I kinda laughed when I got the email from their publicist asking if we’d be interested in interviewing “veteran psych-rock band, The Asteroid No.4” I mean, veterans? How old could they be? That was until I realized that we last spoke to them in 2002–yes, 12 years ago.
A lot has happened in the psych-rock scene in the last decade-plus: Dawes got everyone all crazy for Laurel Canyon again and related 60s and 70s west coast culture; the rise of festivals, especially those catering to niche musical genres like garage rock and psychedelic music; and a movie called Dig! raised the profiles of two of the flagship acts of the scene with The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. And while in economics it may be a bit of a misnomer, in rock and roll a rising tide does in fact lift all boats. Twelve years on, The Asteroid No.4 are floating along nicely.
We jumped on the phone with founding member, songwriter and guitarist, Scott Vitt to talk about the changing scene and his band’s move from Philadelphia to Northern California.
Ten years. Ten Lollas in Grant Park. I had a cutting edge mobile phone in 2005 — the Motorola RAZR — but I didn’t know how to text properly. There were no iPhones, no Twitter, YouTube hadn’t officially launched yet, and Facebook was still exclusive to college students.
Lollapalooza 2005 seems quaint in retrospect. It was only two days long, there were less than 60 bands, the whole thing took place south of Buckingham Fountain, all four main stages were crammed onto Hutchinson Field… And yet this year’s event would hardly seem unrecognizable to a time traveler from 2005. It’s still, as I said back at the time, “an event as corporate and branded and manipulative as anything any marketing genius could ever devise.” And despite that, with the right attitude, it can still be a lot of fun.
Over the years I have seen so many memorable performances at Lollapalooza. Would most of these have been better suited to a dark club as opposed to a big, sweaty field in the middle of the day? Absolutely. But let’s be honest. I cram more bands into three days at Lolla than I go out and see for the rest of the year combined. Is that pathetic? Maybe so, but I’m busy. I’m a grown up. And a big festival provides me with the opportunity to stumble across something unexpectedly great that I never would have sought out on my own. So I return to Lolla every year in spite of the weak lineups that — looking back — I’ve publicly bitched about almost every year.
Let me start by saying that I am not even sure I like this band. That’s not to say that I am trying to get a pass on them. I might like them, I might not. Whether I do is not the point. It’s that I can’t figure it out yet I will excitedly watch any late night TV performance of Future Islands—a statement I cannot make about bands I love.
Obviously, the focus of my semi-obsession is on the singer, Samuel T. Herring. I haven’t read anything about him or the history of the band so let’s run with some of my assumptions:
He’s clearly the guy pushing the band forward. He’s the guy who has been pestering people about his band to the point where they are now regularly on national TV. The rest of the band seems to be barely paying attention. The bassist thought the band broke up 15 years ago, but here they are.
His awkward, intense dancing is unnerving and fascinating. He OWNs this dance. Nobody else can match him. Nobody. Mick Jagger and Bruno Mars are weak fakers just walking through some moves. Samuel T. Herring is the real deal.
Kinda memorable melodies and disco beats aren’t really enough these days so Samuel T. Herring goes full Cookie Monster to cut through the clutter. That takes some real balls.
Samuel T. Herring can and will do Monty Python impressions for hours on end as long as someone—anyone—is still paying attention.
I’ve mostly avoided the hullabaloo around Robin Thicke because I thought I didn’t care, but the truth is that it bugs the shit out of me. Not because I feel a need to defend him (but I will) or that I think he’s some amazing artist (who cares?) but because the hypocrisy of the whole thing is just obnoxious. I mean, really…are we really ready to surrender to the squares?
The basic argument against Thicke breaks down along two lines:
He’s a lout for carrying on with Miley Cyrus at the Video Music Awards and calling women bitches
The first is so preposterous I am amazed I even have to address it, but here it goes: Popular music always has and always will feed on itself.
Traditional folk music and bluegrass structure is built around a handful of simple patterns. Same with the blues. Same with most rock and roll, including so much of the rock canon we all adore.
There’s something thrilling — maybe even masochistic — about entering a big music festival on the first day. So many people at the gates, squeezing in, getting hassled by security goons, all intent on making it inside. Once you’re finally in, you can take a deep breath and get your bearings. Bar, porta-potties, stages. Check, check, check.
