Riot Fest, September 15-17, 2017 at Douglas Park in Chicago

It had been a few years since Seth & I had done a Chicago trip for Lollapalooza so we started to get the itch. Lolla, like Coachella, had started to go more toward pop acts, which wasn’t even a bad thing, just that the line-ups didn’t generally give us much reason to consider the trouble to do it. Those fests weren’t even for us anymore (since everyone gets older), but it didn’t mean there wasn’t a fest somewhere that could catch our attention and get us to go. It was Riot Fest that did the trick, and just as well that it was in Chicago, which had already proven a town we could get in and out of and around easily like we had times before. This wasn’t necessarily a festival for the older set, or all punk acts like it once was, but it was definitely more in the area of rock bands, which the other, bigger fests had mostly already moved on from, but certainly was up our alley. And this one having Queens Of The Stone Age was already half-way there (being usually our requisite to show up), not to mention the rest of a stellar bill, that went far further than it needed to. So we had the idea (originally including Bart but he had to bail) and made plans (all done over text messages, I realized later, evolving our means of communication to not even need a spoken conversation), and we were in. Planning such a trip these days isn’t too much an effort, and Seth came through on a deal for the hotel, as usual. There didn’t need to be a hitch at all, especially getting around. We even had the added bonus of a cadre of L.A. people making the trip, from which I got a great warm-up act the night before the festival started, and before Seth flew in,  hitting bars and keeping up an ongoing conversation about past concerts with Tony Pony (a brand-new friend from my drinking club at home but we quickly realized our kindred spirits) and Lingo, the best concert pals you could have that you don’t have to actually go to the concert with, since we never did catch up to them while at the fest. But we met up after, along with others, and at least one solid night of drinking and cavorting in Chicago. It’s a great town. The thing turned out to be as good a festival, on the whole, as Lolla, just one tier down from half of the biggest acts, for the most part, slightly less packed with people (and kids), and a little closer to the ground. The line-ups after this year were just as good (though no more QOTSA for a while, as evidenced by our not being there), but we couldn’t make it happen again. Though Seth (who said a few Lollas ago that he was done with weekend music fests), floated the idea of getting together for a festival somewhere every two years, even the dream trip of one in England. But if we had to go out to any of them, it would be difficult to get better than this one.

It’s never a surprise that the first day of the fest is our earliest day in, to keep up with our excitement and before other mornings are dominated by hangovers. We didn't have any particular bands to see, but it was easy enough to get there -- as much as going to Lolla, all on the El, then walking through a neighborhood to get to the park -- and admission was the usual line which took the usual drag of time, but making it easier, as usual, by getting there early and being on a weekday. Also a good summer day to walk around drinking, with cheap beers that weren’t cheap in coozies (and no confinements to beer gardens, Seth’s festival poison), but also the crushing realization that I could not keep up with matching Seth beer-for-beer, but no judgment about going at my own pace (which hopefully was at least 1 of mine for 2 of his) and his stories about out-drinking leagues of people, sometimes hearing some of them only once. The first band of the fest for us were Liars, who were the usual racket but the sound not as unpleasant as the cliche of the front-man thinking he’s edgy by wearing a dress. They don’t love you like we do as much anymore, man. And if I haven’t caught up with them after this many festivals I probably won’t, but they (or as much as we saw) were a good warm-up for what was in store; Saul WIlliams could have been a contender, and maybe a secret NIN-related surprise because of their past connection, but what we saw was just the guy spouting off on stage, most charitably called spoken word, which might have been okay but we wanted some music. “A riot is not a festival” became our catch-phrase for the weekend and it was a chuckle at the time. It became prescient for our times later in seeking social justice but the man was too far ahead of his time at the time, man; X were the real spirit of the festival, not just a band aging beyond the edge that punk rock once had, but still rocking out on stage with tight, hard songs not worn from doing this longer than most of the people in the audience had been alive (well, some of them, at least). Also great to see a band that means so much to our shared home environs get respect in another part of the world, though it surely wouldn’t have mattered because they would have put on a fierce show anyway; Action Bronson was just a dude and some canned music so we kept walking by; we got the Buzzcocks (possibly the most veteran band out there) and maybe they deserved more respect but we had to eat sometime; we usually have one band neither of us know so well that we take a chance on, since we’re generally already familiar with the rest of the bands we get around to out there, and maybe due to our modest expectations, if any at all, they turn out to be a high-light. Or we had a hole in the schedule that Death From Above fit into, and we only knew them from one album shorter than their time-slot, but we knew they would rock hard enough. And they did that, even with only two guys -- and the drummer singing, no less -- and made the best and funnest noise of probably the whole weekend. This was a pair going for broke, just putting it all out there and playing as fast and loud as they could and barely concerned about keeping it under control. I hadn’t bothered with the second album and almost not with them, but there was something there, even if it was only so they could transform their newer material into something live incendiary enough to fit with their older, now-classic stuff. If it wasn’t the spirit of punk it was at least rock as blistering as it gets, going like it was going to burn itself from the inside out. Then they left the stage a smoldering ruin and the rest of us wondering what the hell just happened, and if anyone else could dare come close to what and how they blasted through; Ministry could do well to get out to play festivals to hold on to any relevance they could claim, especially since they made a habit of disregarding any former selves as soon as they assumed every new identity, but it made it hard to expect that they were going to play anything we knew and, failing that, playing anything worth hearing. They even pulled off the look -- dirty gutter-punks with a polish between bone and techy -- but accepting that that was the concession of respecting their legend. As it was, their show was just a blast of noise and some presence but easy enough to disregard. We were glad we didn’t have to spend a whole evening to check it out; I would have never thought I would have seen New Order alongside Seth, who wouldn’t normally cotton to such throw-back European techno (as it might seem to him), but a festival offering was made clearly just to put us in the same place, hopefully with some appreciation. This might have been more out of respect of the punk or post-punk cred they had as Joy Division, but they were also a known and liked band enough to pull a crowd for the second-down headliner of the day (and maybe getting along with the main headliner, if they hadn’t already in the decades before). Yet it was expected to be the same set they’d rolled out lately, being predictable enough that each tour is roughly the same and I’d already seen the show from a few angles already. But their rendering of “Subculture” was singular enough to make the set stand out (or would have if I hadn’t taken the time to go find a toilet), and if it wasn’t just a run-through that was too similar to what we already knew. Lots of synths and sequencing, not quite enough punk, but surely they saved it for everybody by taking the Joy Division guise for the end, which got them the proper cred one way or another from the crowd, if they needed it or if they even cared; there could have been some excitement for Nine Inch Nails, especially after the stellar semi-reinvigoration at the FYF Fest, but we’d already seen a limp NIN show together, and it was pretty much that FYF Fest set-list again (which could only pull of being surprising and explosive the first time), and it was late and we just felt like getting out of there for the day, and we had already probably drank plenty because I don’t remember much of the set.

missed: the Cribs (another miss (even if I only went as far as their first album), but given to the wrong side in a conflict with Ministry), INVSN (a suggestion by our L.A. group, but we weren’t going to risk getting there too early), Tobacco (a track randomly heard might have been interesting), Skating Polly (their only cred being that they were good enough to open for L7 in L.A., but also too early).

