Lollapalooza 2008

Dom: Wee!!!

Clay: Meanwhile backstage beneath the veneer of nasty corporate shit-rock lurked nasty corporate shitheads with badges, cards, handshakes and cameras, note-taking and stuffed fat with free swag of which the masses have no clue. Seriously: in our brief visit to the Eastpak café we netted four plates of food and a gaggle of drinks (mostly Don Julio blanco margaritas and something alluringly dubbed “The Diddy”) and some free headphones and energy drinks and could’ve upped that intake to include free haircuts, Diesel jeans, tattoos, yes tattoos, handjobs from SuicideGirls (one must assume) and other various incongruous free (free) free shit.

Why? Or more accurately, why the fuck not? Lollapalooza is the great ugly asshole of the festival circuit, lacking the economy of Pitchfork or the locales of Coachella or Bonnaroo or the emphasis on, you know, music of all of them. This was a festival for people interested in the idea of festivals, sorta bi-curious enough to quit throwing the frisbee long enough to check out some “music,” faggy though that may be. These sunburned shirtless beagles wandered in sparse herds, drunk and yapping. Plus chicks dig Wilco, right?

We had some fun, though. Some guy yelled out “Rain down, motherfucker!” during the corresponding part of “Paranoid Android,” and while this would normally be somewhat upsetting Radiohead appeared in this context to be a band so popular and mundane that they weren’t even fun to think about anymore, and so the braying of this drunk, disappointed retard was both apropos and pretty funny. And we’d be critically remiss to not note the continued excellence of the Cool Kids, who (by their own admission, at set’s close) put on the tightest show of their staggeringly young career, and Kanye, who drank up the exhausted love of his adopted city (he’s from Atlanta) and sent it back in shockwaves of neon light.

But as good as these two performances were, the rest were sweltering, dusty, unhappy, rote, diseased run-throughs of cynically chosen songs. Girl Talk played the dumbest lines from rap songs over loops of indie rock tracks and got the crowd and response he deserved. Rage Against the Machine begged the fuckheads to whom they played to please let one another breathe; the fuckheads responded by throwing shit, and the cops mounted outside sighed and started shutting down sidewalks. What else did we see? What else didn’t we see? Who else even played? In this dreamy nightmare the Black Lips mugged for the camera and Lupe did a backflip and we slurped down whiskey and water with equal indifference and smoked cigarettes with wet fingers.

Though throttled and mildewing from our sickly cores and suffused with the callousness of the experience from the moment we entered, hopes and ideas of hopes melted with each passing hour within that hot and angry place. Things got worse as they went on, in other words, until Sunday could only be spent sneaking booze from the press tent to the normal people waiting for us on the other side and calmly killing feelings until Kanye arrived like a fluorescent god. When there are seven stages and seventy bands and 75,000 people funneled into a single spot, and when there are so few good bands playing that no clear decisions can or ought to be made about where to be or when, the most rational manner in which to exist is “in transit.” This, then, is how the weekend was spent for the vast majority of those who founds themselves within it. Waiting in line to go up the steps to traverse the thoroughfare near the fountain to wait by the line by the line to the bathroom to get a beer, and all this so they’d have something to do (drink the beer) while they waded through slow-moving cattle to wait in line to get a decent spot to wait for the band they wanted to see. And when they got through all that trouble, one beer inside of them and four hours of their lives lost, all they had to say for the experience was that they had seen G. Love live. Perhaps with his Special Sauce. Who knows.

Dom: But Clay, you taste-terrorist you, what about all those wonderful colors and glistening skyscrapers and the murmuring bustle of big city life? We were there in Grant Park, acting proper Chicago denizens by stomping all over its grass and picking the bark from what little trees it has, generally sullying its good nature, us dirty, beautiful, abusive kids with death wishes. But whatever, right, because we were taken completely, indulgently care of. Remember this?

You were having so much fun! That was a big sign!

I don’t even remember that because I was too busy getting taken care of!

Don’t be shy, I saw the grin on your face when you rewarded some loyal CMG/SPIN readers with two free tickets, care of General Motors, and they both said, at once, “Wowza! Thanks General Motors!” Remember when the hotter one wanted to blow one of us and wouldn’t tell us who! You were smiling so big that your teeth rattled like the privileged balls on that tambourine guy in Beck’s band!

And, oh fuck me, that pizza! In the press tent! Delicious stuff. But not as delicious as John Norris from MTV News. Let me tell everyone right now: He may be a free tattoo’s width away from turning 50, but he can still rock those frosted tips like no one’s business! Not even that ugly dude attached to a god-awful moustache in Gogol Bordello could command a camera like that pinnacle of rock journalism. Blam! Eat it, Kurt Loder!

Refreshing. As brought to you by Danny Masterson and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith! Tee-hee, I’m going to look like a lady in the safety of my own home!

Even though it was dangerous to exit the press area, we still had a chance to see Cadence Weapon and the Cool Kids at the BMI stage. Right, Clay? We had our hands up even when we weren’t pointing at anything.

After gazing dreamily at environmental pro/activist/composer Ben Gelen, we got a pair of well-made jeans to protect us from the harsh sun that we almost never saw because we almost never left the area sanctioned as comfortable by the people handing us trail mix bars and all the free water we could stomach! Gulp!

Holy shit! Radiohead! I’m sorry, dude, that I got a blurry picture, but I was just so fucking excited when fireworks were going off during “Fake Plastic Trees.” The band is so cool it was like they didn’t even know it was happening! Remember when I started jumping up and down during “Paranoid Android” and screaming, “Rain down, motherfucker!”? That was awesome!!!!!!!!! We shared the wickedest high-five ever!

Clay: But a quarter mile away in the Hard Rock Hotel many of the rest of the people who will be paid to tell the world about how the weekend was sat on a resplendent balcony amidst celebrities, drunk on Diddy and chewing ravioli and passing amongst their sad selves the rumor that Barack Obama was going to be introducting Kanye on Sunday. Of-fucking-course he wasn’t. Within that sweet café we were pampered and treated like gods and knew that the world wasn’t real, that journalism wasn’t real and that those were the guys from Human Giant over there. We knew that Ben Gelen wasn’t a musician or an environmentalist as all the signs we saw claimed but just a pair of cheekbones attached to scrap metal. The Eastpack café was Xanadu, a VIP oasis as it claimed but one the types of which no human with a soul should ever enter without running screaming that there was a place where the earth was flat and where on that disc no thing that seemed to be was.

Dom: And finally, within the paroxysmal throb of the Rage Against the Machine audience, as I managed somehow to keep my sandals on, as my legs were scoured by tennis shoe treads and mysteriously floating wool blankets, as my skull was crushed by a tossed bottle, Something (my soul) slammed imperiously into Nothing (Lollapalooza) and time stopped.

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