Unyielding Commissioning Has Festival Fever

We Carried It All So Well - Like most of you, we missed the boat on advance, "souvenir" Lollapalooza tickets. They went on sale sometime between 9:00 and 9:45 Central time on Friday. Ah well. Looks like we'll have to pony up the $180 or whatever it is. In previous years, we've been extremely upset at missing out on the cheap tix, but this year, we're not sweating it so much. Why? Because the rumored headliners are Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails. We'd easily drop fifty bucks to see either act on their own. So as long as they're not playing at the same time (which would be utterly unfathomable), that 180 dollar hit won't seem so bad. So consider this a great start. Also on the wishlist:

• The Verve (reunited)
• Swervedriver (also reunited! - at night, please)
• Arcade Fire (they'll make this list every year)
• Band of Horses
• Fishbone (provided they've worked out the kinks of the new lineup - heck, even if they haven't)
  
• Death Cab for Cutie (even though they've played seemingly every year, they do have a new album coming out)

But seriously, after those first two names, even a mediocre remaining lineup will be considered fine.

Believe the Hype - Hitting our inbox this afternoon, Pitchfork announced information on their festival. The Saturday and Sunday lineup so far includes:
Saturday: Animal Collective, !!!, Vampire Weekend, Dizzee Rascal, No Age, Atlas Sound, Fleet Foxes
Sunday: Spiritualized, M. Ward, Boris, Extra Golden, El Guincho
All decent to good acts which we are up for checking out, but nothing that has us really excited yet. However, on Friday night, they are once again doing the All Tomorrow's Parties presents "Don't Look Back" thing. In English, it's when major act each play one of their classic albums in its entirety. This year, they have announced the headlining Friday act will be Public Enemy doing "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back." We've never been that keen on the concept of bands performing an album. But when that album includes: "Bring the Noise", "Don't Believe the Hype", "Louder than a Bomb," "She Watched Channel Zero?!", "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos", and all the other incredible tracks we make a major exception. Honestly, when we heard this news, we started stammering like Flavor Flav when he was first pinned against a wall by Brigitte Nielsen. Tickets go on sale on Wednesday at noon and can be procured here.

Really, we just have to somehow make sure that Flav shows up: