Lollapalooza 2010

LOLLA Day 1:

So I was up at 6am and by 8:30am, I was walking over to Grant Park. By 9am, I was in the box office line (about 11th in line) and made friends with this skinny, extremely white , blond guy sitting next to me who reminded me so much of Michael Cera that for a minute I thought it was him. Once we got to be friends, I made fun of his "moon tan" and he concurred that getting a tan was pretty much a pointless exercise in frustration for him. He was from Hot Springs, or so he said, and since I know Hot Springs, I quizzed him on it and he was totally from Hot Springs. But he was a clone of Michael Cera, I tell you, so I immediately liked him as I am a pretty big fan. We hung out and kept each other mildly entertained with conversation until we finally got our 3 day bracelets and could move over to the next line. At that point, I lost him as I bee-lined over to the Main Entrance as fast as my little legs, which surprisingly swung back into their confident urban swagger almost instantly, could carry me.

This is where it got really fun. Some hilarious , extremely nerdy looking guys ( I didn't ask but they completely looked like IT guys or perhaps college students studying HTML) who were clearly major rock-n-roll fans decided to start a "5-4-3-2-1 CLAP" ritual to count down the time until the Main Gate opened at 11am. By the time it was 10:45am , I reckon there were about 100 people in line participating. As you can imagine, there were many jokes about the "other" clap. The 4 guys who started it all kept saying crazy things such as "That time I clapped my balls!" and other really silly things that, in other situations, probably wouldn't have been funny at all but in this one were hilarious. If one guy made a comment then the other 3 guys would make dry witticisms on that initial comment made and it just went on and on. What made it riotous was that they looked like complete conservative nerdy guys incapable of shouting out spontaneous dialogue to a massive crowd of what ended up being about 1,000 people but of course we all know that looks can be completely deceiving. These guys were total extroverts, heckling the girls in the crowd and anyone else that they deemed a worthy target but always with a tone of voice that was completely understated; they could have been asking for copy machine toner. It really made the time fly--they were so entertaining. And it was all in good fun.

At about 10:55am, to make the last 5 minutes go by quickly, the 4 unlikely "rock-n-roll maestro IT guys," who looked about 22 years old on average, decided to start the crowd singing "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen. They insisted that we all knew the lyrics because we were at Lollapalooza and anyone who paid to be here clearly must know the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody. (There were quite a few "queens" in the queue, now that I think about it, [see photos upper left] and I imagine they bee-lined for the Lady Gaga stage) It was amazing...EVERYONE...young and old alike....knew the entire first chorus and stanza to Bohemian Rhapsody. I had no idea that song could be so fun but when you are yelling out the lyrics at the top of your lungs with a hundred other random rock-n-roll fans on Michigan Avenue, it is downright raucous. I thanked the rock-n-roll maestros who introduced themselves with the alias' Guillermo and Nacho, before running through the gates like an 8 year old out to recess.

My destination was the Budweiser Stage where I knew all the coolest bands were playing, climaxing with the Strokes (NPI) at 8:30pm. I ran across the lawn towards the stage hoping very few would be there and luckily, there were only 6 people there. Of course they were positioned at front row center so I quickly made friends with them as it was paramount that I be in front row center for the Strokes. My allies in music obsession were Drew, Andrew and Sam from Missouri (all very polite) and two girls from NW Indiana, Sarah and Tieg who is attending Loyola. The sixth person was Mike and he was friends with Sarah and Tieg. Everyone was really cool. We hung out, protected eachother's stuff and played UNO, the longest game of UNO I think I've ever played in my entire life.I lost because I was talking smack and its a universal law: you always lose when you talk smack. We had LOTS OF FUN.

I went backstage while waiting around and it was surprisingly easy to walk back there. It was even easier to get into the Strokes' personal trailer, essentially I just walked into the door that said 'Band Only' and no one stopped me so WTH?. Sadly, the band hadn't arrived yet and I was disappointed. However, I felt every bit like Nancy Allen's character 'Pam Mitchell' in Robert Zemecki's/ Stephen Spielberg's classic 1978 comedy film "I Wanna Hold Your Hand." If you haven't seen this movie and you consider yourself a serious lover of rock-n-roll or contemporary music in general, then shame on you! This is required watching, people. You don't know anything until you've watched this little gem.

I ended up mimicking a lot of Nancy Allen's moves in the hotel room scene which is the greatest scene in the entire film except for maybe when 'Richard,' played by Eddie Deezen, pulls out the piece of lawn from under his bed. ~ and you will find out more about that in the next post. To be continued................