Day 2: Rage Against the Machine, but quietly

It's about four or five city blocks from the Lollapalooza maingate to the Jackson Street blue line subway entrance. You go up Columbus for a bit before turning left on Jackson, heading into the heart of downtown Chicago. Last night, as Lollpalooza emptied, a vast column of the (predominantly white) middle class headed up Jackson, Monroe, Van Buren, toward Michigan avenue with Zach De La Rocha's lyrics and afro ringing in their ears and eyes.

In the early waning hours just before the headliners were to go on you could feel the festival trying to outgrow its holdings. People made successful and unsuccessful attempts to sneak into the fest over large barricades. One spry teenager scaled fence, onto port-a-jon then to the ground and off like a jack rabbit, while his friend could only look embarrassed back on street-side because he hadn't quite the spring and dash of his buddy. Police presence was visible and people were hassled for little or no reason, posturing for fans of a band like Rage Against the Machine.

The Machine is listening. One guard in particular, informing me the media entrance had been shut down, was a big guy with bad teeth whose combnation of muscle fiber and plaque build-up suggests the unfortunate belief that lifting weights will clean one's teeth.

I saw a fan get nearly run down and ultimately knocked to the ground by a speeding festival transport; one of those immense golf carts usually packed with ice or VIP's. It made no sign of concern but left the man to wipe his bloody leg and flip-off the world, supported by his girlfriend, limping toward the main gate.

I will just say that the auspices were generally poor. A good Roman, in the ancient republican mode, might consult the sybelline oracle at such a moment to see what was up and what sacrifice or ceremony to perform to avert the impending.

Earlier in the day Greg Dulli, former lead man of The Afghan Whigs, and Mark Lanegan, best known as lead singer of The Screaming Trees, presented their current project, The Gutter Twins. The band has a handful of good songs and are, atmospherically, a good idea. But both Dulli and Lanegan have done much more interesting stuff under other names. Still it was cool to see them onstage together and the heavily Screaming Trees influenced track, Bete Noir, came off particularly well.

Devotchka, a dapper mariachi-influenced indie-pop band from Denver Colorado played out on the other side of the park. With flowers in front of them in a particularly manicured area of Grant Park, their well-mannered songs of love and evocations of mystical and exotic anachronisms were quite lovely. I heard them mostly as I sat nearby, scoping the adjacent Budlight Stage for good position for Explosions in The Sky's set.

As mainstage attractions go Explosions in the Sky may not seem an obvious choice. Sure, they've been championed by a legion of credible voices and even had the market savvy to hand some of their music to advertisers. Still, long lyric-less, composition noise rock isn't usually expected to carry the day to a festival crowd of thousands.

But with some bands all they need is a chance. And Explosions brought the house down, or since there was no "house" per se, the perfomance being buffeted on all sides by skyscrapers and Lake Michigan, it at least careened and blasted up to and off of office buildings penthouses and yachts. They would be hard pick to beat for best performance by a non-headliner (nobody will touch what Radiohead did Friday night for Best of the Fest overall).

Coming out from the festival grounds, as the real bulk of attendees took to the street, I was lean-eyed and ready. I had not been able to get in for either Rage Against The Machine or Wilco. The bands were playing opposite one another - Wilco being native sons of Chicago, the planners likely thought them a strong choice to split the attendance so as not to put every one on one side for a band like Rage.

I had stepped out for dinner between shows - no reason to pay festival prices when you're surrounded by a concrete jungle of alternatives. But when I got back the media entrance, a neat little innovation that by-passes waiting and opens directly onto mainstage grounds, was closed and the maingate turned me away for having too big a camera.

I'm not superstitious, but I am sensitive to the things that buzz around my head. And when the membranes of a place seal off to me so decisively, while a forceful and negative energy seems drawn to its core without end, I'm not so anxious to press the issue. So I decided to ride it out within earshot of the festival where non-ticket holders had gathered, along various roadsides, lawns and lake views.

Needless to say my experience of the night's closers was unremarkable, essentialy alone with my thoughts in a city of millions, variously gazing at the lake, watching the attractive young play frisbee and dozing in the warm dusk, propped on my backpack. Good journal entry fodder but nothing you'd likely be interested in.

But once the concerts had ended and I was one in immense press toward the subway stations and bus routes the general interest picks back up. Columbus Ave. was already shut down for the sake of the festival and people skipped and ran down the middle of the street, like munchkins poking at the corpse of The Witch of The East. The half block between Columbus and Michigan had also been closed, used for bus parking and pedestrian traffic. And at eleven last night a bit of impromtu revelry as a street perfomer beat out drum-corp beats on a plastic paint bucket and a shifting group of twenty or so concertgoers danced like they never would in the daylight.

As I crested the hill at the intersection of Michigan and Jackson, representing entrance onto Chicago's real commmercial thoroughfares, I heard a concert-crowd roar, the barely contained shouting of hundreds and thousands of people agreeing on something. Half of me expected to see overturned cars, broken shop windows and panic-stricken police. What there was, though, was a dream-like column of the rich and orderly, out of place but not causing any real trouble, walking up the middle of Jackson, filling the crosswalk and bringing the late night traffic to a complete halt.

Every now and again a memetic ripple of euphoria would move through the crowd as it walked and you'd hear a shout begin a block away, tear past and then land somewhere far behind. A borderline Mad Max scenario, apocalyptic if only the crowd had agreed to be angry, instead seemed a ghostly shadow walk; something vaguely sacred.

Most of the people in that crowd will never be that consolidated again, vested with that much power to choose. Rage Against the Machine had just sung, not two hours before, the strains of Bulls on Parade, but we were reasonable folks on a walk-about.

Was non-action noble or just complacent?

We all woke this morning, despite our precarious brush with anarchy, and are still safely middle class, ready for Nine Inch Nails tonight.

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