Lollapalooza on Friday, looking north from backstage

by Justin Valmassoi

What many of you don’t know, mainly because I was not raised a braggart, is that I am actually a combination neurosurgeon and propulsion scientist (specifically, rocket propulsion). This UR writing gig is something I do to relieve the tension that such a combination can produce. A way to let off steam.

I began the three day ordeal/celebration/dance orgy that was Lollapalooza ’09 by biking down the lakeshore from my laboratory/medical facility/bachelor pad at Irving Park and Ravenswood to the southwest corner of Grant Park because my superhuman intellect deduced that it would both invigorate me on an admittedly hungover morning and avoid the hundreds of thousands of music lovers, industry personnel and fashionable hangers-on cluttering the CTA on their way to the same event.

As you, even with your limited or “average” intellect can imagine, the dual-pronged attack of pre-precipitatory humidity and a cloudless, sunny sky in conjunction with my tendency to bike exceedingly fast found me arriving at the designated media area looking more like I had attempted to swim the preceding ten miles. After checking in a sweat-sodden Chrome bag and acquainting myself with the snack/beverage area, I looked up to see a sky already going grey under gathering clouds.

Nature, it seems, has a well-developed sense of humor, so by the end of my first hour in the media tents organizing my various notebooks and recording devices, just as the gallon of perspiration was dissipating from my shirt, it dropped 20 degrees and started raining.

I spent the majority of Lollapalooza’s kickoff afternoon actively fighting pneumonia.

[This is all part of the “journalistic experience” and I am not complaining. I would like to state for the record that prevailing weather conditions prevented me from using my trusted pen and paper to record notes (I am very old and do not have an iPhone), so the following is reconstructed from whatever memories remain after three solid days of free booze.]

I wandered into the park during the first half of Hey Champ’s set, which was surprisingly entertaining and gathered a good number of grinning, dancing teenagers for being so early in the day and so wet underfoot. It was also my first experience with the oversized screens and on-site camera crews that helped to make so much of the weekend better/visible. After watching a couple hundred youngsters jump in place and flail their arms, I took a brief jaunt around the park to make sure my hand drawn map was accurate before returning for Gaslight Anthem. They were the only Friday band I was honestly looking forward to seeing and I wasn’t disappointed. It doesn’t matter how much of their appearance is carefully calculated, whether it’s posturing or just genuine Jersey, but hearing that particular blend of blue-collar Springsteen-influenced rock from a guy in a Social Distortion t-shirt flanked by a drummer and a bassist rocking the same “blue jeans and white t-shirts” combo he sings about just made me smile.

They played the better portion of their latest record to a crowd that seemed hardwired for singalongs despite the rain’s rather abrupt shift in intensity halfway through. The camera’s occasional panning of the crowd revealed what would turn out to be a weekend staple, the oft-forgotten mosh pit, which might have brought a smile from a band that obviously grew up with some punk records in their collections if it hadn’t broken out in the middle of a song about the death of singer Brian Fallon’s friend (‘The ’59 Sound’). For a band that rose to popularity rather quickly last year, they seemed completely unfazed by the size of the crowd and/or stage, deftly tearing through fan favorites (‘High Lonesome,’ ‘Great Expectations’) and throwing in a little interpolation of James Brown’s ‘It’s A Man’s World’ for good measure. It did a world of good for keeping my spirits up while my teeth chattered themselves to splinters (I’m kidding. All my teeth fell out years ago).

I retreated to the safety of the media tents where I remained, peering over the fence from the shelter and warmth of an umbrella and a cup of coffee at The Heartless Bastards as they diligently tried to win over a scattered crowd of rain-soaked fans and first-timers. While lead singer Erika Wennerstrom has one of the more impressive voices in modern rock, I’m not sure anyone knew or cared who they were. Also, as relative unknowns, their appeal hangs almost exclusively on Wennerstrom’s Janis Joplin wail, their stage personas falling into the category of “workmanlike” rather than “rock stars.” Still, it’s a hell of a voice and they did a perfectly good job considering the weather. I cannot stress enough how miserable the early afternoon rain made most people, and there was no shelter of any sort save for ponchos and umbrellas. Any bands performing before 4 o’clock were working at a disadvantage.

