Lollapalooza is approaching. This Friday, I will essentially move in to downtown Chicago’s Grant Park for three days. How I’m going to keep this blog going, I don’t know. That’ll be interesting.
Anyway, due to various reasons, I find myself thoroughly unprepared for this year’s fest. I spent three crucial planning weeks completely out of the loop, and this blog doesn’t help my cause either. Most of my music listening now revolves around Swole Ear, which has hindered my usual obsessive Lolla research.
Let’s just say, I’m scrambling.
So for the next few days, I hope you don’t mind if I use this blog as a way to get ready. I’ll be checking out some artists that will be playing at the fest, mostly groups that I’ve been meaning to get around to, and bands that will help fill some gaps in my schedule. Let’s take Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr., for instance.
I’ve been thinking about seeing these guys ever since the lineup came out. Awesome name + hipster hype + the fact that they play in full NASCAR getups = at least a glance from me. The thing is, I had never heard any music by them prior to this. Fortunately, It’s a Corporate World is a solid record. Unfortunately, I now have to decide between these guys and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.
We have here a decent, fairly original indie rock/pop/electronic record. It doesn’t slap me in the face with awesome, but I think it’ll work well at a festival. A lot hinges on possible crowd reception, though. DEJJ are playing the Google+ stage (also known as the Hipster Stage), versus Pains on the Sony Stage, which is much larger.
I think Dale’s bleeps and bloops will work better on the hipster crowd than Pains’ fringe-shoegaze-pop will on a crowd of assholes camping for Explosions in the Sky. Decision made.
Swole Ear 
I don’t know. I listened to the clip (and saw the low-budget Raconteurs video knockoff) and a few others and I think I would go with TPOBPAH. This stuff seems really mundane to me — definitely no Foxy Shazam here — except for the NASCAR costumes and the truly great name. Because I’m a golf fan rather than a racing fan, my next band will be Davis Love III III (pronounced Davis Love the third the third). What do you think?
I think that they ripped off Jonathan Safran Foer who named the “Officious Seeing Eye Bitch” in Everything’s Illuminated Sammy Davis Jr Jr. See this amusing clip where the Jonathan character explains to his crestfallen Ukrainian hosts that they have named the dog after a Jew: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enUhWKcWT1k