LOLlapalooza 09

So I checked Face-LifeSucker-Book about a week ago to see Matt had frantically posted the list of bands playing at this years Lollapalooza. No I never really payed any attention to the larger annual concerts simply because I could never attend. I mean, I'd be crazy to make the schlep all the way to Chicago just because....wait...Is that TV on the Radio? And the Arctic Monkeys...and Coheed...and the Decemberists, and Vampire Weekend...the list goes on!

Indeed the bands playing at this year's lollapalooza are basically the bands we (and everyone else for that matter) have been talking about for the last year. Vampire Weekend, Band of Horses, Glasvegas, Neko Case, and many more. There was enough concentrated audo/visual goodness that I had to bite.

A few days later Matt and I are coming up with a battle plan for making sure we saw the bands we NEEDED to see and prioritizing the rest. Here are those lists:

Owen's List

Bands MUST SEE

1). TV on the Radio

2). Arctic Monkeys

3), Coheed and Cambria

4). Glasvegas

5). Los Campensinos!

Bands If Possible (no order)

Peter Bjorn and John

Kings of Leon

Ben Folds

Silversun

Decemberists

Cold War Kids

Kaiser Chiefs

Andrew Bird

Band of Horses

Bands Would Be Cool To Say I've Seen to Enhance Sex Appeal

But Are Not Imperative (no order)

Beastie Boys

The Killers

Lou Reed

Depeche Mode

Vampire Weekend

Snoop Dog (b/c you know....it's Snoop Dog)

Jane's Addiction

Matt's List

Absolutley Must See:

Los Campesinos!

TV on the Radio

The Decemberists

Arctic Monkeys

Silversun Pickups

Very Much Want To See:

Glasvegas

Vampire Weekend

Kaiser Chiefs

Atmosphere

Band of Horses

Animal Collective

Beastie Boys

White Lies

Cold War Kids

Want To See Because They Will Probably Be Good:

Kings of Leon

Ben Folds

Of Montreal

Lou Reed

Fleet Foxes

Passion Pit

Crystal Castles

Ra Ra Riot

Manchester Orchestra

Want To See On A Lark:

Coheed and Cambria

The Killers

Peter Bjorn and John

Jane's Addiction

Thievery Corporation

Snoop Dogg

Gaslight Anthem

Gabe's List

(even though he is not going sad face)

Bands MUST SEE

1). Arctic Monkeys

2). TV on the Radio

3), Lou Reed

4). Kings of Leon

5). The Decemberists

Bands If Possible (more or less IN order)

Depeche Mode

Peter Bjorn and John

Passion Pit

Fleet Foxes

Silversun Pickups

Of Montreal

The Killers

Snoop Dogg

Animal Collective

Andrew Bird

The Raveonettes

Beastie Boys

Glasvegas

Bands I'm Not Seeing. I'm Just Not. Nope.

Asher Roth

Tool

Manchester Orchestra

Coheed and Cambria

Jane's Addiction

Miscellaneous Other Bands I Know But Don't Particularly Wanna See Live

The Virgins

Deerhunter

Ben Folds

Ben Harper

Band of Horses

Vampire Weekend

Neko Case

TOP FIVE (Vol. 8) - Poetic Front Men

It would be impossible to put these in order.

Paul Simon ("No good times, no bad times, There's no times at all, Just The New York Times")

Jim Morrison ("No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn")

Lou Reed ("Skip a life completely. Stuff it in a cup. She said, Money is like us in time, It lies, but can't stand up")

Morrissey ("Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head See, the sea wants to take me The knife wants to slit me Do you think you can help me?")

Colin Meloy ("A plaintive melody Truncated symphony An ocean’s garbled vomit on the shore, Los Angeles, I’m yours")

This excludes singer/songwriters, so as a side-note:

Tom Waits

Bob Dylan

John Lennon

Damien Rice

Leonard Cohen

And since Pink Floyd didn't really have a front man after Syd Barrett:

Roger Waters

Counting Snow

(or, Crow Patrol...I guess)

Snow Patrol is the anti-Counting Crows. It's true. There's no denying it. And they are both adequate and inadequate at the same time, just in opposite ways. Let me explain....

Counting Crows' Adam Duritz is an excellent songwriter by nearly all accounts: he is original, facile, and deep without ever being emo (though he gets country-whiney sometimes, but it tends to fit). The Crows' production doesn't add more to the music than needed, and the song remains about the song writing, which, again, is ace.

Meanwhile, Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody is a sort of off-white kind of guy. It'd be hard to tell if "A Hundred Million Suns" was made before or after "Eyes Open" because both albums sound like they sprang from the dirt beneath the cheerless remains of Frosty the Snowman's half-melted midsection. Concisely put, Lightbody writes the same song over and over again and makes good money doing it. But listening to Snow Patrol is like sitting on a bean bag on the train while everyone else has to sit upright on badly designed plastic seats. It's so easy. The substance is handed to you on a cocktail platter and you don't have to listen, just enjoy. With Duritz, you can praise the lyrics, the guitar interplay, the clever arrangement, but only if you so choose. So naturally do the sounds caress the crannies of your brain.

Both bands make for effortless listening, but while Duritz does it with effortless song writing, Lightbody does it without effort.

And to address how Counting Crows is inadequate in that way, no one says music should be listened to effortlessly anyway. That's why no one listens to the Easy Listening station except worn out, menopausal women. Like Celine Dion. Haw haw haw.