OK, it’s been three weeks since Lollapalooza and I think I’m finally recovering, so here is part one of an overdue festival review.  I was very excited about going and seeing dozens of bands that I have loved for years, as well as a few that I recently discovered that I loved, but I had no idea it was going to be as awesome as it was.  The event was well organized and relatively well controlled, which is a miracle considering that all 75,000 tickets were sold out every day and that there was another 8,000 or so people working there.  It was Florida weather up in Chicago, from the 80+ degree temps to the unusually high humidity, but there were free water stations (you just had to wait in some very long lines to get to it most days) and high SPF suntan lotion for use at the entrance.

As my boyfriend and I walked down Jackson on our way from Union Station to Grant Park, it was pretty easy to tell who else was there for Lollapalooza, especially since we walked through the financial district.  With every step I was getting more and more excited about getting my concert on, but the instant I saw Columbus Dr and the line to get in, my heart sank.  Oh well, I thought, we have plenty of time until Manchester Orchestra, it looks like it only goes a couple blocks…yep, plenty of time…wait, the line turns down Monroe? wtf!  That is when the anxiety started setting in that we could be in this line all day…then the line turned again to head South on Lake Shore and kept going another 2 blocks.  As we got to the back of the line, some people came by on a golf cart and handed out liter bottles of Smart Water, one of the event sponsors, and that helped a lot, but there was no way we were making it for Manchester Orchestra.

We got finally through the gates around 1:00, which was at least perfect timing for seeing The Parlor Mob , one of my new faves.  These guys were better than I could have hoped for, rocking (and sweating) their asses off.  If you like blues basted rock and have not listened to this band yet, you have to.  Seriously.  Essential Listening for certain.  After the show, guitarist Dave Rosen greeted some fans who wished him a happy birthday as he graciously posed for pictures.  I took this opportunity to ask about how the heck I could get my hands on their self-released album and EP (which was put out under the band’s original name, What About Frank?) and Dave said to shoot them an email.  I’ll be doing just that, because just one album from these guys isn’t enough for me, even if And You Were a Crow is nigh perfect, imo.

The Parlor Mob - When I Was An Orphan

Next we headed off to see The Enemy, a still relatively new British Indie band that’s been named Best New Act by Q Magazine, Best British Debut Album of 2007 in the XFM Awards, and Best New Band at the NME (my bible) Awards.  Pretty high praise for sure, and well deserved as far I I’m concerned.  Lead singer Tom Clarke’s voice reminds me very much of Inspiral Carpets vocalist Stephen Holt’s vocals, both in tone, and also in strident sincerity.  The three band members were all spread out on the stage, which made it look like the concert equivalent of Danny Devito’s foot in one of Shaquille O’Neal’s shoes and that could have been part of why there didn’t seem to be much cohesiveness to the show.  It was good, but not great, so it wasn’t too hard to tear myself away and head over to catch Yeasayer.

The Enemy - It’s Not Okay

Yeasayer is an amazing group that is listed in Wikipedia as experimental rock, which sounds about right.  All members of the band sing, which adds an amazingly lush layer of harmony to a type of sounds that I cannot figure out how to describe, so you’ll just have to listen for yourselves.  They put on a brilliant show, putting themselves completely into every song of the set, and keeping the fans in front of the stage when they could have been somewhere with shade, even at 3:00 in the afternoon of a stupid-hot day.

Yeasayer - 2080

After some food and drinks we headed to see The Black Keys.  Autopsy has already rubbed it in my face that he saw them at a local hole in the wall forever ago, but I had not yet been lucky enough to enjoy their brilliance in person.  Yep, these guys are fucking good, but you all probably know that.  The crowd to see them was huge, which may have been helped by the fact that The Raconteurs were going to be on the same stage afterwards, but everyone was eating it up, which seemed to feed the band and make them rock even harder.

While waiting for Raconteurs, we strolled a stage over to check out fellow Floridian Cat Power.  I like a few of her songs, like “The Greatest”, but haven’t been able to really get into her music as much as I thought I would.  Still, she put on a good performance and had her audience in rapt attention as she paced the stage and powered out her angsty vocals with those leather lungs.

