Surviving Lollapalooza: Day 1

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LOLLAPALOOZA DAY 1
Friday August 3rd, 2007 – Grant Park – Chicago, IL

And so it begins…

The first day of any music festival is when you settle in, acclimatize to your surroundings and get really, really drunk while schmoozing with friends, colleagues and rock stars. This course of action inevitably makes you miss a lot of music, so when you’re getting paid to attend a festival you have to change up your game a bit and lower your alcohol intake from 12 Tito’s-and-Vitamin Waters to six Tito’s-and-Vitamin Waters. (Tito's Handmade Vodka and Vitamin Water were two of the great sponsors of Lollapalooza and kept me quite happy all weekend long!)

In addition to the never-ending beverage supply, I am only one man and though I’d love to have superhuman ability and be at multiple places at once, I just can’t. I did, however, try to catch as many bands as humanly possible to let those who couldn’t attend know what they should be upset about missing and what they should be thankful for staying home about.

For the first time, I was able to wake up early enough to get down to the park to catch one of the festival’s first bands. The Fratellis had the misfortune of landing the 11:45 a.m. time slot, which pretty much guarantees that you’ll be playing to tumbleweeds. To my surprise, thousands of kids seemed to have gotten a good night’s sleep in order to catch the Scottish rockers and the band did not disappoint. The Fratellis roared through their 45 minute set and were definitely the highlight of an otherwise, mild-mannered, Friday afternoon schedule.

That is until the 5 o'clock hour rolled around and a band from Silverlake, CA killed the festival! Silversun Pickups took the stage and whipped the crowd into a frenzy from the outset. Often described as a melding of My Bloody Valentine and Smashing Pumpkins, SSPU have taken the shoegazing swirl of MBV and combined it with the best of Corgan’s songwriting to create something that just flat-out works -- fuzzed out, melodic rock that you can sing along with. In my opinion, it was one of the top three performances of the entire festival.

The early evening concluded with Perry Farrell’s latest project, Satellite Party, actually doing a pretty good job of playing Jane’s Addiction covers along with cool originals, as well as Mickey Avalon strutting his stuff on a very small stage that barely gave him enough room to vibe with the two hookers -- I mean professional dancers -- that he brought out. LCD Soundsystem was slotted to play from 7:30-8:30 p.m., making them the perfect opening act for French duo Daft Punk. Needless to say, they absolutely destroyed it! There is something so utterly cool about James Murphy’s beats combined with his catchy lyrics that keeps you moving the entire time. Though I will admit I had to duck out early to get “hydrated” before Daft Punk took the stage.

Now to be fair, I had zero intention of seeing Ben Harper, the co-headliner on Day 1. However, I did hear he put on an excellent show that included a duet with Eddie Vedder of Dylan’s “Masters of War.” That being said, the main reason for attending the opening festivities was to see the French duo perform and perform they did. I’m sure by now you can go on YouTube and see it for yourself, so without wasting both your time and mine, allow me to say this -- Daft Punk fucking rules. Their costumes, the light show, the stage, the music, everything about this performance was just incredible and no words can do it justice. It was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen and the perfect ending to a Friday night.

Stay tuned for Day 2 and 3...

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