Francispalooza

Althought I'm obviously a huge fan of music, and have been to dozens of shows in my career, I'd never been to one of the big multi-day festivals that have become all the rage (and sometimes featured Rage Against the Machine) in recent years, like Coachella, Bonnaroo, Big Day Out, and such. I did go to Lollapalooza in 2003, the first year of its revival after a six-year hiatus, but that was back when it was a single-day touring festival. That was still probably the rockingest day of my life, featuring sets from Queens of the Stone Age, Audioslave, Incubus, and Jane's Addiction.

For the past five summers, Lollapalooza dropped the touring aspect and became a three-day event held annually in Grant Park in Chicago. While that certainly decreased the convenience factor for a lot of fans like me, it increased the sort of lineup they can put together, and this year's was a killer: headliners included Arcade Fire, Green Day, the Strokes, and, playing their first show in 12 years, the mighty Soundgarden. I decided it was worth the $215 admission fee for three days and the trip to the Windy City. Lolla really is the ideal festival for me - it's the closest major one to me, my musical interests are very well-aligned with 'Paloozas, and you don't have to camp outdoors and be gross like at some other festivals.

It was a rockin' weekend, documented live via my binge-twittering. Here's how it went down:


Travel and Logistics
You really couldn't ask for a better locale than Grant Park, located just off of Lake Michigan near the south side loop in Chicago, IL. It's a nice area, and big enough to acomodate an event a crazy-big as Lollapalooza.

I have to say, the organizers did a terrific job with the logistics of the event. Possibly the most important idea: free water dispensation stations. They let you bring in empty water bottles and refill them at your leisure, which was huge since temperatures were in the high '80s all weekend. Gotta stay hydrated. I can't overstate how much I appreciated this.

Food and drink were reasonably priced; a bottled water was only $2 (after which you could refill it) and 16-ounce beers were $7. Comically, you could also get a plastic squirt bottle filled with wine for $24, which would have delighted the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia gang. None of the food items I saw even topped $10.

They had plenty of bathrooms and very short lines. This is very important. No further detail is necessary.

You can see on the map how well-distributed the stages were. The minor stages (BMI, Sony) were placed near the middle, as was "Perry's", the cool DJ party stage named after Lollapalooza founder and Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell. The bigger ones were at either end of the park, and were in pairs, a giant stage and a big one. Shows alternated roughly every hour between the stage pairs, meaning no waiting at all between sets for changeovers. Someone finishes at the Parkways stage, someone else picks up at the Adidas stage, almost continuously. Ditto for the Budweiser and PlayStation stages. This was terrific. All in all, I have no complaints about the way the event was organized and run, plus right smack in the middle was the fountain from Married...With Children. Al Bundy rules.

But enough administrative details: let's rock. Click for the complete concert schedule so you can follow my adventure and see what you might have done differently.


Day 1: Friday
Frankly, I didn't care about anything this day until about 4 pm. I mean, sure, it's fun to see live rock and roll, but was it worth leaving Thursday night and burning ourselves out watching bands we don't really know? Nope.

So, my traveling companions Liz, Vijay, and I left the Cleve at 8 am and headed west on I-90. Thanks to light traffic, the Ion's stellar performance, good weather, some rocking tunes, and expert piloting by this blogger, the trip there was rather painless. Other than Liz crushing us at Travel Yahtzee!, that is. I absolutely could not roll threes, but still battled Vijay to a draw.

Things slowed considerably once we rolled into Chicagoland. I've since learned that real rush hour delays can last into hours, so the slowdowns we experienced were relatively mild, but I live in Cleveland and simply do not have to deal with traffic. So THAT was somewhat frustrating, THEN Ben Stein came on the radio THEN I had to drive past Swirling Garbage Field and fester about the White Socks, and I was throwing around a lot of hate and then I relaxed. It's Lollapalooza! V&L dropped off their gear with a friend, and I dumped my stuff and car with some extremely gracious and hospitable friends who put me up for the weekend and had the foresight to live about a half mile from Grant Park.

