August 08, 2009 – Chicago, IL – Lollapalooza (Day 2)

My Lineup: Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Tool, Animal Collective, TV On The Radio, Arctic Monkeys

This was one of the shortest days I spent at Lollapalooza.  The lineup for the earlier part of the day wasn't great and Joe and I had some friends in town that didn't have tickets to the festival, so we ate breakfast/lunch and then rolled into the festival pretty late.

I bought a ticket for my girlfriend to go the next day, but this day was just me and Joe.

Arctic Monkeys, a band that I really like, were actually boring.  They played too many slow songs in a row and completely lost me.

TV On The Radio were good, and Animal Collective were strange.

Animal Collective played nothing but a looping formless electronic cacophony of sound for the last 10-15 minutes of their set.  It had little musical quality, but it was great to space out to.

This was one of the only times where I decided to split the headliner.  Beastie Boys were originally on the lineup, but they cancelled and were replaced by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

I stood in the back of the south field and watched Tool first.  My eye sight is really bad at a distance, so it looked like Maynard Keenan was just wearing a black diaper and shoulder pads.  Pictures that I saw later would reveal that I was pretty much correct, however he did change clothes at some point and put more on.

I walked across Grant Park after a few Tool songs (45 minutes into their set), and I caught the last half of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.  They were great and Karen O wore this awesome Native American looking costume with a huge headdress.

Despite some solid performances, my favorite moment of the day was my walk across the park while the headliners played.  A mostly empty festival, lit up the way it was with random hopeless woozy couples sitting and strolling around was something to behold.  There was this festival going on in-between the music that I hadn't really noticed before.

Some people didn't require anything but a nice night in August and the promise of something right beyond their own bubble to have a great night.

The people walking or hanging around in the middle of the festival almost seemed happier than those that were watching the music.