Lollapalooza 2007
By Tim Den
Wednesday. Aug 08, 7:11 PM
live at Grant Park (Chicago, IL) Aug. 3rd to 5th.

(all pics by Tracy Yu Stronsky, except Blonde Redhead by Matthew L. Elliott)

When it was first announced, Lollapalooza 2007 looked like a dream. Not only were there underrated cult faves such as Sparklehorse, Sean Lennon, and Elvis Perkins, but big names / legends such as Patti Smith and Pearl Jam were due to make rare appearances. I was stoked. Last year's experience was spotty, but I was sure that there was no way this year was gonna fail me. No way sir.

The first sign that things were not as they appeared came when Sean Lennon jumped ship to join Rufus Wainwright for a string of West Coast dates. Even though right then I would've traded my Lollapalooza tix to witness the pair together, I tried to remain hopeful. But behold, what's this? Both Sparklehorse and Elvis Perkins were playing BEFORE most people got off work on Friday? Yup, the tables were starting to turn, alright. And so it was with these slightest traces of trepidation that the missus (Layne) and I, along with our friend Christine, made our way to the first day of what would become a very long weekend.

DAY ONE (the 3rd)

We made it just in time for Blonde Redhead, a splendid way to kick off the festivities. As usual, the trio were hypnotic and effortlessly charismatic, with frontwoman Kazu Makino drifting as if the music turned her corporeal body into a spirit. Drawing heavily from 23, I was surprised that the songs sounded even better outdoors than in the smokey club that I last caught them in. However, it was obvious that the band were operating beyond most people's comprehension, as loops and delays and ethereal vocals left many spectators frozen and not sure of how to react. No one ever said Blonde Redhead were a "festival band," but it still pained me to see their brilliance not understood by so many.

Christine, being a faithful child of the grunge years, wanted to see (Perry Farrell's newest endeavor) Satellite Party, so we crossed Grant Park's southern field and took our places just off the left of the AT&T stage. As soon as Satellite Party came out, we knew that it wasn't going to be so much a "new endeavor" as a nostalgia trip. Out of the band's hour set, most of it was comprised of Jane's Addiction and Porno For Pyros songs. Some might've loved seeing "the hits" live, some might've thought it was pandering to the people, I didn't care either way. I was never a fan of either band... nor Farrell's "look at me I'm weird!" attention grabbing antics, which he definitely piled on during the set. But whereas in the '90s he was a jumbled but somewhat amusing mess, now he just comes off as a car salesman, eager to say whatever makes the crowd applaud his gestures. Sigh, time to move on.

But had I known that I was about to witness possibly the worst aberration since the invention of audible sounds, I would've begged Farrell and co. to stay longer. Yes, I knew that LCD Soundsystem were the epitome of annoying hipsterdom, but nothing could've prepared me for what they whipped out live. Mastermind James Murphy (I suggest he change his name so as to not insult the guitar legend) is somehow able to gather all that is terrible about today's musical climate and suburban White kids culture into a dazzling display of shallowness, brainless posturing, and irony-upon-irony-until-the-music-is-no-longer-music-but-a-claustrofuck-of-hipster-cliches that pretty much unraveled my sanity. I was completely and utterly stunned. The tuneless, I-came-up-with-it-during-a-shit yelping, the so-mundane-it-hurts-to-hear-it-yet-again "disco beats," the "it's cool and fashionable to look like a fat frat guy" insincerity, even the between song banter that was calculatedly hipster wink-wink made me baffled as to how the crowd simply bent over and spread their cheeks for this garbage. I used to hypothesize that large audiences didn't care what kind of bunk they were swallowing as long as it had repetition ad nauseam and the boringest rhythm on earth: it is no longer a hypothesis. LCD Soundsystem – and indeed much of the rest of the weekend – proved that you could put absolutely no thought into music yet be loved as long as you 1) utilize a beat a lobotomized vegetable could dance to, 2) mask smugness as "witty and clever" if you're wearing the right "hipster look," and 3) forgo any redeemable vocal approach for Krusty the Clown cartoon laughs. Have you seen Idiocracy yet? I'm pretty sure LCD Soundsystem is on par with Ou My Balls.

