Well, to answer my musing of the last post…why no, as a matter of fact, Lil Wayne is apparently incapable of doing anything on anyone’s time but his own.

In the three-year history of this festival, no act has ever been late – not even by a few minutes. It always impressed me that the artists maintained enough professionalism to be on time and the organizers insisted on a tight schedule.

So who does Lil Wayne think he is?

His scheduled start time was 3:50 p.m. Around that time, a roadie came out to test a guitar. Not a good sign.

At 4:10 p.m., Wayne’s DJ casually strolled out and set up his turntable.

At 4:20 p.m., Wayne’s crew of assorted hangers-on appeared to deafening cheers, then did nothing but saunter around the stage while the DJ played Wu-Tang Clan songs.

        Photo credit: Timothy S. Griffin

Five minutes later, they left…and THEN the crowd started booing. What? These people weren’t bothered by any of the nonsense unfolding BEFORE this point?

I, on the other hand, was quietly seething and already calculating how this would mess up the schedule for the rest of the day. Sorry, Mr. Dylan, your set will now be late because Lil Wayne couldn’t be bothered to get off the tour bus on time (which, as one of the photographers planted at the front of the stage verified for me as the reason for Wayne’s tardiness: there WAS no reason).

So, finally, just past 4:30, His Highness appeared, walking onto the stage in a tight white T-shirt, black jeans, shades and a University of Texas baseball cap as if he had all the time in the world.

Without anything resembling an apology, Wayne started rapping along to the pre-recorded version of “Full Clip,” his jeans already halfway down his thighs.

When he then pronounced, “I’ve got three things I’ve gotta tell you,” one might have expected “Sorry I made you wait” to be one of them. But nope.

“One: I believe in God. Two: I ain’t [bleep] without you, so make noise for what you created. And three: I ain’t [bleep] without you, so make noise for what you created.”

Repetition is so…clever.

So Wayne stalked the stage, grabbing his crotch and telling the 90 percent suburban-type crowd to “get your [bleeper bleeping] hands in the air” about every 20 seconds.

“Duffle Bag Boy,” “Birdman” and “My Daddy” – during which he looked at the sky, made the sign of the cross and then gave another order to, “Get your [bleeper bleeping] hands in the air” – had the audience of about 9,000 bumping body parts and hooting appreciatively.

As his scheduled end time crept up 20 minutes later, it would have been expected that Wayne get booted off stage, so the next act, The Black Keys, could get their equipment organized and perform at 5:15 as planned.

Again, nope.

Wayne rolled through “Fireman” (and, for the record, every one of these songs is essentially the same song – clip-clop beat, plinking synthesizer, nonsensical lyrics) and a particularly vulgar “poem” about his affinity for a female body part (and really, it is incredibly difficult to offend me) before someone apparently told him to shut up and get off the stage.

With that, he announced he was going to “blow ya alls minds,” the radio friendly hook of “Lollipop” began and Kanye West – on deck for tonight’s closing slot – raced out to rap a few verses.

Why the fashionable rapper was wearing a designer backpack is anyone’s guess. But hey, at least we know he’s here.

I did make it down to the other stage in time to see Iggy Pop, plastered in sweat from head to toe and, as usual, displaying his unbelievably ripped torso (dude is 61!!).

Pop had just bounded into the audience, cheerfully singing the refrain of “My Idea of Fun” (“My idea of fun, is killing everyone) and grinning like the punk maniac that he is.

After climbing back onstage, Pop looked at the crowd and yelled, “I don’t know what to do!”, presumably because his set was over, but the fans wanted more. So, in true Iggy form, he slammed his mic stand into the stage a few times, scampered off, and returned moments later for “Electric Chair.”

If you have teenagers, you’ve probably heard of Paramore, the young emo/rock band with a few traces of punk.

If you don’t have kids, maybe you’ve stumbled upon recent stories about the band in Blender and Spin.

In any case, know this: They’re a tight enough rock outfit that they might even still be around by the time frontwoman (girl? chick?) Hayley Williams turns 20 in December.

Williams is a feisty little thing, banging her orange and blonde-haired head relentlessly, pogoing around the stage and never losing her breath (again, she’s 19) while shouting the words to “Born For This.”

Upon her arrival on stage, she immediately had the adoration of thousands of lovesick bys and the adulation of the girls who always wanted to be rock stars.

The band’s Virgin Fest set attracted a solid, mostly teens and twentysomething crowd of at least 8 or 9,000.