We got to Lollapalooza around 3:30, time to catch the end of Drive-By Truckers' set. I wish I'd caight more of it, because they sounded really good, but oh well. For the 4 pm show, we had the first of many dilemmas that a festival with this many overlapping bands presents: Devo, or New Pornographers? We picked the latter.

Big mistake. I like some of the Nuevo Pornos' stuff, but they had little stage presence and their material is a bit innocuous for Francis Live Standards. I once read a writeup that called singer Neko Case "an on-stage charisma bomb," and she is no such thing. She lazily played tambourine, wore this hat like the one Al Czervik picked up in the Bushwood pro shop to mock Judge Smails with, and sang occasionally. You can kind of see the hat in the photo I took - you should get a free bowl of soup when you buy one of those. Neko, it looks good on you though. They didn't even play that one song they have in Rock Band ("Electric Version") or one of the two songs I know from Twin Cinema. The nerve! Plus they got a bit chatty between songs, prompting me to yell "less talk, more rock!" for the first of roughly 8000 times this weekend. I also ceased wearing a shirt at this point: hey, that's what outdoor fests are for!

I did discover one great thing during the New Pornographers: these ladies who stand near the stage and sort of dance and interpretively sign the lyrics (and to some extent the music) to hearing impaired people who got preferred seating near the stage. I loved the idea and execution of this, and the women were great fun to watch in addition to providing a nice service. Kudos, ladies.

I shoulda gone to Devo, though I would have passed on the $30 plastic "Whip It" hats, which weren't even red. This became a running joke for me - any time we picked a subpar act (not that often) or something else didn't work out, I said "I shoulda gone to Devo." The moral of the story was: when you have a choice, always pick the band from Akron, OH.

Speaking of which, Black Keys were up next at the Budweiser stage at 6. I have a soft spot for rocking duos, having once fronted one myself. Plus I'm a big pro-Ohio guy, and I really enjoy the Black Keys' music. I thought their set was tremendous. The obvious highlight: "Next Girl," a track from their new record Brothers where frontman Dan Auerbach sings in his 60-year-old-black-man voice, "My next girl/'ll be nothin' like my ex-girl." He and drummer Patrick Carney put on a hell of a show - for me, that was when I realized that, fuck, man, I'm at Lollapalooza. I may have high-fived someone at this point. No photo of the dynamic duo from the Rubber City, since my phone died, so you get Vijay and the Lollapalooza backdrop. For what it's worth, I liked the way they dressed - exactly the way people from Northeast Ohio dress. Way to represent the 330, brothers.

Black Keys wrapped up at 7pm (every single band was 100% punctual at finishing on time, which I thought was outstanding), and the next show I wanted to see was The Strokes at 8 pm, giving us an hour to chill. Vijay and I actually waffled several times over whether to see Lady Gaga or the Strokes. I mean, I've already seen the Strokes, they don't have anything new, and Lady Gaga supposedly puts on a crazy show. But then I realized that I like almost every Strokes song I've ever heard and I dislike every Lady Gaga song I've ever heard that wasn't sung by Eric Cartman. Game, set, match, Strokes.

The hour of downtime did give us the opportunity to quiz festival-goers about a burning question that we'd had since our car ride, namely: can women sing in falsetto? You know, that artificially high register that men can hit? Think Radiohead's Thom Yorke, or Prince. Anyway, I asked a number of people this, mostly women, and no one knew. Most surprising is that not a single woman had any idea whether or not she was capable of such a thing. Go ahead - ask a woman if she can sing falsetto. Do it. She will not know.

But eventually, one dude did know. His expertise reminded me this one time Karari and I were debating the biology of buffalo and bison at a bar and he randomly asked some guy and the guy was like a buffalolologist and gave us the whole taxonomy and I was totally and completely wrong. Anyway, this cat was a music major and was able to explain the mechanism for falsetto: men move the Adam's Apple up high in their throat. Try it! He was totally right. I high-fived him. He also explained that women can achieve something called a "high voice" that boosts their pitch frequency but is not the same physically as a falsetto. Thanks, dude.