By the time Daft Punk's famed live show gathered the largest attendance of the whole weekend, I was too destroyed to take it in. Amazing how, when the cold hard fact of devolution is shoved in your face, you lose the urge to dance to flashy lights and fairly average house music.

DAY TWO (the 4th)

We made it in time to hear some of Pete Yorn's last numbers: average radio rock songs that were at least occasionally catchy. Some chicken-on-a-stick later (the best part of any Chicago festival), and I found myself playing my Game Boy as the ladies watched Motion City Soundtrack. I believe Ivan once summed up these guys better than I ever could. The imagery I kept getting in my head while they played was a court jester on a unicycle, funny hat and all, trying his hardest to please the royal court. Mmm hmmm, Motion City Soundtrack aren't interested in anything else but PLYING the adoration from barely-teenagers' hands, even if it means dumbing down sitcom theme songs with toy keyboards and the whiniest singing this side of Gwen Stefani.

We sat with our friends Tracy (who provided many of the pics) and Leon during Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, chatting and not really paying attention to the semi-folky, semi-jangly generic Talking Heads rip offs I remember disliking these guys a helluva a lot, but on this day they were more unmemorable than anything. The guitarist/vocalist actually talks exactly the way he sings, so I guess I can't really blame him for having a nasally and squealing voice.

I was looking forward to Regina Spektor and if she could project her unique (and likeable) warble outdoors like she does on record. Thankfully, she did just that, performing solo on a piano and endearing herself to the crowd. There's no question that the lady is extremely talented, and her great sense of melodic maneuvers and hooks demonstrated why even mainstream radio is embracing her. However, the only thing that I found a bit disappointing was her occasional use of novelty-ish lyrics. Perhaps meant to "shock" the listener, lines such as "someone next door's fucking to my songs" and "summertime means clevage, clevage, clevage" came off less controversial than "Weird" Al. Cuz if you need eyebrow-raising lyrics to get a reaction out of people instead of writing simply good songs, then the audience is gonna walk away remembering you as a novelty act. Your music is cheapened, not strengthened, by these tricks, and one thing Regina Spektor's songs don't need is tricks. They stand on their own just fine, so I can only hope that she puts away the schtick and concentrates on writing great tunes in the future.

When Snow Patrol came on, I was relieved that I was FINALLY gonna get to hear some decent music. Sure, I had seen the band twice in the past and knew that they were nothing special in the flesh, but the sounds of "You're All I Have," "Chocolate," "How to Be Dead," and "It's Beginning to Get to Me" were like a desert oasis after two days' worth of mostly dismissible crap. Afterward, I had wanted to see Spoon – whose live shows I like way more than their records – but the gang convinced me to stay for Patti Smith. Now, I know that anyone who's even slightest interested in having "cred" must love Patti Smith, but I gotta say I was never blown away by her. "Because the Night" is an enormous song, sure, but I had always found her material more poetry than actual music: she was always more interested in what she was saying instead of the melodies she was singing. So I wasn't sure if an hour of her elongated prose was gonna keep my attention... but waddaya know, the legend lived up to her name and delivered by far the most moving set of the weekend. Starting off slow and cautious, Smith and her band grew from a whisper to a raging storm as the hour went by, organically growing both sonically and in confidence. By the time she was done, I wasn't even bothered by the persistent rain anymore: it felt as it the heavens were crying for her. The power and honesty of what she put forth shook everyone to the core: an actual connection that no other band pulled off.

I normally love Muse and would've really grasped the chance to see them after having not done so since their debut, but after Patti Smith everything else seemed fabricated and desensitized. The fact that Muse had a plethora of mechanical imagery and light shows didn't help this feeling, as their meticulously epic prog rock came off as sterile as Smith was human. Don't get me wrong, the fellas fucking tear it up live and all the hits were played, but I was not in a rock opera kind of mood. Besides, Muse's music is over the top enough: the sensory overload of a stage show they had kinda pushed the melodrama overboard into the insane. Whereas Patti Smith could hold your heart in her bare hands, Muse were trying to wow you with grand piano solos better suited for Vegas shows. Tonight, I preferred the human touch, so we left early as Muse continued to blast the crowd with Berklee-worthy mini orchestral scores.