I showed up on Friday at Lollapalooza excited to see Father John Misty, and Josh Tillman’s band did not disappoint. Tillman is a charismatic front man, poking fun at both the VIPs in the platinum section as well as the “idiots in the back.” The band was tight and since they only have one album, they played all my favorite songs. It was such a great show that I was afraid nobody would be able to top it for the rest of the weekend.
Father John MistyCrystal Castles had me thinking how the electronic stuff that used to be relegated to Perry’s tent/stage has spilled over on to the main stages. I was coming up with a theory about EDM’s recent influence on indie rock…when New Order came on and reminded me that this has actually been going on for at least 30 years. Beer can make you a little slow.
I love this movie: The Source Family. It details the formation and history of your proto-typical southern Californian 70s cult. Founded by entrepreneur-judo champ-war hero-man-killer-turned-spiritual-guru-and natural-food-purveyor, Jim Baker, The Source Family did a lot of its recruiting via a psych-rock band comprised of Family members. Over the years, the band recorded several highly collectable albums under various names, including Yahowa13, Children Of The Sixth Root Race, Father Yod And The Spirit Of ’76, Fire, Water, Air, and Yodship. While the trailer for the film implies a bit more doom and drama than the film actually delivers, it’s still a fascinating look into how one man can take over the lives of many. And the music is pure gold!
I have had a lifelong obsession with cults. The idea that a person, by sheer force of personality, can control others fascinates me. That so many of these stories end in tragedy appeals to my sense of drama. That so many of them include sex, drugs and rock and roll appeals to my love of outlaw culture. And to think that it all started with a warning…
I spent the summer of 1980 in Wichita Falls, Texas with family friends. I was nine years old and excited to be on a trip all by myself, but also spent many late drives home from rodeos crying in the backseat because I was certain my parents would die while I was away. Such was the psyche of a young boy away from his family for the first time.
Psyches were generally fragile in that time. The 70s may have officially ended that December 31, but the cultural ramifications and general freakiness were still very much in play. The year 1980 was much more like the loosey-goosey 70s than the Yuppie-filled decade it marks. Music was still loose, drugs were still prevalent, people were still searching. It was confusing.
The parents I was staying with of course had to work, which left a minimum of eight hours a day where their daughter and I were unsupervised. We spent much of that time at the community pool listening to Eddie Rabbit croon about how much he loved a rainy night. We were pretty good kids so we didn’t really get into much trouble but I did get into a scrap or two with the neighborhood boys and it was eventually decided that we would attend Bible school.
Most of the classes were boring, but toward the end of the summer we had a whole week dedicated to cult awareness. You have to remember that the Jonestown massacre had occurred less than two years previous. The first American Blessing Ceremony of the Unification Church (a mass wedding conducted by Rev. Sun Myung Moon) was still two years away. In Texas, and around the country, there was a growing fear of cults and their influence on young people in particular.
The week kicked off with a movie that we all watched in the church activity room. It was all very spooky with grainy news footage of Jim Jones and various fakers, but Jones was the star and it was easy to see why. Who can forget those shades and the fact that his most infamous, heinous act was the origin of an idiom that so perfectly articulated the danger of blind submission. I was indeed drinking the cool aid.
The rest of the week was focused on how we spot cults and those who might want to indoctrinate us into their fold. What actually happened was I went home armed with a dozen or so other cults and leaders I wanted to research. My library lending habits would certainly raise the suspicion of today’s Security State listeners, but this was 1980! I could check out as many books on sadistic egomaniacs as I like!
Somehow, Jim Baker and The Source Family never hit my radar. Maybe it’s because of how the story ends (and I won’t give that away here), but I’ve since been spending some time on Wikipedia and variousothersites dedicated to the Source Family story and all I can say is, “Yahowha!”
It was the end of February and my mom was a week away from dying of cancer when I stopped by Laurie’s Planet of Sound on my way from work and picked up All Hail West Texas. I had moved from my hometown to Chicago that summer and my mom was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in November.
My wife and I had been driving back and forth between Michigan and Chicago all winter, watching helplessly as my mom’s body was ravaged by the disease and the treatment.
I was just a few months into a new job and while the people I worked with were very supportive, it puts you in a tough position to be constantly asking for time off that you hadn’t accrued…week after week. My wife was working on her masters degree in an intense program and it was really hard. My life sucked.
