Lollapalooza 2010: Top 5 Bands To Avoid!

Well, it’s that time of year again, in which we all flood towards Chicago for all the same bands we saw at Coachella now Rubiks-cubed with a handful of other acts and headliners for three days of music, humidity, and wildly overpriced bottled water and pizza.  It’s time for Lollapalooza 2010.

And while Beatcrave will be offering up a list of the Top 5 bands you must see at this year’s Lolla, I thought I’d slip you a handy primer of the five bands you must avoid at all costs if you’d like to have a pleasant time in Chicago this weekend (and if you have good taste).  From hipster blog golden calves to appallingly plastic pop divas to ’90s rock jokes, these are the bands whose sets you can miss in order to nap, grab a slice of $20 pizza, or take an annoying picture of yourself in crowd with a band onstage behind you for your Facebook profile pic.  Just remember — you’ve been warned.

5.  The xx (Saturday/ Playstation Stage)

London’s The xx should be a band worth catching live, seeing as how their 2009 debut, XX, was a brilliantly sex-obsessed postmodern slice of R&B mixed with postpunk – the alluring lunar pull of their coolly passionate sound falls somewhere within a crossroads of Bobby Wommack and Interpol (seriously), with the breathy wanderlust of their boy-girl vocals and minimalist throbs reaching a level of almost criminal goodness.

However, the only crime this band seems intent on committing any time soon is theft of your hard-earned money; at least, that’s what you’ll be accusing them of as you lament spending any of your time catching their snoozy live show – unfortunately, the cool glacial drift of the band’s bedroom R&B and disaffected lullabies doesn’t exactly translate into a thrilling live show, and by the third song of gently throbbing pop you’ll be more intent on seeing if a single somnambulant band member actually moves at all while onstage rather than trying to dance at all yourself.

4.  Green Day (Saturday/ South Stage)

The first of two inexplicable headliners on this list, Green Day have had a massive resurgence lately, having released two ‘rock operas’ (and how depleted, by the way, is our rock culture that the band we have to look towards to produce our grandiose rock operas and concept records has gone from The Who to the group previously known for having the best song on the Godzilla soundtrack and producing a handful of pseudo-punk radio hits?) and giving emo kids who don’t have the taste to listen to The Clash a voice with which to express their social alienation between trips to Hot Topic with mom and dad’s credit card and the latest screening of whichever Kristin Stewart blankfest is out in theaters right now.

Sure, they’ll play a bunch nostalgic hits from the 1990s, and sure, you’re likely to see a few douche-y couples making out to “Good Riddance” (always good for a laugh),  but seriously – if you can’t go to a festival of this size and find a better act to see besides Green Day (might I suggest Phoenix at the Budweiser Stage?), you deserve a beating from the adenoidal bag of hormones you’re likely to cross paths with anyway when walking anywhere near the South Stage while Billie Joe and Co. are on.

3.  Wavves (Friday/ Budweiser Stage)

Hey gang, wanna hear the sound of rock ‘n’ roll pissing down its own legs?  Or maybe the final, most depressing culmination of countless bands that are hyped too fast, too soon, by countless blogs — bands that are rocketed to an undeserved stardom before the talent for writing compelling music is even cultivated?  How about catching an act that maybe has one or two hooks total spread thinly across about twenty or so ‘songs’ of noisy spizzspazz noodling?  Want to watch the epitome of hipster culture lurch itself, lemming-like, ever closer to the cliffs that overhang total irrelevance?  Yeah, me neither.

2.  Lady Gaga (Friday/ South Stage)

Hey, look – I know that Gaga is also listed as a recommended act in our other Lollapalooza list (but resist!  Do not be swayed!), and sure, I like David Bowie and Madonna, too.   What I don’t like is watching those two artists in a grisly slow-motion car crash that lasts two hours and takes away my faith in pop music, the general tastes of humanity, and the ability of a major summer music festival to find a better headliner than a woman who has to wear an increasingly odd and “shocking” series of headdresses to desperately claw at any shreds of relevance or my attention (and listen: an overwhelmingly loud beat, pseudo-oddball singer, and endlessly repetitive and flashly light show does not a unique concert make).

1.  MGMT (Sunday/ Budweiser Stage)

It will be hard to truly avoid this one, as MGMT precedes Arcade Fire and you’ll need to show up early to get a good spot to catch those big-hearted and beloved indie rockers.  But make no mistake – MGMT will put on the worst show of all the major bands at Lollapalooza in 2010.  Having caught their stale act at this year’s Coachella, I can tell you what to look forward to here:  Bereft of any kind of energy or inherent drama, a band content to spin their neo-psych synth-pop lazily into the crowd without any attempt at being exciting or even intriguing (indeed, their live show isn’t even interesting enough to bomb, let alone be enjoyable).  Riding high on the coattails of good album reviews and an inexplicable hipster following, if you want to see the definition of the word “coasting,” check out MGMT on Sunday night.  If you want to see and hear a show that imbues music with passion, emotion, theatricality, hooks, excitement and energy, simply jam your earplugs deep against your eardrums until Arcade Fire takes the stage.

What do you think of our picks?

***Also Check Out Seraphina’s Top 5 Bands You MUST See***