Getting in Saturday a little later than the day before was no surprise. It probably would have been a good idea to see Bad Brains, but we might not have been able to grasp the scope of their legend, and the fact that they were on so early didn’t put them in the highest echelon of consideration. We didn’t know the whole story of the band, so this might not have even been the real version of them, or maybe just another act that had a name enough to be there because they had stuck around for so long or had the luck to survive. As it was, we got the last few songs and they were legit, as far as punk bands go, fast and loud, maybe too much for so early in the day; Danzig might have the same listing as Ministry the day before, an easy festival get and a minor obligation to see, but he did nothing for us. I didn’t care even when he somehow got on the radio back in the '90s, and the devil thing -- fabrication or not -- never moved me. I’ve respected him (he was even a nice guy when I met him at the comics store once) but his art doesn't take me anywhere. What we saw, just the first half, wasn’t great, and we didn’t stick around for anything we might recognize; Mike D might have been a high-point for the day, just for what he could have done. He could have gone anywhere. We wouldn’t have guessed he would get too deep in anything Beastie Boys-related, as that was a finished project the minute that MCA passed, but to make an appearance with something, presumably music-related, was worth checking out (to maybe check our heads). He didn’t come with a band prepared for an hour of music, just one DJ (and not Mixmaster Mike or Hurricane), and kept stalking the stage, with less energy than back in the day but he could still command a presence, for whatever he was going to do. He and the DJ led a light tour through hip-hop, playing out some familiar tracks from throughout the years, some recognizable, some surely his favorite cuts, and he jumped around a bit, throwing out rhymes and some stream-of-consciousness rattling-off of facts, and even a run through of a lot of “So Whatcha Want”. The energy came from the spontaneity of it, barely a performance in the traditional sense but something loose and off-the-cuff, since he knew he’d have enough of a crowd to get something going, and just running through what he liked and throwing it out to the audience. The DJ even had a sound-bite -- maybe activated by a button -- that he could cut off a track as soon as Mike D threw a signal (or just said to stop), which was a clever, if subtle, if necessary, technique. There wouldn’t be any reason to make a routine show out of it, but for one of the legendary Beastie Boys to show up, it was worth it to see what he felt like doing for an hour; Seth and I might have parted ways for a bit and I wandered over to At The Drive-In, who might have been a more exciting act if I hadn’t seen them before and been mildly let down when the art overcame the rock (which is always a tenuous balance for them). But this time rock took over, tearing into it as soon as they exploded on to the stage, and keeping it going for the couple songs I could stick around for, before meeting up with Seth again. It might have been a shame, not seeing the rest of the set, since it could have finally been what I liked most about the band. I even went back for more later but I couldn’t claim the continuity over the set and just assumed that I’d missed out this time; we wandered over to see Wu-Tang Clan, maybe just to say we’d seen them even if playing on the side-stage inferred that it might not have been the whole thing, but that stage was more crowded than it had been all weekend, making it baffling how they were booked over there, somehow not earning the main stage (but possibly speaking to how big all the acts they got were). As it was, it was a glimpse, from a distance across a huge crowd they pulled, possibly so far away that we didn’t get the music. From that maybe we could say we saw them, but it’s probably the farthest both of us can say we’ve gotten from a band while attempting to pass off that it was anything at all; finally it was QOTSA, the center of our weekend. This was the tour for Villains, which I had only heard once, in the hotel as we were getting ready for the fest, and it sounded fine to me, even with their shift to something dancey (and maybe, maybe-not so accessible). They’re a band that has always shifted their approaches around, if not their styles, and making something in a genre so unlike them is just the kind of unpredictability that could be expected of them, if never knowing where they would land. This show was fitting the new pieces with the old, rolling out some familiar stuff along with the new. Seth might have been a bit non-plussed, as he wasn’t as open to the new sound as I might have been, and by now we’ve both seen the band enough to know the show well. The songs we knew might not have had the same energy, with the band rolling them out for the umpteenth time, yet we’d probably see another festival where they’re playing because even when the soda isn’t as fizzy as it used to be -- or was now sometimes too fizzy -- we still can’t get enough. Of course, respect to stay to the end, then no reason to stick around after that.

missed: Peaches (too early for us; too hard to tell if we missed out when she got naked, since we haven’t bothered to see her enough to know if that’s a regular thing), Dead Cross (this might have been the band I most wanted to see, just to see what Patton was doing with his newest super-group, but again too early), the Regrettes (but a conflict with Mike D)

