here at the museum, which is surrounded by nothing. The closest I get is shopping at Powell's Books, a rare-book chain I've only experienced through the power of the Internet before. (Actually, the closest I really got is when Michael had his car broken into, which may have been linked to a series of muggings right in our area. Chicago, take a bow!) I pick up some old Pogo collections and Jules Feiffer's Tantrum before those other guys finish polishing their broomsticks in the museum, and then we have a Last Meal (for now) with Michael and Amanda at the Original House of Pancakes, a restaurant I can only imagine arrived at its name through a series of one-upmanships with IHOP. It's a nice way to end the adventure, and I hope all these guys know how crucial they were to my enjoyment this weekend, from not having to watch little kids play guitar by myself (which may or may not be an arrestable offense) to giving me a free place to lick my wounds at night. I ate an apple pancake. The end.
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