Eric R. Danton | Sound Check

Lolla lineup leaks

It wasn't supposed to come out until Thursday, but since the Lollapalooza lineup leaked a day early, here are some of the acts playing this year's festival Aug. 3-5 in Chicago:

Pearl Jam, Iggy & the Stooges, Modest Mouse, the Hold Steady, Son Volt, Kings of Leon, Cold War Kids, Peter Bjorn & John, Amy Winehouse, LCD Soundsystem, Interpol, Tapes 'n Tapes, Yo La Tengo, Regina Spektor, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Ben Harper, Elvis Perkins In Dearland, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, John Vanderslice, My Morning Jacket, Daft Punk, Muse, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, the Roots, Patti Smith, !!!, the Rapture, the Polyphonic Spree, Stephen Marley, Rhymefest, the Fratellis, Spoon, TV on the Radio and many others.

Tickets are on sale now. The festival was fun last year.

Lollapalooza: New Wilco songs

Wilco played four new tunes at Lollapalooza, and I promised the other day to track down titles. With thanks to the band's supremely helpful publicist, here's a complete set list from Sunday; new songs are marked by asterisks**:

"Shot in the Arm"/"Impossible Germany"**/"I Am Trying to Break Your Heart"/"What Light"**/"The Late Greats"/"Handshake Drugs"/"Via Chicago"/"Let's Fight"**/"War on War"/"Jesus, etc."/"Heavy Metal Drummer"/"Walken"/"I'm the Man Who Loves You"/"Hummingbird"

By the way, opening with "Shot in the Arm" was tremendously cool. The blast of electronic stuff that opens the song was intoxicating as it washed over the crowd, and people couldn't wait to sing along with the refrain. I think there was even fist-pumping near us.

Lollapalooza, Day 3

All of Chicago was busy this weekend speculating about whether hometown favorite Wilco would play new material at its performance Sunday evening, and behold! Jeff Tweedy and company played four new songs.

Surprising as it may sound coming from me, though, Wilco wasn't Sunday's best set. That honor goes to the Hold Steady, which is the best thing I saw all weekend. The band was good last year at Bar in New Haven, but the stage is small there and it seemed to cramp a certain theatricality. That wasn't a problem at Lollapalooza, where the Hold Steady was on one of the four big stages, playing to a crowd that knew all the words and wasn't shy about singing (well, bellowing) them along with singer Craig Finn (pictured here).

"This is easily the most fun I've ever had before 3 in the afternoon," Finn said during the set.

Lollapalooza: The Scene

There are probably 45,000 people wandering around Grant Park in Chicago every day this weekend, so naturally there's great people watching.

There's also great t-shirt watching. Lots of people are there in Abercrombie-branded gear or whatever, but there's also an amusing array of ironic t-shirts -- "G for Gangsta," read one shirt on a young woman who couldn't be further from thuggish -- and tons of band t-shirts. I saw a bunch of Ted Leo + Pharmacists shirts the first day, and I've counted at least five Sufjan Stevens "Come On Feel the Illinoise" shirts. The Strokes, Modest Mouse, the Hold Steady, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Bob Marley, the Good Life, Wolfmother (whose shirts sold out at the merch booth Saturday in about an hour), Wilco, Tool -- all are represented. My favorite shirt, though, is pictured here. It's completely obscure, but that's what's great about it. (Steven Drozd is the very talented multi-instrumentalist in the Flaming Lips.)

Last year, the four main stages were set up in the corners of one big field laid out with softball diamonds, and two stages were usually going simultaneously.

Lollapalooza, Day 2

It's a great thing to see a young band before the music industry has ruined it, and Be Your Own Pet continues to resist ruination.

It's been more than a year since I last saw the band, at SXSW in '05, where the Nashville garage-rock quartet was one of the rawest, most visceral things I had ever seen on stage. They retained much of that charm Saturday, playing an early set on a big stage. Singer Jemina Pearl (pictured here with bassist Nathan Vasquez, left, and drummer Jamin Orrall) is still a pistol, flailing along and shrieking out the lyrics as the whole band seemed to teeter gleefully on the edge of total chaos.

Pearl actually threw up on stage during one song, and as the tune ended, the drummer asked, "You OK?" She nodded, and said to the crowd, "So, I just puked. Should we do one more, or is that heat exhaustion?" They did one more, and at the end, Pearl jumped on Vasquez's back, wrestled him to the ground and skipped innocently off stage.

Lollapalooza, Day 1

Friday was hot and sunny at Grant Park in Chicago, and Lollapalooza's opening day seemed more crowded this year than last. The walkways between stages were always choked with people, and the only way to get close to a stage (without pushing your way up front) was to get there early.

There were some excellent performances, though. The Raconteurs were easily the day's highlight, thanks to a bold, rocked-up cover of "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley (who are sure to play the song themselves this afternoon). "Sing along if you know the words," guitarist and singer Jack White urged the massive crowd gathered to see his other band. "I know you do!"

"Now I don't need to see Gnarls Barkley," one friend remarked when the song was over.

Via Chicago

I'm leaving in a bit for Chicago, where I'll be attending Lollapalooza in its second-annual stationary incarnation. The lineup is superb this year, with a smart mix of styles and sounds: Kanye West, Wilco, Gnarls Barkley, the Shins, the Raconteurs, Blackalicious, Coheed and Cambria and on and on.

Naturally, one of the acts I'm most looking forward to seeing is the Flaming Lips. In fact, they are the subject of my in-flight reading, courtesy of "Staring At Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma's Flaming Lips," a new rock bio by Jim DeRogatis (who, in a nice bit of symmetry, is the rock critic at the Chicago Sun-Times). I know Jim a little bit, and I like him, though like any rock critic, he can be a blow-hard. He is a masterful writer, though, and his Lester Bangs biography, "Let It Blurt," was incredibly well-researched and written. I would never wish for flight delays, but I'm prepared just in case.