Our Coverage Of Lollapalooza 2008 Coverage


Photo by Cambria Harkey

This year there are a ton of music fests across the US, and unfortunately I can’t get to them all. But, there are still more music bloggers than festivals, so I can at least give you the scoop on the scoop. Lollapalooza is the fest I-most-wanted-to-go-to-but-couldn’t-make-it-to of the year. I think they had the best line-up of the major fests and on top of that, it is probably the only yearly festival on this continent to remain relevant for such a long span of time. The essentials from the weekend:

The biggest story seems to be the riotous crowd at Saturday night’s Rage Against The Machine show getting so crazy that RATM had to cut their set short. You can read a very long, but excellent and detailed account of the entire ordeal here from Chicago Sun-Times reporter Jim DeRogatis.

Grizzly Bear performed 4 new songs, two of which were debuted there. Stereogum had audio they recorded up of the new songs, but were asked to take it down. They still got good Griz coverage.

The biggest band at Lollapalooza, and in the world pretty much right now, was Radiohead and you can see the setlist and photos here. Friday marked the first time the festival has ever sold out a day (75,000) since adopting the Bonnaroo/Coachella model and basing the fest in Chicago in 2005. In fact the festival went on to sellout every day. With new national fests popping up weekly now, it seems music festival over-saturation hasn’t been a factor for Lolla. Of course having Radiohead on the bill doesn’t hurt, but I’m guessing the secret to their success was being the only fest in this country that didn’t have Jack Johnson come stink things up.

Atlanta’s Black Lips were there. They have tour dates. They were named by NME as one of the “Top 25 bands making America cool again”.

Former Uncle Tupelo member Bill Belzer played with Jeff Tweedy. Wilco played a new song that you should go listen to here. See Bloc Party vids and pics here. Kanye West’s set went over better than his at Bonnaroo but he still said some douchey stuff. Yeasayer got interviewed. The widely circulated rumours of Barack Obama being there turned out to be false.

Largehearted Boy is keeping up with all of the live Lollapalooza downloadables here.

Next year hopefully I’ll bring you my own coverage. Below are some vids from Earfarm’s best of Lollapalooza video collection:
Radiohead:

Wilco:

Chromeo:

Humpday Randomnimity

TV On The Radio will be at The Tabernacle October 25th.

Jenny Lewis will be at The Variety Playhouse September 30th.

Atlas Sound is opening for the Stereolab show at The Variety Playhouse September 26th. Damn that show is gonna be awesome.

Deerhoof is going to be at The 40 Watt in Athens, GA Halloween night, but not coming to Atlanta. Well, I spent Halloween last year at The 40 Watt to see Of Montreal, so I guess this will be two in a row.

The Fiery Furnaces have a 51-track live album coming out by the end of August.

Another Fleetwood Mac reunion coming next year.

Best Buy started selling vinyl, started selling music from local and unsigned artists, and now will start selling musical instruments. Someone really hip must have got a promotion over there recently.

Iran is about to have its first concert involving a pop singer from the Western World in 30 years.

David Byrne and Brian Eno are dropping an album together in less than a month.

Tom Waits‘ recent show at The Fox Theater here in Atlanta is available at NPR.

Silver Jews documentary heading to DVD soon.

A new The Streets album due out in September.

My new favourite blog on the interwebs right now is Hipster Runoff. It is hilarious.

The ludicrously amazing line-up of My Bloody Valentine curated ATP Fest in New York just added Lightning Bolt and Les Savy Fav among others, and they still have tickets available. In case you don’t know what the best festival line-up of the year looks like, here you go:

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 19TH – DON’T LOOK BACK
THURSTON MOORE PERFORMING PSYCHIC HEARTS »
TORTOISE PERFORMING MILLIONS NOW LIVING WILL NEVER DIE »
MEAT PUPPETS PERFORMING MEAT PUPPETS II »
BUILT TO SPILL PERFORMING PERFECT FROM NOW ON »
BARDO POND PERFORMING LAPSED »
PATTON OSWALT »

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 20TH – CHOSEN BY ATP
FUCK BUTTONS »
LOW »
GROWING »
EDAN WITH GUEST DAGHA »
SHELLAC »
THEE SILVER MOUNT ZION ORCHESTRA »
THE DRONES »
POLVO »
WOODEN SHJIPS »
HARMONIA »
OM »
AUTOLUX »
APSE »
ALEXANDER TUCKER »
LES SAVY FAV »
LIGHTNING BOLT »

SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 21ST – CHOSEN BY MY BLOODY VALENTINE
MY BLOODY VALENTINE
DINOSAUR JR. »
LILYS »
YO LA TENGO »
MERCURY REV »
MOGWAI »
LE VOLUME COURBE »
BOB MOULD »
SPECTRUM »
GEMMA HAYES »
THE WOUNDED KNEES »
BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE »
ROBIN GUTHRIE »

I can’t friggin wait.

Ok, videos:

Chromeo:

Devendra Banhart:

M83: