Friday 04/08/06 Day 1 @ Lollapalooza, Grant Park, Chicago

Three days, 130 bands, eight stages…Lollapalooza, you’ve become a monster. From one end of Grant Park to the other, we will all be running mini-marathons this weekend. And in the morning, when we wake, bleary-eyed and hungover, our legs will feel like oaks.  We will feel like cyclists after the Tour de France. We’d give our left testicle and pedal through the Pyrenees on a unicycle if the band to kick things off at the Playstation stage was Clearlake. But the band is not Clearlake – it’s Midlake.
 
To commemorate Lollapalooza’s newfound Godzilla status, Austin sextet Sound Team unleashes their Kraken of an anthem 'Movie Monster'. Penultimate song of their set, by the time they play it, I’m half a field away, awaiting The Subways. 

Charlotte’s got some saucy rock poses in her bag of tricks. Billy in his mock Ween T-shirt – unafraid to leap down onto the ledge that separates photographer from performer. 

“Did you see that chick in Husky Rescue?” a photographer asks us afterward. “For a white chick, she’s got the thickest ass I’ve ever seen.”

Negative. Couldn’t take my eyes off her face. Husky Rescue starts their set by staring into the crowd…and beyond. Not a confrontational Liam leer, no, this is more a gaze of wonderment.  Buildings aren’t this tall in Finland. Would love to hear more of their soothing hearthside lullabies but we’re off to witness Anathallo.

Anathallo hail from the same village in mid-Michigan where Gigwise sleepwalked through his undergraduate studies.  Much buzz about them being This Year’s Arcade Fire. Wrong.  Playing a trumpet through a soup pot coupled with the intermittent spaz-out does not make for an Arcade Fire.  

Back in the press tent, we meet Trent, photojournalist. “Yeah, so I said to Mike Patton, last weekend, at a festival in Wisconsin, ‘Hey man, I heard you piss on photographers.  Any truth to that rumor?’ Patton just shrugged.” 

In any event, we’ll be wearing our raincoat and galoshes tomorrow for Peeping Tom.

Aqualung’s got the best stage of the lot – snug in a bandshell with his electric piano, the foot of the stage festooned with flora, blessed with shade. So what’s taking him so long to play “Brighter Than Sunshine”?

Okay, girls. Here’s your Panic! At the Disco shot.

These three-ring Vegas nitwits have the audacity to do a cover of 'Karma Police'. The singer even goes so far as to take liberties with the lyrics. "When"you mess with us” becomes “…when you **** with us”. When “phew, for a minute there” becomes “shit, for a minute there,” I lunge at the closest “20 free songs/iTunes” complimentary necklace so I can hang myself. Blasphemy. No one messes with the sacrosanct canon of Radiohead, least of all these adenoidal poseurs. Out, now.

Holy ****ing shit, if it isn’t Lord Ambiance – star of Bonnaroo.  Didn’t know you’d be here, where are you headed?

“Headed over to the Bud Light stage. Get a good spot for Ryan Adams.”

Maybe I’ll see you there. In the meantime, let’s buy you a beer.