Cat Power - The Greatest (Live at La Cigale)

As the sun began to set, The Raconteurs, the band whose failure to come to Florida on their last tour got me looking into Lolla in the first place, took the stage.  I fucking love this band and this fourth time seeing them live did not do anything to lessen that.  I don’t know how they did it, because I was so hot I could hardly remember the kyrics, but they brought their ‘A’ game once again, even while sweating through their clothes.  It was at the end of the show, however, that I was most impressed with the band, as Jack White made the classy move of going over and giving a hug to the woman doing interpretive sign language for their hearing impaired fans.

The Raconteurs - Blue Veins

Finally it was time for Radiohead.  Let me tell you one thing, looking at the map of Grant Park is one thing, but walking from the North Stage to the South Stage after a hot ass day full of music and drunks is another thing altogether.  By the time we made it all the way to the South Stage, Radiohead was on their second song and the area was ridiculously packed.  I would have to guess than about 70k of the 75k people that got tickets for Friday were there, but everyone was amazingly civil, even near the stage.  We initially went to the front, but even with earplugs in the music was ridiculously loud and, after getting some pix, we moved back a good ways.  The light show and the video peojections made it easy for most of the crowd to still be able to see what was going on, and when the fireworks went off over Lake Michigan it cemented the awesomeness of the day.

Radiohead - High and Dry (Live at Pinkpop Germany)

Check out the bands’ myspace sites, and hang tight for reviews of days 2 & 3 coming soon.  And if you wanna check out all of our pix, the albums are here.

July is creeping by and the concert is getting closer, time to start pouring things into 3 oz bottles.  This post features three bands that I like a lot, one of which I am completely in love with.

The Parlor Mob

Fucking. Brilliant.  I can’t say enough about these guys and coming up with just a couple songs to post was nigh impossible.  This blues heavy rock quintet is definitely one of my favorite discoveries while doing this little project.  Mark Melicia’s vocals are desperate, earnest, strident, and sincere, meanwhile the other four band members, David Rosen and Paul Ritchie on guitar, Nick Villapiano on bass, and Sam Bey on drums, seriously rock everything.  Listen to them, seriously.  Hot damn.  10 ponchos for sure.

The Parlor Mob- Tide of Tears
The Parlor Mob- Everything You’re Breathing For

The Parlor Mob on MySpace

Mates of State

I was undecided after the first couple runs through  However, as the songs started to pop up on rotate on my ipod I liked them more and more.  This husband and wife duo out of Lawrence, Kansas make fun and pretty indie pop songs that come across like they’re just having fun and happen to be recording it.  I imagine they’re one of those couples that always making a big production of singing “Happy Birthday” in two part harmony at friends’ parties while everyone secretly rolls their eyes at each other, but everyone loves them anyway because they’re so damned cute.  I would like to see if their energy translates in a live show and have them at 8 ponchos, but they’d better play “Help Help”.

Mates of State- Help Help
Mates of State- Get Better

Mates of State on MySpace

Cadence Weapon

Apparently Autopsy was listening to him 2 years ago.  That is why he’s Mr. Bullets.  I, however, just discovered this smooth-ass hip hopper while doing this project and I am incredibly impressed.  He has a beautiful and graceful flow and his words are insightful and refreshingly un-cliche, with a perfect amount of tongue-in-cheek.  So far I only have “Afterparty Babies”, but I definitely intend to check out more of his music and I have him at 9 ponchos, I definitely want to see what he brings to the stage.

Cadence Weapon- Tattoos (And What They Really Feel Like)
Cadence Weapon- Juliann Wilding

Cadence Weapon on MySpace

PART 5: The Blakes

The eponymous album from this 3 man Seattle band is another great find for me and this little project.  No gimmicks, just good music with nice variety between the songs, yet still maintaining cohesiveness.