My mom had lived in the same small house all my life. She moved in with my dad when they got married. I was their only child. She was widowed at 33 when I was ten years old. From then on, it was just me and my mom. She never dated. She devoted her life to raising me.
And to Jesus, whom she had accepted as her personal lord and savior after my dad got sick. By the time he died, my mom was a full-blown born-again evangelical Christian with everything that came along with that in 1981. Pat Robertson encouraged her to get involved in politics and she became a precinct delegate for the Republican party with the intention of overturning Roe v. Wade.
Not too many years before that she had been pretty hip. A cool 70s chick with a little daisy tattoo (visible in Super 8 home movies from my waterbabies swim lessons where she wore a bikini, because hey, it was the 70s). She and my dad took motorcycle trips across the country. We had a boat on Lake Michigan and a Datsun 280Z. They’d drop me off at my grandma’s so they could have have week-long parties. My parents knew how to live.
Didn’t really know how to die though. Who does? My dad was sick for a few years but they never talked to me about the potential — the fact, really — that he was dying. Chemotherapy, radiation, a macrobiotic diet, they tried everything. When that all failed, they tried Jesus. That failed too obviously but my mom never saw it that way.
Her faith provided her with a peace that passeth understanding. I spent my adolescence in the church. Sunday school, bible study, church retreats, Christian rock concerts, overseas missions, building toilets in rural Bolivia, witnessing to unbelievers, planting seeds of faith, the whole bit. I was still enough of a fundie my freshman year of college that I gave an anti-abortion speech in my poli-sci class.
But as I got older I grew more skeptical. I tried to blend my beliefs into my own goofy brand of Zen Christian Humanism. Or something. This scared the shit out of my poor mom. She knew that if I turned my back on God, she would lose the opportunity to spend eternity with me in heaven. Our family would never be reunited.
I kept her prayer journals after she died so I know full-well the consternation I put her through. And that’s not even getting into the general dickishness of the 20-year-old know-it-all liberal undergrad asshole I had become.
* * *
Four months. That’s the prognosis the doctor gave us in November when my mom was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. Your first reaction to news like that is disbelief. But doctors know what they’re talking about, and my mom’s doctor was cruelly accurate.
Being who I am — or who I was then, anyway — I made her a mix disc. It contained a bunch of Johnny Cash gospel songs as well as some of Woody’s more spiritual lyrics from the Mermaid Avenue albums. I’m told the music comforted her, made her think that I hadn’t lost my faith, that she could die without worrying about where I’d spend eternity.
I wouldn’t have included anything off All Hail West Texas on the mix even if it had been released more than two weeks before she died. She had lightened up a bit over the years, shunning a lot of the hateful rhetoric of the Christian Right. Even so, I don’t think she’d ever be down with Jeff and Cyrus.
All Hail West Texas came out on February 19, 2002. I picked it up that Friday after reading Michael Goldberg’s review in Neumu. I was home alone that evening, doing laundry and getting stoned when I put on my new purchase. It blew my mind.
At the time I wrote, “After dealing with some seriously heavy shit lately, I was turned on to an album that lifted my spirits in a way that only truly great music can.” Before I looked up the release date just now I would’ve sworn I listened to this album the entire time my mom was sick. But she died just eight days after I got it. March 2. In my mind this album has become so wrapped up around this time in my life that the actual dates don’t even need to make sense.
I can’t remember if it was the night after she died or the night after the funeral, but I was at a bar with my friends and I kept going out to my car to play “The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton” for them. Then “Fall of the Star High School Running Back.” They just stared at me with sympathetic red eyes, uncomfortable and unsure how to interpret what I was trying to communicate to them through these whirring, lo-fi boombox recordings.
I don’t really know either. But there is something in there that I need them to grasp. Something deep and heavy. I try “Source Decay.” Surely this bitter tale of receiving “torture devices from my old best friend” will convey the thing in my soul that I’m trying so hard to share. When I come up empty handed the feeling almost overwhelms me. We go back inside the bar and drink in silence.
* * *
And now it’s eleven and a half years later. That’s a lot of time. I’ve watched the Mountain Goats get signed by 4AD and release a bunch of professionally recorded albums that are widely acclaimed. They’ve recently signed to Merge who have reissued All Hail West Texas with seven bonus tracks. And it’s now even available on vinyl for the first time. I bought it and it sounds perfect.
