It feels like just yesterday I was dragging my withered, beaten body back to O’Hare, Lollapalooza 2009 having sufficiently kicked my ass (I didn’t end of leaving until 10AM the next morning, but that’s another story). And yet here we are, 12 months later and just about 24 hours away from the official kickoff of this year’s Lolla festivities, which include non other than Devo and the Dirty Projectors bringing the noise at the Congress Theatre. I for one can’t wait.
Now in its sixth year as a three day festival in its adopted home of Chicago, Lollapalooza’s second coming has emerged into perhaps the preeminent summer festival. And for good reason. Even on an off year (I’m looking at you 2008), there’s no better place for a music fan to be the first weekend in August. It’s (comparably) affordable, the beer flows like, well, beer, the weather is almost consistently excellent and th location right off of Lake Michigan in Grant Park simply can’t be beat. As far as we’re concerned you might as well throw a wreath around the Lollapalooza sign at the entrance of the park, because its like Christmas for diehard motherfuckers like ourselves.
But we’re not the only ones hopped up on the Lolla trip. the interwebs have been buzzing pretty loud as the festival has drawn near. Rolling Stone even took a break from covering utterly irrelevant bullshit just long enough to put up a brief piece on Lolla founder Perry Farrell’s all time favorite festival moments. It might sound like a throwaway fluff piece, but it’s pretty cool to hear the man himself reminisce about his favorite moments from the musical monster’s past.
For those planning on attending this year, the AV Club has a pretty thorough breakdown of this year’s lineup, providing tight and succinct overviews of every act and throwing out a few recommendations. Worth a read if you’re on the fence on who to see this weekend. They’ve also got an interesting point/counterpoint on the value of summer music festivals, something that might ruffle the feathers of staunch lolla defenders but makes some good points nonetheless.
And as much as it triggers my gag reflex to compliment the starfuckers at Entertainment Weekly, they did actually pull a random act of journalism with this interesting story on celebrity chef Graham Elliot (he of Fox’s MasterChef fame), who took the lead in pulling together different merchants and vendors to dole out the eats this year. The food is pretty bomb at Lolla, and its a quick reminder of some of the other things the festival has to offer beyond the tunes.
Yeah, so as far as a primer for this year’s festivities goes, I think this gets things off to a good start. Phil and I will report back (read: rant and bitch) about all this weekend’s mayhem next week. Now if you’ll excuse me I need to find a way to successfully smuggle my hash in my carry on bag.
RB