DAY THREE (the 5th)

I opted out of most of today's activities simply out of fatigue: of the body, of the ears, of the spirit. Lounging on the couch with my dog seemed a much better alternative than seeing most of today's mediocre line-up. And even though I knew The Stooges would kill it, I wanted to stay out of the sun as much as I could. Sorry, Iggy.

I arrived on site in time for Modest Mouse, and what a mistake that was. Having always thought the band painfully average, I was treated to an hour of – what else? – painfully average songs set to shitty singing and disco beats. Can somebody PLEASE tell me when it became a rule for singers to suck? And I don't just mean technically – cuz I'd take Julian Casablancas over Timo Kotipelto any day – but actually NOT GIVING A FUCK. Over the weekend, I've lost count of how many bands dumped diarrhea vocals over disco beats. It seemed as if every band made up of White dudes used this formula, from Cold War Kids to The Rapture. Not only were all these bands interchangeable, but it amazed me how – as long as the beat was knuckle-draggingly dumb – people would overlook the fact that the vocalist is either yelping a Subway menu or plain ol' TALKING over the music. Unreal. Again, please watch Idiocracy.

Anyway, the only things I walked away with from Modest Mouse's set were 1) that I saw Johnny Marr in the flesh, 2) I saw a three-man piggy back tower, 3) and that you can have your no-talent friends in your band if you've got the cash to burn (keyboard player who doesn't do anything? Second drummer who only mimics the first? Modest Mouse's got 'em!).

FINALLY, it was time for Pearl Jam to put this horrid weekend to rest. Coincidentally, the last time that I saw them was when they were with Lollapalooza '92, playing second on the bill the day before Hurricane Andrew destroyed most of Miami. Back then, the band were young and seemingly unstoppable, dropping my jaw to the floor with every song. I wondered if they would be able to maintain such vigor... and they made me wonder no more. Opening with "Why Go," the quintet sounded not a day older. If anything, it was only obvious that 17 years together had turned their chemistry into telepathy. "Do the Evolution," "Even Flow," "Alive," "Rearviewmirror" (my personal favorite), and even "State of Love and Trust" were played, lifting my sour spirits and making me miss the early '90s. Vocalist Eddie Vedder seemed as genuine as when he first appeared on the world stage, chatting about his time in Chicago as if he was among close friends. And after bringing out Ben Harper and an Iraq veteran to sing a war protest hymn, the band closed their second encore with "Rockin' in the Free World" and brought a bunch of people onstage (including Dennis Rodman...!?) for a sing along party. Much like Patti Smith's set, Pearl Jam's two-hour show felt like a natural building of energy that coalesced into the celebratory ending. Even with the disdain for Bush in the air, there was no sense of negativity: only hope and strength. As cheesy as this sounds, Pearl Jam alone were worth the weekend.

Overall, I can't help but feel that Lollapalooza 2007 was actually a big step down from 2006. Whereas last year had variety and a fistful of really great acts, this year it was only the usual hipster suspects who've been playing every goddamn festival anyway (Christine pointed out that seemingly 50% of the bands were also at Coachella). And since all these bands tend to sound the same – ironic, insincere, awful vocalist, disco beat – it made the festival extremely homogenized. What happens when the same ol' bunch of hyped up hipster bands fill a weekend with their insincerity? Well, you get the sense that people are there not to take in the music, but to be seen as someone who's watching the hyped up bands. And aside from Patti Smith, there wasn't one other instance where I felt like people were there for the music.

With it drawing bigger (overcrowded) crowds than ever and seemingly rolling downhill, I hardly doubt I will give Lollapalooza the chance to bum me out next year.

Tim Den

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