Joey N. and I wake on Saturday to discover we were missing Rainer Maria, and promptly decide to go back to sleep and miss Nada Surf. Screw it – we’ve got tickets to see the Brooklyn band (which, since its mid-‘90s brush with mainstream popularity via the hit “Popular,” has evolved into a hell of an accomplished fringe-pop act) later tonight at ace Wrigleyville venue Metro.
Eventually, we get our sore feet back into our eternally hip but not exactly arch-supportive Chuck Taylors, and hoof it from our hotel five blocks east to the festival gates, which are topped by a giant Lollapalooza logo that lends the impression we’re entering a Stone Age-themed children’s park.
Our first stop, two hours and 15 minutes after the 11 a.m. start time, is the Playstation-sponsored side stage, where eccentric former Faith No More and Mr. Bungle frontman Mike Patton’s new group Peeping Tom tears it up after an opening number fraught with technical difficulties. Patton has gone on the record as calling Peeping Tom what he thinks mainstream pop music should sound like. In reality, Peeping Tom is an iconoclastic amalgam of chugging metal, hip-hop, sleazy funk, broken jazz and turntable/production wizardry, made all the creepier by Patton’s taking the stage looking like an extra in a wedding scene from a ‘70s Latino exploitation film, complete with outdated tan suit and hairnet. Good stuff.
We listen to the second half of neo-fuzz-jam favorite Built to Spill’s time, then make the first of our few hard decisions, passing on ‘70s-metal revivalist combo Wolfmother (a band that will be at Jannus Landing shortly) to catch an excellent set by Southwestern spaghetti western-influenced fringe outfit Calexico. Former Tampa resident/drummer for late Bay area act The Gita, Tony Dolan shows up for a hug and a brief reminiscence before being swallowed up by the crowd, never to be texted from again.
Hey, you know who’s disappointing live? Sonic Youth, that’s who. The legendary noise-rock pioneers seemed to take little interest in the crowd, and lived up to exactly none of the stories I’d heard about overwhelming stage volume and mesmerizing presence. Sure, Thurston Moore did the thing where he runs the drumstick up and down the guitar neck underneath the strings, and Kim Gordon danced and shimmied with all her might, but none of it could make up for the underwhelming sound quality and distinct lack of connection to the audience.
Walking over to see reunited Chicago pop-punk icons The Smoking Popes, we stop for some of Lollapalooza’s surprisingly tasty grub. I go with half a slab of slow-smoked ribs for the second day in a row, not only because they’re cheap and delicious but also because strolling through Grant Park pulling a rib bone languorously and lovingly from between your lips is a great way to earn disgusted looks from vegetarian hippies, and envious looks from vegetarian hippies’ boyfriends.
One of the few loud-and-fast rock acts on the Lolla bill, the Popes rip through an hour’s worth of insanely catchy high-volume songs to a comparatively small but rabidly enthusiastic throng, showing just how influential they’ve been to such bigger Chicago area names as The Broadways and Alkaline Trio. (I swear to God, Dan from Alkaline Trio learned everything he knows about singing by listening to evocative Popes lead vocalist Josh Caterer.) When the band announces it’s currently recording a new album, the place goes nuts.
After the Popes, Joey N. and I drag our asses back across the park – into the breeze this time, thankfully – to check out the weirdest pop band on every quasi-hipster’s iPod, The Flaming Lips. It’s now that we get our first real inkling of how big the event actually is. Stepping up onto a raised plaza between the two sides of the park, we’re treated to a vertigo-inducing panorama of the crowd packed from the Bud Light stage at the far end almost all the way back to the park’s halfway point. There’s no way we’re getting within a quarter-mile of the Lips; from here, the JumboTron looks like one of those tiny DVD players spoiled kids carry on to airline flights these days.
We wade in only far enough to assure ourselves that the sound sucks from this distance, blown everywhere by the wind, then agree to forego tromping all the way back to wait for Canadian power-pop act The New Pornographers to play the AT&T stage back at Lolla’s opposite end. It’s time for a shower and a ride on the El up to Metro.
On the train, we get a great real-life anti-drug commercial: we can’t tell if the thugged-out kid who’s singing loudly to himself, constantly blocking the door, fidgeting and bothering other passengers is high, or mildly retarded.
It’s dark when we reach the north Chicago area around Wrigley Field, and stop into a gyro joint for some cheese dogs, chili cheese dogs and corn dogs. Then we cross back across Clark to Metro, where the doors have finally opened and the short line of early arrivals has dwindled to nothing. Joey N. turns me on to vodka and ginger ale, a cocktail I’ve never tried before, and I go looking for a place to smoke. The bartender tells us there’s another bar downstairs, and that I can smoke there. While wandering around looking for the entrance (you can get in from inside Metro), we’re stopped by a security guard, but another one, a more important looking one in a golf shirt and a walkie-talkie, waves us through. As he throws open some double doors meant to keep out the commoners, he tells his walkie-talkie that he’s “taking a couple of guys from the band downstairs for a smoke and a drink.” As we enter a bar that’s obviously not going to be open for an hour or so – the tenders are still setting up, and bouncers are sitting around drinking and smoking – I have to come clean with the guy, and tell him we’re not “from the band.”
He looks from Joey N. to me, thinks about it, and tells me to have my smoke and then get the hell out.
Saturday night at Metro is, without a doubt, one of the strongest front-to-back bills of live music I’ve seen in a club in years. Aforementioned Smoking Pope Josh Caterer opens with an infectious, heart-wrenching acoustic solo set, then the wild Depression Era junkie Elvis Perkins and his band deliver some soulful Appalachian twang. Irish folk-rock combo The Frames, which I’ve now seen at Metro twice, is one of the most criminally underexposed groups out there right now – The Frames’ honest, earnest, dynamic tunes could, and should, be receiving the kind of maniacal fandom heaped upon the likes of Coldplay.
Finally, eight or so vodka and gingers in (the bartender had to open us a second bottle of well booze), Nada Surf tears into a chronologically ordered set of highlights from its past three releases. (No, they don’t play “Popular.”) The club is supposed to close at 2 a.m.; at 2:30, Nada Surf is still pounding out its newest songs, having called Chicago’s answer to Rodney Bingenheimer, local radio personality Beatle Bob, onstage for some of his trademark weird/hilarious dancing.
It’s about 3 by the time we pile into a cab, and make friends with a friendly driver who’s into both computers and writing Pakistani poetry. I tune him out, and think about the myriad dissimilarities between the massive festival we’ve been experiencing for the last two days, and the communal back-to-roots club rock show we’ve just experienced.

This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2006.