The Hold Steady

Lollapalooza spread out across the full expanse of Grant Park on both sides of Buckingham Fountain this year, an arrangement that reduced sound bleed, but also limited the amount of music one person could hear. Asked for tips on navigating quickly through the park, Lolla employees offered this brilliant advice: "Run and jump." Only the Flash, who appeared onstage with The Flaming Lips, was fast enough to sprint between stages in time to see Ween's opening number after Sleater-Kinney's final Chicago performance. Maybe it was just suntan lotion and sweat in the eyes, but there were a lot of teary fans during S-K's set.

Bigger and longer (130 acts over three days) than 2005, this year's festival was also remarkably even more corporate. Almost everything bore a logo from the Bud Light Stage to the "delivered by AT&T" inscription on the T-shirts, and security had its hands full aiding unconscious fans while hunting down and throwing out unauthorized vendors (children selling fundraiser candy bars), because there's no free market economy in Lolla's "Chow Town" food court. To be fair, without funding the festival might not have been able to hire sign linguists to sign the lyrics during select acts. Thanks to their efforts, I can now sign, "I want to fuck you all." It looks a lot like you might imagine.

Ultimately though, the corporate atmosphere is a significant departure from the founding mission of Lollapalooza to introduce eclectic and "alternative" music to a larger audience. As the penultimate act on the final day, Broken Social Scene announced before their set, "We have 45 minutes to play our guts out for you." And they received the most passionate crowd response of the entire weekend from hundreds of fans packed 30 deep screaming themselves hoarse for "one more song," then "let them play!" The band members could be seen at the back of the stage with instruments in hand pleading their case to come out for an encore, but they were only permitted a curtain call, as on the adjacent stage Perry Farrell was handing the festival over to his "friends," the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a band that, "hits" notwithstanding, hasn't been innovative or relevant in over a decade (and proved that irrelevance by playing almost exclusively from their past two albums).

The clock-watching and bean-counting closed the festival on a bitter note, but couldn't detract from a weekend of outstanding performances, most notably from The Hold Steady, Of Montreal, Sleater-Kinney and The Go! Team, which leaves hope that Lollapalooza's spirit isn't dead, but only lost in the accounting department.

(j_delaney@citypaper.net)