It’s no surprise that Sunday can be a challenge, so we got in late, despite whatever intentions. We might not even have been hung over, but we didn’t make it much of a priority to hurry in, and we knew we’d catch up on the bands. Sundays are often a bummer even in the best weeks, and it was the last full day of our trip and time together, and there might have been a grimy cloud of Midwestern humidity settled over the place that made it uncomfortable. So we wandered in a bit of a daze, maybe even slowing down on the drinking since we didn’t need to party as hard mid-way through the Lord’s day. We heard some of Pennywise, a staple of SoCal alt festivals, including a great set at the Inland Invasion, but here it was sounded like standard-issue old-school punk rock while we wandered; Dinosaur Jr. were Seth’s must-see for the day but they were a disappointment. They’re capable of a sharp, full-force set but here it was mushy and a lot of obscurities that made it seem like they were trying to challenge anyone who wasn’t already a fan. Not that we needed the relative hits (that hadn’t included Lou), but it was a messy set of just a bunch of sound, which included a lot of J. scorching on a guitar but not offering much in the way of songs to pull us through the dismal afternoon; that left a stretch of time which we might say was just drinking and wandering until the headliners. For all the concerts you've seen I've been to, I’ve never been one for mosh pits. I’ve never participated in one (at least willingly) and for the times when I had to get close to one, sometimes just on the edge and obligated to shove people back in when they pass, to get closer to the stage in the early years when there was value in that, even when I was young enough to handle it and eventually choosing just to stay out, even if that meant hanging at the very back of the venue (which was better than essentially being in a fight), and haven't gotten much more physically capable of being able to withstand one as I got older. And yet we were there and it was a punk rock festival and with a rowdy crowd for Prophets of Rage, being in the pit just seemed the thing to do. So we positioned early, dismissing whatever band was on before but getting up as close to the rail as we could. Predictably it was a lot of Rage Against The Machine fans, who would have played just as well there (though a little more inciteful to action, which might have been taken to mean beating your mosh-pit neighbor in the face). Luckily it was mostly a lot of over-aged lugs like us, no one who wanted to get rough or get roughed-up, just a lot of sweaty bodies pressing against each other and jumping around, so it was ideal company for being a hard rock pit that also didn’t need to move. We got separated but that's a given being mixed in with so many bodies, and it was just as enjoyable. I never cared for Cypress Hill for B-Real, but I could be down with Chuck D, and blended with 3/4 of Rage, it was a rah-rah-rock show that moved and rocked hard, and not too dangerous for only getting an hour (not long enough to do any lasting damage or too short to leave too much leftover energy), into which they also packed some of their previous bands’ hits. The new stuff was still too new, being before their album was out, but it was the familiar rap-rock shtick they'd already pioneered and with the people on the stage it wasn’t hard to figure out or get into, if you wanted to get sweaty and jump around a lot; apparently it was a big deal that Jawbreaker were there, after having broken up years before. I only knew them from a scant few tracks on samplers from the ‘90s, though I asked around and got astonished reactions that they were back together and doing the show and that I was going. That was even in California, before getting to Chicago and finding out that they could pull a headline slot at a big festival because that’s their hometown. Still, there had to have been some value for them to pull that kind of crowd anywhere so I wanted to give them a chance, but what was surely beyond caffeinated punk rock from a couple decades before, it didn’t sound like much to me. There was something to dig into when getting some familiarity, and I eventually got marginally into them when I continued to explore the stuff I picked up later (which, as far as I could tell, was all of it, even though it all stood up as one mass of music rather than particular albums), but at the time, after a long day capping a long weekend away, I was good to leave them. There’s also something to be said for moving out before the headliner is done, to beat the traffic and bottlenecks (having no luck with those the previous nights, if not at all festivals); so we ended with Andrew W.K., dialed down in stature on the smallest, furthest stage, but ready to party hard, as if he was made for anything else. We couldn’t get it together to party on the level that he was (and always is) ready for, but we could take it in with some easy head-bobblng across the clearing. He seems to pop up wherever he's needed, maybe even beyond festivals, so we didn’t put too much into getting a lot out of him. We didn’t see anything wrong with catching that latter half of his set then taking off. Overall we could finally say we partied and got our fill from the weekend (though we didn’t go directly back to the hotel. We wandered downtown looking for a 24-hour place to get a bite to eat and ended up in a high-end all-night eatery with a great bar and a rough-looking guy who turned out to be an airplane steward who wanted to buy us dinner for hanging out with him. There might have been more to that story but we were good to be done there).

missed: Beach Slang (from Matt's T-shirt, which could have been enough to check them out), That Dog (but I'd already seen them recently), the Orwells (I discovered I had a random track by them that sounded pretty good on the sampler iPod, something not too far form Local H (a high compliment from us (though an album I got from them later didn’t hold up as well)); we got to talking to some older folks going in early in the day who turned out to be their parents, but we’d already missed them); the Mighty Mighty Bosstones (one of the acts we would have seen since we never had and it had been a while since they had been gone, but it would have been an effort to get in that early), Cap'n Jazz (who were pretty good at FYF), Built To Spill (a band everyone seems to go nuts about but have never had reason to get into my orbit), TV on the Radio (conflict with Dinosaur but I’d seen them enough to be good with missing them), Gwar (near-miss, but conflict with Prophets, which could have been the wrong decision, since it’s hard to say when we would have had any other opportunity to see them (when we’d already seen Rage plenty)), M.I.A. (same conflict but I knew her well enough and her newer stuff was still a little obtuse to me), Paramore (I gave them a chance years before but I left them as a wanna-be punk band with a cute but standard singer and too safe to be moving. Though they were touring for After Laughter, which turned out to be a pretty good album, so this was a bit of a regret (especially since I never would bother to attempt to see them anywhere else, and since it would have been an easy option to pop over. But oh well. Sometimes you miss things at festivals. There will be others).

Queens of the Stone Age's set-list:

"You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire"

"Feel Good Hit of the Summer"

"Feet Don't Fail Me"

"The Way You Used to Do"

"My God Is the Sun"

"Smooth Sailing"

"The Evil Has Landed"

"No One Knows"

"Make It Wit Chu"

"Domesticated Animals"

"If I Had a Tail"

"Little Sister"

"Go With the Flow"

"A Song for the Dead"

New Order's set-list:

"Singularity"

"Disorder" (Joy Division)

"Ultraviolence" (stopped and restarted)

"Your Silent Face"

"Sub-Culture"

"Bizarre Love Triangle"

"Plastic"

"True Faith"

"Blue Monday"

"Temptation"

"Love Will Tear Us Apart" (Joy Division)

Prophets of Rages' set-list:

"Prophets of Rage" (Public Enemy)

"Testify" (Rage Against the Machine)

"Take the Power Back" (Rage Against the Machine)

"Living on the 110"

"Hail to the Chief"

"Bullet in the Head" (Rage Against the Machine)

"Hand on the Pump"/"Can't Truss It"/"Insane in the Brain"/"Bring the Noise"/"Jump Around"

"Sleep Now in the Fire" (Rage Against the Machine)

"Cochise" (Audioslave) (snippet)

"Like a Stone" (Audioslave) (instrumental with crowd singing)

"How I Could Just Kill a Man" (Cypress Hill)

"Bulls on Parade" (Rage Against the Machine)

"Killing in the Name" (Rage Against the Machine)

Danzig's set-list:

"Godless"

"Anything"

"Left Hand Black"

"How the Gods Kill"

"Dirty Black Summer"

"Heart of the Devil"

"Do You Wear the Mark"

"Bodies"

"When the Dying Calls"

"Twist of Cain"

"Devil on Hwy 9"

"Her Black Wings"

"Mother"

Ministry's set-list:

"Psalm 69"

"Punch in the Face"

"Antifa"

"Rio Grande Blood"

"Señor Peligro"

"LiesLiesLies"

"Waiting"

"Bad Blood"

"N.W.O."

