August 26, 2007, 2:59 pm : Reading Festival Rules!

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Well, my first festival in the UK was a blast and something that I have wanted to do since I was, well, younger than I am now. I have read about Reading (and had no clue either where is was or how it was pronounced). By the time I had my feet under the desk last week, it was far too late to get tickets. With a little scrounging around, I managed to get guest passes from EMI UK (cheers guys!!) and made it out to the Festival just in time for the sun to come crawling through the clouds after the last week(s) of grey, grey London days. Snagged our wristbands, giant beers in paper milk shake cups, a scheduled pulled from the wall of the PR tent and headed into the slightly muddy field! Go team!

Cold War Kids were first up, looked and sounded very very good and the crowd was into it. The show was good fun, except for the rather disturbing stoners standing in front of us, who brought an inflatable sex doll with them and spent most of CWK’s set punching and kicking the doll - scary to say the least. We moseyed over to see Maps, caught as little of Fall Out Boy as possible. I was wondering how they became so popular, when I looked down and this sad, odd message was scrawled on a pizza box. Maybe if you’re a guy and you text this phone number, you get a free pair of really small girls jeans and black guyliner….hopefully this isn’t some stalker trying to lure hapless young emo’s to a scary ‘Silence of the Lambs’-style pit in the basement….
We cruised back to the guest area, which was more like a holding pen for lots of people that didn’t want to get their shoes dirty. I did dig not having to line up for flat, keg beer, which made it the coolest high school party with credit cards ever! We gawked at Kelly Osbourne and a couple of Fall Out Boys and Hold Steady guys before heading back out to catch a little of LostProphets, who spent more time telling people to wave their hands and shout than they spent playing.
We scurried over to see Against Me!!! who were good fun and nice and thrashy. Then we had to get our act together - there were many over-priced nachos and warm beers to get into before running the gauntlet of the evening shows - we had 5 bands to see in 4 hours - requiring precision timetabling, beer balancing and drug-casualty-passed-out-on-the grass avoiding - deep breath…..

We lined up really early in the pit to get close to Nine Inch Nails, who ripped the place up - sounded and looked great and set the bar pretty high for the closers, Smashing Pumpkins. We had to hotfoot it across the grounds to make it to LCD Soundsystem, who luckily came on late so we caught ‘Us v. Them’, which is always good fun - this is the 5th LCD show I’ve seen this summer, all good fun but unfortunately all lacking ‘Losing My Edge’. Oh well, can’t have everything. After catching most of LCD’s set, we headed back up front to catch the headliners - on the main stage, Smashing Pumpkins and on the side stage, The Hold Steady.

Smashing Pumpkins started out dull and got more dull, hitting a little early stride by kicking into ‘Today’ and getting the crowd bouncing. It didn’t connect with us in the least, so we grabbed the last warm beers and a tub of fries to nibble while staking out a really good, close place for The Hold Steady. I saw them at Lollapalooza 3 weeks back and haven’t stopped listening to ‘Boys and Girls in America’, which it appears I was the last Minneapolitan to hear about. They are such good fun to listen to and watch live - a great ending to a long, hot, noisy, rocking day.

August 5, 2007, 8:00 pm : Lollapalooza - Day Three - Sunday

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Started the morning around 10am with a trip to the Art Institute of Chicago, which was a chunk of my art education when I was going to school in Minneapolis, making frequent trips for guest lectures and to check out the permanent collection. After visiting old pals René Magritte and the grarly Cy Twomblys’, I spent an hour or so in the Jeff Wall exhibition. Jeff Wall first knocked me out when I saw a small exhibition of his in Germany years back. This was a great, really moving show – I can never get over the amount of detail and emotion packed into these really large, densely populated images. This was a great break from the heat and sun. The Sunday bands were never going to get me jumping up and down – Amy Winehouse was OK, but came on late and had the stage manner of a bored flight attendant waiting for everyone to leave the plane sothey can get off their feet and go drink and have some fun - which is what was surely going through Mrs. Winehouses’ mind. I struggled for the next hour or so (Los Campesinos and the Annuals will hopefully not gain a following and take over the world…), until it was time to get ready for Iggy and The Stooges. Absolutely great fun – Iggy was funny one minute, scary the next. You would expect Scott Ashland behind the drums to be able to keep time by now – no such luck. The highlight was Iggy inviting about 100 fans from the audience to come up and dance during ‘No Fun’, which was great fun, especially since only the most hammered, horrible singers made it up onto the stage. I did a side trip to see a surprise mini-gig by Satellite Party (flog that horse, Mr. Farrell), then had a few beers before the double-header of Modest Mouse (modestly talented and modestly OK) and My Morning Jacket, who despite bringing the Chicago Youth Symphony and wearing matching tuxedos….they still sucked as bad as they did at Coachella.
Near the end of the day, I spotted a guy with a Lollapalooza t-shirt from 1992. The line-up on the back was Ministry, Ice Cube and the Peppers at the headlining spots and Pearl Jam second from bottom, just above Lush. I took this as a sign that it was a good time to split the show: cheese-balls like the Peppers still walk the Earth, Ice Cube is now ‘AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted’ cornball kiddie movie actor, Ministry is off the radar and Pearl Jam is headlining Lollapalooza, 15 years later. I look up to the skyline of Chicago and the clouds behind the Sears tower have the outlined look of the women in the de Chirico painting I saw the the Art Institute this morning. I depart with a quick blast of TV on the Radio, who not only sound great but have the sort of vibe that sends me off on just the right note – all all good.

