Jones, Bart, and I were on the fence about doing another Lollapalooza but we all knew that if it were the right line-up, and for one band in particular, then we'd probably do it. They announced the bands and there they were, and we said we'd do it, so we were in. We made arrangements, which then, after doing a few of those trips, we knew what we needed to do and were only booking flights there, and Jones took care of the hotel(s, as we switched halfway through) and we were set. We all got there Thursday night, Jones there on business, and we settled in, with drinks, getting our spirits and livers ready for the rest of the weekend. As for the festival, as it was a dudes' weekend, there was no end to drinking. Figure probably 1.5 Miller Lites for each of us for every band noted here, including, and often especially, and probably another one for each use of the word "wander". We might have gotten a (relatively) early start but our earliest act was The Neighbourhood and we got there in time and they were a good way to start the day. I'm not particularly a fan but the other two were, and I didn't find much beyond that song about the sweater, which is fairly atypical of the rest of their material. Also another time that I've gone to another city to see a band from L.A.; between acts was wandering to peek at some other bands: Emeil Sande was one but I don't remember a thing about them. Atlas Genius was another wander, and I recall seeing them on a line-up for a KROQ show but the only thing notable about them at that show is that there was an unreasonably large crowd for them in relation to the fairly small stage they were playing. And hard to find Jones and Bart among so many people. Brick + Mortar were okay, another two-piece though I can't see why anyone could get signed on the backs of DFA1979 10 years later; Ghost B.C. should have been in the line-up of every festival that summer (and nearly were). They had it all: old-fashioned, Satan-worshiping heavy metal, with a great flair for theatrics -- they have something even for festivals that don't have music. They play the kind of stuff that hasn't been around for a while, or at least stuff that isn't usually worth much paying attention to. We can look at it ironically now, especially with an aging alt-rock crowd, but that's some great head-banger stuff. Even better that they have a show for the stage, with the band dressed in priestly robes and the singer, all in full make-up, blessing the audience at some point. That he got around in a Pope hat is notable enough, though it made it easier that he could be immobile and sing preacher-chanting-like and not have to move very much. The visuals were enough, he didn't have to be active. It was a great show to see. I don't remember much of the music but that was almost beside the point; I wouldn't have thought Jones and Bart would be fans of Crystal Castles so it was probably me who wanted to check them out, even though they hadn't blown me away when I'd seen them before. There wasn't any reason to think they were extraordinary when they started, until Alice appeared and, looking like the biggest, highest/most-drunken mess I've ever seen, fairly literally dragged herself across the stage, up the microphone, arriving just an instant before she started singing/screaming. From there she was swept up by her own fury, shrieking and bounding about the stage with the blips and boops around her from the backing track (no telling if anyone was playing anything live) and eventually re-igniting something resembling a human being, if more a whirlwind than a person. One of the most frenzied performances of the weekend, if not the year. If I wasn't particularly a fan before I was then, if not for the music but for the performance, even though it couldn't be the same show they put on every time (at least not in that state, since she couldn't possibly survive long); Imagine Dragons were another band we had no interest in but we probably brushed by them. They probably played that "Radioactive" song that I always thought was "Ready to rock you"; then the main event: Queens of he Stone Age. The band we said would get us to go to the festival if they played. And they did not let us down. They tore into the set with a cool ferocity, just detached enough that they weren't seeking approval from the crowd but were glad to set them on fire. They could have played Like Clockwork... and that would have been fine, one of the rare albums that breeds more anticipation for new stuff than old stuff (which we'd seen numerous times already anyway), but they trotted out some old songs, even starting with one of their bigger songs, to ignite the crowd right off and to make the most of an unfairly abbreviated set time. At this point in their touring cycle they had played enough shows that they had worked out any rust but they weren't exhausted, so we got them at just the right time. They really burned it down, and made any effort from that weekend worth it, even for that one performance. Smashing, as always. As if they would ever let us down; all of us are Nine Inch Nails fan but they weren't the main attraction for us that time. We've already lived with them for so long and we just wanted them to continue the momentum that QOTSA had ignited. Trent started off with an empty stage and some new songs, building up to a set that was sparse but visually innovative and songs that we knew, but at that point it was rote. Not bad but we kept waiting for something explosive. The abbreviated time meant a condensed set, which was understandable, but a soggy middle of slower, atmospheric material that just made us bored and sleepy. It kept going, one dirge after another, and we kept waiting for the next song to pick it up, but it dragged on. He even did some stuff off The Fragile, so it wasn't like he was under an obligation to do all the slow songs off the new album. After a full day of great acts and the fury of QOTSA, we were let down. We kept edging toward the exit with each slow ramble until, just as we were almost gone, he broke out "Wish" and raced with rage toward a more fitting end. He almost redeemed himself but those songs mid-way were really a drag. We wouldn't expect the entire set to be like the last few songs but he could have paced it better. Trent might not have been phoning in but he could have used more advisement about the material to include (though he liked the performance enough to include some of the songs on a live EP). We officially moved on once he started in on "Hurt" and it was satisfying enough. But for the day, it really was about QOTSA and most anything but NIN. Then, in the evening, it was back to the hotel and, of course, more drinking.
