Steady Tonic

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It was a late one the night before. In fact we woke up when last night’s opener The Octopus Project was getting on stage in Grant Park.

We opted for the calming (and ampersand-loving!) sets of Amadou & Miriam and Iron & Wine. Amadou & Mariam are a blind Malian couple who create light Afro-pop. Iron & Wine are a sighted brother-sister team who create light folk-pop. Although they sounded more engrossing and punchy than last year Pitchfork (and were translating better to open air), I left Iron & Wine’s set early because I had to see Saul Williams.

Saul Williams and his band took the stage with what could only be called space-age tribal makeup and fashion. The guitarist sported a shiny silver space suit (like a tailored suit, not a spacesuit) and his mohawked keyboardist was draped in a vampire cape. Williams revved up the crowd with his rap/rock sound and passed out brightly colored feathers, which much of the hipster crowd proceeded to wear like Native American braves in their pointless head/sweatbands. (The hipster crowd was most likely there early for Girl Talk, in my opinion.) I had heard on Sound Opinions that there was a Williams cover of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” floating around, and Williams brought it out, to my delight. That is, until he actually started singing. I had high hopes, but alas, I left to head towards Gnarls Barkley.

The dynamic duo came out in white pants and mustard-colored suit jackets, resembling the guys in country club ball photos from the 60s. They were backed by Molly Shannon as Mary Catherine Gallagher on keys. They quickly got to their standouts “Gone Daddy Gone” and “Going On” but we left to catch a bit of Girl Talk.

This evening brought my biggest conflict of the weekend - the Gnarls/Girl Talk/National timing. All three are great live acts, but for very different reasons. So I was going to attempt to hit a good chunk of all three. And I would have gotten away with it, if it weren’t for that medding…
…portapotty situation. For some reason, Sunday night always seems to have the worst portapotty issues. Long lines, no TP (not that I don’t always have a spare - oh and Girl Talk brought people shooting guns of TP) - I spent a good chunk of my Girl Talk listening time on line.

But I wanted to get to The National. What a perfect way to come down from the weekend. The sun was setting behind the skyline and most of the crowd was gravitating toward the main stage opposite to prepare for Nine Inch Nails. Lollapalooza 2008 ended for me with the soft opening strains of “Fake Empire” building and crashing into “Mr. November”. See you next year!

Click here to start at Day 1

Click here to see the best t-shirts

I got to the park early, but unfortunately missed De Novo Dahl (see here). Also unfortunately caught Does It Offend You, Yeah? (yes, yes it does). With a little time before Gutter Twins started, I explored the new offerings at this year’s more upscale Lollapalooza.

Some friends have told me they wouldn’t set foot at Lolla. The crowds, the trash, the portapotties, the annoying drunks, and the heat all have great potential to create a perfect storm of suckage.

But it doesn’t. The park is huge (one mile from each headliner stage to the other) and doesn’t feel like it has 75,000 people until the late shows. At 1pm on Saturday, it felt like heaven.

video by me

The organizers added a Whole Foods section with tons of healthy foods and a craft section with vendors (perhaps taking the cue from the Pitchfork Festival). There’s also a craft beer section! With $7 Stellas! Okay that’s not so necessary, but the section also has picnic tables and video screens showing the stages, and it was relatively uncrowded each time I passed.

The Gutter Twins are not a band you’d prefer to see at 2pm on a bright sunny day, but it worked anyway. They came on stage to the apocalyptic-scream opening sounds of “Idle Hands” dressed all in black, sporting black sunglasses and spewing black sentiment for the next hour. Give me all the black metal bands in Sweden, and I don’t think any of the their frontmen would intimidate me as much as Mark Lanegan does. I’m buying their album Saturnalia and I plan to listen to it on repeat for all of February, with a flask full of whisky.

On the opposite stage, the hipster/teen crowd had gathered for MGMT. I thought they would be young glam-era types, and they did not disappoint. Their leadman could literally be Marc Bolan reincarnated, with his curls, his voice and his posing. Since I believe the world needs another Marc Bolan, I enjoyed their set which included standouts “Weekend Wars”, “Time To Pretend” and “Pieces of What”.

Also, apparently it was difficult for anyone to stand still during their set.

video by almostfamousgirl via You Tube

I left MGMT early to catch a bit of Devotchka, whom we saw play an impromptu sidewalk set at SXSW. A decent crowd had gathered to sway to their Eastern European-tinged groove. Shortly after, Explosions in the Sky took the opposite stage and their atmospheric guitar-driven instrumental tunes lofted nicely over the park.

