'Little' occasion, big names

As I write this column, I’m eagerly preparing to see Lil Wayne for the first time. His show also marks my first time dropping $50 on a ticket to something that didn’t feature at least 40 acts in a large open field and only my third or fourth time witnessing a pop icon of Wayne’s magnitude perform — albeit from barely underneath the roof of Assembly Hall.

Well, this column is running two days after Wayne, and you might have even read the arts section’s coverage at this point. I can only hope it was positive. I paid five columns’ earnings for this ticket, after all.

But anyway, here I am, trying to write 600 words assessing the live music of this year’s Little 500, unable to give further mention to the four most distinguished names who came to Bloomington this week to celebrate our bike race: the great Wayne, recent Billboard conqueror Nicki Minaj, daily hustler Rick Ross and the technical wonder drummer behind Blink-182’s adolescence-soundtracking  pop punk, Travis Barker.

Fortunately, it’s not like I’m left with nothing to write about because it’s not like Little 500 is just a bike race.

Most colleges have some annual occasion to book one Girl Talk-caliber college staple performer. Every year around mid-April, IU books a dozen — and this time, it’s the most famous lineup in years.

That’s saying something for an event that, in just my first two years here, has attracted the likes of Snoop Dogg, The Flaming Lips, Wilco, Ludacris, Soulja Boy, Young Jeezy, Mike Posner, LMFAO and Flight of the Conchords. This week, however, Bloomington is the host to enough generation-shaping superstars to make New York City jealous, if only for a few days.

The word “stacked” hardly does this list justice. “Diverse” would be a step closer. Hip-hop fans hit the jackpot, but the artist-to-style ratio among this week’s performers is solid from the biggest names to the smallest ones.

Perhaps the best way to appropriately outline the range of Little 500 2011’s concert lineup is to glance at all the other acts that will perform during the next two nights that did not require massive Facebook campaigns (who knew those work?) to show up and play.

Tonight, the increasingly popular rave act Pretty Lights will headline GLOWfest at Bell Tower Fields with its funk-tinged electronic set. (Gucci Mane, Gorilla Zoe, Project Pat and Lloyd Banks were to perform to the stadium parking lot just across Fee Lane at the same time, but the concert was canceled in the wake of Gucci’s most recent arrest.)

The more guitar-inclined music fan can head to The Bishop for The Native Young and The Fresh & Onlys and Young Prisms, two San Francisco bands who are acclaimed products of the surf-rock revival that recently took off from their hometown. The Fresh & Onlys will be the deserved headliners, owning a lo-fi sound that is at times similar to Sonic Youth and at others to Girls.

The big name of Saturday night is permanently stoned Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa, whose new album, “Rolling Papers,” just debuted at No. 2 on Billboard and whose face just graced the cover of Rolling Stone. It’s also his second Little 500 concert in three years. Meanwhile, for those still wide awake from Pretty Lights, Rhino’s will be host to the annual Speed of Sound electronic showcase that night, headlined by John Flannely, Adrian Fish and Ersatz Modem.

Lil Wayne and company was the most highly anticipated Little 500 concert as of now, but only time will tell whether it will be the most talked about. This year, that could be anyone.