In looking for some info on them, I came across a story in the Seattle Times about how well they’ve been doing and one part particularly stood out.  Apparently, Iggy Pop heard the band at SXSW and asked, “Who’s this? This [stuff] is good!”  I can’t say it much better, this stuff is good, and The Blakes are at 9 out of 10 ponchos on my must-see scale…maybe 9 1/2.

The Blakes- Commit
The Blakes- Two Times

The Blakes on MySpace

PART 6: Black Kids

I had heard their song “I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You” before on an indie mix I’d downloaded, and while I liked it right away, I didn’t have the urge to check out their whole album.  I mean, it’s a fun song, but not very substantial, so I didn’t expect much from Wizard of Ahhhs.

The album turned out to have the same feel as that song, light, poppy, sing-song-y with a slight tendency to the annoying, in other words, it was pretty much just what I’d expected.  The songs are fun and clever and it’s nice to listen to and maybe sing along with on the drive home from work, but not the sort of thing I can imagine myself listening to much unless a song comes up on shuffle.  I’m going to give them 7 ponchos- I would like to see them, but not over many other bands that I also want to see there.

Black Kids- I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You
Black Kids- Hurricane Jane

Black Kids on MySpace

PART 7: Booka Shade

This German Duo electrohouse duo is another group that I had heard stuff from before but hadn’t gone so far as to get an album from.  Movement is total chillout room music, at first listen I kept thinking Deep Forest with more bounce.  When the schedule was released, I found it strange that they’re going to be on from 3:30-4:30p, as this is music I’d be more likely to listen to at sunrise, but for those to whom the time 10 minutes before the end of their set is meaningful, I guess their set time should be pretty perfect.

I give them 5 ponchos if I’m already feeling tired and don’t want to fall asleep, or 8 ponchos if I’m at the right level of awake and intoxicated to appreciate them.

Booka Shade- Darko
Booka Shade- Body Language (Interpretation)

Booka Shade on MySpace

PART 8: Brand New

I’m awful with genres, but according to their Wikipedia entry, Brand New is a a post-hardcore band.  There are at least one or two songs off of The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me being played on Sirius’ Alt Nation channel and I thought they were decent enough tunes, so I was interested in checking out the album.

Lead vocalist Jesse Lacey has a great voice, very strong and earnest, and combined with good percussion and strong guitars it should be a decent album.  However, while the music behind it all may be good, the lyrics are often juvenile and trite, and the album ends up slightly angsty with a touch of cheese.  The song that really killed it for me was “Jesus”, with lines like, “Well, Jesus Christ, I’m alone again. So what did you do those three days you were dead? Cause this problem’s gonna last more than the weekend.” and “I know you’re coming for the people like me, but we all got wood and nails and turned out a hate factory.”  Holy melodrama, Batman.

Overall, The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me is pretty easy to listen to, but even though I dig the music and the vocals, due to the cheese factor I’m gonna give them 5 ponchos.

Brand New- Sowing Season
Brand New- Degausser

Brand New on MySpace

The Cure is one of my favorite bands.  Sure, I wasn’t yet 5 years old when they released their first album, but that didn’t stop me from falling completely in love with them in my early teens.  I’ve lost a little of the fire over the last few years with their most recent releases, but I still can’t pass up a chance to see them on tour.  So, after fighting rush hour traffic and parking without incident, I got a drink for just under the price of a barrel of crude, rolled my eyes at the $45 concert shirts, and headed to the seats that I bought almost a year ago before they rescheduled much of their tour.  I had missed the opener, 65 Days of Static, but it seems most around me had as well.

It wasn’t long after we sat down that The Cure hit the stage to raucous applause, and 5 songs in as they went from “Fascination Street” to “The Walk”, I remarked to my boyfriend how relieved I was that they weren’t playing all new stuff.  He simply responded, “They know better.”  They must have, because the concert spanned their full 30 year history with a heavy emphasis on earlier stuff.