"Just One Fix"

"Thieves"

"So What"

Dinosaur Jr.'s set-list:

"Just Like Heaven" (The Cure cover)

"Training Ground" (Deep Wound cover)

"Little Fury Things"

"Kracked"

"Sludgefeast"

"The Lung"

"Raisans"

"Tarpit"

"In a Jar"

"Lose"

"Poledo"

"The Wagon"

"Goin Down"

"Feel the Pain"

"Freak Scene"

"Chunks" (Last Rights cover)

Death From Above's set-list:

"Right On, Frankenstein!"

"Always On"

"Turn It Out"

"Holy Books"

"Virgins"

"Freeze Me"

"You're a Woman, I'm a Machine"

"Going Steady"

"Black History Month"

"Trainwreck 1979"

"Little Girl"

"White Is Red"

"Romantic Rights"

"Caught Up"

"Government Trash"

"The Physical World

X's set-list:

"Beyond and Back"

"In This House That I Call Home"

"We're Desperate"

"It's Who You Know"

"Because I Do"

"The New World"

"True Love""

"Dancing With Tears in My Eyes" (Regent Club Orchestra cover)

"The World's a Mess, It's in My Kiss"

"The Hungry Wolf"

"Year 1"

"Los Angeles"

"Your Phone's Off the Hook, But You're Not"

"Johny Hit and Run Paulene"

"Motel Room in My Bed"

"Soul Kitchen (The Doors cover)"