The Strokes eventually rolled onstage 15 minutes late (and finished 15 minutes early), led by a visibly wasted Julian Casablancas. A band from Ohio would never be so unprofessional. In fact, it occurred to me that I don't really like anything about the Strokes...except their music, which is fantabulous. Casablancas, in particular was annoying, especially his between-song banter. (Example: upon seeing Lady Gaga's fireworks in the distance, he remarked: "shit, fireworks.") He also took a swipe at Pearl Jam and Nirvana (who never actually played Lollapalooza) that was not well-received.

But they played terrifically, kicking things off with "New York City Cops," the track dropped from their debut Is This It after 9/11. The song selection was perfect and the band's execution was a precise and passionate as you could ask for. Particularly memorable was a four-song stretch bridging the ent of the set and the start of the encore that comprised my four favorite of their songs: "Last Night," "Reptilia," "Juicebox," and "Someday," the latter backed on the video screen by classic video-game footage. I may pick on the Strokes for being NYC pretty boys, but that was a great rock and roll show.


Day 2: Saturday
I'm a rocker, but I'm an athlete too, so I headed down to Lake Michigan for a morning swim. Lake Michigan is freezing! It's far colder than the shallower Lake Erie, the waters in which I typically purify myself. I should have known something was up when everyone else in the lake had a wetsuit and I rolled up in board shorts. I finished a mile and talked to a British dude who was mulling over whether to put on his own wetsuit; I think my chattering teeth helped him make his decision. I ran a few miles back to the ranch and declared myself trained for the day.

Thus: more rock. First up was Soft Pack at 12:30 pm, a group who I remarked made me want to listen to Huey Lewis and the News. They were OK, but I was tired from swimming, running, and eating, so I grabbed a nap on the lawn mid-set. You may be able to see in the photo that the drummer played standing up, which struck me as odd. From there, we rolled over to Perry's, which I rather enjoyed. I questioned whether we were in fact at Perry's or maybe at the Sony Bloggie stage, but Liz pointed out, "that chick dancing on stage is wearing antlers - this is Perry's." Indeed.

If you have any interest whatsoever in people-watching, Lollapalooza is your Mecca. You could populate a year's worth of straightcashhomey.net with all of the absurd basketbal jerseys, plus crazy band shirts, novelty tees, comedy shirts, and more. I absolutely never got tired of checking out people's garb all weekend. Unfortunately, I saw this joker pictured at right, wearing simply the worst t-shirt I've ever seen. I booed him for a while, then decided I needed to get a picture with him. I don't give a damn about the whole state of Michigan.

Against Me! was the next act we were slated to check out at 2:45 on the Adidas stage. I thought some punk-pop under the sun would be good after the phat beats of Perry's. At this point, I'd sealed my sunburnt fate, though it ended up not being too bad. Against Me! wasn't all that great - the singer sounded a lot like Dropkick Murphys or one of those Irish-punk bands, and I despise that kind of music. They seemed to try really hard, but I just didn't get a big kick out of their stuff. They looked hot too - why would you all wear black on an 85/sunny day? Plus, they had long pants, which I noticed virtually every musician at the festival sported. Does anyone know why this is? The only people I saw in shorts were Tré Cool of Green Day and Eugene Hütz, frontman of Gogol Bordello, though I assume Lady Gaga spent a significant portion of her show pantsless. Editor's note: I saw a video where she joined one of the earlier bands on stage and she was basically naked, so: check.

Speaking of Gogol Bordello: Wow. Liz had talked me into their 3:45 show the night before, but she and Vijay heard their records after we'd parted ways for the evening and decided to go see another band, but I stuck with GB at the Parkways stage and was richly rewarded. The Lolla guide described them as "gypsy punk," and I can't do much better than that. There were seven people, and as I tweeted, four of them could legitimately be described as the group's "Hype Man" (think Flavor Flav), including Hütz. It was a big old party, like a hoedown, if I knew what a hoedown was. I really can't decribe them, and neither can my photo; guitar, bass, drums, harmonica, electric fiddle, designated dancer, rapper/percussionist, lyrics in three languages - just total craziness. I mean, you try to build a 10-minute song out of trying to convince people to wear purple. Betcha you can't. I can see where their recordings might not be so great, but their concert was terrific fun. For me, that was the most pleasant surprise of the whole festival.