When I listen to these songs I do not wallow in sadness. This music still lifts my spirits like it did the first time I heard it. I no longer think about my mom dying every time one of these songs comes up on shuffle.
That said, whenever I hear the line, “I want to go home. But I am home,” from “Riches and Wonders” I can conjure up the two opposing emotions that were tearing me apart at the time: Whenever I was in Chicago, I needed to go and be with my mom. And whenever I was at my mother’s deathbed in Michigan, I just wanted to escape back to Chicago.
I spent several years hating God for taking my mom. I’ve got a kid of my own now who will never get to know his paternal grandparents. Every once in a while he asks me if heaven is real. “Some people think so,” I tell him. I try hard not to lie to him. But he’s insistent. “But is it true?”
Lollapalooza: the great granddaddy of music festivals. Or would that be Woodstock? Or Monterrey? Or Newport? Maybe Lolla is just the weird uncle of music fests. Who’s not even that weird anymore. Lolla is your uncle whose basement used to smell funny, but now he’s just a regular old guy who wears golf shirts.
Or something.
I went to the first two Lollas back in its original incarnation as a touring freak show, and I’ve been to all of them since it settled down in Chicago as a dest-fest in 2005. So I’m a seasoned expert at this shit. An OG (old grump).
People always complain about the headliners. It’s what we do. But this year it was particularly bad. Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Keys, Black Sabbath, and Jack White are the only bands on the lineup to get the “extra big” font size. Avicii and Justice headlined the other two “main stage” slots but they don’t warrant the extra big font because apparently nobody cares about them. There were eight other bands with the “not quite as big” font size and six of those were scheduled to play before 6:30. Sigur Ros played at 4:00.
But usually it’s the undercard bands with the tiny font size that make Lollapalooza worth the hassle of sweaty bros and sweltering heat. For me this year there wasn’t even much of that, but I went in full of optimism because every year I always stumble across something unexpectedly great. In the past, I’ve been turned on to Saul Williams, Deerhunter, Matt & Kim, and lots of other interesting stuff. That’s what makes a big fest potentially exciting.
Friday
If I still lived in Chicago I would’ve totally showed up on time to see First Aid Kid, but they were playing at noon on Friday and I had to drive from Michigan, so I missed them. I got there in time to see Sharon Van Etten who was charming and gracious. It seems that Lolla has finally solved its stage bleed issue that has plagued most fests where more than one band is playing at a time. Except for the quiet moments where you could hear the bass from Perry’s stage from just about anywhere in the Loop.
Once again, Perry’s stage with its DJs and EDM artists made all the white dudes with guitars seem irrelevant. This was most pronounced when walking from Porter Robinson to the Head and the Heart. You go from Robinson’s audience who are all young and dancing and half naked and glittery to the Head and the Heart where everybody’s sitting on blankets or standing with their arms crossed as some beardo plucks the strings of his acoustic guitar and warbles a little folk ditty. It’s pretty clear who’s having more fun.
But there comes a point when you need to chill out on a blanket in the afternoon sun, and the Shins are a fine soundtrack for that. I had completely forgotten that I had seen the Shins the last time they played Lollapalooza in 2006 with their original lineup. This set was more rock and less Garden State, but Mercer cannot even come close to hitting the high notes in a live setting. I enjoyed it, but I wonder if in six years I’ll remember it at all.
I’ve seen Dawes a couple of times in the past couple of years (including at 2010’s Lolla), and although I love their albums, they hadn’t won me over in concert. This was going to be their third strike for me. But we ended up right up front and they played enthusiastically and engaged the crowd and put on a great show. Taylor Goldsmith still makes ridiculous “L.A. guitar guy” faces when he plays his solos, but he’s self-effacing enough to get away with it. Plus his lyrics are just so damn good.
I wasn’t expecting much from Black Sabbath. I assumed Ozzy would be propped up like a marionette and forced to lip-sync to a pre-recorded vocal track. And I was grouchy about Sharon fucking over original drummer Bill Ward, who was replaced by some kid. But I’ll be damned if they didn’t pummel me into submission. They sounded way better than anybody had any right to expect.
Whenever I started to get tired or bored or grumpy a stroll past Perry’s stage would recharge my festival batteries. I certainly wasn’t going to spend all day there, but five or ten minutes of standing on the edge and looking in at the mayhem and debauchery does your soul a lot of good. Bassnectar blew my mind for a couple minutes when I need it most.
