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Lollapalooza Music Festival 2007
Lollapalooza. It may roll off the tongue like drunken banter but in its third year at Chicago’s Grant Park comes out pure auditory bliss. Its come-one-come-all attitude of last year was toned down a bit for the latest incarnation in favor of lesser known’s taking center stage going back to its roots of offering innovation to the loads piling into the square mile venue. Gone were last years dominating hip-hop presence in favor of UK upstarts and lightly speckled with proven performers.
Large acts did little to disappoint. Daft Punk created a fifty thousand strong rave on Friday night. Who cares if they are just pushing knobs behind those Thunderdome masks? It still sounds sexier than any offerings of its genre and continues to set the benchmark live. M.I.A spit mostly new tunes from her upcoming Kala while youthful Tokyo Police Club murdered Saturday morning drawing a huge crowd with their post-punk grit.
In the dreadful category rests acts like Amy Winehouse who appeared to use a teleprompter during her songs. An un-amused crowd left faster than Lindsay Lohan from rehab after the artist played her infamous song in favor of something, arguably anything else. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were a mixed bag of control. Sure Karen O was as punked out as ever, dawning leather and knit stockings but it felt for show while their sound was more refrained than in years past. Both Pete Yorn and Ben Harper were ‘meh’ at best despite Eddie Vedder’s appearance with the aforementioned Harper on stage. And why oh why must Cold War Kids continue to milk their two EP albums for yet another year?!
Then of course there is the heart of the event itself. A few years back it was a line in the sand that has quickly become a crack in the foundation. The aging acts that grew old on the fat of inflated record contracts seem to provide only a percentage of their talent at any given time during a performance. On the contrary, you have an emerging global talent of youth raised in an industry burned by their elder’s and a shrinking commerce purse due to retail price gouging and digital file sharing. Their contracts are small but by touring seemingly year around, they make up the difference. Therefore, maybe it’s the sense of want for acceptance that drives their performances to the next level of buzz. Regardless of its reasons, Lollapalooza was part torch pass and deflation device. Nothing seemed more awkwardly surreal than Eddie Vedder joining Southern rock outfits Kings of Leon onstage. It was the father of grunge-revival bedding the soul of rock resurgence – and it was remarkable. The air had electricity for five minutes where people could feel a real connection between the two formats, even if Vedder was only playing an asinine tambourine.
Before you retort with flames of ‘How can you compare…’, we’re only pointing out the sense of transference that most dedicated listeners look for when retiring one act for the next. Call it the Dead Phish Conundrum. Label it the Ford LaBeouf Relay. Sure Pearl Jam has air left in their sail; last year’s self titled album showed us such. But they are becoming few and far between. Fans are often times ravenously looking for something to keep them entertained until their favorite artist releases the bi-annual next. I don’t buy into listeners having a shorter attention span these days due to saturation or availability thanks in part to MySpace and file sharing. I as well as most spend just as much time celebrating aged music as we do searching for the next big thing. This is what makes Lollapalooza such a necessity in today’s market. It celebrates old and new on all stages big and small. It helps catapult upstart whispers of greater things like Los Campensinos or gives second chances to artists who should have already made it like Chicago native Rhymefest. It grasps a generation hell bent on musical consumption and throws as much at them as possible – sometimes to a maddening degree. For once, the listener gets fat from the sheer abundance of substance. With every mile we walked this weekend between stages, every crowd we jimmied through, and every artist that graced or pierced our ears, it was worth it. Lollapalooza is an amazing rebirth of indie and mainstream music. Here’s hoping that it stays as a destination event for years to come and doesn’t choke itself like the later years of Woodstock or Horde. For now, however, Perry Farrell’s baby is growing up with surprising grace and dignity. |