Rejoined my team back over in the Budweiser/PlayStation area for sets by Metric and Spoon at 5pm and 6 pm respectively. They were both pretty unimpressive for me - I may have still been amped up from Gogol Bordello, but I wasn't all that excited. the most interesting thing I could say on twitter was: "Guy from Spoon has a white T and white jeans. All I can think is; why doesn't Andrew WK still tour and only play songs from I Get Wet?" I stand by that statement. At this point, I started to get weary of bands giving shout-outs to "Chicago." I've never been a visiting fan - am I supposed to cheer this as a Clevelander, just because I'm in the crowd? I dunno.

I bolted Spoon a bit early to get to Green Day, since I had to ramble all the way over to the Parkways stage and get some H₂O, on time for their 7:45 show. That was another one of the big debates for the weekend: are you going to see Phoenix or Green Day? A surprising number of people told me Phoenix, but the French rockers have one album I kinda liked and Green Day has been one of my favorite bands for 15 years. Easy choice.

Green Day...well, I wish they would do things a bit differently. Look, you've got probably the deepest and most influential catalog of anyone at this entire festival, with the possible exception of Soundgarden, who hasn't put out a record in 14 years while you're coming off of two of your best. Why not just play music? Unfortunately, Billie Joe and the team opted for way, way too much banter, call-and-response, bringing people on stage (though they did bring my favorite sign lady up, which was boss), preening, mid-song breakdowns, and such. Guys, I love your music - just play! I couldn't say "less talk, more rock" enough.

When they did play, it was terrific - a selection from throughout their career, from early gems ("2000 Light Years") to their breakthrough Dookie ("Basket Case," "When I Come Around," "Longview"), to mid-period stuff ("Hitchin' a Ride," "Minority") on through to heaping helpings of their twin towers of concept-punk (American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown). It was great music, but a bit exhausting after almost 2 1/2 hours, bringing my total for the day to 10. Would you believe that three bands I saw that day featured accordions (Against Me!, Gogol Bordello, Green Day)? That increased my career total by 300% (Yankovic, "Weird" Al). I went out for a bit afterwards, but was exhausted by midnight.


Day 3: Sunday
Not wanting to risk hypothermia again, I settled for a six-mile run along the lakeshore, which in addition to being good training, fueled my rage against the waste of a perfectly good lakefront that is Burke Airport in Cleveland. Mr. Mayor, tear down this "airport"!

I decided to pace myself today, for two reasons: one, 10 hours of rock is too much on consecutive days and no one early was really essential for me; and two, I was planning to drive back after the show and was the only one who could operate my standard shift car, so I needed my rest. Day 3 of Lollapalooza thus began for me with Minus the Bear at 3pm. I wish they would have been minus a Francis too - I would rather've had that extra hour to sleep. But hey, you don't know until you go, and I liked the fact that they were categorized as "math rock."

Two groups of people I had a lot of contempt for all festival long: anyone who smoked, and anyone who sat up on someone else's shoulders. Both groups are basically saying that they don't care about anyone else around them, and that's not cool with me.

With a couple of hours before the hurricane-force closing gauntlet of Wolfmother, Cypress Hill, and Soundgarden at the Parkways/Adidas area (up against the lamer trio of MGMT-The National-Arcade Fire), we checked out a band on a lark called Violent Soho. The booklet described them as "stoner pop," which I decided was suitable. On our way there, we stumbled upon Kidzapalooza, a family-friendly area of the festival that featured sets by, of all bands, Verve Pipe, and Perry Farrell. We ended up in this multigenerational drum circle thing called "Rhythm Revolution," which was fun as hell. I wore my shirt there, so as not to look creepy. I did turn out some phat beats on the wood sticks, though. I wanted a drum, but I was afraid I'd crack it with my wood cylinders.

And then we continued on to Violent Soho on the tiny BMI stage, and they ROCKED. Probably the heaviest band I saw all weekend, but with plenty of tunefulness. Just four grimy guys from Australia going balls-out, and it was great. The band half-complained about having been granted a 45-minute set but only having one 30-minute record to their name. They also passed around a hat, not for donations, but to collect marijuana, which they claimed was difficult to "organize" on the road. When it returned, the guitarist proudly announced that they'd acquired five joints, then proceeded to continue thrashing their instruments. Well done.

