After a great start to Lolla, we launched into Day 2. After some coffee and a morning walk around downtown we headed into the park around 1:30. To start the day D and Mike checked out the Prius tent and got some other swag, while Justin and I headed to Perry’s (the DJ stage).
Whether you’re a fan of techno or not, Perry’s is always worth at least one visit. Steve Porter rose to internet fame when he remixed the Slap Chop infomercial into an auto-tuned rap. Turns out he’s an all around fun DJ. He had the crowd jumping at Perry’s for a solid hour with great beats and crazy video mashups on the screen behind him. I was going to catch The XX’s set, but we were having such a blast at Perry’s it didn’t seem right to leave for a much more mellow show.
One thing you must always be on the lookout for is crowd surfers. Although they were most frequent during the big shows, I learned the hard way that even at Perry’s you’re not safe.
After dancing our butts off, we grabbed some food and drink. Once again, with Chef Graham Elliot as food director, Lolla had the best food I’ve ever seen at a festival. Throughout the weekend I enjoyed some awesome BBQ, classic deep dish pizza, and of course Elliot’s lobster corn dogs.
The rest of the day was about rocking out, so we started with AFI. They were (predictably) screamy, and very loud, but the few songs I knew sounded very good.
After about 4-5 songs in, it was time to switch over to claim a close spot at the main South stage for the evening’s last two acts. D and I grabbed a decent spot right on the rail to the left of the stage. You really can’t beat a rail vantage point – even if you’re off to the side there’s no one to look over and people aren’t constantly trying to push past you. First up was Social Distortion. They played all the staples and sounded good, but it was a notch less intense than the club show I saw them at last Fall. Some of the songs seemed arranged a little slower (e.g. “Ball and Chain” really crawled) and others just didn’t seem to have the usual SocialD fire. Or maybe the momentum was just slowed with the bits of between song banter (which I actually enjoyed). But even with a little less spunk, Mike Ness and company still put out a solid set of old school punk rock.
So it was a good historical segue into the new(er) school of punk(pop) rock, with Green Day’s headlining performance coming next. I really didn’t like Green Day through the 90s, and I didn’t particularly care for them in most of the 00s either. I’m not sure if it was their pop-ified version of punk, Billie Joe’s affected singing accent, or all the endless media adoration. It wasn’t really until American Idiot that I began to appreciate them for being anything more than a snotty pop hook generator. Even then I’d say I wasn’t a fan of the band, but rather a fan of a handful of songs. That would change tonight.
Even before SocialD finished, but especially after they did, fans flocked to that field in droves. I don’t know if Green Day drew more people away from their headlining rival (Phoenix) than Gaga did from hers (The Strokes), but I wouldn’t doubt it. As the crowd rushed in, I worked and worked my way to Mike and Justin who were more centered in front of the stage. Turns out we’d only be together for a short time – a couple songs in and the moshing ripped us in different directions.
Early into the set Billie Joe announced “You paid your hard-earned money to buy a ticket to tonight. It is my honor and my privilege to give you the best fucking show you’ve ever seen in your life.” And man he wasn’t far off. OK, I might be hard pressed as to whether it made my top 5, but it possibly was the best set I’ve witnessed at any Lollapalooza (and that’s going back to ’91).
For a solid two and a half hours Billie Joe, Tre, Mike and their touring players put on a clinic in running a rock concert. Their set list was constant stream of greatest hits spanning the past 20 years. Even their older stuff which I didn’t think I cared a lot for turned out to be a fun blast of nostalgia. The crowd was captivated, sometimes thrashing, sometimes swaying, but shouting along every note of the way.
But how in the world do you keep tens of thousands of people entertained for that long? I mean, these are people who have been rocking out in the hot sun for two days. You throw everything but the kitchen sink at them, is how. As we learned, Billie Joe is really a master of working a crowd. For starters, he’d coordinate crowd chants constantly throughout the show. They also took tangents at two different points to play snippets of covers (including “Sweet Child O Mine”, “Ironman”, “Highway to Hell”, “Shout”, “Satisfaction”, and a great sing along of “Hey Jude”). Then there was the firing of t-shirt cannons and fire hoses into the crowd (which was sweet relief). They even had big concert cheese in the form of pyro and (really loud!) fireworks to punctuate points throughout (and a barrage at the end). Hell, he even dropped trou and mooned everyone at one point.
But what was most cool were the many opportunities he took to pull fans on stage. In one song Armstrong brought up about a dozen fans to sing and dance around the stage. At another point he brought up a kid to stage dive back into the crowd (which was pretty scary given the stage setup). He also got a little girl to come up at one point and lend some acting. But the most memorable came during “Longview,” when he called a random “skinny little shit” up to completely take over the vocals from start to end. The kid (obviously a huge fan) nailed it – he worked the stage like a pro, running from end to end, and never dropped a line. Impressed, Billie Joe gave the kid his guitar when the song was over.
The show ended with a 1-2 punch of “When September Ends” and “Good Riddance”. For at least the last hour, my voice was shot, my feet aching, and my arms too tired to raise, but as the last of the fireworks ash fell on our heads and the field began to clear we couldn’t stop talking about how utterly surprised and amazed we were.
