First thing I did when I got there was see a band called Tokyo Police Club that my friends and I talked about checking out. Tokyo Police Club is from Toronto, Ontario and have absolutely no connection or relation to the Japanese law enforcement community. This directly resulted in me not liking them. Perry Farell introduced them and said they would "light the place on fire" or something. How is that representative of protecting and serving the people? Unless if the motto of Japan's police is "to start peoples shit on fire" in which case I would think that no one lives in the apocolyptic anarchy of Tokyo. Fuck this band I left.
And who did I see next? Why another Swedish band with 4 million people in it called I'm From Barcelona. And initially I liked them! They were lots of fun and happy and even though I am not a fan of yiffing they had a sweet dude in a Teddy Bear Outfit!
I dare you to google image search "Yiffing"
But I kept looking at the Ronald McDonald on acid front man that they had. He was a major ginger and something threw me off about him. So I kept looking at him.
Who does this guy look like? Carrot Top? Well that's too easy, and Carrot Top is way more buff than this guy. Wait a second... OH SHIT I KNOW WHO THIS ASSHOLE IS
It's the Chicken Fucker from South Park! The guy that owns the Book Mobile and has sex with chickens in order to get Officer Barbrady to learn how to read! And you know, the more I listened to this band, the more I realized that this guy LITERALLY WAS THE CHICKENFUCKER. Guhhhhh done with this band.
In stark contrast to the happy and light sounds of I'm From Barcelona was the harsh consolidated tones of Tapes 'n Tapes. This band was harder and more rigid than I was expecting. A pretty good show for sure and perfect for me to sit down and rest my legs while enjoying them.
Oh man THROWBACK TIME! It seems like every year Lollapalooza has a band that was completely awesome in the early/mid 90's but if you heard them now you'd be like what the hell these guys are still around? In 2005 it was Primus, last year it was Nada Surf (of course they played Popular!), and this year it was Silverchair. When these guys were huge they were 15 years old. My how things have changed. Since then, the lead singer has gone to Vietnam to fight in the Vietnam War and has lost a lot of men out there.
You don't know what it's like to fight Charlie in 'Nam
But despite the random flashbacks to Ho Chi Minh City and fighting Charlie in the jungle, they weren't half bad. Another great "let's sit down and watch these guys" band. Complete with the WTF moment of the day when the lead singer said, "I once had a dream that I vomited dolphins." Heroin was huge in the 70's I guess (actually I have no idea). Also, every time the crowd would start singing along, he would yell "You guys are gonna make me cry!" Um...people like your music dude, own it. Unless if its because every time you hear people singing it reminds you of the innocent screaming Vietnamese citizens that you killed in the war. Then I understand.
MOVING ON next I checked out the Cold War Kids on a smaller stage. These guys should NOT have been on this stage as a crapload of people were there to see them, so many that it was blocking traffic. However, it could have just been that this stage was right by the beer tent because by the end of their performance we had moved closer a good 150 feet or so. I really enjoyed them live, nice and chill, but new thing I learned this day: the lead singer is a guy. Who knew?!
Probably has a penis
Only bad news of the weekend was that CSS was supposed to be next on my list of bands to see, but they are from Brazil and I guess one of their connecting flights got cancelled. A shame, my friend who's given first name I have changed to Rocky to disguise who he is, and I both really wanted to see them because they are supposedly a ton of fun live.
Instead we saw Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah! on the mainstage. I've seen these guys before so it was more leg resting time. They are also chill, so chill that I'm not sure they're really a mainstage kind of band. Also they did make me clap my hands a few times, but I never really said "yeah" after clapping so take what you will out of that.
Next up was the Hold Steady who were my favorite act of the day. You can just tell that they have SO MUCH FUN playing live shows. Even though they've been nonstop touring it really felt like this was the first time they'd ever played those songs. They were that much into it. And any band that has a guy in a tuxedo with a curled mustache gets my respect immediately.
Winners of the most bizarre stage show of the day go to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Let's start with this outfit.
Whoa. I had always wanted to see Siouxsie Sioux and the Banshees before, but then they played all Yeah Yeah Yeah's songs. Weird.
Siouxsie Sioux. Know your 80's Pop Music.
Things took a turn from weird into really fucking weird when she put on her silver stream hat that covered her face. So, is this artsy or fucking retarded? I'll let you be the judge (as long as you don't pick artsy).
After the Yeah Yeah Yeah's was another band I had been looking forward to, Spoon. Spoon was OK but I left unimpressed. In my opinion, they completely had the wrong setlist. No Underdog, no Cherry Bomb, nothing to get the crowd excited and into it. My Mathmatical Mind was the only one that would and they played that first. Rocky said he could write pages of what was good and bad about that performance so I will invite him to do so and I will add it.
Next time I'll take Fork and Knife. I'm sorry that's a terrible joke.
Last of the day was Muse. I don't really know any Muse songs but their show was pretty cool. They had an awesome stage set up as evidenced below.
Everytime this dude played the lit up grand piano onstage was cool. I enjoyed them, but can not remember the melody of one song that they played and probably if you played me any song of theirs I would think, oh yeah they played that one maybe. But a nice opera watched from the sides to finish off by far the most chill day at Lollapalooza. This band also made me decide that you could pretty much play ANY music at all and if you have a kick ass light show people will love it. So my next band is gonna have a sweet light show with fireworks and shit. I got it copyrighted or something.
Monster thanks to Lollapalooza, Pitchfork, Stereogum, and ESPECIALLY Jenny for the pictures.
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