Porl Thompson definitely won Best Dressed for the night as he bopped about the stage like a man half his age, sporting head tattoos and a pair of fabulous glittery red heels that would have made Dorothy proud…and a little slutty.  Robert was Robert with the same baggy clothes, red lipstick, and black eye makeup that has been his trademark for so many years.  Simon Gallup looked like a kid on stage next to bald Porl and smooshy Robert as he strutted around like Billy Idol’s younger brother.  Jason Cooper was pretty hidden back there on the drums, and while I haven’t been impressed with anything they’ve done since he joined the band during the recording of Wild Mood Swings, I don’t blame him for those albums, and he did a great job on every song he played on.

My boyfriend isn’t a huge Cure fan, he was there as my date and to take pictures, but he did want to hear “Pictures of You”.  After “Lovesong”, I told him it wasn’t likely they’d play it, as that marked three songs already from Disintegration and we were only 6 songs in.  Because I can never win a damned argument with my boyfriend, they played “Pictures of You” two songs later, and I started to wonder if I’d warped back in time to The Prayer tour.  When he reached an arm up and clutched at the air, his fingers barely peeking out of his ridiculously long sleeve, during the chorus to “Catch”, I giggled like I was 15 again, staring at his poster on the ceiling over my bed.

As the show went on I heard so many favorites, “Push”, “Inbetween Days”, “Just Like Heaven” to name just a few, and I started to wonder what the heck they were going to do for the encore.  I had no freaking idea what I was in for, but as the third and final encore began I was verging on delirium, and when Robert and Simon’s guitar jam session at the end of “A Forest” ended, I was ecstatic.  There have been lots of rumors that this is going to be their last tour, and if that’s the case they definitely went out on a high note.

Here is the setlist for the show:

Main Set:

• underneath the stars
• prayers for rain
• fascination street
• the walk
• the end of the world
• lovesong
• to wish impossible things
• pictures of you
• lullaby
• catch
• the perfect boy
• from the edge of the deep green sea
• the kyoto song
• hot hot hot
• the blood
• sleep when i’m dead
• push
• inbetween days
• just like heaven
• primary
• shake dog shake
• the only one
• wrong number
• one hundred years
• baby rag dog book

Encore 1:

• the lovecats
• let’s go to bed
• freakshow
• close to me
• why can’t i be you?

Encore 2:

• boys don’t cry
• jumping someone else’s train
• grinding halt
• 10:15 saturday night
• killing an arab

Encore 3:

• a forest

Lot’s more pictures are available here.

I can’t say I’m a huge Ladytron fan, and I had only heard Datarock a few times before, but I knew that I liked both groups enough and so many friends were rabid fans of Ladytron that I was pretty excited about the show.  As it was a work night, doors opened at 8p and Datarock went on not very long after that to a steadily building crowd.  Right away I remarked about how these guys were either in witness protection or were hideously ugly, as they all had on matching outfits of red hoodies and sweatpants with their hoods up and with big, black sunglasses on, and the stage lights were limited to a handful of red lights pointing stage-ish.  It didn’t take long to distract me from the mystery of their disguises, though.  Datarock put on one hell of a fun show, from choreographed dance moves on some songs, to aggressively working the crowd during others, to singalongs with the audience.  And then just when they’d thoroughly impressed me, they outdid themselves when they wrapped things up with a karaoke-inspired performance to the Dirty Dancing classic “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” that started playing at the end of their set…complete with a brilliant saxophone solo. 

By the time Ladytron was set to come on the Imperial Ballroom was packed.  As I watched the crowd buzz in anticipation, I was informed that the club had brought in a generator to handle the light show that was about to happen, something about how the light displays draw 100 amps and would blow every breaker in the joint in one pulse.  I’m glad someone brought some electricity to their show, because Ladytron didn’t.  With lights blinding and synths blazing, they put on a decent enough show, but I don’t know if they chose too good of an opener or if they put on too poor of a show.  Either way, I would have liked more Datarock.  Guess we should have stuck around, as I hear they put on a hell of a dj set after Ladytron.  However, we decided halfway into Ladytron’s set that it wasn’t worth calling in to work in the morning and headed out.

