There isn’t one person who goes to Lollapalooza who hasn't imagined being a rock star. It's just not possible to stand in a sweaty, undulating crowd of thousands and think to yourself "holy shit, I can't imagine how it feels to be the person on that stage with hoards of people who carved out a portion of their day to see me." This having been my 4th stint at the glorious festival, I think I have a pretty good grasp on what it is...and what it decidedly isn't. It's definitely not the kind of event you tell a coworker "you HAVE to go, I guarantee you will love it" because it's ungodly hot, sometimes it rains in buckets, and the entire south side of the festival smells like Bigfoot's dick. What I have learned about myself over the past 4 years of Lollapaloozas and Pitchforks is that I hate people, but I love music....and I love music more than I hate people because holy shit, your patience hasn't been truly tested until you stand in 100 degree heat in full sun smashed amongst various groups of drunk sweaty teenagers screaming the lyrics to songs you hold close to your heart. Lollapalooza offers a constant learning curve - be it that I am getting older, more irritable, or the crowds are changing faster than anticipated - but there is no set formula for enjoyment there. Sometimes you just have to make decisions on the fly to maximize the experience. Back story: Last year a number of us missed a time slot of music to nestle up to the Playstation stage to see Band of Horses. It proved to be one of the best decisions we ever made because a band we all adored did the perfect amount of face melting to overshadow the fact that it was ballz hot (as illustrated in a few choice pictures where we all have a major case of shiny face) and we were in some serious anxiety attack inducing close quarters. THIS year we thought, duh, let's do that again for Mumford & Sons. The stars seemed to have aligned in that they were at the same stage, across the field, Blitzen Trapper was playing and we figured we could still hear them. If not, I was okay with that since I had seen them the year before at Pitchfork. In fact we couldn't hear them because it was so blazing hot that we had to sit down - lest we fall down from heat exhaustion and heavily perspiring people block sound extremely effectively. At last the band walked out and for a few moments the sun graciously ducked behind a portion of the stage. Unfortunately the age of the fans around us hadn't been taken into consideration and we were soon in the midst of a teenage mosh pit, throwing elbows, screaming lyrics, and brandishing cameras and cell phones. I know this makes me sound old, but is it really too much to expect to be able to see a band without having to move out from behind the girl taking 78 photos of one song or hear over the girl who 'knows every word and is going to make sure everyone knows it?" God, they were so good, but the experience was tarnished greatly by heat and assholes.
One of my favorite parts of Lollapalooza is how varied performances are. It's so amazing to see how bands captivate crowds - how they take what you hear on an album which is, in essence faceless, and attach an experience to it when on stage for fans will carry with them from that point on. The fun part is to see what forms that takes - be it the whimsical bouncing antics of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, the heart-on-your-sleeve delivery of The Antlers, the fantastically choreographed experience of Empire of the Sun complete with Broadway-worthy costumes, the performance that is a symbiotic relationship with the crowd - a give and take of energy like Frightened Rabbit, and album seemingly best suited for sexy time transformed into a powerfully seducing rock performance as was The National, a gradual build up of intensity and volume like The Arcade Fire, or just simply spot-on renditions of your favorites as was the case for The Strokes. It's all there, spread over 8 stages and 3 days. Rain or Shine it goes on paying no mind to food poisoning (me, Saturday of Lolla '08), heat stroke, drug overdoses, extreme intoxication, horrific poison ivy (me, again, Lolla '07), or crippling hangovers. You live there...you eat, you sometimes nap, you hold your breath as long as humanly possible to brave the porta johns, you rack up hundreds of text messages attempting to find your friends, you make metal notes of how to make it all easier next year...you even exercise your mind. How does one do this? Well, I am going to tell you. The week leading up to Lollapalooza, Erin and I spend much of our time, actually our employers' time, scheming ways to smuggle booze into the venue. We aren't rolling on dough so $7 beers for two girls who have been known to throw a few back in our day just wasn't in the budget. Dig a hole and bury it out there? Booze in baggies under a sun hat? Then, Erin came up with possibly the best idea in the history of ideas. I will cut and paste the gchat so that you can read it exactly as it was presented to me:
9:47 AM Erin: So I'm thinking: tampon box, emptied of its original contents, filled with airplane sized bottles of booze, and picking a line with a dude searching bags
9:48 AM me: holy genius!!!!
9:51 AM Erin: If I get questioned? My response: I have a heavy flow
Goooo. Move along miss
9:53 AM me: well here is what you do
you put it in a bag from CVS with your water so that it looks like an emergency purchase
Erin: Oooooohh!
me: they have mini bottles at the 7-11 half a block from my place
Erin: Fuck YES
And that is the method we used, without fail, to get our sauce on. It became so popular, in fact, that by the end of the weekend all the females in the group were doing the same.
I am pretty sure Don asked me to write this as a review of bands seen and not so much to hear about tampon boxes and food poisoning. I actually kind of hate it when people ask me what the best show was or who was my favorite. We all like music for so many different reasons so who am I to say what was good and what was bad? I though Mumford and Sons was awesome, but the guy who looked like a fish among other people around us kind of ruined it. I love The Black Keys, but that stage struggled with some sound issues. Empire of the Sun was visually awesome, but it's not the most profound music I've ever heard. Sometimes you are so worn out that you miss a band you really want to see just because you don't feel like putting the effort into getting up and walking over there - SOMETIMES the band you see instead that just happens to be at the stage your lazily camping out at is a highlight of the weekend. I think you have to look at it more as a whole than a sum or parts. Was it fun? That's a resounding hell yes. Did the weather cooperate? For the most part which, was a welcome change from last year. If there was a day 4 could I have made it? Not without a wheelchair and an IV drip. Did I surround myself with the best group of assholes ever assembled? You're goddamn right I did.
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