After an exhaustive and marathon Day 1 between Lollapalooza and the Dr. Dog/Rogue Wave aftershow, Ben and I pulled outselves out of bed to get back to Grant Park, hyped for the lineup for that day. After my lovely sister and fiancee made us pancakes for breakfast at their place (where they let us stay all weekend – thanks again!!), we were off. Day 2 began much more smoothly than Day 1, as we didn’t have to wait in any godawful long line to get in…it was just right up to the bag check and we were inside with the hippies. The weather also wasn’t nearly as hot as it was on Day 1, so that provided much relief from the nonstop sweatfest of Day 1. As an added bonus to the lower heat, the count of shirtless sweaty dudes dancing/bumping into me (like at Radiohead) ended up as a zero on Day 2. The number of ultra sweaty, vacant staring, ex-moshpit people bumping into me leaving Rage was, unfortunately, sky high, but I’ll get to that. Follow the jump to get some photos and my brief thoughts about each act we saw:
First off was Does it Offend You, Yeah?:
These guys really surprised me by how much I enjoyed their set. Their constant reassurances to the ladies that it was, in fact, ok for them to remove their tops was entertaining in of itself, but the real enjoyment was from their entire set, as it was solid throughout. In his review, Ben talked about the strange duality on their album, and it was apparent in their live show as well, but I think given the energy of the show, the songs all worked a little better together live than they do on the album. Good stuff, great way to kick off Day 2. Next up was The Ting Tings:
These two were pretty good but not wonderful, to be honest. I don’t feel like they carry over all that well to such a huge stage as the Lollapalooza main stage, but they were still really fun to watch. Their catchy rhythms got everyone ultra excited in the crowd and they were good…just not magnificient. Afterward we hustled over to the Playstation Stage to catch Dr. Dog:
I think Ben said it best: “For a band who’s music I like so much, these guys are SO hammy onstage.” This was our second time to see Dr. Dog in less than 24 hours (first was the Rogue Wave/Dr. Dog aftershow Friday night), and while we missed most of their Friday show, we did note that they seemed to love: fedoras, goofy synchronized dances, silly outfits, silly stagetalk. The good news is that their music is solid, and their songs live could not deviate more from their recorded versions. The live stuff has a much faster pace and seems more energetic overall, and as a result it sounds entirely different. They are good live…just watch out for their fedora dances. After Dr. Dog, we planted ourselves in the same spot in preparation for MGMT:
My personal favorite of Day 2. Also, probably the most self-indulgent band of Day 2 the festival. They pretty much covered all of Oracular Spectacular, and they were all totally awesome. In fact, some of their songs I enjoyed much more live than I do on the album. For example, The Youth and Electric Feel were both rock solid live, and even though I like those songs on the record, there is no denying their extra appeal live. MGMT also knows exactly what its hits are, and spaced out the wildly popular songs to give the audience a taste of the good stuff throughout, spacing out exceptional and crisp versions of Time To Pretend and Weekend Wars before closing with their concert dance party H-Bomb, Kids. One reason why I think that they were so self-indulgent is because of their performance of Kids. They closed with that song, and during the whole show, they were rocking a five piece setup. Before that song started, the three supporting band emembers leave the stage, and all five of them abandon their instruments altogether. The lead vocals dude then puts on this riciculous and awesome tarp/carpet/sequined/tie-dyed thing and the other dude comes up front and they simply sing over the track, which was entirely sampled/prerecorded. No time to worry about playing instruments during their over-the-top close, they simply came to the front of the stage to sing and soak in all the love from the crowd. Awesome and hilarious. We then crossed over to the shell to go see Okkervil River:
I absolutely love their album from last year, The Stage Names, and lucky for me they seemed intent on playing all nine tracks from that record. Unlucky for me is that we had to leave the Okkervil River show early to catch the start of Broken Social Scene. However, I did not leave before I heard live versions of Our Life Is Not a Movie Maybe, Hand To Take Hold of a Scene, A, Plus Ones, Girl in Port, The Stage Names and John Allyn Smith Sails. BVaz had told me these guys were excellent showmen, and he’s right – they held the rapt attention of everyone there in the audience to a high degree and for good reason…they were bad ass. Not only does Okkervil River’s lyrics make them sound like the smartest band this side of the Shins, but they look the part, too, dressing in blazers and ties. Their costumes looked hot to me, but I was standing in the sun on ultrahot pavement. As an aside, Ben and I were discussing OR’s discography, and this girl kept throwing very concerned looks our way until I asked her if our theories were right. She politely then explained each and every recording the band had released in their history. Twice. She actually was very nice, but a diehard for sure. Broken Social Scene came next:
