The Spin: Paloozin' Part One: Like Bonnaroo With More Obama T-shirts
Photos by Kyle Scudder.
Friday. Noon. We arrived at the south entrance of Grant Park to the pulsating, robotic sounds of Holy Fuck. Our mission was to see two bands—fellow Nashvillians Raconteurs and De Novo Dahl. But holy fuck if there wasn’t a lot of rock ‘n’ roll going on in Chicago in the meantime, and we intended on catching a healthy dose of it.
We caught a bit of Holy Fuck’s set, which was pretty entertaining…in the sense that it sounded like the soundtrack to cyborg sex and the lead singer kept playing what looked like a Richter scale. (Turns out it was a 35 mm film sequencer…still a bit baffled.) They were the first act we caught that married live instrumentation with hypnotic, surging samples and electronic sounds, but they certainly wouldn’t be the last.
Brooklyn’s Yeasayer played the AT&T stage a bit later and wowed us with their command over various triggers, MIDI pads and effects processors, and their vocals were surprisingly spot-on. The epic, sometimes disjointed tunes off their debut All Hour Cymbals translated pretty well live.
Yeasayer
Backstage during The Black Keys’ set, we spotted Brendan Benson sporting a handlebar mustache that made him look less like a tough guy and more like Willy Wonka’s anemic nephew. It didn’t bother us too much, however, ‘cause we knew the guy would be playing the hell out of a blonde Telecaster in about 30 minutes. The Black Keys were good, but they didn't do anything we hadn't seen before.
The Black Keys
The Raconteurs honestly seem to get tighter each time we catch them. They’ve grown so comfortable live, in fact, that they deconstruct their songs, incorporating changes in time signature and more than a few wank-offs between White and Benson. Even Little Jack Lawrence broke free of his typically stoic presence to bob and jump a bit. Auxiliary guy Mark Watrous proved his meddle with fiddle parts that brought a familiar Southern twang to the Windy City. Most songs were played well but often proved to be a bit masturbatory and full of Jack White’s bleating, bluesy gibberish. Not that his gibberish isn't cool from time to time.
The Raconteurs
We bailed a little early in order to catch Malkmus and the Jicks at the MySpace Stage (perhaps the most inappropriate pairing of band and stage we came across), because, well…it’s Stephen Fucking Malkmus. The second the man stepped onstage and began mocking his vocal melodies with those trademark noodly riffs, we knew we’d made the right decision. Surprisingly, we didn't hear anyone yell out the names of Pavement songs. Oh, and drummer Janet Weiss is an unreal badass.
Stephen Malkmus wanks for no one but himself
We thought we’d have enough time to see The Jicks and still catch a good spot for Radiohead, but we didn’t account for the fact that there were no Friday co-headliners and every human in Grant Park was trying to squeeze toward the AT&T Stage. As we were having a smoke with a guy who claimed to be the lead singer of the Felice Brothers (who informed us that Alison Mosshart of The Kills passed out due to heat exhaustion during their set), we heard the opening notes of ”Airbag” and knew seeing Radiohead wasn’t an option.
More to come.
P.S. Here's a picture of Cat Power. Just because.
Chan Marshall
