Lollapalooza weekend presents us Eleven staffers with a very special challenge: can one three-day span of music and parties be better than Christmas? At either, one finds camaraderie, family, feasts, and a heightened thirst for life and joy. It’s just that Lollapalooza’s serving on the order of a hundred thousand music zealots in one sitting.
Our day starts off at a crawl. Festival grounds have expanded to include all of Columbus Drive, placing Eleven’s de-facto meeting point right in the heart of festival grounds. While circling the festival gates to find an entrance point, I’m treated both to the opportunity to overhear Foxy Shazam’s 12:00 set and to a ton of eighth-sheet flyers featuring…Billy Mays? Who knows.
Once inside festival grounds, one new feature of this year’s festival becomes painfully clear: Everything is really, really wet. The grounds waver between areas of sloshey marshes and pools of mud. You want me standing the entire day? Forget that. Not after we were up until 3:30 last night at the Perez Hilton party. I hit the sound stage at set of The Walkmen and set up camp on the barricade, shooting filthy glances at any volunteers who consider asking me to step down.
After the Walkmen I make a quick run to the Playstation HQ tent. No surprises here: 3D gaming is as retarded as it sounds.
From there, the afternoon begins to steamroll by. I chuckle as the Hot Chip bump in the official festival guide looks awfully familiar. We catch lunch at the Hard Rock Hotel, DEVO, The Dirty Projectors, Hot Chip, Chromeo and have to decide on a headliner. If there was any remaining doubt, it was extinguished after a quick brush with Lady Gaga driving a golf cart full of little monsters between Devo and Dirty Projectors sets. The Strokes will still be around in another ten years, I figure.
Lady Gaga’s show, and supporting cast of followers, was nothing short of a spectacle. The set and theatrics really felt better suited for something on Broadway than in Grant Park, but neither she nor the crowd really seemed to mind. And besides, I imagine it’d be harder for Gaga to get away with lines like “Hey Lollapalooza, I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve got a pretty tremendous DICKKK” up on stage in front of the social elite. Gaga covers herself in the red blood of the fame monster; and I the answer to our prevailing question becomes clear: If Lollapalooza is but a souped-up Christmas, then this year Lady Gaga is its gift-bearing and cheer-spreading icon.
My final Christmas gift for the night: someone gave me a burrito at the Hard Rock Hotel afterparty. Happy Lolladays.