Coachella, April 18-20 in Indio

After missing Coachella ‘13, we figured we were done with the festival, for various reasons (chief among them financial -- for that much money we could go on a proper vacation, and we're adults now), and we were cool with that.  The biggest thing that could get us to reconsider it for another year, we knew, was if they whipped out a phenomenal line-up, one beyond what we could expect, something maybe even more amazing than we could ask for, which doesn’t seem completely impossible considering what they’ve come up with in years past but it would have to go some distance.  For me, it was mostly about one group, a band I had been slavering to see even before the first Coachella and had broken up well before then.  Then the announcement that they were going to be there in ‘15, something that had been hinted vaguely at but the line-up revelation being the first actual confirmation.  It didn’t hurt that the rest of the line-up was incredibly impressive (and included a number of the bands from my first fake Coachella line-up, being the guide to bands I had never seen, were favorites when I’ve seen them, and wanted to reunite).  There was no way we couldn’t go.  The rest of the kids were down for it, I made the hotel reservation (the day the line-up came out) and everyone got their tickets, so we were all-in.  We had our traditional Sizzler dinner the night before on our way out, got everyone together -- us, Vanessa, Noa, Rachel, Jen, and Dave, having his very first Coachella weekend, and the whole thing went off without a hitch, a fitting end to what we thought strongly would be our last Coachella.  To top it off, on our way in the first day, our carpoolchella-outfitted truck got spotted by the roving agents giving out prizes for carpooling in and we, with Vanessa and Dave, won VIP tickets.  We would have been fine without them but it was a nice touch for the weekend, with a relatively uncrowded place to rest, shorter lines for food and drinks, and, most of all, the Samsung tent, which we had access to since I had a Samsung phone, and that gave us a rest area with AC, lockers to leave my phone to recharge, more drinks, a concierge who helped me with some problems with my phone I was having, Carla got her hair braided, and they even gave us a $10 voucher we could use at any of the food-trucks or bars around there.  Membership has its privileges.  I liked the phone anyway.  We were in there some of the time, mostly because we could, but to see the bands it was best to be out and about.  Friday is the day we’re most likely get to in early, since we’re excited and full of energy, and since, as we’ve learned, there’s a mass bottle-neck to enter as the day goes on, with so many people coming out from L.A. at the same time.  So we were there early enough to see some of Preatures, who we found out are Australian, heard some of Wye Oak, not to hear from them again, some of Goat, which were apparently good enough while we were having drinks, and ZZ Ward, who actually wasn’t bad, with a boogie-bar-band going on, with some nice hips (the only other thing I knew about her was her image on a tin of mints I got from somewhere at some point, a promotional thing I didn't pay much attention to except for being some pretty good mints), then Grouplove a bit later from the VIP area, who are probably a fine band, but I couldn’t find much concern, even though, or maybe because, they’re local.  It was a good warm-up to get into the day and sunshine and groove.  The crash over the next day or two would happen when it happened; the first band we were there for were Dum Dum Girls, who I’d started getting into just recently.  They’d been around for a while already so I had to catch up, and I still wasn’t as deep into them, but a sturdy set there proved they were a good band to stay with.  I knew there was something about their music that drew me in a little more, maybe something that wasn’t captured so much live, and it was shortly after that that I discovered they were produced (including their newest, Too True) by Sune Rose Wagner, of my beloved Raveonettes, and that was enough of a connection for me.  It also doesn’t hurt when your mysterious and dark lead singer performs with black tape Xs over her nipples under a sheer, black top.  They don’t need to keep a gothy image and it might be a bit much to give out, but a drop of overt sexiness can be a nice bit of spice; again, a whole lot of it was all about the line-up.  There were so many bands I had taken as my own, it would have been ridiculous to not have gone.  I’d seen a number of them a number of times, and maybe more toward their peaks, but to see them all there together in one weekend, mixed together, in the here-and-now, the updated versions to show they were still pushing on (and relevant enough to play the festival), was a singular delight.  It wasn’t until we got out there and Carla pointed out that, even beyond a number of bands that were reuniting, which Coachella does well to pull, it was a whole lot from the ‘90s.  Maybe it was just being retro, and we were done with the whole '80s thing by then anyway.  It worked for us.  It was mildly surprising to see the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion in the line-up.  It almost seemed like a reward for them to have been there at the beginning (even if they weren’t actually at the very first Coachella -- they were supposed to be, and were even on some of the T-shirts, but ultimately weren’t, for whatever reason) and back again, with whatever happened to them in between, and not only were they still standing but they rocked as hard and as loud as they ever have, maybe moreso, earning that place on the line-up as much as anyway, not needing to actually rely on any retro thing and making anyone wonder how they could ever not be asked to appear.  They don’t really have anything else to prove but they played like their lives depended on it.  That’s how they played their best shows.  They tore into the material, not bothering with playing what everyone knew (which wasn't much in the first place) or shying away from new stuff (from Meat & Bone, as appropriate as anything they've done), just blasting through the set, burning it down, then starting the next song before wasting even a second.  The band still looks like they did 20-something years ago and that’s all they needed to round it out.  Spencer doesn’t let you wonder if leather pants are still in style or how hot he must be on stage in them, but maybe he'd give you a whiff of his pant-leg, baby.  It must have sucked for the bands on the bigger stages to be blown away but these veterans on the under-card.  No one recorded the set-list because to witness it was to be blown away by it; the Afghan Whigs were another surprise and another '90s reunion, even though we'd already seen them (twice) since they came back.  To have them in the mix would have been significant enough but we also knew they couldn't not put on a blazing set, especially a compact one that would go right for the jugular.  And they did.  They had enough confidence to fit in new material (from Do to the Beast) as half their set, that day not bothering with relative hits they managed to get on the radio (i.e. "Debonair") or usual set staples that are their best songs (i.e., "What Jail Is Like"), just burning through a set like they would have 20 years ago.  It was good enough that it wasn't even a bother that they ended 10 minutes early (as that stage seemed to be off all day).  Dulli once said to my face that he wouldn't play Coachella (because it was too hot).  He also said in that same conversation that the 'Whigs wouldn't get back together, but I had no problem at all that both of those became false; I was going on about how the line-up was the biggest deciding factor in us going that year, and it was, but I would have been there, on my own if I had to, just to see the Replacements.  It had been way too long waiting for them to get back together, and the rumors every year and Paul’s mediocre solo albums and seeing Tommy paying the bills with Guns N’ Roses, that it was agonizing waiting for it.  I told Carla on our first date that if they played Coachella that I would be there.  And so we were.  Now, I got on the ‘Mats train late -- right around when they broke up if I recall, and with their last two albums, which the general consensus says are their worst (whether I admit that or not, there’s still a very special place in my heart for them).  So all this time I’ve been patient about their getting back to together, for the chance to see them that I missed before, and thinking that they might never do it (though the Pixies proved that if any band could ever possibly get back together, it would likely eventually happen).  For all that I’d heard and read about their live shows for years I couldn’t know what to expect but I didn’t care.  Just to see them up on stage again, to hear at least a few of those songs, would be enough for me.  It could be a great show or they could play it drunk -- magic or a shambles, maybe decided as they stepped on stage, just like back in the day.  I’d read about their show there the weekend before, that it was sparsely attended and that they played a turgid set.  Well, it wouldn’t be a surprise.  It’d been quite a while, and no one had gotten any younger.  Could it have been too long?  Could they have missed the mark?  Maybe.  But I didn’t care.  I just wanted that one show.  Appropriately, I had drinks before, getting to just the right level of dippy-headed inebriation before they went on (maybe like them), and clawing our way to as close to the stage as we could get (and somehow digging the other kids from back in the crowd up with us).  And then they were up there.  In front of us.  And they tore into it.  They stuck to the older stuff, wisely if they knew their fans, with a few newer cuts but very purposely not a lot.  They started as a bar-band so putting together a set-list would be some kind of poison, but it’s not like they weren’t loose even on their tightest nights.  Even rolling out “Another Girl Another Planet,” a B-side cover rare on its own, even rarer to play (and the song I’d had in my head for days up to then).  If there was something that didn’t work the weekend before, it wasn't on evidence that night.  They could have done the whole thing like that but then they brought out Billy Joe Armstrong.  I’d probably be more excited to see him with the Replacements, his gods as much as ours, than with Green Day.  He was up there for only the few songs that they’d practiced but Paul encouraged him to stay.  Paul asked, “What do you want to play?”  Billy Joe shrugged.  Paul suggested a song, then Billy Joe said he didn’t know how to play it.  “Neither do we!”, Paul said.  Typically, classically Replacements.  Josh Freese, a brilliant pick for a pinch-hit drummer, kept everything on track with a strong spine while the guitarist (obviously not Bob or Slim) followed the others, and somehow it all fit together (as well as it could for such a shambolic band).  Paul spent most of the set on his back on a couch near the back of the stage, which could have been interpreted as him just being an old guy or pass-out drunk (or both), all of which would be appropriate.  It turned out that he was having back problems, which is a lot less fun than the other possibilities, but the fact that they clearly weren’t trying too hard to make too much of it was also typical.  All around it was just what anyone could have expected -- sometimes better than could be predicted but not in the way anyone guessed it would be.  We suspected they were going to stick around for a while longer, since they went to the trouble to get all this together in the first place, but their doing that show then and there in front of the world again was a declaration that they'd returned, maybe for the only other time, to finally put the rumors to rest and show that they could create magic out of chaos once again.  They weren't going to settle for a standard set and it was a highlight for the weekend, not just for me (though it was also a high-light for my entire year) but surely for anyone else with the taste (and age) to know that they could be as amazing as their legend had it; if we saw the beginning of the Knife, it was lost to me because I was in a post-Replacements daze and just couldn’t comprehend much after that; Outkast would have been a total high-point in any other line-up on any other day.  Here they were just the headlining band, and something we were kinda over by the time they got up there.  I’ve loved what albums of theirs I've had but they’re in a class by themselves live, or at least they used to be.  They were still great but they weren’t competing for attention being before other bands and really getting it out like they used to.  Seeing them years ago, they were one of the most amazing bands I’d ever seen for getting a crowd going and punching out a great show.  That night they already had the biggest slot and they could do what they want, including just gliding through a show instead of having to prove themselves, and to a much bigger crowd than they'd been in front of back in the day.  It was because of popular demand that they came back, and we thank them for it.  But they became just the headline band, as they were doing for that all-festival tour, cashing in on the dues they’d paid and giving it to the crowd together (more for getting Andre 3000 out) one more time.  They at least had the songs to carry them, even if they had no concern for new stuff, having enough confidence in their set to pull out “Hey Ya!” only halfway through, and that’s when we were leaving for the day.

missed: MS MR (a festival staple for a while and I'd never really seen them; conflict with Dum Dum Girls); Haim (conflict with JSBX, but we didn’t miss them much because they’re local (like, really local) and we knew we’d see them again before long); AFI (usually not on my radar but still great memories of their Lollapalooza set a few years before); Bastille (we decided to be an optimist about it); Kate Nash (too close to the 'Whigs but it’s good to see she’s still around and relevant enough to be playing a big American festival (I hadn’t kept up with her after Made of Bricks); Neko Case (heart-breaking to miss her but a conflict with the 'Whigs); Woodkid (conflict with the ‘Mats); Bryan Ferry (conflict with the ‘Mats, which was a real bummer because we probably wouldn’t get a chance to see him again, and he still does a healthy dose of Roxy Music stuff); Girl Talk (if you’re not on drugs and you’ve already seen him play once, you’re kinda over it); the Cult (another bummer to miss since it’s a band we hadn’t seen before and might not go out of our way to see again).

