Monday, August 31, 2009

Lollapalooza 2009 - Day One

I was extremely jealous when my sister attended Lollapalooza last year. I stated that I would be going this year, even if it was alone. Needless to say, it did not take much arm-twisting to get both my siblings to join in the fun.

Chelsea and I got the three-day passes in order to maximize our Lollapalooza 2009 experience. For those of you who aren't familiar, this is an annual outdoor alternative music festival that is held in Grant Park in Chicago every year. It's billed as one of the largest such festivals in the country.

As I can't really pay justice to proper music reviewing, this is more of a "round-up" of the weekend's events, and less about critical music coverage.

Friday
In order to have a more relaxing weekend, I rode the Amtrak to Chicago on Friday. Once the train actually left Champaign, after being one hour late, the ride was a nice time to read and do my iPod-based music prep work. This is despite the fact that I'm fairly certain I was seated amongst some recently-released inmates (matching new gray sweats, white t-shirts, and white Keds).

The weekend (August 7-10) was supposed to be one of the hottest weekends of the year, with heat indices well-above 100F. So, I only took shorts and t-shirts. Unfortunately, Friday was a typical cold, rainy day in the windy city, and we had to make an Old Navy stop for an emergency long-sleeve t-shirt. We embraced the sure-to-be-muddy festival attitude and headed downtown. The rain wasn't too bad, and our umbrellas helped improved situation between shows.

Here's who we saw on Friday:
My favorite was Of Montreal. They had a fun stage show that involved lots of costumed characters. Another highlight of Friday was the availability of 24-oz cans of beer. Although we chose not to watch them, Depeche Mode was the only Lollapalooza band that I had previously seen live. Kimberly and I saw the Devontional Tour when it visited Champaign in 1993. The night was concluded with an 11:00 dinner at one of Chelsea's local bars.

The scariest part of Friday was when Kimberly texted me with "How's the Bud Light?" about 2 minutes after we bought more Bud Light. Big Brother is watching.

3 comments:

  1. Fun fact: I co-founded the record label of Of Montreal.

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  2. I like to think they were in a cult
    Don inmates get to keep their original clothes... in some sort of a bag

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