Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

Pitchfork linked to a Thom Yorke/Atoms for Peace vid of them doing “Love Will Tear Us Apart” but it sounds like shit. I would have liked to hear them do that when I saw ‘em but whatever. Here’s Radiohead doing “Ceremony” instead.

Here’s something different: check out Milk at Midnight’s version of “Planet Telex,” the great Radiohead song off of “The Bends,” streaming here at MilkSpace. If you like it you can buy it here.

New Radiohead song available, free of charge. I’m listening to Jonny Greenwood’s “There Will Be Blood” soundtrack right now. If only the storms would come back, it would be perfect.

A present from Thom Yorke and Radiohead:

Did I fall or was I pushed?

in celebration of nov 5th
jonnys burthday
amid bonfire and fireworks in the UK
and the dawn of a new era in politics in the USA
i humbly donate a remix of harrowdown hill that was finished ages ago during the band webcasts,
a small reminder of the dark days of Bush’s….
x

Click the link and get an interesting mp3 remix of “Harrowdown Hill,” from Thom’s solo album.

So I guess they made a movie out of a book by Chuck Palahniuk called Choke, which I read a couple of years ago–it’s pretty bizarre, and good. And now it appears that Radiohead has done some of the score and written a new song for it.* But as Pitchfork points out, it’s not the obvious “Exit Music (For a Film),” which was actually the exit music for the updated Romeo + Juliet film, I believe. (IMDb says yes, and it also included another Radiohead song, “Talk Show Host,” an unreleased song that I know and love from a couple of bootlegs. The things you learn from the good old IMDb!)

* According to IMDb Nathan Larson of Shudder to Think is listed for the score on Choke.

That monster storm knocked me out and offline until late tonight. Then I went out and got an oil change and this woman flashed me today. Seriously, I was at a gas station on Fullerton and this woman was going around talking to every guy she saw while her friend pumped gas. She looked like she belonged in a hip-hop video. She had golden skin (Hispanic, I think) and fake blond curly hair, and she was wearing a very short skirt and a bikini top. First she lifted up her skirt to reveal one cheek and slapped it, and then, looking in my general direction, she pulled down one side of her top to flash her large, and seemingly fake boob. As she did this she yelled out “All real, baby!” I was in a bad mood until that happened.

A couple of things I didn’t realize: pre-season football starts Thursday for the Bears and the Olympics start on Friday. I care about football; the Olympics, not so much. Orton is starting, for now. I guess Fav-ra’s leaving the Pack? Good. He should have retired after he cried all over the Bears game two years ago.

Here’s the setlist for Radiohead. Awesome. I remember everything, but I don’t. They played all of those great songs? Something else I didn’t realize: the other show in 2001 at Hutchinson Field was also on August 1, and had four three songs that are still unreleased (on proper studio albums). (“Lurgee” was a song on Pablo Honey; never really heard that album, even still.) Final stupid fact: both sets had 24 songs in them. Eerie.

Lastly, there is this:

“Now two points,” Obama told the crowd. “One, they know they’re lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they’re making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by three to four percent. It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.”

He was referring to inflating your tires.  And he’s right, they do take pride in being ignorant.

Another year of Lollapalooza is over, and what fun we had. Here’s my somewhat brief and mostly non-chronological recap, starting with the band of the year, the decade, the best band there’s been in a long while, Radiohead. I managed to snake up pretty close on the left side, but could not manage any good pix, except for these screen shots. Here’s a ghostly Thom, in double:

And a band shot, kind of:

Umm, this giant spacepod building? Where did that come from? That was not there last year.

The Flaming Lips screened their movie Christmas on Mars, but who wants to watch a movie when you’re at a music festival? Well, we couldn’t get in anyway. We tried to get some special Eat Your Own Spaceship popcorn, but that was a no go as well. It looked, and smelled, quite delicious.

I had no idea what was going on over at the RATM show, as I had decided to see Wilco instead. Sounds like there were some meatheads on parade, although I would have liked to hear the Rage. But I missed Wilco last time they played Lolla and I had hopes of an Obama appearance, which, alas, never happened. A pretty good show anyway by Jeff Tweedy and his smartly dressed band.

The cops kept a watch over Grant Park in this nifty surveillance contraption. Frightening. Put wings on this thing and we’re all in big trouble. I’m surprised the Rageheads didn’t take this thing down, or at least pelt it with trash and beer. Maybe they did?

The Congress Hotel was a madhouse as usual, it was fantastic. On both Friday and Saturday nights the bar and lobby were completely overrun by the inmates. The place is right out of a Hunter Thompson book.

I had no idea Janet from Sleater-Kinney was playing drums with Stephen Malkmus, so that was a nice surprise. The next day I was walking to Grant Park and passed her on Jackson. Brush with greatness. I was up close at the show, but couldn’t get a good shot of her from my angle, so, the screenshot:

Greg Dulli, Mark Lanegan…The Gutter Twins! They were great, even in the sunlight. One of the best of the weekend. The deaf/signer person (what would she be called?) was really into it, and I was captivated for a while by her general bizarreness.

I have no idea where I ran into this kind sir, but it was somewhere in or around Grant Park:

I thought this girl was a bit cheeky:

Nine Inch Nails closed it out on Sunday night. I started over at Kanye and caught a few before trekking all the way to the other end for NIN. Good show, if a little gloomy. “Hurt” is a great song.

I don’t have any (good) pictures of them, but Explosions in the Sky were majestically awesome, it was one of my favorite sets of the weekend. Also, Devotchka, who I last saw at The Hideout a few years ago, was pretty good, and MGMT had the biggest crowd for a non-headliner, it was nutty. Gogol Bordello was weird and good, Gnarls Barkley didn’t hold my attention for long, except for the great Radiohead cover of “Reckoner” and Girl Talk threw a great party. Iron and Wine is still kind of a snoozer to me live, although I still like their records. Cat Power too.

Who’d I miss? Love and Rockets. The National. I would have liked to have caught them both. Overall, the lineup was more about curiosities than must-sees for me, so I did a lot of wandering. It was easily the weakest lineup of Lolla in Chicago yet, and we had a much smaller gang this year, but I’ll take it. Proud of my city, once again.