After Friday’s cornucopia of bands, peaking with the Replacements, Saturday could only be a lower level, even if on any other bill it would have been a high-point.  We got in about mid-day, not being in a rush but with a few acts in mind to see.  Since we entered by the main stage it was hard to avoid Cage the Elephant, and that was one of the big acts Noa was there for.  I always forget that I like them, mostly because it’s not enough for me to track down their albums, but I’ve enjoyed them live.  This was a lot like any other time I’ve seen them at a festival, though it was still fine and energetic; Bombay Bicycle Club is one of Carla’s bands, and being that they’re a poppy but solid band from England, you’d think I’d be all into them but by that time they were just another band in the mid-size tent.  Nothing wrong with them, and it was probably a great set for them, and Carla enjoyed it, but it wasn’t much for me, especially since I’d seen them do a full show already; Julian Casablanca’s set from a few years ago was a high point for me then but this time it seemed like a token appearance at best, a nuisance at worst.  The solo album he was touring on hadn’t grabbed me and even if he did some Strokes cuts it would have felt like he was desperate to offer anything the crowd would be into or just assuming he was automatically in their good graces.  It's apparent that the people love him for his original band.  For us it was just a set we wandered through after our lunch in the VIP garden (a reason to get one of those passes on its own) on the way to the next act; out next stop was the beer garden to the side of the main stage, so Kid Cudi’s set was mostly secondary to us drinking.  We saw just the end and he sure put a lot of passion into it but it mostly passed through us, except when he did “Pursuit of Happiness” which we knew only because of Lissie; we went with the kids over to Capital Cities but I knew it wasn’t for me.  I was already gone by the time they got into it but everyone said later that they were really great.  Maybe they were; if we saw Warpaint, it was only for the briefest bit at the end.  As much as we love them, we didn’t sweat missing them since we’d seen them and we knew they'd be around again.  They were a summer festival staple band and they got around.  They’re more like Haim in certain ways than not; MGMT were also festival whores, a band that kept showing up more than they didn’t, it seemed.  I made an effort at the beginning and they didn’t catch, and I knew trying harder wasn’t going to pay off.  As it was, we could enjoy them at a show, if we were in the lounge with a drink in hand, then forget a few minutes later that they’d even played; Lorde had been a hard sell for me -- I never did warm up to “Royals”, but after all the hype I checked out the album and really dug it, more as an album than as singles.  Even still, it wasn't enough to fight for a close spot to see her on the second stage, so we saw the first bit of her from a distance, enough to say I’ve seen her in case she has the ability to be something enough to seek out later on; I’m rarely drawn to DJs playing the festival but some years ago when I wandered by Fatboy Slim playing I saw one of the most astounding feats of live music-cutting and -mixing that I may ever witness in my life.  Enough to put him on the list to see again, and he had the longevity to make it back (even if that amount was big only anywhere but the States).  I made my way over to the big DJ tent to catch some of his set, to see if it was something I needed to see the rest of, but by that time of the evening the place was packed and chaotic, the visuals loud and messy and confusing, and who knows if he was even mixing live like a DJ or just letting music play, or if that music was even worth listening to.  I saw that it was just too much for me, fairly typical for the Sahara Tent, and we moved on; the Pixies playing should have been a big deal.  A really big deal, for me.  They weren’t announced initially and added only when the set-times were released, and even then it didn’t feel like much of a surprise.  The line-up was already packed so it didn’t contribute much, and they had gotten around so much by then that the only surprise was that they hadn’t played every year since they did the first time, 10 years ago, which we already had seen, both Carla & I separately, and on top of how many other times we had seen them, they became just another band out there.  The only real reason to see them would have been to hear any new material, which we already knew was not much worth the effort, or to see Paz playing bass, which was welcome but not enough to balance not seeing Kim there.  Packing out the mid-size tent almost made up for not scoring a spot on the main stage -- a bummer because they would have deserved it more if it was all old stuff they were playing, if they hadn’t already done that show.  As it was, we saw the first half of them out of some kind of obligation then scurried off to the next act that we were actually excited about.  Side-note: At one point Frank Black was entering the VIP area just as we were so I said hello and thanked him for playing and shook his hand and he dismissed me as usual; Queens of the Stone Ages’ ...Like Clockwork was my album of the year so it was good to be able to see them play from it later in that tour, when I was more familiar with it than at the beginning, at Lollapalooza.  They tore through it, along with other great stuff, and more relaxed this time with having nothing more to prove (as if they ever did).  That was the high point for Carla, always meeting her expectations if not exceeding them, and they delivered, even though we had no doubt; after that could have been all extra, but it was still early.  We knew Pharrell’s set was going to be big, and you probably read about his guest-stars in an article more informed and more aware of pop music than this one.  We hung around to hear a few of the hits, songs we knew even though they were nowhere in our music collections, and maybe even knew we missed what was probably one of the most electric and electric sets of the weekend (and one perplexingly confined to the side stage).  But there was other stuff to see; Pet Shop Boys were another big attraction for me.  I’ve already gone on about seeing them, and being familiar with them I knew how great they could be live.  Even though probably every person over 25 knew who they were, their set, in the mid-size tent, was nearly empty (relatively).  It was just the two of them, as usual, along with a pair of dancers wearing mildly-Satanic-looking cattle skulls, and they rolled out a lot of the hits, even when those weren’t always hits in the U.S.  The music was good, the presentation was fine, the vibe was sexy and fun, but maybe it was the lack of an audience, and that they were aware of the size of it, or the fact that they’re used to a crowd turning the place into a wet discotech that they just didn’t bring much energy.  They usually slide through a set without a huge amount of effort, leaving the dancers to put out most of the physicality, but that wasn’t the best play for the place.  They had little to prove, and maybe they played just to show they’re still relevant, and even if their material was still great, it just wasn’t the place for it.  Maybe they could have done better in the DJ tent with kids so E-ed out of their minds that they’d dance to whatever, whether they could appreciate it or not.  It could have been not being able to fully appreciate them because of an overflow of acts that were great for other reasons, or because they just didn’t bring as good a show as they could have, or because it was getting late and we wanted to be able to get out before the mass exodus of the night, but we left halfway through and didn’t much regret missing the rest.

