For three or four days every year, Lollapalooza transforms Chicago. While taking the train or walking the streets, it’s extremely easy, judging by their colorful tank tops, bandanas, and flower crowns, to pick out who’s on their way to the festival. Once you enter festival grounds, you immediately immerse yourself in this self-contained, colorful, insane little world of music and youthful nonsense, or more concisely, a Baby Boomer’s version of Hell.
But for us younger folk, the festival is a great place to mosh, sing, and kill brain cells. The ingenuity of the place is amazing; I once saw somebody dig up a bottle of booze by a marked tree that they had buried a week before with their bare hands. You can avoid all of this and just enjoy the music if you’d like, but watching the chaos unfold around you is half the fun.
Musically, the festival was no slouch. Favorites like local star Chance The Rapper, pop-punk banger group PUP (@puptheband), quirky indie rock act Cloud Nothings (@cloudnothings) gained new fans and invigorated old ones with their energetic ballads. Emerging future bass artist Slushii (@SlushiiMusic) performed a great set that had half the crowd knocking each other over in a giant mosh pit.
Last but certainly not least, beloved pop-punk giants c (@blink182) put on a fantastic and electrifying show. Despite a few shaky lineup changes the past few years, the band managed to retain their charm and humor for their performance. Being one of my favorite bands from my angsty teenage years, hearing “The Rock Show” live put a notch in my bucket list.
Justin Cabrera
PlaylistHQ 