I know that the Black Keys play every festival and that lots of annoying people really love them, but I’d never seen them before (that I can remember) and I like several of the songs I’ve heard from their recent albums. So I ventured down into the sea of bros to experience it first hand. We ended up standing next to shirtless Canadian boy who kept shouting, “WOOOOOO! THE BLOOOOOOOOZE!” every 15 seconds. Normally this would drive me nuts, but something about him made me chuckle instead. When a huge orange moon rose over Lake Michigan, my wonderful wife thought she should tell the bro to check it out. “OH MY GOD, I THOUGHT IT WAS THE LIGHTS. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR POINTING IT OUT TO ME. SERIOUSLY: THANK YOU!” It was a moment. And I’m happy we got to share with that guy.
We walked back to catch the end of Black Sabbath, and I was shocked that Ozzy was still upright after an hour and a half. They played “Paranoid” for an encore and everybody went home happy.
Saturday
I made it down in time for JEFF the Brotherhood because I’ve heard a couple of their songs and they remind me of early Weezer. Had no idea they were a two piece until I got there. Spent a good amount of time trying to figure out whether the main guy was playing a guitar or a bass before I realized that — either way — they were terrible. They earned that 1:30 slot, I guess. Yikes. Just a shambles. And when there’s only two of you, at least one of you has to keep it together. Oh well.
Got some food and listened to a little Aloe Blacc who was soulful and nice. Met up with pals who wanted to watch Neon Indian, so we did. They played pleasant synth-pop for a half hour until an announcer came on and told us there was a big storm coming and we’d all have to leave. Everyone had to evacuate the park. That’s it.
So we startled shuffling out with no idea whether that was it for Lollapalooza or what. It wasn’t even raining at that point but the skies looked ominous. We passed Perry’s stage on the way out where we heard a similar announcement. Everybody had to leave the park. For our own safety. We asked some of the security guys what’s up but they couldn’t give us any additional info. All they knew was that we all had to leave the park.
I couldn’t get an internet connection until I ended up at an Anthropologie that had wi-fi. That’s when I saw Lolla’s claim on their website that “Festival-goers are being directed by staff and the Chicago Police Department to pre-established underground evacuation and shelter sites.” That was 100% bullshit. Nobody mentioned anything about underground evacuation and shelter sites. Nobody. And we asked. Later, I even talked to some kids who tried to stick it out inside the park for as long as they could. When they finally got hustled out, nobody mentioned underground evacuation and shelter sites to them either.
I was annoyed by the clusterfuck of the evacuation, but I wasn’t angry about it until I read the lies. I got even grouchier when I couldn’t find my friends and had to go without beer for an additional two hours. The little grill we ended up at had two waitresses on staff, which is more than enough for the typical Saturday afternoon in the Loop. But when you’ve got 100,000 Lollapalooza refugees demanding beer and french fries, it gets a little overwhelming.
Eventually we saw a tweet that they were letting people back in. The schedule was all fucked up and it was hard to figure out what was going on, but we found out FUN was playing right now. We made it over there in time to hear them do the summer song of 2012 and they seemed to be effectively washing away the bad vibes from the past couple of hours. It’s hard to be cynical when a whole field of wet kids are shouting, “WE ARE YOUNG. SO LET’S SET THE NIGHT ON FIRE!”
Next up in the newly compressed schedule was Franz Ferdinand. We got pretty close and ended up having a great time. As far as I’m aware, those Scots haven’t done anything since 2005, but seeing them gave me the same feeling I got from the Strokes a couple years ago after my Lady Gaga disappointment. It’s only rock and roll but they do it well and I like it. By the end of their set I was in a great mood.
A stroll past Perry’s stage made it even better. Calvin Harris was playing (or whatever he does) and there were thousands of muddy kids going crazy. Not just kind of muddy, but like mud-bath-at-the-spa muddy. Head to toe, covered in mud. I was nervous they were going to touch me but we got up pretty close for Santigold. Young couples were making out and grinding all around us. Glad to see the kids are doing ecstasy again.
Probably should have gone over to see a bit of Frank Ocean, but we got lazy and ended up splitting. We had an aftershow to go to.
