I want so badly to believe.
I do! I do wish that Daft Punk had been phenomenal! But really, it was just kind of meh. Bob literally took off five minutes into their set ["Is that all they do?"] to go catch Ben Harper, and even I was wondering if I had made the right choice.
Too tired to dance, I sat down on the grass off to the side, watching the pretty lights and the ravers and the glow sticks and the thumpa thumpa thumpa. It actually did get a little better - my mood had improved, and the pyramid pulled off some pretty awesome lighting effects. However I just can't get past the urban legend that it's not even really them up there - they just hire two actors to put on the robot costumes and rock out for ninety minutes. I mean, they claim to be mixing and playing the music, but it all just sounds pre-recorded, and coincidentally exactly timed to like a billion lighting and video effects. I moved a little closer for the encore and got into it a little bit, but all around it just kind of disappointed me.
Amazingly, Bob and I ran into each other on the way out, blocks before the pre-arranged meetup point.
Saturday morning was cloudy, we bought umbrellas before going in, and I headed over to catch Matt and Kim, mostly due to location. They were - well, kind of like Atom and his Package, which is not what I really wanted on a Saturday morning.
Across the field from them was I'm From Barcelona, yet another music collective, this one from Sweden, where I think the government pays them to do this.
Balloons, costumes, dancing, crowd surfing - the whole nine yards. I never did count how many of them there were, I think it was over 30. At the time, I really, really enjoyed it [ooh, a song about Chicken Pox? and it's DEEP!], I jumped around and sang, but in retrospect they weren't that memorable. Would I go see them again? THE ANSWER IS PROBABLY NOT!!
Up next is the big old indie rock stage and the biggest disappointment of the entire weekend. TO BE CONTINUED!
The phone stopped mobile photo web logging [it usually does]. After Sparklehorse was Blonde Redhead, LCD Soundsystem and Daft Punk. It was a very tiring day.
I assure you, higher quality pictures and rants and raves to follow. Today's winner? The Polyphonic Spree!
So last week was the big Lollapalooza line up announcement, and while I was slightly underwhelmed, I'm still going. The big dilemma for me has been whether Pitchfork might be better or not, because Pitchfork has Grizzly Bear, Sonic Youth performing Daydream Nation and hipsters. Lollapalooza has Daft Punk and
Well, not much else, really. But anyway, it's a weekend in Chicago and there's more than enough for me to pull together a list of things I must see
- Daft Punk
- Interpol
- Lupe Fiasco
- TV on the Radio
- Yo La Tengo
- Modest Mouse
- Amy Winehouse
- LCD Soundsystem
- CSS
- Blonde Redhead
- Pete Yorn
- Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
- !!!
- The Polyphonic Spree
- Peter Bjorn and John
- Silversun Pickups
- The Rapture
- Roky Erikson and the Explosives
- Cold War Kids
- Fields