missed: White Lies (it was a surprise they could still pull a festival slot but I wasn’t so concerned with them after their first album, leaving it in a place where I could enjoy it without having to connect it with anything else they did after); Chvrches (we weren’t familiar with them but they had a lot of buzz at that moment); Washed Out (probably couldn’t top what we’d seen of them before); Foster the People (probably the only time we would make an effort to see them.  But didn’t want to badly enough to have any regret for not having done it); Sleigh Bells (from an impressive list of bands that we missed, they just happened to stack so many of them on top of each other later in the day and sacrifices had to be made); Muse (like we were going to bother anyway.  The fact that they got them to do the festival -- yet again -- just seems like they couldn’t get another headliner and these guys, not currently on a tour, had the weekend open.  Not very adventurous but probably great for their fans); Skrillex (and I’m not sure why we even would have considered it.  It might have been interesting to see how his show -- whatever that is -- has changed since he’s gotten big but we weren’t going to make the effort).

As usual, Sunday was a late day going in, enough that our first act of the day was Neutral Milk Hotel, one of the big pulls for the festivals.  I knew how legendary they were since their heyday in the ‘90s yet I never found my way to them.  I know that I had missed that one since their set did nothing for me.  Surely an acquired taste like so many of my favorite bands but at that time, going in cold, barely even knowing what genre or sub-genre they subscribed to, the set just went through me.  I didn’t even remember that we had seen the entire thing but apparently we did; we saw the second half of Little Dragon.  Another one that didn’t leave an impression since I don’t remember seeing them.  But it had been a long weekend; for everyone else, Beck was the big act of the day.  Nearly for me too.  Even since the beginning I couldn’t say that I was a huge Beck fan, though I still managed to get every album he put out and kept them, even if I didn’t always hold them as dearly as any other artist I kept up with.  But part of the thrill of being a fan of his, to whatever degree, is following his various mutations and being there when he reached another high.  His newest, Morning Phase, was billed as a new Sea Change, but I liked the new one more than that older one.  And as difficult as it would have been to pull off any version of such a dour album, he brought it.  With a truncated set he probably left off more of the newer stuff than he had been playing, but he stuck with the gems, not always his best-known stuff but what was working with that band, in that context.  The whole thing would have been fine but he pulled out a secret weapon, the near-forgotten “Debra,” buried even since his first (and the first) Coachella festival.  Maybe it would have worked in any other set-list along the way, maybe even on the Sea Change tour if he wanted to get cheeky of a night, but that he had it there that night helped make the whole thing.  He might even have coasted through the rendition (which, as it’s so laid-back anyway, might have made it another version) but it was a high point.  If they did a CD of highlights from the weekend, one song from each artist, that one would have opened the album.  Beck did it again.  Then I left before the last song because I had my personal highlight for the day, if not the entire festival that didn’t include the Replacements; Motörhead isn’t a band you’d think I’d be into, but it’s possible you could say the same thing about most of their fans.  Cousin Jason introduced Brian and me to them somewhere in high school as something of a novelty, something that we would only marvel at and maybe make a joke from our ignorance.  Biker-metal was a lot closer to what Brian had ever listened to and especially as I was going through various alt- and British- and pop-phases, it wasn’t anything that I ever thought to listen very seriously or non-ironically.  That wasn’t fair but I didn’t know any better.  It was only in getting another stack of CDs from Columbia House and The Best of Motörhead was just another one to get cheap.  I always put it on as a really extreme thing -- everyone needs a bit of head-banger metal every once in a while -- but after a while the songs started to take hold of me.  Of course it started with “Ace of Spades” -- forever a stone classic -- but the other tunes started to grab me as well.  For one, there was never anything like it, even other biker-metal (wherever that was) couldn’t get near it.  Those were hard songs, but they were done as well as anything else in any other genre out there.  For what it was, it was true and honest to itself and didn’t care if you were in or out since it was going on anyway.  And of course there was the incomparable Lemmy, a star on his own even if you couldn’t get into the music (and a shame if you didn’t, but you always have time with the music).  I hadn’t gone much beyond that greatest-hits, probably out of fear, but I still had something for them.  And I had never seen them in concert.  Not really a surprise -- they weren’t going to play much any other festival, Coachella itself being one of the biggest shocks in their history, and it was a bit intense for me to see them on their own (a friend of mine, who had been in a pioneering speed-metal band, said that they were such a loud band that he couldn’t stay in the same facility when he had seen them).  I had my ear-plugs and I was ready.  I missed the first song just because it takes time to get across the field even when you’re sprinting but I don’t feel I missed a thing from it.  The volume from the rest of the performance made up for it.  Even Slash coming out for the encore was an unnecessary addition.  No one had any idea what kind of shape Lemmy was really in for that show, but they made the effort to make that go of it, and his fans will always love him for it.  It wasn’t too much longer that we all became exponentially glad that we got to see that show, and for that one, the first and only time I would get to see him/them.  (Some years ago he had brushed by me at the Rainbow Room on an ordinary Wednesday night and I was too overwhelmed to say hello to him.  Everyone has told me that he was really friendly and I regret that I never met him.)  That show was as perfect as it could have been; I think I wandered through Duck Sauce, whatever that was, on the way to the next thing but obviously what was there didn’t stick; the rest was Arcade Fire, though again it was just to finish up the night after a high-point.  By that time in their timeline, the band, while still great, had settled into being a reliable, if predictable, headliner, as they seemed to hit every big festival with their rolling extravaganza (as well as working their way up through the Coachella ranks and already having headlined once before).  Second only to their music was how they were impressive for being a (relatively) new band that earned headliner status, when that designation was getting few and far between for bands that had increasingly fleeting moments of impact then flitted away with the waning attention of the fans.  The Arcade Fire could either handily keep that attention or the people were just starved for a decent band to end the night with a longer set.  The band had just turned in Reflektor, their recent album that didn’t quite reach the heights of their previous efforts, but it played well enough live.  As it was, I muddled through the set until it was time to leave and we could be done with the day, and the rest of the festival, going out on the highest of high points, satisfied if we never did it again.