Saturday Night at the Aragon
I already told you I’m a Lollapalooza OG. I get super nostalgic about Jane’s Addiction. So when I heard that Jane’s was doing an aftershow on Saturday, I had to go. The last time they played Lolla I had a horrible experience. The band was great, everything I could’ve hoped for, especially with original bassist Eric Avery, but there was a guy standing next to us at that show who had brought his six-year-old son along with him and got way up front where it was very loud. The kid didn’t have earplugs and was getting upset. I gave the dad some earplugs for his kid, but the kid didn’t like them in his ears. He was starting to cry, and we told his dad to get his kid out of there. Then we found out the guy we were talking to wasn’t the kid’s dad; the dad was laying on the ground, tripping his balls off, leaving his kid to be taken care of by strangers. Long story short: we got the dad up off the ground, dragged him to the medical tent, while my social worker wife tried to explain to security what to do with the little boy. Needless to say, that ruined our night and we went home disturbed and depressed. Which sucked because Jane’s Addiction was playing a hell of a show.
I love loud concerts. And I love drugs. And I love kids. But you’ve got to be a real asshole to mix all three together at once.
At the Aragon this year, there were no abandoned children to distract me. And Perry Farrell is the consummate entertainer. Dude understands show business. Strippers on swings, monsters on stilts, stag flicks on screens, I mean come on. They put on a show!
And the music sounds like it did twenty years ago, which is all we could ask for. Right? “Mountain Song” and “Ted, Just Admit It” are massive songs. They will always bring me back to my sophomore year of college, getting wasted with pals, and expanding my mind. The fact that this band represents everything I loath about Los Angeles isn’t really their fault. You can’t blame Dave Navarro for the fact that he’s become the “model” for every Hollywood casting call of “edgy rocker.” Just look at every backing band that plays behind a “rock chick” pop princess on Saturday Night Live or American Idol. It’s embarrassing and everybody involved should be ashamed of themselves. But that’s what happens when you pass off the alternative to the mainstream. They co-opt the weird shit and make it silly. So maybe we can blame Jane’s Addiction after all. Oh well. Whatever…
Sunday
The Dum Dum Girls were fun. They’d be better in a club, of course, but instead they played in the bright light of the afternoon. The weather was perfect on Sunday. Sunny with a cool breeze. Not hot enough to dry up all the mud. But that’s okay. Just watch your step.
I spent most of the Gaslight Anthem’s set standing by the medical tent watching various kids get wheeled in and out on gurneys. Nothing gruesome. Just a bunch of exhausted party people who don’t understand the value of sunscreen and an occasional sip of water. The music veered back and forth between sounding like rootsy punk and awful current alt-rock a la Nickleback. Do these guys have two songwriters in the band, one cool and one terrible? Or is that just what it takes to cross over these days? Should’ve gone to see Sigur Ros; I heard it was cool.
My wife likes Florence + the Machine so we got up close for that. People around us seemed to think Florence is weird and freaky, apparently because she makes cosmic hand gestures. Other than that she seemed like a normal singer in the vein of Sinead O’Connor or Sarah McLachlan. She channeled a little Yoko when she told everybody to turn to the person standing next to them and hug them. (Now that I think about it, maybe she is weird.) And then she encouraged everybody to put a girl up on their shoulders, which a lot of wimpy dudes actually attempted. “More dancing! More girls on shoulders!” That’s actually a pretty good rule for concerts in general. But the corollary to that rule is that if you’re going to sit on someone’s shoulders, you have to take your shirt off. That’s the way it worked in the 70s and I don’t see why, in this liberated era, we should take a step backwards toward Puritanism. Or is that just me?
In general, there wasn’t enough genuine weirdness this year. Maybe it’s time to bring back the Jim Rose Circus. Or better yet, the Emergency Broadcast Network.
We tromped across the park to get in place for Jack White. While we were waiting we watched a wasted teenager stumble around and get ditched by his friends. He ended up passing out in on his back in front of us. Medics and security eventually dragged him away. Jack came out with his male band and then brought out his female band. They both sounded great, and it was cool to hear the oldies performed by a full-band lineup. The countrified “Hotel Yorba” worked particularly well with its new arrangement. I miss Meg though.
Overall, it was a weird year for Lollapalooza. The fact that most of the excitement was centered around Perry’s stage leaves old guys like me feeling a little out of touch. That’s okay, of course. That’s the way it should be. Kids deserve to have their own scenes without a bunch of hairy old weirdos falling all over themselves trying to prove how cool and “with it” they still are.
