I took the time to write my commentary. I'm sure I'm forgetting a ton of details, but it was getting WAY too long and it'll probably bore you anyway
The Lollapalooza Experience
Friday - August 1, 2008
We started out on Friday morning by taking our puppy, Leeroy (yes, Leeroy Jenkins!) to my parents house in Glendale Heights so they could dog sit for the weekend. We then headed over to the train station in Lombard to try and catch the 10:00 train. Since there was no parking, we then raced over to the Villa Park stop to try and get that one.
We made it on to the train and finally got into the city around 11:00 or so. We walked over to Grant Park and had to walk all the way around to the back of the park to get in line to gain admission. Imagine all the walking so far from Ogilvie, to Grant Park, then having to go all the way around to Lakeshore Drive, then walking back to the entrance at Buckingham Fountain - not fun. It was super hot outside too.
Anyway, we finally made it in to the entrance and traded in our tickets for our 3 day wristband. Considering the amount of people that were there, getting in was surprisingly fast... about 40 minutes from where we were in line to the fountain.
We were presented with our wristbands, a cool program for the weekend, an iTunes card each that can be redeemed for 25 songs by Lolla artists, and a smile by each staff person there. All of the staff we encountered were very nice and cheerful. We got into the park and started walking around, looking at the scenes around us and ended up getting a free tote from some radio station there.
We missed the first band that we wanted to see, which was Bang Camaro (they started at 11:30), so we headed over to the PlayStation 3 stage to see Butch Walker. Great show! He had really good stage presence, and he sounded great. We were fairly close for that, since it was a smaller stage.
After Butch Walker, we headed over to see the last part of Enemy UK, which was near Buckingham Fountain. They were pretty good too. The sound from all of the stages kinda blended in, but nothing annoying.
After Enemy UK, we went over to see Duffy. We ended up leaving about 20 minutes after she started - we weren’t all too impressed with her. She had kind of an annoying voice, and her songs were making us tired and sleepy
We did grab some food from the food court earlier in the day, so we headed over to Gogol Bordello which was very entertaining. They played on the AT&T stage, which is at the far south end of the park. Much bigger stage than the other main stage, Bud Light. A lot of people were crowding in by that point, and I left to grab some dinner while Brian stayed behind.
With some awesome chinese food in tow, I headed back to the AT&T stage to find Brian and watch Bloc Party, but there was no way in hell I was going to be able to get back to where he was.. so he gave up his great spot to come find me at one of the baseball diamonds I was near. We then met up with our friends, Danny & Gabi, and relaxed while waiting for Radiohead to start up. We considered going to see The Raconteurs, but we didn’t want to be too far for the Radiohead concert.
Radiohead played on the AT&T stage, and didn’t have another headliner to compete with them, so the entire crowd was there to see them perform. We weren’t too far back - they had huge monitors on either side of the stage, so we were able to see the band. They did an unusual display on the monitors - there were 6 cameras on different members of the band, and they displayed each camera on the screens. They also used some unusual color lighting to display the images.
Radiohead definitely catered to their hardcore fans and didn’t play a lot of their more “mainstream” songs - but it was definitely a great show. A lot of people smoking pot, cigarettes, and drinking a ton. A few people getting sick from the alcohol and heat (not a great combo obviously).
Radiohead ended right at 10:00, so we headed back to Ogilvie to catch the 11:30 train back to Villa Park. Metra really kinda screwed things up for their commuters though - they should have let people on the trains a bit earlier, and had more trains going back and forth for the events. There were crowds of people waiting to get on the trains, no seating at all in the food court, and people sprawled out on the floors trying to rest up and all.
We finally get in and head home, ready to get up early the next day to go back to the park. At this point, we’re kicking ourselves already for not getting a hotel in the city. We don’t live super far away, an hour train ride away, but it really wears on you.
Saturday - August 2, 2008
It’s RAGE day! Brian and I get up super early to catch the 8am train out of Crystal Lake. We planned on heading over to my mom’s business to visit before the fest. We took the train in again to Ogilvie, and walked over to the green line at Clinton and took the L over to Roosevelt. After our little visit, we walked a couple of blocks over to the festival. Much better walk!
