One Friday afternoon a few weeks ago, I sat bored at work, thinking about the abysmally empty weekend ahead of me. Luckily, inspiration struck. I made a few inquiries, checked the credit card, and eleven hours later was on a flight to Chicago. Voilà les resultats!
As far as I can remember, this is the first actual el stop I've ever been on! It's a pretty one, too. This is where John lives at the moment. John kindly put me up for the weekend, thanks to Meredith's intercessory efforts.
reggie [email] said at 11:27 AM 08-22-2005: I look at the background of this pic and suddenly the theme song to "Married...With Children" starts playing in my head.
I highly enjoyed the Kaiser Chiefs. They were excellently crazy and fun. The singer climbed up the rigging, pulled people onstage, banged his cowbell around, and danced up a storm--and so did the crowd. It was great! Here's Meredith rocking out:
myriam [email] said at 1:11 PM 08-22-2005: note the Steretypical Keyboardist in the background. I also have some great videos of the Dancing Man In Blue.
courtney [email] said at 6:22 PM 08-22-2005: Yes, I agree, the Kaiser Chiefs put on a great show. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw them a BFD a coupla months ago. Between them and the Arcade Fire, they're my two favorite performances of the summer season so far.
Then Weezer came on. I am very old, so although I had really been looking forward to my first ever Weezer concert, by then I was just too pooped. Plus about 18 million people suddenly came out of nowhere and filled up the grounds. Weezer looked like they put on an awesome show, though--they had this enormous W in lights at the back of their stage, I think you can see it in this photo. This photo pretty much exactly captures the ambiance of the night. I love outdoor festivals on warm summer evenings...
myriam [email] said at 3:48 PM 08-21-2005: By the end of the night, we were desperate for some non-Budweiser beer. We headed to a bar to relax at an outdoor table, where we chatted, laughed, and savored food and drinks that weren't 5-dollar-plastic-cups-full-of-Bud. Meredith and her boyfriend Jeremy were there, as well as Meredith's cousin Jessica and her boyfriend Ryan, and me, and John met up with us. I think this is probably one of my very favorite things to do in life.
meredith [email] said at 1:12 PM 08-22-2005: I love how you can tell that John didn't go to lolla that day because he doesn't look half as exhausted and burnt and sweaty as the rest of us.
Sunday dawned brilliantly sunny and hot. This was awesome at first, for someone (me) who just finished going through 7 months of winter... until it ended up being a record-breaking 105º, with what must have been something like 80% humidity. People were dropping like FLIES at the concerts. Poor bands, wearing the obligatory indie rock suit and playing hot instruments under hot stage lights, were dripping sweat onto the stage and taking little breaks to curse the heat. I'm seriously amazed they could even play, let alone dance around. It was seriously insane. The city of Chicago deployed an army of buses to park around the grounds and sit running their airconditioning, but by the time one of them filled up with 20 sweaty, partially drunk concertgoers, they weren't much cooler than the outside. Staffers plunged into crowds with hoses, but they refused to hose people off; only refill water bottles (which was better than nothing. Most of us promptly dumped the bottles on our heads, anyway). I heard of one girl taken away in a stretcher. Miraculously, it seems that nobody died, but honestly we all expected at least a few deaths, especially the way people were drinking. We made it to as many concerts as we could, but out of necessity had to give up on some of the lesser ones and park ourselves in the shade for a good chunk of the afternoon. Here are Meredith and I at Kasabian, early on:
myriam [email] said at 4:07 PM 08-21-2005: Nope. Boston, remember? Nasty snow, mean people? I feel like I've bitched about this a bit on here. Maybe not.
myriam [email] said at 4:06 PM 08-21-2005:
Chuck came around and smuggled us special free cans of Bud from the musician's lounge. I feel like port-a-potties make for especially good portrait backgrounds.
meredith [email] said at 1:15 PM 08-22-2005: I actually really like it. We all look so candid in our sweaty squalor. And Chuck was indeed our booze connection. Right upon meeting him for the first time he presented us with free beer. How awesome is that?
myriam [email] said at 4:14 PM 08-21-2005: I just realized that these photos are a lot bigger than I thought they would be, and this page is going to take forever for everyone to load unless I chop it in two. So, story TO BE CONTINUED in my journal...
myriam [email] said at 4:19 PM 08-21-2005: First let me finish off Lollapalooza.
This lady is absolutely beautiful. The indian behind her ain't too bad, either--he's got some great ass muscles! They stand at the entrance to the Grant Park, right before you get to Buckingham Fountain:
...the prettiest phallic symbol you ever did see.
The Arcade Fire puts on a great show. In the middle of the hot afternoon, they were dancing around like crazy and had so much energy I swear I thought they were going to need hospitalization at the end. A couple of the guys (bassist and back-up guitar I think? Can't remember) even put on motorcycle helmets and banged around on each others' heads with drumsticks for awhile (and wrestled, and poked each other, etc etc). It was a REALLY fun show. I don't know if I've ever seen a band have so much fun playing before.
(You can see one of the helmets on the left in this pic)
meredith [email] said at 1:17 PM 08-22-2005: I admire them for wearing helmets. I totally would not have put a helmet of any kind on my head in that heat.
courtney [email] said at 6:24 PM 08-22-2005: Oh yes, they have so much energy, I don't know where they get it. It's so awesome, their enthusiasm for performance.
I remember at Coachella, the helmeted folk climbed up the sides of the stage and drummed on the rails. Too cool.
I got to meet up with my friend John, who lives in Pittsburgh, for some of the shows. He saw Death Cab with me and made it fun. Here I am at the show with him, a bit tired at the end of two days of concerts:
myriam [email] said at 1:07 PM 08-22-2005: I love that airplane wing photo. I wish that loaded up on top every time I looked at killoggs. I'm getting together a whole series of airplane photos.
myriam [email] said at 2:19 PM 08-22-2005: ha ha, there are too many! I'd like to sift through them, get together a "best of", and make a gallery or something. I'd actually really like to print them all on 4x6 prints with little white borders and line them up around the walls of my room, so when I look around I have nothing but views of sky and clouds and land far below.