Speaking of Australian hard-rockers: Wolfmother, anyone? Andrew Stockdale and company hammered home material from their two albums, Wolfmother and Cosmic Egg, and man can that guy play some guitar. Their singles "Woman" and "New Moon Rising" got the crowd hopping, and they absolutely destroyed the finish with "Joker and the Thief." Possibly the single hardest-rocking moment of the festival. I enjoy rating things using the Andy Francis Subjective Ordinal Hard-Rocking Scale. I was pretty close to the front at this point as well, just behind a security area set up for rounding up crowd surfers. I knew that pretty much as soon as they finished, Cypress Hill would start their set just across the way at the Adidas stage; this is the downside of the seamless transitions between sets. I had a lot of people to weave through and little time, and I also thought that maybe if I just hung out where I was, then it'd be cool to be that close for the 'Garden. But in the end I decided I wanted to see Cypress Hill.

Great decision. Cypress Hill was ridiculously fun - I was jumping all over the place and having a good time, and so were Sen-Dog and B-Real. Well, they don't jump, but you get the point. The beats were extra-phat, and the rappers in fine form, smoking up almost constantly onstage while tearing through some of their best rhymes, including "Hand on the Pump," "How I Could Just Kill a Man," and "Insane in the Brain." There was way too much smoking going around me - I basically just kept sipping on my water bottle and seeking clean air throughout the set, but you had to expect that. The group closed with a new track, "Rise Up," featuring Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello on guitar (the backing track - he wasn't there in person) and "Rock Superstar," a great closer. There was even a Perry Farrell sighting just off to the side of the stage, though he didn't look too excited to be there. Maybe he's spent too much time with the six-foot bong that B-Real brought onstage for...wait for it..."Hits from the Bong." Also, there was a sighting of Green Man, who looked much more crunked than Perry. Awesome show, I would totally see them again, especially if the venue allowed respirators. And then they were done...and it was time...

Soundgarden.

I was really tense with anticipation - the first big show in over a decade from one of the greatest bands ever, and I was going to be there. Is this really going to happen? Another of the weekend's big debates was Arcade Fire vs Soundgarden - also the biggest boner on the part of the organizers. A lot of people told me that they would go see Arcade Fire, which: seriously? I like Arcade Fire, but they'll be around for a while, and this is SOUNDGARDEN, in case I've been unclear on that point.

Anyway, I quickly worked myself near the stage; not Wolfmother-close, but well-positioned. And then it was on. Frankly, I wouldn't have opened with the relatively tame "Searching With My Good Eye Closed." Really a weird decision. They made some other curious choices too, including a tepid version of "Black Hole Sun" and the call to include the obscure "Face Pollution" and meandering "Like Suicide" in their three-song encore.

But the rest of it was spectacular, as you'd expect. They hammered home classics like "Jesus Christ Pose," "Let me Drown," and "Superunknown" with the sort of authority and technical precision that made them so great in the first place. "Outshined" sounded just supermassively heavy. Kim Thayil makes even the most complex playing look easy, Matt Cameron is a whirlwind behind the kit, and Chris Cornell is still one of the most powerful singers in rock, even if he doesn't go after all the high notes he once did. He was also the only frontman who, in addition to "Chicago," thanked "everyone from somewhere else." A fitting end to a great weekend of rock.

But wait! It wasn't over yet. Walking home, we bumped into some real superstars: the sign language ladies! I was actually star-struck when I saw them; I would've just walked past Cornell or Armstrong, but I had to say something to my girls. I told them I really liked what they did and skipped on along. Shoulda gotten a photo. Shoulda seen Devo.

Driving back was a bit of a chore; I didn't want to waste another night and get stuck in traffic the next morning, so I drove us all the way home in around 5:30, arriving at my place at 5:30 am. Would I go again? Depends on the lineup, but I haven't seen a Lollapalooza roster yet that I didn't like. Rock on.