Lollapalooza 2009 - Day Two

For your enjoyment today, I've included a few pictures that my brother took.

On Saturday, Nick and his girlfriend, Grace, joined us for a day-long steam fest in the mid-90s heat. After a late lunch at Potbelly, we headed downtown again (did I mention that we used CTA all weekend?).

We started off the day with an amusing, but explicit Welsh band, Los Compesinos! The lead singer would have fit in quite well in down-state Illinois, with his jean shorts and sleeveless t-shirt.



Next, we trudged back to the other end of Grant Park to watch Gomez. They were enjoyable, but the stench by that stage was so awful we didn't watch the whole show. That was the muddiest area on Friday, and they put down some moisture-absorbing granules that caused the whole area to smell like BO (worse than the smell of 1000s of sweaty bodies).

Nick and I then took a break in the shade (on Chelsea's emergency rain ponchos) and watched a few minutes of the mellow Blind Pilot before heading back to the heat to watch the Arctic Monkeys. It seemed like all of the UK's bands were in Chicago for the weekend.

As the Arctic Monkeys wound up their set, we headed to the neighboring stage and staked out a spot to watch Santigold, who none of us had heard prior to our morning iTunes preview. I went to load up on beer, and got stuck for 10 minutes in a mass of non-moving people. It was rather disturbing, and very stinky. Men should not have been taking their shirts off! Although Santigold is not really my type of music, the live show was great with good dancing and lots of audience participation, including an on-stage dance.

We passed on seeing Rage Against so that we could get a good spot to see Ben Harper and the Relentless 7. Their show was also great. Although, maybe he shouldn't have been wearing a long-sleeve shirt in the 90-degree heat under bright stage lights. On par with Ben Harper's performance was that of the dancing pot-head a couple of rows in front of us. He danced for the entire show.



At this point, we were starting to feel rather beat. We weren't very excited about Tool, and I was the only one who'd heard of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I think we were all a little bitter that we wouldn't be seeing the Beastie Boys (see below), which should have been the weekend's highlight. So, after a port-a-potty and beer break, we decided to head over to the DJ area for a little Bassnectar. That was a lot of fun that sapped the rest of our energy.