The Dead Part of You

I'm all caught up so I was playing me some Tip Top when I realized WAIT! I went to a music festival 2 weeks ago and have not written down the experience in my web log yet!

Lollapalooza Friday started out with a long line in direct sunlight. It was not too humid, however I did crack into my water before even entering the gates. Upon entering, I went right over to Elvis Perkins in Dearland. I'd heard a few songs I liked, and his live show was good too. A cross between American Music Club and The Decemberists maybe. He also gets props for standing up to the asshole stage manager who tried to throw them off at 12:15 instead of 12:30.

While You Were Sleeping is definitely my favorite track.

From there I went over to Colour Revolt, and also received my first introduction to Beatle Bob, who I seriously thought was Mike Myers as Austin Powers. He gave them a real goofy introduction.

Colour Revolt were - OK. I was pretty psyched to see them - I still adore the EP. Live, I wound up just sitting back in the shade - there really wasn't enough there for me to even stand up to watch them. It sounded fine I suppose, I think I just had my hopes set way too high, thinking they were the second coming of Slint or something.

I went back over to one of the big ["Bud Light"] stages to see The Polyphonic Spree. Remember how much I loved them when I saw them a few weeks ago? This time, I think I loved them even more.

In some ways it was "Polyphonic Lite", as they only had an hour to play. They came out in their Fragile Army uniforms and ran through about 30 minutes of hits. Since there weren't enough people on stage, Beatle Bob showed up for a song, and another had 12 members of the Chicago Tap Theater. At 3PM, Tim announced "This is our last song", and couldn't keep a straight face, following up with "Well, we need time to go get changed!" They got into their robes and actually did a run-through the crowd before taking the stage again. I hadn't been expecting a costume change in such a short set, and if they were going to run through, I figured they'd just stay behind the barriers.



POLYPHONIC SPREE! You were the BEST thing I saw all day Friday! You were the THIRD BEST thing I saw all weekend! Congratulations to you!

The sun hadn't faded at all yet on Friday, [I was rockin' the sunscreen]. Polyphonic Spree playing on a main stage with no shade, and with all the dancing, singing and arm waving amongst 5000 other people, I was starting to get that 'festival' feeling, which is actually just a fancy way of saying 'fatigue' or 'dehydration' but NO TIME TO REST because as soon as the Spree ended, Sparklehorse started up across the field...

[to be continued]