[All photos by the talented and gorgeous Fuzzy Gerdes]
We arrived at Lollapalooza on Friday about 12:30.
We took a few minutes to grab a beer and look around, and then headed over to see Los Amigos Invisables, who I had never heard of, but Fuzzy likes and now I do, too. While waiting for them to start, we heard the last few songs from Wavves, all of which I recognized from SiriusXMU.
Los Amigos Invisables.
They were great!
At 1:30, we headed across campus to the mainstage to see Raphael Saadiq. On the way there, we heard the end of the Walkmen.
The lady singer/dancer, Erika Jerry, was amazing.
He kept peeling off layers of clothes, revealing lots of tattoos and serious guns. It was realll niiice (sorry Fuzzy.)
The show was a lot of fun, but it dipped in energy when they did a freestyle set. He didn't play my fave song either, which was sad.
Food break!
We had a lobster corndog from Graham Elliot, Punk Rock Shrimp from Elate (my fave from the weekend--I got it twice) and a pork belly tostada from somewhere I don't remember.
Then we decided to miss the New Pornographers (ah!) thinking that we can probably see them again and it is more rare to see....DEVO!
They are so funny. They had 4 costume changes in 1 hour.
They started with their more rocking stuff, but then started to lose the young crowd when they started talking about Devolution and playing Jocko Homo. The older folks in the crowd loved it.
Here's a woman doing the Rock-and-Recycle program I mentioned earlier.
After that, we caught the first half of Matt & Kim, who I think are the most adorable band in indie rock. Great energy, great songs, great fun (no photos). We should have stuck around for the whole set. Instead we wandered to the other stage to catch the end of Dirty Projectors (only heard one song) and then the Black Keys. I love the Black Keys, but unfortunately, they were on the crappiest stage of the festival (the second mainstage). It had terrible sighlines and acoustics, so we could barely hear them. I bet it was an awesome show if you were up front, but instead it was boring and bad and we left after 3 songs. I don't fault the band--I fault the stage.
Dirty Projectors
Black Keys
Eventually, we headed back over to the mainstage (after getting more beer and a pulled pork sandwich) and settled in for Lady Gaga.
Oh man.
It was so weird and hilarious. I don't quite know what to think of the show. I love Lady Gaga--love her--but the show had a weird story line sort of, and it all seemed pretty self-indulgent (she kept asking if we thought she was sexy, she kept saying how she was made fun of in school and look at her now--she's a star! And that she was getting payback for getting bad reviews at her 2007 Lolla show.) But the music and the dancing--amazing! I love her choreographer and that woman has some pipes! At one point I had to throw off my hat and my earplugs that were draped over my neck so that I could truly dance and let loose. It was awesome.
The literal "Fame Monster."
She had about a million costume changes (I stopped counting at 8) and really blew the mother out. It was great.
Every now and again, we would look around and say "Oh yeah! We are in Chicago!" Awesome.
All in all, it was a great day.