Okkervil River, as always, put on an energetic show. For a band whose tunes weave tales of princesses in towers, poets in Minneapolis and being tossed down oubliettes, they perform with a surprising amount of traditional rock antics: drumsticks twirled and tossed, jumps from drum kits and audience participation on hand-clapping rhythms. Their set included standouts from The Stage Names like “Plus Ones” (during which Will Sheff managed to transform a verse-ending line into an instruction for the soundbooth), the most upbeat material from Black Sheep Boy, and concluded with a crowd sing-a-long on the murder ballad “Westfall”.

Broken Social Scene crammed their 800 band members wielding 815 guitars on stage and alternated between proper BSS tunes (including my personal favorite “Cause=Time”) and newer material from Brendan Canning, Kevin Drew and Andrew Whiteman-led Apostle of Hustle. I am always amazed at how they don’t sound like a dissonant cacophony with all they have going on - Canadians are so talented at being nuanced. [And btw I know dissonant cacophony is redundant, but that’s what makes it perfect to use for BSS].

We left after Broken Social Scene to regroup for our aftershow at Schuba’s with Okkervil River and The Octopus Project. I was going to say that Explosions in the Sky is the most interesting and accomplished instrumental quartet out there — they, however, don’t have Yvonne, the queen of the theramin. Somebody’s been working on her aerial fingering!!!

video by hmc1410 via You Tube

Okkervil River played an expanded version of their earlier Lollapalooza set, including new tunes “Lost Coastlines” and “Blue Tulip” from their upcoming release/sequel The Stand Ins. I encourage you all to to treat yourself to that album when it comes out on September 9 - it’s outstanding. Other additions to the set included “Okkervil River Song” and opener “The War Criminal Rises and Speaks”. Also, the band members are very nice and tolerant people. I asked Yvonne and Lauren whether it was rough being the only women in each of the bands - did they have to deal with a lot of farting in the van? Apparently these boys are much more polite than most men I know.

video by hmc1410 via You Tube

Arrival time of 12:45, enough to catch the end of the Black Lips, who remind me of the White Stripes covering 60s surf rock and who also reportedly hit the stage hard. Unfortunately the line of thousands of people squeezing their hands into the new cloth wristbands caused us to get to Bud Light around 1:10, barely catching any punk rock awesomeness to kick our weekend off. So, naturally, we did the next best thing: beer and airbrush tattoos.

We trekked across to catch a bit of Rogue Wave, who sounded again like Death Cab For Cutie - but that felt great in the breezy dry heat. Yeasayer was up next - we’d missed them at SXSW and were quite excited to catch them. We were not disappointed. Their deceptively loose sounding experimental rock kept our heads bobbing while we watched them switch places and shift instruments.

We took a food break during the Kills to come back to catch Gogol Bordello, the other gypsy pirate polka band. We were dripping in the late afternoon heat but it didn’t suck any of their energy away.

video by jynblueflame via You Tube

We caught a few songs from the husband and wife pop duo Mates of State before heading out to catch Grizzly Bear on the side stage. For some odd reason, the organizers put the side stage directly facing the setting sun, but the Brooklyn quartet kept their cool harmonies and sparse arrangements - they always sound beautiful live.

We schlepped across again to catch some of the Raconteurs before heading back for the headliners. Jack White must have come out of the womb with a pick in his hands. They got some call-and-response crowd participation on “Steady As She Goes” and Brendan Benson stepped up to steer some slower numbers before we tore back across the field to fight the crowd that had parked all day for Radiohead.

Radiohead’s set has been glowed about and panned (as much as Radiohead can ever be panned), but I have no complaints…well only one.

As with last year’s Pearl Jam set, other events in the city seemed to be timed to compliment the headliners. During “Everything In Its Right Place”, fireworks appear to the southeast of the stage. The fireworks appeared almost perfectly coordinated with the climax of “Fake Plastic Trees”, and the below crappy video shows their start:

video by me

…and the talking…lots of talking…

Unless you were parked pretty close, the chatter of casual fans waiting for “Paranoid Android” drowned out the band’s more delicate numbers.

[oh wait…after 7 hours in the hot sun and more liquid meals than solid ones, that was me!]

Overall the set list was wonderful, covering ample old favorites from OK Computer and The Bends while also incorporating most of In Rainbows, which sounds fantastic live — to a song.

