Lollapalooza 2007 (Day -2)

Only three days till Lollapalooza! Last year I attended one day of Lolla—saw Gnarls Barkley, Blackalicious, Flaming Lips, and Kanye—and ever since I left it had been knawing at me that I needed to attend the whole festival in ’07. Once the lineup was announced, I knew...I’d be attending the whole festival in ’07.

About two weeks ago, I called a buddy of mine who lives in Dallas—a buddy who loves Chicago as much as I do AND is just about as big a music nerd as I am—and had this exchange:

Me: Hey, do you want to go to Chicago in two weeks?
Buddy: Hell yeah!
Me: Don’t you want to know why?
Buddy: Sure.
Me: Lollapalooza.
Buddy: HELL YEAH!

And we’ve been giddy ever since. This guy was one of my three major Road Trip Buddies (along with Hear No Evil) in college, and it’s been a while. So I’ll be picking him up in St. Louis on Thursday and heading on up to Chi-town.

Three days from a music festival, there are only three major things to worry about:

1) Weather. Here’s the latest from Weather.com’s 10-day forecast.

Friday: Mostly sunny, high of 87, 20% chance of rain
Saturday: Partly cloudy, high of 88, 20% chance of rain.
Sunday: Isolated T-storms, high of 90, 30% chance of rain.

Applying the “The Weather Channel is always wrong” postulate, I’m thinking that either means 100 and sunny (and Chicago Humid) all three days, or Evenly Distributed Thunderstorms all three days. Not sure yet.

If it’s the latter, it won’t be the first time I found myself in a wet festival. During the 2001 Beale Street Music Festival, we ran into a Friday night deluge. Half of Tom Lee Park was pure mud, meaning 125,000 people were crammed into half the space. As it is, Tom Lee Park is extremely narrow and seems about a mile long, so getting from one end of the park to the other took about an hour that weekend. I got stuck listening to half of (ironically) Puddle of Mudd’s set trying to exit the park that Saturday night. It was like the same five minutes on repeat—every song sounded the same, and the lead singer’s only interaction with the crowd was screaming “YEAH! WE’RE GONNA ROCK YOUR F---IN’ C---S OFF! YEAH!” after every song. Ugh.

I also got to witness a weather-induced power outage while John Mayer was halfway through “Your Body is a Wonderland.” Let’s just say that being stuck in a crowd of 15-year old girls who didn’t get their “Wonderland” was FAR more tense than being stuck in a moshing Puddle of Mudd crowd.

In other words, I’m really hoping it doesn't rain.

2) Parking. Taken care of. We’ll be staying with Hear No Evil near Wrigleyville, and he has a weekend visitor parking pass. He lives close to the El. And a Dunkin Donuts. And lots of Wrigleyville bars.

3) Who are we going to see? This one will be answered tomorrow.