Lollapalooza - Day 2

Gnarls Barkley

If I had any intention of losing my voice at this festival, today would have been the day to do it. Crowd participipation, call-outs, say "yeah", sing-alongs, am I being redundant yet?
Lyrics Born got us started with the high energy, loud, wave your hands in the air theme, working the stage like we were all at the gym in an aerobics class. He did as well as one can do with an act that is better suited to the sweaty, reverberating confines of a club, and yes that is a compliment.
Gnarls Barkley picked up on one of LB's other themes, complimenting the ladies exhaustively and giving off the "how many of you nubile young women are gonna see me backstage" vibe. Dressed in suburban white tennis outfits, every song was tight and well choreographed but they blew their wad a little early, choosing to play "Crazy" about 2/3 of the way through their set. It was actually kind of sad seeing the exodus after that song; it just proves that they could have not even tried, they could have played 50+ minutes of crap and everyone would have stayed just to hear the hit single. (This is the stuff of a future rant about downloading singles versus hearing entire albums, if I can get in the proper frame of mind to write it.)
We caught some of the Blackalicious set next (unfortunately scheduled half against Gnarls; what the hell?) which continued with the call-out theme. Didn't see too much of them, but they were good.
Took a break to stand in line for food, then went over to see the Flaming Lips. Wayne Coyne decided it would be a good day to stand around and mumble a lot of incoherent nonsense, exhorting the crowd to sing along and seeming somehow put off by the rather weak response. Wayne, you can expect that when you're the headliner, but maybe everyone was so distracted by the twenty or so blue balloons bouncing around the audience and the two astronauts, alien, giant santa and santa chorus on the stage to really focus on what you wanted them to do. Just dig in and play the crowd pleasing back catalogue, man, give the people what they want. So yeah, even though I am amused by their theatrics, I have definitely seen better Lips sets.
We went back to the south end and grabbed a chunk of hill for the New Pornographers set. Once again, the 7:30-8:30 block of time yielded the highlight of the day, but Neko Case, sweetie, where were you? Carl Newman provided some amusing between-song banter, and the band was in lock-step, charging through the highlights of their catalogue. (An aside: We were highly entertained, during their set, by a little girl with one of those blue balloons using the entire hillside crowd as playmates as she smacked it back and forth to people. This kid had so much infectious energy, and I think she made everyone in that section smile.)
R and I finished up by checking out Manu Chao for a little while, and probably could have stayed for their set (what we heard was very good) but we were both tired at that point.
Overall, Day 2 gets a B-