If you haven’t heard these Norse hip kids before, check out a couple Datarock tunes

Datarock- Princess
Datarock- Fa Fa Fa

Datarock on MySpace
Ladytron on MySpace

The lady responsible for turning my run-on and fragmented sentences into a cohesive enough thought to be placed on the internets for y’all to read, Marci Richter, is gonna be doing a recurring piece on ninebullets with regards to this years Lollapalooza line-up. Today we’re featuring the first 4 parts.

Enjoy

————————————————————————————-

PART 1: The Intro:

The Raconteurs are making me going to Lollapalooza. No, I don’t know Brendan, Patrick, or either of the Jack’s. Rather, I was just bummed when I found out that they aren’t going to be coming to Florida on this tour, so I started looking at good places to go see them. I saw that they’d be at Lollapalooza, and then I saw that a ton of other artists I love will be there, too, like Bloc Party, Girl Talk, Radiohead, Santogold, and The Black Keys to name just a few. I also have family and friends in the area that I can stay with, so the trip planning started.

I’ve been to festivals before where I wasn’t familiar with all the bands, and then later I hear something from one of them and realize I probably missed a great set. I decided that I’d try and avoid that happening again and have planned to try to listen to every artist that will be there beforehand. After listening to the music on their websites or their MySpace sites, I have weeded out 34 artists that I have no interest in seeing and am still left with 73 that are possibilities. This festival is over the course of just 3 days (August 1-3), so since I’m sure some performances I’m interested in will conflict with each other, I’ve decided to rate my interest in seeing them, to make it easier to schedule my weekend once the schedule is released.

I have definitely discovered some great music (and some mediocre music) this way, so I figured I’d share what I found, along with my ratings in case anyone wants to try and change my mind about whether this is a set I should see or skip.

Lollapalooza Website

PART 2: The Black Keys:

Yeah, I know they’re not new to many of you, and you probably already know that they’re brilliant, but I have to make sure that you specifically understand that the song “Lies”, off of the album Attack and Release, is black silk, hair pulling, and a warm drunk in musical form.

That is all.

The Black Keys on MySpace

PART 3: Dr. Dog

Dr. Dog is one of the biggest surprises of my little project so far. I honestly thought this was going to be a hip hop act. I guess my subconscious paired Dr. Dre with Snoop Dog, and since Kanye West and Kid Sister are on the lineup, I figured this was another act along those lines.

I was so very wrong. We All Belong is the fourth album from this band out of Philly, and I can’t believe I missed them before now. According to the wikipedia article about them, they’ve toured with both The Raconteurs and The Black Keys. Funny enough, it also says I’m apparently not the only one confused by their name, which makes me feel a bit better about my subconscious.

The album is soulful, bluesy, lighthearted and fun, with earnest vocals and beautiful harmonies. There is definitely a 60’s rock influence which fits just right with the blues feel. I can’t wait to check out their prior releases and will definitely be awaiting their planned 2008 release. Dr. Dog gets 8 out of 10 ponchos on my festival must-see scale.

Dr. Dog - The Way The Lazy Do
Dr. Dog - Keep a Friend

Dr Dog on Myspace

PART 4: Does It Offend You, Yeah?:

Did it bore me? Yeah. Seriously. Obvious I know, but it’s what I kept thinking as I listened to You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into. I mean, with a band name that comes across that pretentious, you’d better put some mustard on it, and I was not feeling the mustard.

This is the debut album from the Reading, England electro-punk band, and I suppose the beats are catchy enough, but there is also the tendency to run a decent thing into the ground in many of the songs. I got an overall generic feel from the album and with the exception of a couple tracks that sounded a bit more original and standout, there was nothing I hadn’t pretty much heard another Nu Rave act do already.

Overall, these guys get 5 ponchos on my scale. I won’t run to catch the set, but I’ll listen if they’re on stage near the portapotties while I’m in line.

Does It Offend You, Yeah? - Let’s Make Out
Does It Offend You, Yeah? - Epic Last Song

Does It Offend You, Yeah? on MySpace