August 4, 2007, 9:05 pm : Lollapalooza - Day Two - Saturday!!!

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Saturday just wouldn’t be Saturday without a trip to the comic shop (sorry for cheating Golden Apple!). I pored over the new books (thank Christ for Geoff Johns and the JSA) and then headed to Lollapalooza to see I’m from Barcelona. They were described as being like Polyphonic Spree. And they were, except that they didn’t suck like Polyphonic Spree. Good fun, lots of people grooving on-stage (I think there were 14, but hard to tell from all the running around). Onto Tapes n Tapes, who, despite being from Minneapolis were either really flat or really bad – don’t know them well enough to tell. Left early for another trip north to Boystown and a late lunch. Back in time for another Minneapolis band (via NYC) – the Hold Steady. They have connections to some of my other fave old MPLS bands and I’d heard good things and they were fer sure true. I really enjoyed the vibe, the sound and the fact that they were really enjoying themselves (and I always have a thing for emo-styled dudes with dark hair and those thick black glasses…). Next onto Snow Patrol, who were far more rocking than their ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ hit single would give away. I was hoping that they would pull out their cover of John Lennon’s ‘Isolation’ from the Give Peace a Chance compilation for Darfur, but no such luck. A gracious funny front man with a band soaked in cool tunes – very nice. Running at full-tilt, I made it over to Spoon with only a few missed notes. I had never seen them and was loving it from beginning to end. I love ‘Don’t make me a target’ and it sounded fantastic live – really want to see Spoon in a proper theatre with a longer set and better sound. Finally, the big dilemna – Interpol or Muse. I had seen Muse briefly at Coachella, so made my way to see Interpol. They were rocking and the only bummer was the lighting which made a bunch of guys in black suits and night very very hard to make out. Luckily, they had the killer tunes and were great fun to watch. After seeing a little over half the show, I made another mad-dash to see the second half of Muses’ set, arriving just in time for my favourite tune ‘Starlight’ which was not only cool to hear that loud but even more fun with some seriously intense lights and graphics. Hit an after-party at the W until about 430am, so a slightly late-ish start is OK for the 3rd and final day on Sunday.

August 3, 2007, 5:24 pm : Lollapalooza - Day One

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Those of you that know me will know how much I love music festivals. Coachella is my old favourite, really kicking off the USA summer season and Lollapalooza, which is pointing toward the end of the summer (bummer). This year had a really interesting batch of bands, so I cashed-up some airmiles and spent the weekend in Chicago, soaking up the sun, sounds, beer and occasional spot of rain. Here’s the run-down for Day ONE:

Friday: First band up was The Fratellis, were very average, but can be forgiven because of the iPod-soundtracking ‘Chelsea Dagger’ . Well, possibly not. They didn’t look like all that thrilled to be there, thank Christ for Ghostland Observatory, my Lolla new favourite band and completely unexpected discovery. As I got close to the stage, I was thinking that this cool chick singer would be the kind of girl I’d go out with, then, to my relief it turned out to be a groovy guy in too-tight jeans with a voice like Geddy Lee and some very groovy moves. A little later, M.I.A. didn’t really do it for me, but I really want to hear the new tunes she’s putting out soon. Right before I take off for some food, I register for the TXT message services, promising exclusives and alerts. The return message looks like my Mom wrote it – perfect wording, no TXT-SPK and the whiff of a lawyers pen – will hold my cynicism til I see how this unfolds on my phone. This needs to have the coolest TXT and interactive experiences going – how more SISOMO can you get with music, big-ass video screens and sponsored by a phone company!?! Rock my world over the next 3 days – PLEASE!! After a break with some Mexican food and margharitas up in Boystown, I made it just in time for Satellite Party, Lollapalooza grand-papa Perry Farrell’s new band, which didn’t suck as bad as grumpy bloggers would like you to believe. With some Porno for Pyros and Jane’s thrown in (along with Farrell throwing back Jagermeister and Veuve Cliquot), another pleasant surprise. Then, for the 3rd time this year, I grooved on LCD Soundsystem, with about 10,000 other people, very different than seeing them at Coachella and at the El Rey in LA. Good good, fun with the same set-list (minus …NY you’re bringing me down…thank goodness). They played ‘Daft Punk’s Playing At My House’ which was pretty cool, because Daft Punk was playing at the stage right behind them directly after their set. Daft Punk, what can I say? I dig the tunes, the look and the robots schtick but I can never get past the fact that this is a couple of producers with a fuck-off tunes and light show. I’ve always been a little wary of them after I heard that it isn’t really the Daft Punk guys in the seriously expensive suits, just a couple of hired hands. I took off a little early, hit an after-show party and ticked off the shows for Saturday.