Words by Sean Moeller//Illustration by Erica Parrott
Grant Park is expansive and beer/Pepsi was expensive, but by all rational accounts, this year’s Lollapalooza was grand in the only way that massive, multi-day festivals with bands on eight different stages can be. You were guaranteed missing some of everyone or everyone altogether and coming home each night with screaming feet, legs and skin. Lollapalooza 2006 blew itself out into a festival on juice, Floyd Landis-ing into an event that needed 69 acres of land to hold it and in doing so became a gigantic exercise in indulgence and letting the belt loose for the waistline to spill out. No matter how you planned your days, there were sacrifices to be made. There were the countless walks over the dusty, rocky terrain surrounding Buckingham Fountain, which served as the midpoint for the grounds. Nothing was made easy and the bleeding of sound between acts on different stages – the biggest bellyache of 2005 when the Perry Farrell brainchild took roots along the Chicago lakefront as a standalone festival – was still rampant. When Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy was singing, “Our love is all of God’s money,” Josh Homme was on the very far end of the grounds, a good quarter of a mile away, making sure that Queens of the Stone Age encroached as much as possible on “Jesus, Etc.” If anything, this weekend proved that while the skyline of the city is a spectacular backdrop for live music in the park, the oftentimes atrocious sound mixes (see The Shins and Built To Spill) and the long days in the blaring sun reinforce the obvious, that seeing Feist or James Mercer work is always going to be better in a small, dimly lit room. That said, Lollapalooza was a good weekend.

The public transportation was teeming with those who had already been deep-fried watching The Raconteurs, Sleater-Kinney play its last show ever and Death Cab For Cutie shutting down the night for the second-consecutive year on Friday. A late start to the station resulted in getting through the gates with half of Cold War Kids’ set left to go. The band was transformed from a bedraggled, lumbering four-piece when they swung into the Daytrotter studio on Friday afternoon into an uncompromising melee of everything that’s right about this band. Carl Newman of The New Pornographers was flanking the right side of the stage as Nate Willett owned up to being a front man both mindful of electrifying lyrical content and electrifying presence. Guitarist Matt Averio was able to capture the energy of a stampede, drummer Jonnie Russell was the guts and soul and bassist Matt Maust kept a steely watch on the captivated audience with a playing technique that was intimidating and invested in the moment. Even after two days of performances, this first one was the standout.

Oh, Feist, you siren. She was the one soft performance that flew at Lollapalooza. As Andrew Bird had major difficulties navigating himself through surrounding sounds and an unfortunately chosen set list, Miss Leslie Feist delivered a performance that turned everyone watching into the smitten. The way she cut off her soft words as if she were smothering them with a pillow, moving her head back and forth and squinting through sun-glared eyes was the stuff of an intimate show that worked anyway. She asked if the crowd could feel it all – possibly knowing the answer – and then continued to play, doing finger dances, as if she were trying to shake some stray peanut butter from them. She makes you tipsy.
Built To Spill had the terrible misfortune of playing on the most unfortunate stage at the festival, where sound was an issue every day. Doug Martsch came out with the beard of all beards planted on his chin and cheeks and shorts and black socks only to have the sound come across as a swampy waste. His rugged wisps of Ernie McCracken hair were the focal point, not “Goin’ Against Your Mind” off of the wonderful “You In Reverse,” which started the set. It was disappointing because the huge crowd seemed primed.

With the disastrous sound plaguing Built To Spill we took to one of the side stages where the best performances came all weekend. Elvis Perkins, who calls Massachusetts home and is a favorite of Cold War Kids – who seem to write about him once per every other diem, gave off a Mason Jennings vibration and inspired two Irish Naval officers to perform vigorous jigs during his set. These were the real things, not the one Ashley Simpson performed on SNL. Perkins’ upright bassist came with bells on, wearing garlands of them as necklaces and bracelets, giving the tones of his sweet ballads even more enchantment. The exhaust swept off of Lakeshore Drive as Perkins commented, “Some of my high school bandmates are out in the audience today.”

When you enter the stage performing “We Are The Champions,” you’re saying something. When you’ve written the best song of the year, there’s nothing more that needs to be said. There was Cee-Lo Green in Fila tennis gear – wristbands and knee-length, ringed tube socks – and Danger Mouse with an athletic whistle dangling from his lips. Green explained that Gnarls Barkley couldn’t be there today and was replaced by Love 40. Green laughs like a preacher – like Al Green to be more specific – and his constant smile was a horizontal skyscraper on his face as he sipped hot chocolate between songs. Nothing carried as much weight as “Crazy” did, though the squiggle-out in the middle of “St. Elsewhere” came close. Before playing The Doors’ “Who Scares You?” Green said, “I think Jim Morrison had an affair with my mother,” before laughing like Al Green.

Wayne Coyne was in a reflective mood at the outset of the Flaming Lips’ performance late in the afternoon Saturday. He was thinking of the days back before Red Bull and before Starbucks was making coffee, back to 1994 when the Lips were playing Lollapalooza with Sonic Youth and Guided By Voices, which had just released “Bee Thousand.” Coyne has become a festival staple and certainly does bring the party, but the dancing Santas and girls in alien costumes have a tendency to lose their entertainment potency the more times you see them. You kind of knew that he was going to shoot rockets of confetti into the audience (over and over and over and over…) and you thought there was a great chance that he might get into a big clear ball and walk out over the crowd, returning to the stage this time to say, “There were two Olsen twin girls on their cell phones out there and I fear they didn’t see me coming.” This was one spectacle that didn’t catch anyone much off-guard, it’s sad to say.

Carl Newman was again touting the greatness of Cold War Kids from his own stage later in the day and commenting on the fact that his band’s set was sandwiched on the southern-most field between Gnarls Barkley and Kanye West. He said, “I can only guess that it’s because we’re somewhat like them.” Always good for the wittiest between song banter in the biz, Newman slayed with his quotables, his knowledge of the contestants on “So You Think You Can Dance?” and with the brilliant pop songs that go best with a lot of sun and good cheer. The melodies danced happy numbers, but Newman warned that the audience might do better to just nod along, “Our time signatures are a little more fucked up than Coheed so if you’re trying to dance, good fucking luck to you.”

As the sun set, the anticipation for Kanye West’s hometown performance could be physically felt. It was hard to ignore. Even if a festival is a poor place to see a band, this was the exact place you’d want to see West for the first time – in Chicago, with it practically and literally surrounding you. West himself seemed taken by the scenery. He too was the victim of shitty sound issues as his microphone wasn’t even turned on for the first half of his initial song. He violently knocked on the microphone to get someone’s attention. Things improved only slightly through three songs before West – the world’s most outspoken and talented superstar – publicly scolded the sad sacks working sound, saying, “We’ve gone all over the world doing our shows and we come here, to my hometown, and ya’ll fuck up my sound. There will be repercussions.” West, though informally dressed, was as showy and dynamic as ever. His only misstep was bringing Lupe Fiasco up early in the set to perform his upcoming single about skateboarding that came off as a glorified commercial complete with a service announcement of when the record’s set to drop. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me? I hope West got paid well for that intrusion because everyone there saw it as a burden. He and Twista were a great pair for two songs and Common even made an appearance. He performed everything anyone wanted out of him and game a performance that felt perfect for the night.