The wait wasn’t as bad as the day before, but this time we had our backpack (we left it in the car the day before, didn’t want to walk around lugging a hot backpack all day), loaded with water and a blanket to sit on. We immediately headed over to the AT&T stage to try and claim a spot, stopping at the food court on the way to grab some lunch.
We got a fantasic spot up by the barrier near the AT&T stage. They had a “cross” type barrier so that security and the sound crew could get back and forth between the sound booth and the stage. We were in the lower right section of the barrier, flush up against it.
We decided to spend the entire day there to watch all of the bands at that stage, so we wouldn’t lose our great seats for Rage Against the Machine. We spread out our blanket and vegged out the entire day. Our spot was getting smaller and smaller as more people started packing in. There were hardcore Rage fans there all day camping out, which is why we couldn’t get closer. However, our spot was perfect, since we didn’t have a crowd of people directly in front, and we were in the corner, so we had a direct view of the stage. AND, Tom Morello usually plays on stage left, so we were super excited
We ended up seeing The Ting Tings first. They were fantastic - we really enjoyed their music. We also saw The Gutter Twins. They were OK. Kinda boring. Nothing special. The lead singer didn’t move at all - he stood in the same position almost the entire time - absolutely no stage presence, and very monotone in his singing.
There were a couple of people crowd surfing, and they were pulled out by the security personnel that was there. The security people were pretty cool. No one was mean at all, and they just brushed off the problem people pretty easily. One guy fainted as he was talking to one burly security guy (the guy was trying to give him some water - he must have looked pretty peaky). The security guy muscled him up over the barrier and threw him over his shoulder to take him up to the front where some medics were stationed. As the guy was walking down the aisle with the kid over him, the kid woke up and puked all over the ground and the back of this guy’s legs... poor thing (the security guy that is!). he was cool about it though, just pissed that the kid got puke inside his shoe LOL.
Another drunk guy pushed his way up right next to Brian and was leaning over the barrier just staring open mouthed at the ground. Security came over and asked the guy if he was alright (he obviously wasn’t)... I leaned over to Brian and told him to watch out, as the drunk guy looked like he was going to puke all over him.
Drunk Guy got some water from the medic, and said he only had 2 drinks (whatever!).. and security and the medic decided to remove him and take him to the medical tent to get him away from the other concertgoers and to get him hydrated. Drunk Guy didn’t like the idea, but he wasn’t violent at all. They finally got him over the barrier, and took him away. In the meantime, Brand New was playing (an emo band I guess). They were ok. Some annoying chick behind us talked about them like she knew them personally... I wanted to turn around and tell her to shut the fuck up, but I didn’t want to cause a scene and lose my awesome spot
After Brand New ended with the guy throwing his guitar at the drummer (typical angsty band move), we waited around for the next act before Rage. Lupe Fiasco started his set with the Rocky theme music, and it was a performance that we immensely enjoyed. I am not normally a fan of rap/hip-hop, but this was more popish hip hop and I really liked it. At the end of his set, he jumped down from the stage and ran into the middle of the security area, which was right next to where we were at.. that was a bit of a surprise, and I got a few good shots of him finishing his set.
After Lupe, the craziness started hardcore. Rage was up next, and the surging in the crowd started within only a few minutes after Lupe got done. (Wilco was the other headliner, playing at the opposite end of the park at the Bud Light stage).
