Hipster Paradise

It’s been a busy week as I gather back together all the parts of my life that exploded last weekend with the culmination of so many months of planning and anticipating and mix taping. Lollapalooza ’08. It was yet another weekend of living inside my iPod, body surrounded by music at every corner of Grant Park.

The overwhelming feeling that comes with trying to see 130 bands over 3 days was curbed by the accompaniment of my two rock and roll tour guides; Boutit (for a complete band-by-band run down of who we saw, please enjoy Boutit’s blog.) and my alter ego/sister Andrea. Between the three of us, we had a full schedule to tackle over the 3 days. An added challenge was staying cool. Because Mother Nature has a sense of humor, Aug 1-3 happened to be the 3 hottest days of the summer. The sun and sweat was relentless. Hours under the cloudless sky and weaving in and out of the largest crowd to ever hit the park (225,000 people total for the weekend) made for a very uncomfortable few days. Unfortunately, this personally put a damper on the weekend. Constantly whipping the sweat off my face and making sure I always had some cold water to drink, trying to stick together as we made our way from one end of the park to the other along with a hurricane of people moving in all directions and reading the schedule at the same time took away from some of the magic of the festival.

But I’m no Debbie Downer when it comes to music so aside from being a baby wah wah about the weather and crowd conditions it was a weekend of discovering new bands, people watching, and jump jump jumping around jump around. The crowds were the most entertaining part of the weekend for me. The shear number of people that swarmed the city for the music was enough to give me chills even in the heatwave. The carpet of people that covered the mile long park was a picture of a culture of escapism, getting lost in the wave of the music, wanting for even just a weekend to forget the everyday life of responsiblity and boredom. Everyone filled their days with music from every corner of the world and every genre, simple tasks of bathing, eating, and dressing back burnered in exchange for squirt guns and hula hoops. It was hipster mecca with robes of skinny jeans and crowns of sweat bands, neon green and pink sunglasses protecting from the glare of the desert sun over Lake Michigan. The one image that formed in my mind that, even though I never got to fly overhead and see, will always sum up the spectrum of music that was played was an aerial view of the park at 8:30 Sunday night when Kanye West was putting on a flashing lights show at the south end of the park while Nine Inch Nails got closer to god at the north end.

Other high points in the weekend included:

-CSS and their neon costumes

-The crowd cheering during Black Keys when the sun went behind the only cloud in the sky

-Lupe Fiasco’s Rocky-esque entrance, including a back flip on stage.

-Discovering 3 new bands to download and love: Mates of State, Margot & the Nuclear So & So’s, and What Made Milwaukee Famous

-Seeing a star being born when MGMT introduced themselves as Radiohead, and believing them by the size of the turnout for their show.

-Living a fantasy watching DJ Momjeans (more commonly known as Hyde from That 70’s Show). Learning that in order to be in his entourage you must wear a fedora.

-Placing bets on when the lead singer of Steel Train would fall off the stage during his schizophrenic guitar solos.

-Trying not to look away when confronted with the hairy chested P-Thugg of Chromeo

-Turning the stage into an irish pub when Flogging Molly took the stage.

-Seeing Girl Talk for the 3^rd time (one, two, three) this year. GT having to stop the party to let everyone know they had to get off the stage because they were bending it. Seeing my sister crowd surf over my head. GT rafting across the audience at the end of his set.

-Missing the memo that Lollapalooza was a memorial concert for Jounrey. Girl Talk, Gnarls Barkley, and Kayne all paid homage to the band.

-Tearing up when Kanye sang "Homecoming" to the city we all love.

There were a lot of stark contrasts between this festival and Rothbury (the audience, the pace, the heat, the groove, the Sherwood forest), but both left me satisfied and smiling (that’s what she said)

I was there

I couldn't help but share this.

Peace, Love, and Music

Thanks to Boutit and his festival obsessions, along with a long line of hippie friends that have attempted to make festival-hopping a true lifestyle, I have spent today furiously reading reviews from the Coachella Festival that was this past weekend in California and hating myself for not realize the mass awesomeness of the lineup and having not thrown responsibilty to the wind and gone to it.