As the music I personally connect with gets further relegated to the side stages and crappy time slots, I’ll just have to adjust my schedule to get down there at noon and leave early. Which is fine. I get tired. Or maybe I’ll skip the fest entirely and just start going to aftershows. Not anytime soon though. I’m still optimistic for the unexpected. You never know.
Lollapalooza is coming up. As always, Glorious Noise will have a posse roaming Grant Park in search of warm felafels and cold beer. Along the way we try to stumble across some good music. There are a lot of bands on the line-up that we don’t know much about. So we threw out some questions to help us all get to know the Lollapalooza line-up.
These are from Hamish from Animal Kingdom.
1. What’s the best part of playing festivals?
The whole thing is a buzz, from meeting your heroes back stage to getting up and performing in front of thousands of people.
2. What’s the worst part of playing festivals?
The mud at some of the UK festivals is crazy some years – you feel like you are in a war zone.
3. Have you ever attended a music festival as a fan?
Yeah, loads of times. First festival was when I was 15 back in England. I loved it and then started going to multiple festivals every year since.
4. Other act(s) you’re most looking forward to seeing?
Neil Young, Tame Impala, Jack White, White Denim, SBTRK…the list goes on…
5. Who is the worst band/entourage member to sit next to on the van/bus?
We have had a couple of nasty crew members in the past but everyone packs their toothpaste these days.
6. What’s the last music purchase you paid for with your own money?
I bought a 2 Bears remix of Disparate Youth by Santigold. It’s pretty fantastic.
7. What’s your favorite thing about Chicago?
I studied at U of I in Champaign-Urbana so spent a year around Chicago. I love the history and the beaches around Lake Michigan in the summer.
8. How has Lollapalooza’s radius clause (no shows within 300 miles six months before and three months after) affected your touring schedule?
I think they might have let us off as we’re not quite at the stage of harming their ticket sales yet!
9. Got anything to say to fans in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio who can’t make it to Lollapalooza?
We’ll be playing Michigan, staying in Wisconsin, unfortunately missing Iowa and Indiana this time and playing in Columbus, Ohio on the way, so hopefully we’ll get to see some of you!
10. Finish this sentence: Perry Farrell is ______
A genius. I grew up listening to Jane’s Addiction. At least three of his records are stone cold classics.
Lollapalooza is coming up. As always, Glorious Noise will have a posse roaming Grant Park in search of warm felafels and cold beer. Along the way we try to stumble across some good music. There are a lot of bands on the line-up that we don’t know much about. So we threw out some questions to help us all get to know the Lollapalooza line-up.
The Dunwells responded.
1. What’s the best part of playing festivals?
Playing to large crowds of people that may not have heard our music before. Also being part of the festival experience – it’s like a big party.
2. What’s the worst part of playing festivals?
Portaloos – especially on the last day!
3. Have you ever attended a music festival as a fan?
We get some great festivals in the UK and between us we’ve been to lots of them including Leeds festival (in our home town), Glastonbury (the year it was a mud bath!), Distortion festival and Isle of Wight.
4. Other act(s) you’re most looking forward to seeing at Lollapalooza?
At the drive in – Rob’s choice, Gary Clark Jnr – Dave H’s choice, Justice – Joe’s choice, Dave D – Florence and the machine, Jonny – Sigur Ros.
5. Who is the worst band/entourage member to sit next to on the van/bus?
Either Joe who has a habit of spilling drinks everywhere, or Jonny who likes to spread out so you always seem to get his feet in your face.
6. What’s the last music purchase you paid for with your own money?
Dave H – I just downloaded Joe Bonamassa’s new album and some remastered John Mayall albums. Rob – Brand New album called Daisy. Jonny – Hed PE Broke. Joe bought the latest Elbow album. Dave D – I just downloaded Michael Kiwanuka and the Ben Howard album.
7. What’s your favorite thing about Chicago?
We’ve never been to Chicago so we are excited to see the city. We’ve heard it is an amazing place!
8. How has Lollapalooza’s radius clause (no shows within 300 miles six months before and three months after) affected your touring schedule?
It hasn’t really affected us as we’ve only just begun our US tour and head to Colorado straight after the festival. [According to a press release received this morning, they’re actually playing Milwaukee, Madison, and Minneapolis before Colorado -Ed.]
9. Got anything to say to fans in Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Indiana, and Ohio who can’t make it to Lollapalooza?
We hope to see you at a show local to you later this year!
