Saturday, August 8, 2009

Done with day 2

Finally home after the end of another long (and hot) day.

Ben Harper put on a great set, but mostly played the stuff from his new album. While he used to perform with the Innocent Criminals, Harper has a new band, the Relentless7. They're much more intense and hard-rocking.

Because of that, they didn't play anything like "Burn One Down," which I'm sure the festival crowd would have enjoyed. Instead, they kept it up-tempo with stuff like "Shimmer and Shine."

And can I say that his drummer is intense? He put his whole body into smashing his kit and it was wild to watch.


To end out the night, we sat on the lawn and watched the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Tool played at the other end of the park at the same time). The Yeah Yeah Yeahs were a last-minute replacement for the Beastie Boys, who had to cancel when Adam Yauch, aka MCA, was diagnosed with cancer.

While it wasn't terrible, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were the first not-so-great set I've seen all weekend. Their set was all over the place, going from danceable tunes to chilled out slow songs to up-tempo jams. They didn't do a good job of keeping people into their set. It didn't help that frontwoman Karen O forgot the words a few times.

Karen O was a spectacle to behold, however. She took the stage wearing a feathered headdress and donned a shawl, cape, flag and leather jacket throughout the show. She also did a pretty good job of fitting a microphone down her throat, which was weird.

The fact that they were a replacement for the much-anticipated Beasties really hurt the band. Yeah Yeah Yeahs would have been a great mid-afternoon show at Lolla, but they weren't exactly headliner material. "We weren't even supposed to be here," Karen O remarked at one point.

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