the funniest Lollapalooza review EVER this just had me cracking up...i think someone on this message board wrote this..(lol)
I Love Corporate Rock!!
Lollapalooza 2005
by John Fox
I have never been afraid to admit that I have a soft spot for corporate sponsored, summer festival rock concerts. On the 23rd of July, 2005, I found myself staggering around in a half drunken/hung over haze for ticket scalpers at some un-godly hour of the morning in front of Chicago's Grant Park, Lollapalooza's only stop this year. Tickets for Lollapalooza 2005 had been sold out long before e-bay ticket scalpers sent the prices soaring to the willing buyers who bought them. I slithered through a sea of crack dealers, prostitutes and STDs before I found a sketchy looking heroin addict who had somehow gotten his hands on a few tickets. I bought one two day pass for a mere $65.00, face value was $125.00.
This year's festival seemed to have the best lineup it has had in years. With Weezer and The Pixies leading the way, the supporting acts included Primus, Billy Idol, Liz Phair, And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead, Blonde Redhead, G. Love And Special Sauce, Cake and, um, oh yeah DINOSAUR JR!!
The first band I remember catching were The Redwalls. Though their music was merely alright at best, their pretentious, "elite hipster," attitudes drove me into the beer tent a lot earlier than I had anticipated. The International Noise Conspiracy was playing at one of the other stages, but I was knee deep in alcohol before I actually started giving a shit about seeing them.
Liz Phair sucks, there's no doubt in my mind about that. She was the first act that I actually left the beer garden for and I regretted it to the fullest extent. I had this idea that she was going to rock, but she sang a bunch of ballads and was so off key that I couldn't avoid the horrid screeching that was her singing voice from any point in the entire venue.
I started feeling sick as the entire crowd of about 20,000 people started migrating toward one of the other stages to see Dashboard Confessional. At that point, I decided to go lay down near some bushes where I found a side bag with two pints of vodka stashed in it. I took the contents of the bag and ran off toward the kids stage where I hid out.
I came out from behind the kids stage reeking of alcohol and staggering around like a giraffe that had just been beaten behind its two back legs with an aluminum baseball bat. I staggered toward the stage area where the music was playing before hitting the floor. I brought myself to my hands and knees, crawled a few feet and then turned to my right to see some hippie laying down on a cot in a white tent that had a large red cross on it. The next thing I know, I am sitting on one of the cots, violently throwing up into a bucket and swearing up and down to the two police officers that I wasn't going to cause any trouble at all.
I was released from the medical tent just before Cake went on. That hippie dude who was occupying the cot right next to mine looked to be in pretty bad shape. He was breathing heavily and would let out a frantic cry that would stir up the tent volunteers about every five or six minutes. Later on, I saw him getting beaten up by a group of frat boys near the Honey Buckets. I had seen Cake once before at Bumbershoot a few years ago. I have always had a mild fascination with their music and own one or two of their CDs. They ran through their set with ease and the crowd sang along to every one of their hits.
Billy Idol was next. He came out plugging his new CD, Devil's Playground, and rocked the house with a mix of new and old tunes. Stevie Stevens also accompanied him on guitar for the first time in a long while, but nobody gave a shit about that. One of the highlights of the whole festival was when Primus got on stage; they delayed their set because they all stood off to the side and watched as everyone in the entire venue sang along to Rebel Yell. Primus was a pretty interesting act to witness. They hadn't played a show in quite some time before stepping onto the Lollapalooza stage. Their stage props were two gigantic, inflatable rubber duckies that stood about thirty feet tall apiece. They played one of my favorite albums of all time, Sailing The Seas Of Cheese, from cover to cover and played a few other scragglers that included "My Name Is Mud."
There was no denying the fact that I was most excited about the act that was coming up next, my all time favorite band, The Pixies. This was the third time that I'd seen them. The first time I saw The Pixies was back in April '04 with my ol' buddy ol' pal Crystal Schaler down at the McDonald Theatre in Eugene, Oregon. To make a long story short, that entire trip nearly became a total and complete disaster because the amount of alcohol that I had in my system nearly got me banned from the venue (For the complete story, please read "Hail To The Pixies" Seattle Sinner, June 2004.) The Pixies weren't as good as I thought that they were going to be. They seemed very relaxed and not too excited as they seemed to just play their songs according to text book before strolling off of the stage. They didn't play with that same raw energy that had on display in Eugene, but I loved them anyway as they probably played their last ever show.
Last, but not least, was the band that everybody had been waiting for = Weezer. The last time I saw Weezer was when they played the DV8 way back in the day. Today, they are a massive, corporate rock, conglomerate that cannot be stopped. Everything about their whole presentation was grandiose and way over the top. Rivers Cuomo has taken "Nerd Rock" to a level where it cannot ever return to being cool ever again. They went from wearing cardigan sweaters and singing songs like "Buddy Holly" to wearing $5,000.00 Italian suits and hiring a pyrotechnics squad to blast fireworks out of that huge, flying "W" that they decorate the stage with. The only interesting things that came out of Cuomo's mouth the entire night was when he was speaking about how when the Blue Album first came out (March 10th 1994), it sold only ten copies in its first week. After that, he claimed that their second album, Pinkerton, hasn't done that much better. Beyond that, they played just about everything in their catalog and did every single macho, rock pose under the sun and even invented a few of their own.
At this point, I just wanted it to end. The last time I had sat down was ten hours earlier when I had that little episode in the first aid tent. I took off during their third encore, that's when I witnessed that hippie dude getting his ass whipped. Those fucking jocks were rubbing his face in feces as hundred of people just looked on. I reached the "El Train,? went home, and slept well.