I love these guys. They put a ton of people onstage, they’re Canadian, their songs rule, and they hit several of the favorites like 7/4 (Shoreline), a way different, faster, almost country(?) version of Major Label Debut, and Fire Eye’d Boy, then they closed with It’s All Gonna Break, which were all excellent. I think they also played Fucked Up Kid in this set, which is a great song, and when you combine this hour long set with the two hours they performed later that night at the Metro, you have a blistering day of Broken Social Scene Facemelt Ridiculousnesstm. Because it was so awesome, here is a YouTube of the band playing 7/4 (Shoreline) in their daytime set:
Next up was the Day 2 Headliner, Rage Against the Machine:
Wow you guys, seriously, this was killer. All the ancillary issues aside (I’ll get to it in a second), the songs were just spot on awesome. It’s as if someone froze these guys in time 10 years ago, unfroze them, put them in the warm liquid goo phase, and reanimated them for that Saturday night. They sounded like they were sampling the radio tracks they were so sharp. And seeing Tom Morello do that crazy guitar stuff in person was also totally awesome. Given the fact that this is Rage Against the Machine - who’s music gets people HYPED – and given that they don’t play very often, which made the crowd HYPED, and given that it was a massive crowd of ~50,000 people, all of which were HYPED, it caused a few issues. To begin with, the second song they played was Bulls on Parade, which got the crowd even more HYPED, and in the middle of the third song, this tech jumped on stage by Tom Morello’s monitor and was giving the “cut it” slashing motion across his neck.
The band kept playing for a second looking confused, but then they just stopped mid-song. After a bit of silence, Zach got on the mic and pled with us to move back. He told us people were getting hurt up front and we all had to take 10 steps back or they couldn’t continue (“And we want to play everything we got!”) Zach then brilliantly (predictably?) somehow related the violence in the crowd to being George Bush’s fault. This continued pretty much after every song that we saw…I’m telling you, the fans were HYPED. It was also of worth noting that I saw about a million kids in Rage’s Lollapalooza special shirts that were a take off of The Battle of Los Angeles album cover that read The Battle of Chicago. That alone should have warned me of the HYPE, but it still was ultra craziness.
Another side note which I referred to above was that during the set, every once in awhile, some dude would come walking past us away from the stage toward the fringe/exit. Invariably they would be drenched in sweat, have a WAY out of it look on their face, and clearly wanting to get the hell out of there. I have no doubt they were all victims of being too close and being victims of the HYPED fans and had just had enough of the mosh and squeeze up front. From our vantage point, however, Rage was rock solid awesome and everyone around us seemed to be enjoying themselves about three million times more than the ultrasweaty weirdos that were fleeing the front. In order to catch the Broken Social Scene aftershow, we left Rage a little early and cruised by Wilco on our way out:
We only were able to stay for a couple songs to insure that we would make the entirety of the Broken Social Scene show at the Metro, and all I can say is that it was the strangest dichotomy going from Rage to Wilco. Whereas Rage had people moshing, suffering compound fractures, and mashing the stage so much the band had to stop every single song, Wilco had all kinds of relaxed people standing around, dancing, sometimes laying down in the grass. At any rate, Wilco was Wilco; I’m sure their set was solid, but we had a mission to get to The Metro by 11, so alas, Wilco was cut short.
All in all, Day 2 was exceptional as there were bands which I had never seen but love their latest effort (Okkervil River), bands that I love their first effort (MGMT), bands that I had never seen but heard good things (Ting Tings), bands that were a pleasant surprise (Does It Offend You, Yeah?), bands that I love, all the time (BSS), and some real throwback pure awesome rock in your face (Rage). What an awesome day.