Missed: Counrtey Barnett (who we didn’t know at the time but became big fans of later and totally bummed to have missed her when we had the chance); Strfkr (who always seem to be at the fringes); Classixx (some local boys who were getting a lot of buzz at the time).


​OutKast set-list:
"B.O.B."
"Gasoline Dreams"
"ATLiens"
"Skew It on the Bar-B"
"Rosa Parks"
"Da Art of Storytellin', Part 1"
"Aquemini"
"SpottieOttieDopaliscious" (with Sleepy Brown)
"Ms. Jackson"

Big Boi:
"Kryptonite (I'm on It)" (Purple Ribbon All-Stars cover)
"GhettoMusick"
"The Way You Move" (with Sleepy Brown)

André 3000:
"She Lives in My Lap" ("Vibrate" intro)
"Prototype"
"Hey Ya!"

Ol' school set:
"Hootie Hoo"
"Crumblin' Erb"
"Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik"
"Player's Ball"
"Elevators (Me & You)"
"Ending"
"Roses"
"So Fresh, So Clean" (with Sleepy Brown)
"Int'l Player's Anthem (I Choose You)" (Underground Kingz cover)
"The Whole World" (with Killer Mike)

Arcade Fire set-list:
"Reflektor" (instrumental outro tape)
"Get Lucky" (Daft Punk cover) (with fake Daft Punk on stage)
"Normal Person" (with fake Daft Punk on stage)
"Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)"
"Rebellion (Lies)"
"Joan of Arc"
"The Suburbs"
"The Suburbs (Continued)"
"Ready to Start"
"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
"Crown of Love"
"No Cars Go"
"We Exist"
"Afterlife"
"It's Never Over (Oh Orpheus)" (Régine on B-stage)
"Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)" (Damian Taylor Remix intro)
"Reflektor"
"Controversy" (Prince cover; with Beck)
"Here Comes the Night Time"
"Wake Up"
"Wake Up" (with Preservation Hall Jazz Band)
"Iko Iko" (The Dixie Cups cover; with Preservation Hall Jazz Band)

The Replacements set-list:
"I Will Dare"
"Nowhere Is My Home"
"Another Girl, Another Planet" (The Only Ones cover)
"I'm in Trouble" (with Billie Joe Armstrong)
"Kiss Me on the Bus" (with Billie Joe Armstrong)
"Achin' to Be" (with Billie Joe Armstrong)
"Color Me Impressed" (with Billie Joe Armstrong)
"Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out"
"I'll Be You"
"Bastards of Young"
"I Don't Know"
"Psychopharmacology" (Paul Westerberg song)
"Left of the Dial"
"Alex Chilton"

"Can't Hardly Wait"
"I.O.U."

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"
"Smooth Sailing"
"Little Sister"
"…Like Clockwork"
"If I Had a Tail"
"The Fun Machine Took a Shit and Died"
"I Sat by the Ocean"
"Go With the Flow"
"A Song for the Dead"

Beck set-list:
"E-Pro"
"Loser"
"Devil's Haircut"
"One Foot in the Grave"
"Black Tambourine"
"Soldier Jane"
"Blue Moon" (Arcade Fire's "Rebellion (Lies)" intro snippet)
"Lost Cause"
"Sissyneck"/"Billie Jean" (Michael Jackson cover)
"Debra"
"Where It's At"
(incomplete, possibly out of order)

Neutral Milk Hotel set-list:
"The King of Carrot Flowers, Part One"
"The King of Carrot Flowers, Parts Two & Three"
"Holland, 1945"
"Gardenhead"/"Leave Me Alone"
"Two-Headed Boy"
"The Fool"
"In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"
"Ferris Wheel on Fire"
"Song Against Sex"
"Ruby Bulbs"
"Snow Song, Part One"
"Ghost"
"The Penny Arcade in California"
"Two-Headed Boy, Part Two"
"Engine"

Pet Shop Boys set-list:
"Axis"
"One More Chance"/"A Face Like That"
"Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)"
"Fugitive"
"Integral"
"I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing"
"Suburbia"
"I'm Not Scared"
"Fluorescent"
"West End Girls"
"Somewhere" (Leonard Bernstein cover)
"Leaving"
"Love Etc."
"I Get Excited (You Get Excited Too)"
"Rent"
"It's a Sin"
"Domino Dancing"
"Always on My Mind" (Brenda Lee cover)
"Go West" (Village People cover)
"Vocal"

Motörhead set-list:
"Damage Case"
"Stay Clean"
"Metropolis"
"Over the Top"
guitar solo
"The Chase Is Better Than the Catch"
"Rock It"
"Lost Woman Blues"
"Doctor Rock" (with drum solo)
"Just 'Cos You Got the Power"
"Going to Brazil"
"Killed by Death"

"Ace of Spades" (with Slash)
"Overkill" (with Slash)

Pixies set-list:
"Bone Machine"
"Wave of Mutilation"
"U-Mass"
"Gouge Away"
"Bagboy"
"Caribou"
"Magdalena 318"
"Crackity Jones"
"Ed Is Dead"
"Indie Cindy"
"Where Is My Mind?"
"Nimrod's Son"
"Greens and Blues"
"Vamos"

The Afghan Whigs set-list:
"Parked Outside"
"Matamoros" (with Van Hunt)
"Fountain and Fairfax"
"Going to Town"
"The Lottery"
"Heaven on Their Minds" (Andrew Lloyd Webber cover)
"Somethin' Hot"
"It Kills" (with Van Hunt)
"Royal Cream"
"I Am Fire"
"My Enemy"

Bombay Bicycle Club set-list:
"Overdone"
"It's Alright Now"
"Luna"
"Your Eyes"
"Evening/Morning"
"How Can You Swallow So Much Sleep"
"Home By Now"
"Feel"
"Lights Out, Words Gone"
"Shuffle"
"Always Like This"
"Carry Me"

ZZ Ward set-list:

"Be My Husband" (snippet; Nina Simone cover)
"OVERdue"
"Put the Gun Down"
"Til the Casket Drops"
"Hold On, We're Going Home" (Drake cover)
"365 Days"
"Last Love Song"
"Criminal"
"Move Like U Stole It"
"Blue Eyes Blind"

Lollapalooza, August 2 & 4 at Grant Park

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"