The Spin: Paloozin' Part Two: Who the Hell Plays Rock 'n' Roll at 11:45 a.m.?

Photos by Kyle Scudder and D. Patrick Rodgers.

One of our primary goals for Saturday was to show up early enough to catch De Novo Dahl’s 11:45 set at the PlayStation Stage. But we fucked up. After a debacle on the Blue Line, we ended up at the park just as DND was loading their gear offstage.

We caught up with Joel, who reassured us that, though it was a good show, we didn’t miss any material we hadn’t seen in previous performances. Dahl noted that the crowd for DND was sizable—he guessed around 2,000 folks—and he noticed a surprising amount of them singing along to material not only from Move Every Muscle… but also Cats and Kittens.

Joel J. Dahl

An impressive crowd had gathered for Philly’s throwback quintet Dr. Dog at midday. The Dog performed a broad mix of tunes from all three of their albums with the youthful exuberance of a band just excited to be there. Despite being freshly scathed by Pitchfork’s 5.5 rating of their latest album, Fate, Dr. Dog turned in a performance that was incredibly strong and more of an homage to their predecessors (The Band, The Beach Boys, et al.) than strictly derivative.

Dr. Dog

After Dr. Dog we caught Perry Farrell posing for some publicity footage near the artists’ area, leaning strangely against a tree and looking more than a little bit like a drag queen sans the wig. Gotta hand it to the man, though; he’s got some good ideas. This year’s festival included Kidzapalooza, which featured stripped-down performances from Jeff Tweedy, Rogue Wave, Farrell himself (with a surprise appearance from Slash) and more.

It was unmistakable that the buzz surrounding MGMT has come to a head once we noticed the mix of kids, bros, punkish hipsters and real-life old people gathering for their set. While we were only moderately impressed by MGMT’S debut album and a little put off by their frontman’s tie-dyed-dashiki-meets-mumu ensemble, we were pleased to find they have the stage presence of a genuine rock band. Crowd-pleasers “Time to Pretend” and “Electric Feel” were tight and lively, and their material lent itself well to a brief but upbeat set.

Citi Stage, one of our least favorite stages at Lollapalooza, also happened to be the setting for most of the up-and-coming acts. Faced with a layout that forced the audience into a veritable cattle corral, a handful of bold but shirtless Lollapaloozers opted to climb the precarious branches of trees overlooking the stage.

Battles put on a performance too large for the Citi Stage, complete with explosive hip-hop drums, throbbing bass and synth and pitch-shifted vocals. We’re not quite sure what Battles member Tyondai Braxton was saying, but we’d like to think it was something about riding rocketships and shit.

Battles

Toadies opened with “Backslider,” and that was basically all the time we could afford to spend on them. A palpable division began to form between Rage and Wilco folks as Toadies were wowing all the 40-year-old post-grungers with virtually everything off of Rubberneck.

Despite rumors of a pre-Wilco appearance by Barack Obama, Jeff Tweedy appeared onstage in his bejeweled Nudie suit without so much as an introduction. Looking stone cold sober but a bit scraggly, the hometown hero led his band—also clad in sparkling suits—in a strong, sprawling set. Wilco opened with a lot of material from Yankee Hotel, and Nels Cline kept the Easy Listening, noodly nonsense to a minimum—for most of their set, anyhow. After about an hour of Wilco, we thought we’d try to see what the Rage scene was like, but we only got about as far as the DJ tent (where DJ Momjeans aka Danny Masterson was spinning) before realizing the renegades of funk had completely taken over and there was no chance of getting near the stage. We quickly realized Masterson wasn’t going to play the Big Star song from That ‘70s Show, so we took off, planning to rest up for Sunday’s drive back.

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