Their tight, punchy rock – coated with a lot of melody – positioned them, especially Williams, as much more than a petulant Avril wannabe.
One of their recent radio hits, “That’s What You Get,” was sung as much by the audience as by Williams, while during “Fences,” she engaged the crowd to hold their arms overhead and snap for several seconds to lead into the song.

The only problem with Paramore’s songs are their tendency to sound similar. Most tunes carry a shifting rhythm – but the same shifting rhythm – and guitar riffs, while sharp, often follow the same pattern.

As if their fans care?

While Paramore was rocking one end of Pimlico Race Course, She & Him, the duo of Zooey Deschenal and M. Ward, was lulling the other side.

At first, their set was more She and Them, as the pair was joined by a three-piece band for “Keep it to Yourself,” including a female bassist and backup singer wearing identical sundresses as Deschenal’s. Theirs, though, were red, while her electric blue one seemed tailored to match her huge, beautiful eyes.

You could tell that many people sprawled on blankets near the stage were only there out of curiosity, to see if this movie actress can sing. And, she can. Most of the time.

Deschenal did sound shrill and slightly off key as she played electric piano to “Sentimental Heart.” But when the rest of the band departed and it was left to her and Ward, on electric guitar, you could hear the confidence lift in her voice.

Their lilting country pop is sweetly simple, and their harmonies effortlessly lovely. At times, Deschenal sounded like Reese Witherspoon’s version of June Carter Cash in “I Walk the Line” – and Witherspoon won an Oscar for that.

Coming up soon – supposedly – is Lil Wayne. Forget about his performance; I’m interested to see if the notoriously late rapper even shows.

Yesterday was sunny and balmy. Today, the heat has rolled in, along with some storm clouds that suggest by the time Lil Wayne hits the stage at 3:50 p.m., it could be a soggy, muddy mess.

But I’ll hang on to some optimism for now.

Shudder to Think and <<

Andrew Bird are on the stages now and have each culled a couple thousand people,  but I’m waiting for the engaging power-pop-punk of Paramore in 30 minutes and the blissful harmonies from She & Him, coming onstage about 2:30 p.m..

Yesterday, Virgin Fest organizers estimated the crowd at about 25,000. That’s down about 10,000 from last year’s first night showing – but that one boasted The Police on the first area stop of its reunion tour.

My guess is tonight’s crowd will be slightly larger than Saturday’s showing. Lil Wayne’s inexplicable popularity will surely draw his die-hards, and the closing trio of Bob Dylan, Nine Inch Nails and Kanye West, who will all perform between 6:30 and 10 p.m., scream diversity. And that’s not even counting Moby, who plays DJ in the dance tent for a couple of hours tonight, too.

Oh, BTW, yesterday I neglected to mention the efforts of Virgin Fest to teach concertgoers about the environment (look, if I had the choice between talking about choices of food or talking about disposing of the food, I’m going with the choices angle).

But really, it isn’t easy getting people to throw their trash in the proper receptacles, so VF organizers have people staked out at every garbage area to tell idiots such as myself whether my garbage belongs in the “landfill,” “compost” or “recycle” can.

That said…off to lunch and Paramore.

The most unexpected part of my day so far is how quickly I tired of Duffy and her Melanie-Griffith-via-Wales routine.

She’s a proficient singer, but her pinched, nasally tone got very irritating, very quickly.

She’s also a bit of a sassy minx, baby-stepping around the stage in heels and a short red sundress, her blond mane swept into a glamorous ponytail with a red ribbon.

Songs such as “Breaking My Own Heart” and “I’m Leaving You for the Last Time,” shimmered with a lush, layered sound produced by her six-piece band, and her music often evokes the best of ‘60s-era girl groups.

But, compared to the similarly styled Amy Winehouse, Duffy comes across as the vapid cheerleader sister to Winehouse’s angst-ridden soul, even when she’s swinging through the sultry “Mercy.”

Following Duffy was The Swell Season, whom I wanted to catch despite seeing them a few months ago at Toad’s Place.

Armed only with their traditional piano and acoustic guitar, the charmingly low-key duo of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová had the unenviable task of competing with the pulsing bass from the dance tent, about 300 feet away.

But Hansard grabbed the attention of the few thousand fans clamoring near the stage, many of them taking cell phone photos and whispering about “those people from that ‘Once’ movie,” with his bracing opener, “Say it to Me Now.”

Irglová bopped onstage and smiled adoringly at Hansard before sliding behind her piano for “Lies.” The duo’s harmonizing was heartbreakingly beautiful, and Hansard, who earlier snapped at a camera man hovering around Irglová to “[blank] off a bit,” turned softer when introducing their most known song.

