Lollapalooza Day Three: I'm Still Alive

Day three was really something special.

Los Campesinos!
For me, skipping The Black Angels is pretty serious. But the first few songs I had heard from Cardiff rockers Los Campesinos! had me very curious as to what they sounded like live. They certainly did not disappoint. Each and every song was filled with lots of energy. I especially loved You! Me! Dancing!

Apostle of Hustle
I had heard good things about the Canadian band Apostle of Hustle, so I thought I'd use this opportunity to check them out. I gave them five songs to pull me in and by the fifth I was ready to leave. The first few sounded ok, but the fifth (coined as an intrumental, but I swear I heard lyrics) was what singer Andrew Whiteman described as a "song about a pony express rider, with a bag of weed, a bag of MDMA, holding the decapatated heads of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and US President George W. Bush." While the idea neither pleases me nor offends me, the idea of a song being about that bores me.

Peter Bjorn and John
I was very excited to see this show and arrived at the Citi stage early because I thought that Lollapalooza had scheduled them on too small of a stage. I arrived early and eager to hear PB&J. Three songs in, the sound went dead and it appeared that the stage had no electricity. I waited for about ten more minutes for them to come back, but appeared that this was not going to happen. I was greatly disappointed, but not in the band. Too bad. I really hoping to see them again.

Modest Mouse
It was a tough decision to miss My Morning Jacket, but since they tour more often than Modest Mouse, the decision was made for me. Issac walked out on stage hardly recognizable as himself with a beard, glasses, and some silly hat. But it certainly sounded like him and the rest of the band as they reeled off song after great song from each of their last three releases. This should would have been outstanding if not for one thing - it was not loud enough. Granted I was sitting towards the back, I spoke to people that were much closer that had the same opinion. Either way, Modest Mouse with Johnny Marr is greatness.

Pearl Jam
I'll confess. I haven't listened to Pearl Jam since around 1996. I assume I probably wasn't much different than most of the people in the crowd in that aspect. Seeing the great Eddie Vedder walk out and play so many of Pearl Jam's great songs reminded me of a time in my life when music seemed different and more simple. It was a time before the internet, when finding new music was best done in your friend's car on the way home from school.

What's so amazing to me is how some of those Pearl Jam songs have, at least until now, stood the test of time. There were more that we all knew than we probably remembered that we did. They opened with Why Go, an early track from their monumental first album, Ten. Songs like Corduroy, Daughter, Elderly Woman Behind the Counter of a Small Town, and Evenflow were all crowd favorites. I even caught other people singing them as I was as I walked around. They closed their first set with Alive, their first single that I can remember. You could hear the crowd sing almost as loud as Eddie. My thoughts were, had Kurt Cobain hung around and Nirvana been there, we all would have been singing Smells Like Teen Spirit. Those two bands of that time were certainly of the same caliber and had the same impact. But it was great to hear everyone singing this song. These guys changed the course of music as we know it today.

The encore opened with Eddie playing the first few recognizable notes of Better Man, while letting the crowd sing the entire first verse. It was awesome how the words just flowed off of our lips. Another thing that Eddie got into was the campaign to keep BP Amoco from dumping waste into Lake Michigan. He even played a catchy little tune that went, "Don't go...to BP Amoco". Needless to say, the crowd loved it.

Lastly, the most memorable moment of the night came when Eddie did a third encore, bringing a veteran from the Iraqi War on stage to promote the ending of the war. Ben Harper then came out to join him in a song. The night ended in the two of them, along with several others, singing Neil Young's Rockin In The Free World.

I left Lollapalooza this year happy and proud. I was proud of someone from my generation (the of Gen X) to get involved and speak out on current issues. I was proud that it seemed that Eddie Vedder enjoyed every minute of that show. It showed on his face. And I was happy because music makes me happy. There are few subsitutes in this world that give me the same sense of joy. This was probably the best Lollapalooza Music Festival I have attended.


I'll have pictures and other festival commentary up tomorrow.