“Awesome” was the popular consensus by the end of the inaugural edition of the Kuyahoga Music Festival. Although the concert started out under threatening skies on an oppressively hot August day, those who slogged through the soaking showers and choking humidity were rewarded with memorable music by some of the biggest names in alternative rock.
Early sets by acts like The Hold Steady and The Go! Team were sparsely attended, but by five p.m. the audience came along -- as did the first tough decision of the afternoon. A side stage performance by local noise-rockers roué coincided with Wolfmother’s set. Although more fans opted to check out the hirsute Australian heavy-rock revivalists, a handful lingered for roué and were greeted with challenging and intense songs that served as a fitting appetizer for the next main stage act, Sonic Youth.
Although the band members were old enough to be parents to a good portion of the show’s teenaged and twenty-something crowd, SY performed with energy befitting a much younger band. When not pounding on her bass, singer Kim Gordon danced frenetically, flailing her sinewy arms and hopping around her husband, singer/guitarist Thurston Moore. Long-time fans hoping for something of a greatest hits set, might have been disappointed, as the band focused heavily on material from its latest effort “Rather Ripped.”
Next up were indie darlings Death Cab For Cutie, whose girl-friendly atmospheric pop drew large crowds into the pavilion. Singer Ben Gibbard and guitarist Chris Walla took turns playing electric piano on a number of tracks, including recent hit “Soul Meets Body.” The multi-talented Gibbard even took a seat behind a small drum kit, trading beats with drummer Jason McGerr. The unexpected highlight of the performance came when the Flaming Lips’ Coyne and guitarist Steven Drozd joined the band for a slightly under-rehearsed cover of R.E.M’s classic “Cuyahoga.”
At the end of Death Cab’s set, Gibbard praised the headliners. “If any of you guys haven’t seen the Flaming Lips, which seems impossible to me, you’re in for the treat of your life,” he said. “I want to get off the stage so I can see them play.”
If you were to imagine a rock concert produced and directed by Salvador Dali, L. Frank Baum and Tim Burton, you might still come up short of the surreal spectacle that is the Flaming Lips live. “Let yourself have an epic experience,” were among the last words flashed on a giant onstage screen before the Lips made their entrance. It was a command that the crowd readily heeded and the band ably facilitated.
Flanked on the left by a gaggle of space-age go-go girls in green alien masks and on the right by a horde of Santas, the band began an eye-popping show. Cannons rocketed showers of paper streamers and confetti into the air, and men in superhero costumes tossed dozens of yard-wide blue balloons into the crowd. Between the band itself, the video screen behind them and the assorted objects above the crowd, you simply didn’t know where to look.
Coyne kept the proceedings intimate, initiating sing-alongs on several songs, including “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots,” current single “The Yeah, Yeah, Yeah Song,” and the oddball early hit “She Don’t Use Jelly.” Between tunes, a digital camera mounted on his mic stand gave even lawn seat holders an extreme close up of every grin, wrinkle and bead of sweat on the singer’s face, and he used those moments to preach love and living in the moment and praise the other bands playing the festival. If, by the time the band closed with the euphoric “Do You Realize?” the whole thing seemed just a little too “Up With People,” there was a final surprise waiting to belie any incipient hippy-dippyness -- an encore cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.”
That choice might have seemed a bit dark for the Technicolor leanings of the Lips, but given their current album’s underlying protests against the George W. Bush regime, it was a perfect fit. Coyne and company want to counteract hate and violence as much as anyone, and their chosen weapons are love, respect and joy. If the beaming faces on the streamer-trailing crowds exiting Blossom were any indication, they might just be winning the war. From Cool Cleveland contributor Leslie Basalla lbasalla77@msn.com (:divend:)