Lollapalooza 2007

I just got back from Lollapalooza yesterday night. The two girls who invited me are huge music people, so I wasn't really sure if I would get the same level of enjoyment out of it. I'm a music person, but with my bad knees and ankles I'm not so much of a concert person. Standing still that long really makes things hurt. Eventually, on the advice of my best friend Adam, I decided to go. And I'm glad I did.

The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of it. Google Earth has told me that it was 3/4th of a mile between the main stages. With 9 music stages plus concessions and merchandise, not to mention a big fountain right in the middle of everything, it started to seem pretty small. That's before you even start adding in the thousands of people who were crammed into Grant's Park. My friends, nowhere on Earth will you find a higher concentration of white people than you will at a music festival like Lollapalooza.

The music was really good. I'm not the dancing type and I hate being surrounded by large groups of people, so I generally hung out in the back and sat on the blanket. (Thus the ant-sized pictures of the performers) You could still hear really well from the back, so I was back there so I didn't get my beer spilled. While I'm on it, the Lollapalooza beer was not the most unreasonable beer I had over the weekend. The beer at the festival was $5 for a 16 oz. and $7 for a 22 oz., not the best prices, but not crazy either. I got a 16 oz. beer in Wrigleyville on Saturday night that was $6. I longed for the $3.50 pints I get here in Des Moines. My advice if you want to drink at Lollapalooza, do what I did and put a pint bottle of rum in your pocket. The bottles of pop were only $2 to mix it with.

As for the music itself, I'd not heard of 90% of the bands before I got there. I'd mostly heard of the bigger names - Pearl Jam, Ben Harper, The Roots, Modest Mouse. I counted on the girls (there were 5 of them, plus me and Adam) to suggest who to go see. I ended up seeing all of these bands (plus I think I left off a few):

• Jack's Mannequin
• moe.
• Silverchair
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs
• Kings of Leon
• Pearl Jam
• M.I.A.
• The Black Keys
• Ben Harper & the Innocent Criminals
• Stephen Marley
• The Roots
• Interpol
• Modest Mouse
• Sparklehorse
• G. Love & Special Sauce
• Pete Yorn
• The Hold Steady
• Blue October
• Silversun Pickups
• Cold War Kids
• Peter Bjorn & John
• Pearl Jam

There were a couple of more bands I wanted to see, but Adam lives up north of Wrigley, so it was a 40 minute walk/ride/walk to the park and I'm not getting up that early for anyone. It would have required me to be out of the apartment by 10 or so, and with 5 girls there, who knows when I would have needed to get up to get a shower. Instead, I just slept till the girls were gone and me and Adam caught up with them later.

Most of the bands on this list were really good. The only one I didn't really like was M.I.A. They were too loud with their particular brand of crap. Their music is what I stay out of clubs to avoid - a gut-rattling repetitive bass with shrieking vocals that I couldn't understand. And the girl actually wanted them to turn it up. The bass actually hurt my innards, and she wanted it louder. At that point we went down to moe.

Going into the festival, Ben Harper was my #1 band that I wanted to see. He was great. Eddie Vedder came out during his set and they played together. It was the first of 3 times I'd see Eddie. He also played a song with Kings of Leon. And when I say "played a song", I mean "smashed two tambourines together till they were kindling". A moment of silence, please, for the departed instruments. And, of course, Pearl Jam.

I'm not a huge Pearl Jam fan, so when we went out to dinner we spilt up into two groups - those that wanted to wolf something down and get back for a good spot and those who wanted to actually taste our food. I was in the latter group, so by the time we got back, we could hardly see the stage, but Pearl Jam was the only band going on at the time, so you could still hear them very well. I didn't realize how many songs I knew that I didn't know were Pearl Jam songs. I may have to take another look at them and figure out what I'm missing.

Probably my favorite show was Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Perry Ferrell came on to introduce them. I'd never heard of them before, but again, the girls said they were awesome and they hadn't been wrong yet. The music was pretty good, but the singer, Stacy Karen O, was what really made the show. She was absolutely crazy. It helped pump the crowd up on a drizzly, overcast day.

The Roots were really good. They were probably my #2 band to see going in. They did this medley with all kinds of other hip-hop songs, but they put "The Roots" in instead of the other guys words in places. Modest Mouse and Interpol weren't very well suited for that kind of expansive space. I think they would sound better in a more intimate environment. They just couldn't fill the emptiness of the park.

I don't really have much else to say specifically about the other bands, other than that they were all pretty good and each one brought a little something different to the party. The Hold Steady are a Twin Cities band, and the lead singer was wearing a Ron Gardehnire jersey. G. Love (who I just missed in Des Moines about a month ago) did a really good rendition of "Gin and Juice". Pete Yorn did a Peter Bjorn & John song because people always ask him to sing it when they get the two confused. I guess Yorn and Bjorn sound too simliar. Also, be warned, Peter Bjorn & John are 3 guys, not one named "John" and one named "Peter Bjorn". I took points off for bad punctuation. I honestly couldn't figure out why Peter got to put his last name in the band name and John couldn't. It really didn't seem fair.

If you are thinking about going in the future, I highly suggest the 3-day pass. It's kinda steep at $195, but that came out to less than $10 a band when it was all said and done. The advantage of the 3 day pass is the ability to come and go as you please. The one day pass means once you're in, you're in. The passouts are nice to be able to go get food (or more rum) whenever you want. And nobody likes a hungry Andrew who's low on libations.