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My previous post covered Pitchfork Festival 2006 and now I’m moving on to Lollapalooza 2006.

In short, I had probably festivalled myself out by the time Lollapalooza came to town. So I freely admit that I’m not giving the festival a fair shake. But I think it’s great that Chicago has a music festival (nearly) on par with Coachella, Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits. I say nearly because as large as Lollapalooza was this year, I still prefer Coachella.

I say nearly, because while there was a similar number of people at Lollapalooza each day, it felt a LOT more crowded than Coachella. I think this was because Coachella has an more open layout. The Coachella grounds are basically a big triangle. Lollapalooza on the other hand, was a long rectangle with Buckingham fountain in the center. This meant that all the traffic from one side of the park to the other had to go through the same corridor between the main stages. Earlier in the day this was no problem at all, but into the evening it became more and more congested. So of the three days, I went for half of Friday and Sunday, and skipped Saturday entirely.

On Friday, I started out my day with a high energy set from The Subways followed by a sleepy set from Aqualung. About halfway through the Aqualung set, I left to watch the M’s. This was my first time seeing them and I thought they put on a great performance. Since they were playing a smaller stage I was able to get up close and take some good photos.

After their set, Stu and I went over to the stage for Editors to get a good spot. We got a close spot to stand, which happened to be right in front of a speaker. When Editors started up we both looked at each other, surprised in just how loud it was where we were standing. We made it through about two-thirds of the set before splitting up and watching from a safer distance.

After Editors I watched a little bit of Mates of State and got a bite to eat. My final set of the day was by Iron and Wine, whose mellow acoustic songs were having trouble rising above the sound of nearby stages. I watched about thirty minutes of his set and left.

I skipped Saturday entirely. I really only wanted to see two band that day: Be Your Own Pet and Sonic Youth. But Be Your Own Pet played at noon, and only for thirty minutes. And as much as I’d like to see Sonic Youth, they’ve been really disappointing the last two times I saw them. So instead of braving the fest, I spent some time with Faith and got caught up on a bit of freelance work.

I had a really good time on Sunday seeing sets and hanging out with Stu and Doug. I watched sets by Office, Perry Farrell, The Redwalls, The Frames, Ben Kweller, Andrew Bird, The Shins and Of Montreal. I really enjoyed seeing the short acoustic set by Perry Farrell at Kidsapalooza

This entry was posted on Monday, August 7th, 2006 at 8:21 am and is filed under Concerts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.