Dispatch from Lollapalooza

People who work in Washington, DC are sometimes accused of having a warped, inside-the-beltway perspective on things. So I decided to get in touch with the mood of America's youth with a weekend in Chicago at Lollopalooza. In summary, most of the music was great and the kids are generally all right, albeit defaced by too many bad tattoos.

Day One

We amble around Millenium Park and gawk at reflection of selves, city, in the giant stainless steel jelly bean. Arriving at Grant Park around 4PM, we walk to see Ryan Adams play by far the worst set of the entire three days. A few good songs from "Cold Roses" are interrupted by frequent inaudible and (I assume) stoned ramblings from Ryan, who gives the music less energy than the guy who sold me beer a few minutes before.

Things pick up when we walk to the other end of the park (almost a mile!) and catch the last half of The Secret Machines, who rocked hard and made me want to run out and buy their album. Next were The Raconteurs, with Jack White more than living up to his reputation as a not-to-miss live act. Unfortunately we had to leave 20 minutes early to walk back and get a good spot for the greatest band of their generation, Sleater-Kinney.

Having seen them less than 24 hours earlier at the 9:30 Club I was a little worried that the one-hour time limit and outdoor venue would dull their effect. How wrong I was. If anything, they were better, giving some of their more epic songs like "Entertain" more room to expand, ditto other songs from The Woods like "Jumpers" and "Rollercoaster." "Sympathy" killed, as always. At 9:30 they finished with "Dig Me Out," here they capped the show with "Turn It On" and both were worthy codas. The only song I really missed from both shows was "One More Hour," which would have been appropriate given the band's tragic, imminent demise.

The downer mood of the impending S-K breakup made the immediate start of Death Cab For Cutie an easy transition. I like Death Cab but they're essentially a studio band and hearing them live doesn't add to the music, enjoyable though it is. The encore is "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," and as the first chords play all the teenage girls nearby squeal in high-pitched unison.

Day Two

We spend the morning at Art Institute (favorites: Daumier sculptures, Natalia Goncharova's Spanish Dancer) before heading to the park. There's a scene in "The Devil Wears Prada" where Meryl Streep explains how a few people people of influence in the fashion world made a decision years before that resulted in the eventual mass-marketing of cerulean blue. I can only assume a similar thing happened at some point in the last decade when Tom Ford or someone said "cargo shorts," which were worn by roughly 90 percent of the male Lollapaloozans, myself included. Narrow wicker cowboy hats and plastic garden clogs also seem to be in fashion these days.

The musical day starts well with a solid set from Built to Spill, including much from their very worthwhile new album. Although one guy in the band makes a halfhearted attempt to note that while, yes, the band is playing on the "Bud Light" stage festooned with the logo "Delivered by AT&T," he is personally still down on the corporate man. You made that decision when you decided to play, dude, you can't have it both ways.

Our next band is Sonic Youth, not that young but still as loud and uncompromising as ever. We watch The Dresden Dolls for a while, who I hadn't heard but were interesting -- think Ben Folds meets Cabaret. Then back to get a good seat for The Flaming Lips. A typical Lips shows, meaning it featured copious ballons and streamers, huge inflatable astronauts, scores of dancing space aliens and Santa Clauses, and Wayne Coyne rolling through crowd in a giant inflatable ball. Making the sensible decision that the best way to please a crowd is to play lots of crowd-pleasing songs (sort of the reverse-Ryan Adams approach) Wayne sings liberally from the last two albums, with the highlight being a huge, sung-along-to "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."

We run across the park to get a good seat for The New Pornographers, who after three nearly flawless albums can fill an hour set with nothing but great songs and do, although the absence of Neko Case turns songs like "The Bleeding Heart Show" from transcendent to merely awesome. We stay for the first three songs of Kanye West before admitting once again that we don't really get hip-hop, and leave for dinner.

Day Three

A note on tattoos: I've got nothing against them, believing that it's a free country and people should be who they want to be. I do, however, object to really bad tattoos of the neo-Frank Frazetta school. Getting a picture permanentally attached to your body is a big decision, people -- pick a good one! Shell out out for someone who knows what they're doing!

After a late start we arrive for The Shins, who may or may not have played a good show, but we'll never know due to some kind of catastrophic sound mixing failure. Like Death Cab, the Shins don't have a built-in live act advantage, and even the Garden State anthem "New Slang" fails to win over a frustrated crowd. Later that night we run across the band drinking tequila in our hotel bar, they seemed to have gotten over the disappointment.

Wilco, by contrast, sounds terrific, even mixing in a liberal helping of new material with no dampening of crowd enthusiam. Although Jeff Tweedy is starting to look like he watched a Blues Traveller video circa 2001 and said "Hey, that John Popper looks sharp--ditch my Norelco and super-size those fries!" After walking by the actual Blues Traveller (Popper looks less like Popper than Tweedy does these days) and an enthusiastic if over-loud Broken Social Scene, we settle in for the Red Hot Chili Peppers festival finale.

Closing a show of this magnitude is no easy task; your set not only has to be worthy in it's own right but worthy of all the bands that came before you. The Chili Peppers pull it off and then some, with high energy and great Flea-Frusciante back-and-forth. The show wraps up and the 60,000 plus crowd leaves in a good mood. All in all a worthy show; we may have to check the pulse of nation's students again next year.