What a weekend! Lollapalooza was like no other music festival I have ever experienced, I am used to the muddy, rainy, grungy fields of England’s Leeds festival or the dry, dusty arena of Serbia’s Exit festival, I almost wasn’t prepared for the clean, green, blue skied Grant Park hosting Lollapalooza in Chicago. It’s an astonishing location, overlooking Lake Michigan on one side of the park and the city skyline on the other, right in the heart of the Windy City offering blazing sunshine but nicely complimented by that famous Chicago breeze. We were given so many freebies…. event programs and schedules, hand fans, sun cream, headbands, sweatbands, sunglasses, bandanas, bags, hand sanitizer, and everyone was given a voucher with 40 free Itunes from this years line up. This is all a novelty to me.
The festival was on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and most of the time we were spoilt for choice of who to see, in fact my one criticism of Lollapalooza would be the scheduling conflicts there were far too many clashes that made deciding who to go and watch very difficult, especially as often they would be playing on stages at opposite ends of the park, but nonetheless we over came this heart breaking challenge and enjoyed as much live music as possible and managed to fit in: The Strokes, Lady GaGa, Hot Chip, F**k Buttons, Chromeo, The XX, Metric, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Greenday, Empire of the Sun, Felix da Housecat, Digitalism, MGMT, Temper Trap, Arcade Fire, The Cribs and Frank Turner.
Friday night presented the first festival dilemma, Lady GaGa or the Strokes. My immediate answer would always be the Strokes, I have always wanted to see them live but there was some curiosity and intrigue that kept pulling me towards Lady GaGa, I knew that I would probably never buy a ticket to go and see a Lady GaGa show, so Lollapalooza was my chance to go and see what all the fuss is about, after all that’s the beauty of a festival…discovery. I have to admit Lady Gaga was entertaining and managed to keep me there for a good few songs, although I was so far back amongst the crazed fans (who were all sporting at least one Lady Gaga style accessory) that I could barely see her. Things did then start to get a bit weird and cult like so it was time to head over to The Strokes, luckily they started slightly later than planned so we only missed a couple of songs. They were playing ‘Is This It?’ as we ran over to the stage in excitement, we fought our way closer to the front and I thought ‘yes this definitely is it’. I can safely say that this was a very happy 40 minutes. The Strokes were amazing, every song was amazing! Enough said.
The Sunday festival dilemma was between MGMT and Temper Trap, MGMT started sooner and so we watched for first few songs, but actually their stage presence wasn’t particularly overwhelming and we were so far back that the sound quality wasn’t very good and we couldn’t really see! We headed over to Temper Trap and I am so glad we did, the crowd was energetic, the performance was passionate and fun and everyone got really into it, especially when they played Sweet Disposition which has such a happy festival feel to it. Definitely one of the Lollapalooza highlights for me.
Other highlights in a nutshell…sweating to the hypnotic beats of The XX in the mid-afternoon sun; seeing Jimmy Shaw of Metric pull out an acoustic guitar at start playing Combat Baby; people climbing trees to watch Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros at the undersized stage; falling in love with Frank Turner in the brief spell of rain; hearing The Cribs declare that American crowds need to dance more in the most northern of English accents; Empire of the Sun’s extravagant costume; Greenday’s Billy Joe dragging kids up on to the stage and then swearing excessively before giving away yet another guitar to a fan and setting off enough fireworks to illuminate the whole of the US. Lollapalooza = amazing.
