Veteran acts aim to be crowd pleasers

It takes a special kind of band to engage the audience at an outdoor rock festival. I once saw Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes open for the Rolling Stones at Soldier Field, and their bar-band soul came off as puny, only to be followed by Peter Tosh, who seemed so at ease in front of a huge outdoor audience he infected everyone with a contact high.

So as much as I like The xx, I have to say their ethereal fuzztone pop has the potential to fizzle when it plays at 3:15 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 7, on the PlayStation stage, and the same goes for Grizzly Bear when it follows the same day at 4:15 on the Bud stage.

A couple of veteran acts, however, have the potential to rock the crowd in an old-school rock-fest manner. Seminal reggae star Jimmy Cliff, playing at 7:15 p.m. Friday, Aug. 6, on the PlayStation stage, can sway a large crowd the same way Tosh did. And the ringer is Chicago's own Mavis Staples, who put on a fantastic show at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park a few years ago, and who ought to be in her element moving the kids in the crowd. The sound of her distinctive joyful chortle ringing out over the masses should be an early highlight at 2 p.m. Friday. In between Staples and Cliff, look for the Black Keys to make more noise than would seem humanly possible for two men with their crunching blues rock at 6 on the Bud stage.

On Saturday, Aug. 7, the gypsy punk of Gogol Bordello has everything it takes to get a crowd cranked up when it plays at 3:45 p.m. on the Parkways stage, and Spoon has the radio-ready hits that appeal to large crowds when it plays at 6:15 p.m. on the PlayStation.

Sunday, Aug. 8, looks to be a little more mellow, but the fest could come to a stirring climax with the huge grunge riffs of Soundgarden going head to head with the big-band melodies of Arcade Fire.