Day 1 Lollapalooza Reflections/Report

Alright folks, it's back to the music festival for Matt! No insane live blogging experiments this time...this is after the fact (and much easier).

Yesterday open Lollapalooza in the beautiful city of Chicago. After roughing it for 4 days at Bonnaroo, I was excited to attend an amazing festival right in my back yard. While the weather on Day 1 disappointed, the musicians did not.

I entered through the brand new north entrance (all hype, not much else) around 3:oopm with Mother Nature providing a light drizzle. The first show on the schedule was Bon Iver. After missing them at 'Roo, I was so excited. The rain kept coming, but from 3-4, I was lost in the sounds of Bon Iver and didn't really notice. The common complaint about Bon Iver is people saying "I love their music, but I don't think it would be good live...it's not good music for outside." This is happily false. Sure Bon Iver isn't great music to get crazy to, but the stage show is well worth it. The best moment for me was when Justin played an old resonator for Skinny Love. The sound left me in awe.

As an aside from the music, the porto-potty situation at Lolla sucks again. While the people at Bonnaroo have figured it out, Perry still has not. I don't know what they're thinking, but especially with all of the short sets at Lolla, going pee can mean missing an act...huge bummer.

After Bon Iver, I met up with friends and suffered through 5 minutes of Ben Folds. Luckily I was able to convince them that it was time to go to DJ stage (Perry's). The new and improved Perry's is awesome this year! The stage is circular and there is room for 10,000 people (I heard last year was closer to 2,000.) Great move on Perry's part! We caught an awesome set from A-Trak, a DJ I started listening too quite recently. It was a great way to switch it up after Bon Iver and also a great way to forget about the rain (that was still coming just as hard!) After A-Trak we got some water and food...suffered through another bathroom wait, and then made our way back over to the Playstation Stage.

We caught the second half of the Fleet Foxes set (another band I was really hyped about seeing live.) They were also fantastic live. What a bunch of weird guys! They brought the weird and also brought the awesome vocal harmonies that sounds great live. I was quite happy that I didn't miss the whole thing! After Fleet Foxes we had some more administrate issues to take care of and missed out on most of the Andrew Bird set. I would have liked to see more, but he's from Chicago and plays here all the time.

The end of the night for us was Kings of Leon. I started listening to them junior year of college (in '07) and fell in love with the lead singers voice. It is so unique and different that it really makes the band. Their most recent album was a great addition to the ones I already had. They put on quite a show! I think they were somewhat inspired by the fact that they played Lolla a couple years ago before they were big and now they were headlining (the lead singer talked a bit about this too.) They played an inspired set that was of course cut short by the silly Chicago noise ordinance that ended the show promptly at 9:59pm...thanks Mayor Daley!

Altogether a great start! I'm ready to head back now, although I don't think I'm ready for 90 degrees and humid!