Sunday 06/08/06 Day 3 @ Lollapalooza, Grant Park, Chicago

First things first – we’re headed to the Hard Rock Hotel to get that damn gift bag everybody’s showing off in the press tent.  Not for the body wash and the badges, no sir, we heard there was vodka in that bag. Okay, here you are. Man, this is heavy.  What’s in this thing? Why, peeking out the top, it’s a Troll doll!  Merry Christmas, mum. Put on Matthew Friedberger’s 'Up the River' and make little blue-haired Troll guy dance on the tabletop for all the hospice residents. They’ll smile. Into the lounge we go, where the bartender, pre-noon on a Sunday, whips us up a Sauza tequila/grapefruit juice concoction. “My recommendation,” he says. Ah, refreshing.  Would you just look at Gigwise, on his knees, cramming every last bit of blag (Deepak Chopra oracle cards, anyone?) into a satchel that’s already filled with his camera. As if on cue, Billy Joel’s 'Big Shot' comes roaring out the Hard Rock soundsystem. You know, the lineup’s a little weak today. And this bar is open ‘til six. Shall we forsake our journalistic duty for mas tequila?

No need to, for there, buried at the bottom – a baby bottle of Snow Queen vodka!

We make it onto the festival grounds just in time to catch Office. A last-minute replacement for Boy Kill Boy, the Chicago band is a revelation. No lie, they could have headlined. Take that, Flea. Shimmering new wave with a kick, these songs are classics at first listen. Hard to argue with the simple entreaty posited in 'Wound Up':  “Let’s go to the beach tonight / with a bottle of wine.” Pray they won’t be dogged by David Brent obsessives screaming requests for that Simply Red song like it’s 'Freebird'.

From here on in, it’s pretty lean. Sparta is doing their thing when we’d all much rather see the Mars Volta. The Hold Steady is barking that song about Elizabeth Shue. Hot Chip is way too into what they’re doing, tweaking knobs like they’re Yes when they should be getting loose and stupid. Things are going off, here, in a bad way. We need a hero. We need a savior.

Enter Jered Leto, actor.

Taking to the stage with that Bach/Rachmaninoff can’t-remember-which-so-maybe-it’s-Beethoven bomb-strafe valkyrie shriek, 30 Seconds To Mars, dressed all in white, are waving white flags and throwing roses. “How are you ****in’ doing, Chicago?” asks Leto. Momentous, this is the first of approximately 89 utterances of “****in’” on Leto’s part. Leto does his dizzy guitar-twirl thing. The girls go wild. Leto smiles.  Rapture. All so staged, so fake, so Hollywood. Poses practiced to perfection. Hitting every mark. 

Then things get interesting.

That’s when Leto climbs the rafters. To the top. All the way.  Girls are shrieking in horror. Cynical journalists are thinking, drop, please, drop. Somewhere in his Malibu mansion, Leto’s manager is watching the live feed and has a coronary. Leto’s at the top now, singing into a wireless mic, kicking his foot out, smiling. Alexander must have really messed this guy up. If he does an Eddie Vedder backflop from here his spine is toast.  He’ll probably take out a few photographers in the process, including this one. So what does he do?  He leaps from the top of the rafters like The Hulk in that crappy Ang Lee movie all the way to the top of the Sears Tower – and continues the song from there! Then he leaps back on stage and shows us his stigmata wounds. No, not really. Jared just climbs back down the other way, behind the curtain, crawls out from under it at the bottom to screaming teenagers. “Chicago,” he says, “for as long as I live I won’t forget this day, ever.”  And he precedes the word “day” with the adjective, “****in’.”

How you gonna top that, Matisyahu? Got your Mel Gibson rebuttal scripted? We’ll never know cos, in terms of audio unbearability, this Hasidic reggae crap is on a par with the hula-hoop rap going on in the Kids’ tent.