We had planned in advance to skip Saturday. As far as the acts went it was the weakest day, and we wanted to give ourselves a day to do other stuff around the city. That included a Cubs game (or trying to get in, since we did not, as we were victims of fake tickets) and the most substantial drinking we'd done for the weekend (and that's saying something, compared to how much we drank at the festival) and the deep-dish pizza I get every time I'm in the city. At the show we didn't see Matt & Kim, Local Natives, the National, Haim (though I wasn't familiar with them at the time), the Postal Service (thank goodness), and Mumford & Sons, but those are all bands we already know, and I don't think we missed much.
I took my time getting in on Sunday (he hotel being across the street gave me the ability to move freely) but Jones and Bart headed in to see Jake Bugg, who they said was boring; we heard a bit of Alex Clare while we were waiting but there was no reason to pursue his stuff beyond that day; for us the big act of the day was Baroness. I admit I didn't have much interest, after not getting much out of them a few years before, but Jones and Bart were excited to see them, probably because they were the heaviest act on the bill for the day, maybe the only heavy act, and they seemed like a good aftermath to QOTSA from the other night, though in the middle of the blazing Sunday afternoon sun. And they were heavy, and loud, and more heavy. With a good, early buzz on, we banged our heads and rocked out. We might have been roasting in the sun and on the verge of sloppily drunk but they were the best act of the day, up there with what we saw on Friday. It was a shame that anyone had to follow them, and that was pretty much all of the acts for that day; after Baroness it was a come-down and a bit of a let-down, a lot of wandering, but more drinking and good times hanging out. Two Door Cinema probably had something to do with something, and Alt-J didn't sound as great as I'd been led to believe they were (though could be an acquired taste), but Vampire Weekend picked it up again. I can't say I ever got into their sound (a little too poppy for me, and their claim to African rhythms by critics always kind of perplexed me) but it was a breezy, sunny set that had a lot of people -- a lot of people, maybe more than there should have been -- on their feet, including us. Though we might have spent a lot of that time playing frisbee; I forgot that Beach House were there and that apparently we or I watched them for some amount of time. That probably sums up their set up; Jones and Bart are not Cure fans. I can understand that, though I can't relate, in probably the same way some can't relate to their music. They're not for everybody, especially for those two. But I always look forward to seeing Robert Smith & co., even if I forgot it at the time. I'm a fan, of course, but I'd seen them a good deal by that point. I felt like I'd already experienced their range of songs on CDs and live, as they play a whole lot of songs in their shows, which are usually upwards of three hours, and they're one of the better live bands around, if you're a fan. But even though I discovered them relatively late in their lifespan, I’d been to a number of their shows, with a lot of songs packed into each, and I figured I’d seen pretty much all there would be to see. This wasn’t planned to be a special show for obsessive fans, just another festival slot, and not even for new material (as if anyone would want any of that). I was just going along with the momentum because I was a fan and I was there. For them to impress me, they would have to take it a bit farther and it didn’t even occur to me what that could be. Little did I realize but the year was somewhere around the 20th anniversary of Wish, probably their most underrated album, if not one of the most underrated albums by anyone ever, and one that means a lot to me personally. That album was the start of me as a Cure fan. I pretty much knew only their radio singles by the end of high school but I needed CDs to fill out my first big stereo, my graduation gift, and I jumped in with that album, assuming it would be the thing to have since it was new, and since Rolling Stone gave it 4 stars. “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea” was the first song played by a stereo that got a whole lot of use throughout a lot of years. And from there I've always been close to that album, and from there I went forward to the crappy new stuff and backward to the stuff that is probably better but Wish always will have a place in my heart. It would be too much to ask that they would play the whole album at a festival but they did the next best thing, leaning toward tracks from it throughout their set. The casual fans might not realize they were favoring that album and the obsessive fans might have been poo-pooing it, but they still played surely enough singles and less-popular numbers from their catalog to satisfy the people in the crowd. Considering they only had a set-time of two hours, they had a lot of songs to pack in and every one would count. Maybe I’m making a lot out of a half-dozen songs played from Wish out of 26 total, but I’d like to think they were doing it on purpose. (They also played about as many as from Disintegration but that's expected.) Most of the main set was mid-career, the encore mostly early hits, and they eschewed anything from the last 20 years but for a few of the best tracks. That was fine with me. I was expecting just another Cure show and it turned out to be probably the best I’ve seen, based on the set-list but also just overall. It’s a shame Jones and Bart aren’t fans because they missed out. But the rest of the weekend made up for it. And they were probably drinking during the last set, for which I shortly joined them after I crossed the street from the park, back to the hotel, and down for another beer.