Here are the top t-shirts that we captured at Lolla 2008:

(the above appeared during the National’s set, a few songs before “Mr. November”)

And the winner, for its trifecta of reference to music, geek-chic, and overall pun-quality:

As far as quantity of shirts, headliners Rage Against the Machine, Radiohead, and Nine Inch Nails (as well as potential headliner Barack Obama) were the clear winners. Coming up close behind them was any t-shirt associated with Dunder Mifflin. Sadly, unlike last year, and even though they were co-headlining, Wilco shirts were pretty scarce.

Shearwater at the Mansion - 6.24.2008

For a few weeks, I’d been cursing the fates that put Shearwater’s headliner at the newly opened Mansion on the same night as Liz Phair’s live performance of Exile in Guyville.

Through most of 1994, Exile was on constant repeat in my stereo. After years of nice and sweet Lilith Fair vagina music, Liz Phair was like a kangaroo kick to the uterus. Much has been written about her subsequent declawing by the desire (hers or her label’s or both) to go mainstream. Her Exile follow up, Whip Smart, contains a few gems like “Supernova” that augured her move toward more straighforward pop while retaining a slight edge. Lyrics like “I’d never been to Rome until you smiled/You’re about as old and piled” (from bitter breakup song “Cinco de Mayo”) couldn’t approach “I want to be your blowjob queen”. However it’s a far cry from striking a Lita Ford album cover pose and insisting “I am extraordinary/if you’d ever get to know me”.

The experience of seeing Liz in her hometown at the smallish Vic Theatre would likely be very memorable. Even though Shearwater’s, Rook is quickly becoming one of my favorite albums, I’d be able to see them another time, right? I almost made the jump.

Boy am I glad I didn’t. Read the rest of this entry »

I never knew these existed. Apparently they were produced by MGM in the 1930s. This is why God invented the internet and You Tube.

I’m amazed by the execution of plotlines, the editing, camera work, and the attention to detail. Take, for example, the grandstand activity at 3:29 in “College Hounds”.

“Queenie’s In Trouble” - the Canine predecessor to SNL’s “The Continental”:

“So Quiet on the Canine Front” - a WWI battlefield re-enactment, complete with breed typecasting starting around 1:48:

Part 2 of “College Hounds”

I mean, how many takes did they need? How did they keep them from fighting/humping/sniffing? Truly a feat, in my opinion.

Oh…but then there’s this one. I’m speechless.

My neighborhood, River West, has developed more slowly than I’d like in my six years living here. Part of the reason for that is the many buildings and plots owned by one man who has refused to sell or fix up his abandoned properties.

On the positive side, street artists have often made these buildings more interesting by tacking their work to the walls.

Recently, one of these street artists, Brendan Scanlon, was murdered in Logan Square. As a tribute to him, his fellow artists peppered one of the abandoned buildings at Grand and Milwaukee. It’s important to note that this appears to be a senseless, random act of violence. Street artists are not to be confused with gang members that tag buildings with graffiti. Here are a handful of the pieces:

June 9, 2008

Open kitchens can create a frustrating take out experience. You try not to watch, but after a certain amount of time it’s uncontrollable. You’re like a dog waiting for its owner outside a store: “Is this one mine? What about that one? Is that one mine? WHERE’S MINE!?!?!?!”

Pompei’s open kitchen falls somewhere in the less frustrating range of the spectrum. The restaurant displays all the menu items behind the counter, so customers can see the many (delicious looking) options. My small chicken chopped salad totaled $7.02 with tax and took no more than five minutes from ordering to receipt.

Here’s the salad’s ingredients: chicken, olives (which were promptly extracted), red onion, bacon, tomatoes, Gorgonzola, some Italian dressing as thick as phlegm. They also give you a few pieces of focaccia.

Best aspect of new shit: Overall it was pretty good — chicken was still moist and the size of the salad was filling.

Worst aspect of new shit: It was probably about 600 calories.

New Shit Rating: Repeatable but I’ll probably use a different dressing and leave off the bacon to save a bit on calories.

DSDD* = Different Shit Different Day

June 8, 2008

This was an impulse purchase from a Cost Plus excursion many months ago. Clearly the fact that it took several months to have the desire, energy, and supplies available in our Spartan cabinets shows we don’t cook pancakes very often. It’s probably a once a year occurance when we have houseguests.

In fact, we didn’t have all the supplies this time — I had to use clementine flavored olive oil.

The mix contains actual almond slivers, which is a nice touch since I find typical pancakes boring in texture. I also find typical pancakes too floury, so I added an extra egg to the mix.

The result was delicious - even with the oil substitute.

Best aspect of new shit: Besides the tastiness, it felt good to use the mix that had been sitting there forever.

Worst aspect of new shit: None.

New Shit Rating: Repeatable.

DSDD* = Different Shit Different Day