The Upstate Life

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Lollapalooza '08 = Conflicts Galore

So the Lolla schedule was released yesterday and it's going to be damn near impossible to see all the bands I wanted to with how they organized the schedule. Let's start with Friday:

Gogol Bordello vs. Black Keys
Mates of State vs. Grizzly Bear
Raconteurs vs. CSS vs. Cool Kids vs. Bloc Party

First one is tough as I've never seen either band in person. Everyone seems to rave about both groups live so this one is a tossup. Each band, however, is playing an aftershow so going to one of those could eliminate that first conflict. I've already seen Mates of State a couple of times and have never seen Grizzly Bear, but then again, Grizz is performing at 6th and I in August. Still, I think the Bear gets the nod at Lolla. The last one truly sucks. We can eliminate The Raconteurs as we just saw them a few weeks ago at the 9:30, and I'm not a really big Bloc Party fan. That leaves CSS and The Cool Kids. I've missed CSS a few times (Black Cat, Virgin Fest – opted to see Dan Deacon and Girl Talk instead), and I've been really wanting to see them live. I went to The Cool Kids show in NYC back in January, but as I documented awhile back, I missed their whole act (but hey, at least I got to see Kanye perform one song!).

Saturday:
Okkervil River vs. Jamie Lidell
BSS vs. Battles vs. Lupe Fiasco
Wilco vs. Rage

Ugh... we had tickets to Jamie Lidell's show last week but Rachel got sick so we backed out thinking we would see him at Lolla with no problem. Guess what? Here comes Okkervil River playing the exact same time slot. I've been meaning to see both acts since I've never seen either one live, and while Okkervil is playing an aftershow the next night, so are Broken Social Scene and Battles. That brings us to our next conflict. How can you have BSS, Battles, AND Lupe all bunched around the same time slot? That's just criminal. Now I really regret missing Battles' show at the 9:30 last weekend. That would've dramatically resolved things regarding this scheduling mess. Wilco vs. Rage is a real bummer, but given the fact that I've seen Wilco 200 times already, Rage easily wins this battle.

Sunday:
Girl Talk vs. Gnarls
NIN vs. Kanye

The last day seems to be the easiest in terms of resolving conflicts. I saw Gnarls at Lolla '06 and wasn't too impressed. In fact, the consensus seems to be that they pretty much suck live. Then again, Girl Talk's popularity has skyrocketed to the point where all of a sudden you realize you're in a crowd full of teenyboppers wearing leggings and stupid sunglasses. Girl Talk obviously wins out since he's got a new album coming out and seems to improve his live show every time I see him, but there's a 95% chance I'll get annoyed by the crowd. I'm not a really big Nine Inch Nails fan so I'm opting for Kanye on this one. We saw him last time at Lolla but The Graduation obviously wasn't out by then. I'm sure he'll be accompanied by A-Trak, Lupe, Kid Sister, Twista, etc since he's the headlining hometown boy.

Posted by Brett at 12:47 PM |