missed: On Friday it was Smith Westerns (conflict with Ghost), New Order (conflict with Queens -- easy choice, and they didn't play anything I haven't seen them do before), Frightened Rabbit (barely overlapped with Queens, and we were just waiting for NIN and they were just across the field but we still didn't bother), the Killers (because they're the Killers, so it would have been about any other act instead), and Lana Del Rey (who I didn't really know but she was hot stuff at the time. I would have been curious to see how hot); on Sunday it was Tegan and Sara (conflict with the end of Baroness), the Vaccines (conflict with us wandering around), Grizzly Bear (conflict with us half-watching Vampire Weekend), Phoenix (conflict with the Cure), Cat Power (ditto).
Queens of the Stone Age set-list:
"You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire"
"No One Knows"
"My God Is the Sun"
"Burn the Witch" (with drum solo)
"Sick, Sick, Sick"
"First It Giveth"
"The Vampyre of Time and Memory"
"If I Had a Tail"
"Little Sister"
"Make It Wit Chu"
"Smooth Sailing"
"I Sat by the Ocean"
"I Think I Lost My Headache"
"Go With the Flow"
"A Song for the Dead"
Nine Inch Nails set-list:
"Copy of A"
"Sanctified" (reworked version)
"Came Back Haunted"
"1,000,000"
"March of the Pigs"
"Piggy"
"The Frail"
"The Wretched"
"Terrible Lie"
"Closer" (w/ "The Only Time" breakdown)
"Gave Up"
"Help Me I Am in Hell"
"Me, I'm Not"
"Find My Way"
"What If We Could?"
"The Way Out Is Through"
"Wish"
"Survivalism"
"Only"
"The Hand That Feeds"
"Head Like a Hole"
"Hurt"
The Cure set-list:
"Plainsong"
"Pictures of You"
"Lullaby"
"High"
"The End of the World"
"Lovesong"
"In Between Days"
"Just Like Heaven"
"From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea"
"The Walk"
"Mint Car"
"Friday I'm in Love"
"Doing the Unstuck"
"Trust"
"Want"
"Fascination Street"
"The Hungry Ghost"
"Wrong Number"
"One Hundred Years"
"Disintegration"
"The Lovecats"
"The Caterpillar"
"Close to Me"
"Let's Go to Bed"
"Why Can't I Be You?"
"Boys Don't Cry"
Vampire Weekend set-list:
"Cousins"
"White Sky"
"Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"
"Diane Young"
"Step"
"Holiday"
"Unbelievers"
"Horchata"
"Everlasting Arms"
"A-Punk"
"Boston (Ladies of Cambridge)"
"Ya Hey"
"Campus"
"Oxford Comma"
"Giving Up the Gun"
"Hannah Hunt"
"One (Blake's Got a New Face)"
"Walcott"
Crystal Castles set-list:
"Love And Caring"/"Plague"
"Baptism"
"Suffocation"
"Wrath of God"
"Crimewave"
"Telepath"
"Alice Practice"
"Black Panther"
"Celestica"
"Vanished"/"Transgender"/"Untrust Us"/"Cryptocracy"
"Reckless"
"Not in Love" (Platinum Blonde cover)
Ghost B.C. set-list:
intro: "Masked Ball" (Jocelyn Pook song)
"Infestissumam"
"Per Aspera ad Inferi"
"Con Clavi Con Dio"
"Prime Mover"
"Secular Haze"
"Stand by Him"
"Satan Prayer"
"Year Zero"
"Ritual"
"Ghuleh"/"Zombie Queen"
"Monstrance Clock"
Baroness set-list:
"Take My Bones Away"
"March to the Sea"
"A Horse Called Golgotha"
"Green Theme"
"Swollen and Halo"
"Board Up the House"
"The Line Between"
The Neighborhood set-list:
"How"
"Female Robbery"
"Everybody's Watching Me (Uh Oh)"
"Wires"
"Flawless"
"Let It Go"
"W.D.Y.W.F.M.?"
"Alleyways"
"A Little Death"
"Afraid"
"Sweater Weather"
"Float"
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