After an arduous, muddy trek to the North end of the park I caught a bit of Ben Folds, who graced us with his darling take on ‘Bitches Ain’t Shit’ amid a pretty heavy dose of tracks from his latest LP, Way to Normal. I am going to admit to you, because we are friends, that I have never heard Way to Normal, and was not particularly moved to purchase it after experiencing it live. It’s not to say the performance wasn’t good, or that I don’t like piano balladeering (I do), but I really haven’t been into Ben Folds since 1992 and I spent the majority of his set talking to a pretty lawyer from Tennessee and her equally pretty sister, where I learned that the Lolla powers-that-be thought charging $24 for a 20oz. plastic squeeze bottle of white wine was a good idea (it isn’t a good idea). Quite frankly, I find charging anything over common bar prices for food/beverages at a festival with $250 tickets to be mildly outrageous, but that’s why I am poor and Lollapalooza is rich. I raise an $8 beer to you, Lollapalooza powers-that-be. I hope you are reading this from your gold toilet on a laptop made of diamonds.

And then Fleet Foxes.

Honestly, I don’t know what to say about Fleet Foxes that hasn’t already been said to death. Ryan Pecknold’s beard. Harmonies. Gorgeous. Timeless yet modern. Seeing as they only have ten songs, it was no great shock to hear ‘Mykonos’ and ‘White Winter Hymnal,’ among (eight) others. I’m half kidding. They did perform a couple new songs, which, completely unsurprisingly, were gorgeous, and sounded timeless yet modern. And Ryan Pecknold has a lovely beard. And harmonies. You see my dilemma.

At this point I was soaking wet, 2/3 drunk, trying to decide between two lovely sisters and in dire need of a portable toilet. Thankfully, the white wine squeezebottlers provided a literal half-mile of them along the park’s western boundary. Despite this almost artful overabundance, the lines still looked like medieval hordes storming some short blue castle. I emerged from the tumult in time for The Decemberists, who did exactly what I was dreading and performed their latest rock opera concept record, The Hazards of Love, in its entirety. It’s here I want to pick a fight with the Decemberists (because The Decemberists are nerds, and bookworms, and I can totally smoke The Decemberists in a fight). I know that a band tends to perform their latest material when on tour, and I understand that if you pen a concept record you might be inclined to keep its conceptual boundaries intact, but if you are playing to a festival crowd of a couple thousand eager fans, throw us a bone from your red right ankle. Give us ’16 Military Wives’ or something, anything, from your arguably better past. Most people in my immediate vicinity were not digging the creepy white princess gal or drama school Karen O. lady while they performed their roles. They wanted the songs that propelled you to a main stage act in the first place, and one or two would have gone over like a speedball at celebrity rehab. Which isn’t to say your set wasn’t enjoyable. It was. I just wouldn’t have stood around in the rain for a full rock opera if I had known it was coming. Also, I am stronger than you and I’m going to push you into a locker in the hallway between classes. Nerds.

Keeping to the north end of things, I bounced back to the Playstation stage for the impeccably attired Andrew Bird, whose use of pedals and gadgets to loop various violin and percussion elements (and quite a bit of whistling) into chamber-pop song structures was impressive. Primarily a one-man show, you had to admire the chops it takes to keep a crowd of a few thousand entertained all by yourself. This is also where the indie kids had been hiding, an array of spectacles, sweaters and argyle radiating outward from the spinning double gramophone stage piece and swaying and sighing in unison. Knowing that the trek back to 2016 (the stage, not the future) was going to take at least 25 minutes, I had to cut Mr. Bird’s performance halfway through to get back to my teenage moody sex jam mainstays Depeche Mode.

Disappointing. It could have been the hypothermia, the beer, the incredibly epic battle against man and nature that is traversing the length of Grant Park during a festival or maybe just that it’s 2009 and Depeche Mode is old and less adept at working a crowd. Their choice of newer material was also a misstep, as their presence could only really be explained by a nostalgia vote, sadly unfulfilled. Marching through the gates, mud streaked and defeated, I chalked Friday up to a learning experience and wandered home in search of dry clothes before heading back down to afterparties and lawyer touching, hoping Saturday would be more well-rounded and dry.