Seattle, WA
Lexington, KY
San Diego, CA
Bend, OR
Chicago, IL
Newport, OR
Toronto, Ontario
Boston, MA
-Ran over 100 miles.
-Read over 70 books and graphic novels.
-Gave the acceptance speech at the Eisner Awards when Dark Horse Presents, on which I work, won its second Best Anthology award. It also won it’s second Harvey Award in the same category this year.
Continuing what is now a three-year tradition with my brother Dan, I attended Lollapalooza in Chicago again this year. This year our sister Lexie and my lovely girlfriend Katie came along to partake in three days of music, smuggled rum, Roman Cokes, sunshine, dancing, aching legs, and too many slices of Chicago-style deep dish.
The whole crew.Koozie users.
Here’s a list of the bands that, in some capacity, we saw so that you can judge how cool I am (I think I might be kinda cool.) and how good my taste in music is. (At least I think it’s pretty good.)
FRIDAY
-Robert DeLong
-San Cisco
-Icona Pop
-Smith Westerns
-Father John Misty*
-Band of Horses*
-Theophilus London
-Hey Marseilles
-New Order
-Hot Chip*
-Lana Del Rey (Kinda. Stage’s sounds was bogus.)
-Nine Inch Nails (Kinda. We watched for like 20 minutes and very little occurred.)
Katie and Lexie awaiting Matt & Kim.
SATURDAY
-Shovels & Rope*
-Family of the Year
-Charles Bradley (From a distance)
-Matt & Kim*
-Eric Church
-The National*
-HAIM (though an insanely long bathroom line prevented us from seeing much of this)
-Mumford & Sons (which was pretty tame, so we went to…)
-Steve Angello (where Dan and I had to carry an uber drunk kid to the EMT)
Katie and me at The National.
SUNDAY
-Wild Belle
-Wild Nothing (From a distance)
-Tegan and Sara*
-Alt-J (which was kinda dull, so we moved on to…)
-The Vaccines
-Vampire Weekend*
-Major Lazer (which turned out to be a bad reason to leave Vampire Weekend)
-The Cure
* = exceptionally good sets/enjoyable shows
Best people to go to a festival with: confirmed!
Making friends: This fella from Dublin, by way of Toronto, became our concert buddy at Vampire Weekend… and he loaned me his sweet shades!
Going to this festival every year, hearing music from bands I know and bands I’ve just been made aware of… Well, it’s tiring as hell, but it’s also a blast! It makes me feel extremely old, yet makes me feel young again at the same time. It’s exhausting and exhilarating. It’s fun and it’s frantic.
Fingers crossed the tradition continues next year!
Katie and I closing out the festival in front of the glowing Buckingham Fountain smack dab in the middle of Chicago’s Grant Park, the home of Lollapalooza.