Since Brian and I were flush on the barrier, we were getting the brunt of all the crushing. I’m not a short person, but I’m not super tall either, so my boobs were seriously getting crushed against the metal barrier. They looked like they were going to pop or spill out of my shirt, or something. that must have been a sight to behold. There was a guy directly behind me that was super sweet, and put his cushy backpack on his front so I wouldn’t feel his bony arms and stuff during the surging
The surges happened about every 5-10 seconds or so and the intervals finally lessened until we were pressed up against the barrier so much that you couldn’t move. This was like this almost the rest of the night. A ton of people were crowd surfing and jumping out of the barrier into the security area to get away from the crushing. It was pretty chaotic! Brian and I stayed the whole time - nothing comes between us and seeing Rage
When Rage started, they opened their set to sirens, and raised their backdrop (which was the black flag and red star, the flag of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation). The crowd went absolutely bonkers at this point. Of course, I took video of it, which will be posted on our site when I have some time to upload the video. Brian and I went a bit crazy too - that’s when all the jumping and major crushing started to get really out of hand.
The whole concert was amazing - of course, mainly a “greatest hits” concert, as they reunited only last year after being on a 7 hear hiatus. It was fantastic, and definitely an experience I will never forget. Zack de la Rocha had to stop the concert 3 times to ask the concertgoers to back up, stop crushing people, etc. Of course, people weren’t listening. Brian and I were screaming at people behind us to stop pushing, shoving, and of course, I was yelling some pretty harsh obscenities at some people. I got shoved out of the way by some girl who complained the most about getting shoved.. Someone behind me kept bumping the back of my knee everytime a surge happened, so I almost fell a few times, which would have been horrific if that happened, as we were still up against the barrier.
Regardless, Rage definitely put on the best show of the festival (in my eyes LOL). They did do an encore and the crowd went crazy again. Surprisingly, even after the 3 times they stopped and delayed the concert, they were able to get their entire set finished, and they ended around 10:15.
We then left the park (our friends Danny & Gabi were at the very back of the crowd), and headed back to the train station. They were able to catch the 10:30 train home, since they left the concert early. We had to wait until the 12:30 train, which was completely stupid that they didn’t have an 11:30 train, especially on a Saturday night.
We grabbed some food at Subway, sat on the floor and waited around and finally got home around 2:30 am.
Sunday - August 3, 2008
Today, we decided to take it easy and slept in til around 10:00am. We took the 1pm train into the city and got to the festival around 2:30-3:00.
We decided to play it by ear, so we stopped in at the PlayStation tent, and Gabi and I did some SingStar karaoke. We grabbed some brats at the Leiderhosen Biergarten and then went our separate ways for the early evening. Danny & Gabi went to go see Iron & Wine & Flogging Molly, while Brian and I headed over to the Citi Stage to see Saul Williams. Brian loved him, but I was bored and didn’t like him at all.
We then met back up with Danny & Gabi and sat up on the hill across from the Myspace stage. We saw little bits of Blues Traveler and Gnarles Barkely. Brian and I left Gnarles a bit early and headed over to the Bud Light stage to see Nine Inch Nails. Danny & Gabi stayed for Kanye.
We got to the Bud Light stage and the scene here was pretty mellow. We were fairly close considering we got there about 2 hours before NIN started. We saw the end of Love & Rockets (they had some weird things going on in the stage). We weren’t paying much attention, as we were so tired and just trying to relax. I really wanted to try and catch Mark Ronson on the MySpace Stage, but didn’t want to move (would have been interesting to see Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson there).
Nine Inch Nails started up and they rocked out! Trent Reznor’s vision for his concert was incredible, and they had some great stage effects happening (lots of video of that will be put up too). The crowd was really mellow and really into the concert.
They had a great mixture of their old songs blended with their new material, so it was pretty cool. He ended the night with a slow melodic tune, and it was the perfect end to the Lolla experience.
We ended up getting home around 2 or 2:30 am, which sucked cause Brian had to get to work at 6:30 am and I started my work day at 8a.
I don’t know if we’ll ever do the 3 day Lolla again, but if they have an act that we’re really itching to see, then we’ll get a one day pass instead. The whole weekend was awesome and very cool... but doing this once was good enough for us
Pictures and video will go up as soon as I get off my lazy ass and format them
Probably took about a thousand pictures/video (yes, we took that much!) during the weekend, so you can imagine how long it would take for us to find the best pics and video.
** edit - Spelling > Cassie **
