No matter when you came of age, July has got a show for you.
1970s
Steely Dan with Elvis Costello
Gexa Energy Pavilion
July 19
Instinctively, the pairing of Steely Dan and Elvis Costello and the Imposters feels like an odd fit, but it’s kind of the opposite. Bespectacled white guy in his 60s, favors blazers, buries a sneer in every song (often not very deep), exists as the Tyler Durden to a clammy jumble of middle-aged record collectors—you could be talking about Costello or Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Yeah, they spent the 1970s in different places. Becker and Fagen began the decade making the musical equivalent of a mirrorful of cocaine on the deck of a yacht; Costello finished it off by firing cannonballs into the hull of that boat. But they’re not very far apart now. It all becomes classic rock if you hang around long enough.
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1980s
Faith No More
South Side Ballroom
July 27
I doubt Faith No More is the first band you think of when someone mentions the 1980s. That’s partly a function of the band’s eclectic approach to hard rock, still in evidence on this year’s Sol Invictus. By folding in funk and hip-hop and whatever else happened to be at hand, the group arrived at sounds their fellow travelers didn’t get to until much later. And, it could be argued, Faith No More had already done it better by the time the others caught up. For example: 1989’s “Epic.” The scope of the MTV mainstay is right there in the title, and there are about five different songs stuffed inside its five minutes. Enough fodder for Guns N’ Roses to basically reverse-engineer 1991’s Use Your Illusion I and II from it.
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1990s
Marilyn Manson and The Smashing Pumpkins
Gexa Energy Pavilion
July 15
Like Steely Dan and Elvis Costello, this is a bill that initially seems off but actually makes total sense. Marilyn Manson is still the kind of performer who thinks the most transgressive act possible is dressing like the door girl at a goth club no one goes to anymore. I guess teetering around in high-heeled boots is the kind of thing that might halfway shock middle-aged, Midwestern dads, if they were aware of his existence. Billy Corgan, leader of the Smashing Pumpkins, is still the kind of guy who thinks he’s just as trangressive as Marilyn Manson, even though he looks like a middle-aged, Midwestern dad and pretty much always has. Neither Manson or Corgan has done much to speak of in about 15 years, but both stridently insist they remain relevant.
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2000s
Fall Out Boy
Gexa Energy Pavilion
July 25
Fall Out Boy remains hugely successful, releasing its third No. 1 record, American Beauty/American Psycho, earlier this year. But it’ll probably never be the dominant cultural force it was between 2005 and 2007. It wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like it happened to your parents. I mean, bassist Pete Wentz was in a high-profile relationship with Ashlee Simpson, and people didn’t squint when you said those names. Back then, the band was more clever than good, and most of that was just in its overly verbose song titles. Weird thing is: Fall Out Boy is better now than it was then, as singer Patrick Stump has come into his own as a creative force, following the release of his underrated solo album, 2011’s Soul Punk.
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Now
Nicki Minaj
Gexa Energy Pavilion
July 17
If Nicki Minaj never recorded anything other than her guest verse on Kanye West’s “Monster” (from 2010’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy), if her entire LinkedIn page amounted to less than two minutes on someone else’s track, she’d still be worthy of playing outdoor sheds this summer. She didn’t waste a single syllable, turning her feature into a mini-posse cut as she switched voices two or three times. But since outshining Kanye on his own song (and Jay Z along the way), she has proven it wasn’t a fluke. There isn’t a big name around she can’t stand up to. Madonna, M.I.A., Lil Wayne, Nas, Drake—it doesn’t matter. The latest evidence: “Feeling Myself,” Minaj’s song with Beyoncé from last year’s The Pinkprint.
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A version of this article appears in the July issue of D Magazine.