So I pay homage to the Music Festival. Unfortunetaly and embaressingly, I have never been to one. I've been to my fair share of shows, of course, but I look upon the religious ceremony that is the 3-day music festival from afar, sighing and only imagining how overwhelming the atmosphere is. Sometimes I believe that it is best that I don't step into that temple of indie rock and ska, so as to avoid the unavoidable panic attack I would have at the meer sight of 5 stages, hemp booths, DJ set ups, 150 of my closest friends and bandmates, and an entire generation of Woodstock-wannabes. It is my calling, but I'm afraid of what it would do to my logical thinking on life. Because, you know, I can live in a muddy tent. I can shower in the rain. I can wear tapastries. I can eat veggie hot dogs and hummus. I can use port-o-potties. I can do that. If it means I can listen to nonstop music of my favorite bands all in the same place. Please introduce me to the man that thought up these cultural meccas. (Ok, I can't seem to find it on Wikipedia, but we'll just lay the praise on Michael Lang for putting Woodstock in motion). Its like Costco for music-listeners. Wholesale rocking out. And who doesn't love Costco?? One-stop shopping. If you took the 170 bands playing at Bonnaroo this year at an average of probably $20 a ticket if you saw each one on tour = $3,400 if you wanted to catch them all. Tickets to Bonnaroo = $214 at the most. Throw in a road trip and tent and you are still nowhere near the thousands of dollars and time it would take to hit all those guys individually. Look at it another way. 170 bands divided by $214 = $0.74 per band! I'm a numbers person but, seriously, that is amazing.

And what is the best part of this obsession is that its building steam. The festivals are popping up all over the US: Lollapalooza, Bonnaroo, Coachella, Summerfest, South by Southwest, All Good, 10,000 Lakes, Austin City Limits, and so much more. Event planners are seeing this equation, are hearing the buzz of crazy music people like me and they eyes turn to $$, which is fine with me if it means your going to give me the Arcade Fire, Wilco, Amy Winehouse, My Morning Jacket, Gomez, Ghostfaced Killa, Lily Allen, Artic Monkeys, the Chili Peppers, and Bjork on one stage. Feed off my naive, teenage marketing audience. We love it!

Mardi 'my pants off' Gras

There are a handful of music festivals (or along those lines) that I will try until I go deaf to experience. One of those is Mardi Grad in New Orleans. To get in the middle of that hot, crazed, tasty celebration is something i would give my entire iTunes library to take in. Beads, masks, jazz and blues, bourbon, jesters, ancient (in American tersm) chaos. Loves it.

Other festivals I will try until I go deaf to check out are Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza. Most Lolla right now since they ahve discovered that rock and rap and jam and hip hop can live in sweet musical harmony. When Justin (Boutit, not Timberlake) finally broke me into the world of rap that doesn't include Eminem or 'Slap that ass up on the floor' and actually has a hot beat and deep lyrics, I have been trying to educate myself in it a little more, opening myself up to more than just indie rock. And then this recent discovery that labels are actually finding that the two genres can, in fact, go hand in hand, with rock melodies and guitar lines to back up the deep hip hop beats that give the music a little more kick than your average bass. Par example (just from flipping through my Ipod):
Jurassic 5 + DMB 'Work it out'
Jay Z + Chris Martin 'Beach Chair'
The genius of Danger Mouse's Grey Album Beatles + Jay Z

So when, last year, Lolla broke some internal barriers by headlining Kanye and Chili Peppers and following that with a 130 band mix of rap and rock, I was hooked on this new relationship.

A festival I never thought would BE on my list, let alone get checked off, was Live 8 - the 20 year anniversary of Live Aid. I grew up hearing about Live Aid, a worldwide festival to support famine relief in Ethiopia in July 1985, three weeks before I was born. My parents love telling (and I love hearing) the story of how, on an 90 degree day in July, my mom sat in an ice bath 9 months pregnant with me while my dad, refusing to go somewhere with proper air conditioning like a movie theater, sat in front of the TV for 12 hours watching the cameras cut from London, Philly, Moscow, Sydney as bigger than life bands played on together, with the likes of the Who, Elton John, The Beach Boys, Elvis Costello, Madonna, Floyd, Dylan, Jagger, Paul McCartney, Run DMC, Sting, Zeppelin, Duran Duran, CSN&Y, Patti Labelle. I could go on. My dad taped the entire concert on his Beta recorder and, every few years, would pull it out for a 12 hour rock 'n roll lesson for me. My mom says that's why I have such a music knack is because, ready to pop in her belly, I listen to 12 hours of incomparable artists trying to change the world one song at a time.

Well, as good as that story is on its own, it gets better. 20 years later, studying abroad in London for the summer, my trip fell right on the date of the reunion concert, as a new generation (and some of the old) tried to get the world's (and the G8's) attention for famine relief in Africa once again. I sat on the lawn of a park in London and watched as Sir Elton, Sir Paul, Madonna, FLOYD, The Who relived history alongside Coldplay, U2, Dido, REM, Annie Lennox, Keane, The Killers, and a list of other new British bands. They would cut on the big screen to Philly, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, and other cities as they played on too. Ending 12 hours later with "Hey, Jude" I knew it was pretty much fate that I was in this city for something so big to me. And, as you can see, I love bragging about it.