Using the familiar metaphor of songs being like children to the songwriter, Hansard said with a smile, “…and this one we sent off and said, go and make your parents a lot of money,” before dipping into the familiar piano plinking of “Falling Slowly.”

Hansard asked the crowd to sing the chorus with him, and watching a motley assembly of shirtless dudes, longhairs with trucker caps and girls in tank tops singing, “Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time,” was, actually, quite moving.

Meanwhile, at the south end, Lupe Fiasco skittered through “Dumb it Down,” and took the award for the first act to feel the need for stage lights at 2:30 in the afternoon. In the bright sun.

You’ve got to love a festival that keeps its patrons sated not only with the standard hot dogs, hamburgers and pizza, but also a more sophisticated array of food: crab melt pita (had it last year – delectable, but messy, and not a hot-weather food), quesadillas (steak fajita, Fiesta Fish, etc.), steamed crabs and a pretty solid crab cake sandwich from Sherri’s Crab Cakes, which bills itself as “The World’s Greatest Concession Crab Cakes.”

Compared to what usually passes for a crab cake outside of the Maryland area, that just might be true.

Greetings from the third annual Virgin Mobile Festival, which, despite its name, is all about music, not cell phones.

This year’s two-day event is already a gazillion times better than last – partially because we whiny press types were moved indoors, to the grandstand of Pimlico Race Course (yay, air conditioning – boo, races being called on a speaker above my head!), but mostly because the weather is quite pleasant. Probably around 82, low humidity, slight breeze – but still sunny. And guess who forgot her sunscreen? Yes, the palest human on the planet.

Anyway, on to the music.

The ladies kicked things off about an hour ago – Cat Power <<

  on the north stage, KT Tunstall on the south.

Another difference this year – along with the absence of a blazing heat wave – is that both stages are the same size, so Wilco and Chuck Berry can perform within 15 minutes of each other and the same for tonight’s headliners, Jack Johnson and Foo Fighters.

One digression: Funniest thing I’ve heard so far – two girls, approximate age 16, standing behind me at Cat Power.
Girl one: “My dad says Chuck Berry is, like, amazing and we should see him.”
Girl two: “Isn’t he, like, really, really old?”
Girl one shrugs. ‘I dunno. Will you take my picture?”

And there you have it – tomorrow’s generation of music fan.

So Cat Power launched the day at noon sharp, wordlessly coming to the stage, grinning at the couple of thousand people assembled and delving into her free-form folky soul songs.

Her languid music was an odd choice to open a festival, but her Dusty Springfield-ish voice – a little like a less-gritty Chrissie Hynde – gave enough punch to “Woman Left Lonely,” and her stalking the stage with a corded mic enough of a visual, to be engaging for 20 minutes.

At the other end of the race track, on the south stage, diminutive KT Tunstall sounded strong and husky on her percussive pop songs, including her opening “Hold On.”

Tunstall, unlike the mostly silent/mysterious Cat Power, is a gregarious front woman. Between songs, she related random facts (“Redheads require 20 percent more anesthesia. It’s true! I had it confirmed by a nurse.”) and recounted her show last night at the Borgata in Atlantic City.

“I went gambling for the first time in my life last night.” Pause “It was [bleeping] great! I played blackjack and doubled my money immediately…and then lost all of it. But it was money well spent. Anyway, speaking of gambling, here’s a song about a horse.”

That led, of course, into her breakthrough, “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” which she played to a electronic drum beat and looped “whoo-hoo’s,” as she roughly strummed her acoustic guitar. Her band joined her for a final jam of the song, which included a sampled snippet of The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.”

So far, so good.

I’m trying to work up the courage to try the MLB batting cage set up on the infield, but first…off to Duffy.

When Alanis Morissette ranted about a lover who spurned her in “You Oughta Know,” it was presented with the kind of vitriol that sounded gut-wrenchingly real.

When Pink does essentially the same thing on her new single, “So What,” it just sounds immature. (Listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTrynxM-qrQ)

Hey, I love Pink. I think she’s one of the coolest pop-rock chicks to come around this decade, and she’s especially appealing when she’s thumbing her nose at the idiots who surround her in the entertainment industry (at least she makes room for a Jessica Simpson line in this one).

The song’s stomping backbeat – a sound so popular right now thanks to Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” – leads into a catchy, guitar-crunching chorus that sounds great musically, but lyrically is annoying self-centered rather than self-deprecating: “So, so what? I am a rockstar/I got my rock moves/And I don’t want you tonight.”

Usually, new Pink songs hook me instantly because there’s some kind of brazen wit woven through them. This time? Not so much.

How about you?