Music

Lollapalooza day three was HOT. In Chicago it doesn’t get hot like Florida but with humidity and direct sunlight it was enough to wipe out most of the crowd. The guy in the upper left had a lot of gas left in his tank, though. On the upper right, a view looking north with the Lolla icon. Lower left, a view of Wolfmother, which played to an emptied-out south half, and Cypress Hill, who had the whole crowd engulfed in a cloud of smoke of the non-traditional variety.

But for me the whole show was about SOUNDGARDEN. I never saw them while they were in their prime during the grunge days but they re-united for Lollapalooza and frankly the pre-concert vibes from critics weren’t that great. But Soundgarden silenced the critics – Chris Cornell’s voice was absolutely awesome – and they bludgeoned the crowd with a hammering set of their classics.

Upper left – I got up front and to the right of the stage (conveniently near liquor, to boot) and this is from later in the night before it got pitch black. Upper right – the view looking north with spotlights in the background. Lower left – a view of the show early on. Middle right – as the night ended, the inevitable ambulance rides off. Lower right – the crowd cheering early on for Soundgarden.

Cross posted at LITGM

Lollapalooza 2010 is being held in Grant Park in Chicago. The music festival goes for three days on a Friday – Sunday and I bought a 3 day wrist band which lets me come and go during the weekend.

On the first day the crowd seemed large, as you can see in these photos. The upper left is the mid-day crowd on Friday watching the Black Keys, on the north end. The lower right shows the crowd facing south just past Buckingham Fountain, which is the center. Lady Gaga played a strange show, dropping more f-bombs than Snoop did last year, but she was certainly trying hard and wearing virtually nothing for half the show and brought fireworks for the finale. On the lower right is Perry’s, where the crowd dances into the night.

There weren’t a lot of bands that I was into the second day. I wasn’t going to attend at all but the weather was nice so I decided to go over and watch the crowd and have a few beers. In the upper right you can see Kuma’s Corner, where they had HUGE hamburgers that you have to see to believe. If you go to the restaurant in Chicago you have to stand in line for hours to get them – it is a heavy metal shop as you can see they have the Iron Maiden and Judas Priest burgers. On the upper right there was a see-saw that generated enough power to make sno-cones. On the lower left you can see some of the very strangely dressed people as they went to Lolla to make a statement. And on the lower right some very pro-dope fans from Canada during Metric.

Cross posted at LITGM

Pitchfork is an annual music festival based in Chicago, which is presented by the Pitchfork music web site. I went to see the band LCD Soundsystem at the show at Union Park last Saturday night.

Upper left – one thing for sure is that any festival will have long beer lines, especially in the hot sun. People were generally not too unruly and they deserve kudos for dropping the price of water to $1, and $5 for a Heineken wasn’t too bad. Upper middle – Union Park is on the near West Side, a place that you couldn’t run out of fast enough even 10 years ago. To have a big show there is an amazing turn about for the city, the vibe seemed to be like Wicker Park had about 10 or so years ago. You can see the top of the Sears Tower looking east towards the lake. Upper right – for some unknown reason someone brought a People magazine to the hipster show and it was on the ground while I sat down and had a beer in a bit of shade. At least they were smart enough to take their name off the mailing label. Lower left – that woman was wearing the hideous “visible backbone” shirt along with designer jeans that I was informed cost > $300 / pair. My inside joke to Dan is that she probably is from Baltimore and this is hiding her skull tattoos. Lower middle – if you look at the guy’s shirt in the middle of the photo it says “Do I look like a F*cking People Person?”. Nice. Lower right – I guess if you bring a baby to the show at least bring ear protection, but it seems kind of nuts to do that in the first place.

Read more