10 Reasons Lollapalooza is THE U.S. Music Fest of the Summer
by Matt Priest

As the recording arm of the music industry scrambles to figure out its next move in the face of severely declining business, aspects of the concert industry are actually managing to thrive. Perhaps as an artist’s entire recorded catalog becomes easier and easier to acquire digitally - within seconds and often for free - we begin taking that artist’s music for granted. In that case, maybe actually seeing that artist perform live, in person, begins to take on more meaning. But hypothesizing aside, it’s a fact - attendance at multi-day, destination rock festivals has been soaring for the past few years and shows no signs of slowing down.

The summer concert season (much like the summer movie season) never waits until the actual summer to start. Things kick off this weekend with the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, a three-day bonanza deep in the desert, just outside of Palm Springs, California. Then, in the following months, another sixteen or so major festivals will take place, a few of the biggest household names being Bonnarroo, Austin City Limits, and Milwaukee Summer Fest. And fans have two new options this year: the All Points West Music & Arts Festival, in Jersey City, NJ and Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival, in San Francisco.

But these festivals aren’t cheap; tickets can cost as much as $350 - which, of course, doesn’t include getting there, parking, eating/drinking and in some cases, camping. So if you’ve got a long list of "bands to see" and you’re looking to kill a number of birds with one stone, because you’ve only got the dough to hit one festival this summer, make it Chicago’s Lollapalooza.

History of Lollapalooza

In 1991, Jane’s Addiction frontman and L.A. art scene figurehead Perry Farrell organized the Lollapalooza tour, which introduced concertgoers to the idea of a music festival full of wildly varying artists you’d normally never see together. Headlined by his own band, the line-up reflected the quickly growing, diversifying alternative music movement of the early 90’s. Year after year, Farrell managed to book outstanding and surprising line-ups of influential, alternative legends, underground buzz bands and everything in between.

It was successful for seven years, until 1996, when Farrell booked Metallica to headline a guy-oriented, guitar-heavy line-up that featured Soundgarden, The Ramones and Rancid, among others. It seems as though his thinking was that "alternative" merely implied "that which isn’t the norm." And Metallica doesn’t sound like anyone else and he certainly hadn’t booked a line-up that before, so he felt he was working well within his vision. But somewhere along the way, the alternative music fans he’d helped birth had decided that "alternative" needed to imply some specific things. And they weren’t comfortable with such a popular band headlining a supposed "alternative" festival and nor did the macho, testosterone-rich line-up gel with the tastes of the alternative music fans who had gotten used to feeling disenfranchised. So the festival’s ideals and those of its fans began to split, ticket sales declined and Farrell became disenchanted and lost interest. A year later, in 1997, Lollapalooza finished its run.

Six years later, in 2003, Farrell resurrected the tour once more, with a whimper. Again, it featured his band, Jane’s Addiction, as headliners and again, he turned to the increasingly popular genres of hard rock, grunge and metal for his line-up, booking Audioslave, Incubus, Queens of the Stone Age and A Perfect Circle. The glory days were clearly in the past and the tour’s return was short-lived. Attempts to book it one last time the following year, with Morrissey, PJ Harvey, Sonic Youth and The Killers, fell apart just weeks prior to launch, as a result of dismal ticket sales.

Finally, in 2005, Farrell decides that that there may be more success in creating a single, multi-day festival, in one prime location - a place around which music fans can gather, where the short commitment time makes it possible for him to land his dream line-up, and a situation where he’s got full quality control over all aspects of the festival and doesn’t need to bother with the logistics and costs of packing it up and relocating it each and every day. He determines that Chicago’s Grant Park is the best place to do just that and Lollapalooza’s debut in its new home features Weezer, The Pixies, Widespread Panic, Death Cab for Cutie, The Killers and Arcade Fire. Ticket sales didn’t quite hit their target that first year, but it was brutally hot and there were signs of potential growth. So he mounted the festival again in ’06 and ’07, seeing major increases in attendance each year, topping out at 167,000 for the ‘07 weekend. Now in its fourth year, Lollapalooza looks hungry to grow again. When the recent line-up announcement revealed that there would be three to four headliners, each with a draw on par with that of last year’s main attraction, Pearl Jam, it was immediately apparent that Farrell was attempting to re-establish Lollapalooza as *the* festival to beat.

The Few Negatives of Lollapalooza

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be stated up front that I reside here in Chicago. So if you fear that makes me unable to write an unbiased piece on Lollapalooza, then feel free to stop reading. But know that I didn’t get any sort of free "press pass" to the fest; I paid for my ticket like everyone else. So I’d like to think I had to maintain a good degree of objectivity when deciding how I’d spend my money this summer (if, on the other hand, this were an article about Chicago pizza, you’d be right not to trust me). In fact, lest you think I’m merely here to write a fluff piece, let’s get a few criticisms out of the way right here at the top...

For starters, this year’s line-up is a little heavy on repeats from previous Chicago installments; all in all, I count 18. That list includes the thankfully re-watchable Mates of State, the unfortunately un-watchable Louis XIV, two artists managed by promoter C3 Presents, which co-owns Lollapalooza (Blues Traveler and What Made Milwaukee Famous), four of the festival’s nine marquee acts (Kanye West, Wilco, The Raconteurs and Gnarls Barkley) and two bands making their third appearance in just four years (The Black Keys and G. Love & Special Sauce). So the line-up does look, in parts, a little familiar. But to be fair, the majority of those artists are good ones and with eighty-some more on the bill and barely enough time to catch a quarter of them all anyway, a yearly frequenter of the fest could easily avoid repeats all weekend long.

Second, although I’d say overall, Lollapalooza’s line-up offers the most quality of the summer fests, it does lack a bit of the "wow factor" that comes from scoring artists who either don’t play often or haven’t played in a particularly long time. Coachella usually takes the prize in this department and this year is no exception; the festival’s poster proudly displays scarce names like Prince, Portishead, Kraftwerk, The Verve, Aphex Twin, and Love and Rockets (the only one of these artists that's also scheduled to hit Lollapalooza). Other head-turning bookings this season include Metallica at Bonnaroo, David Byrne at Austin City Limits, Jarvis Cocker (ex-Pulp) at Pitchfork, Lee “Scratch” Perry at Bumbershoot, Manu Chao at Outside Lands and a reunited Triumph at Rocklahoma. Lolla headliners Radiohead and Rage Against the Machine - while certainly top notch bookings - don’t quite count here though, seeing as they’re both stopping by the fest in the midst of massive, international tours.

Thirdly, in the past, Lollapalooza’s stages have been named after their sponsors, Bud Light, AT&T, Citi, MySpace, Playstation, Adidas and BMI, names which were displayed distractingly on large banners above or alongside those stages. Now I’m not naïve enough to expect no advertising to appear at such an event. But couldn’t it be a little less conspicuous? Considering the uproar a few years back when the Chicago Bears considered selling corporate naming rights to their home stadium, Soldier Field, I’d have thought someone would’ve convinced Perry to take another approach.

Lastly, both mainstages at Lollapalooza are flanked by the "Lolla Lounges", where concertgoers pay $850 for frozen drinks, gourmet buffets, mini-spa treatments and air conditioned restrooms, and "Private Cabanas", intended for parties of 20 or more, which come complete with a wait staff and go for $25,000 and up. Again, I understand their place at the festival: it’s partially because of them that I can afford to attend a show with some really terrific, in-demand artists. And if I had the money, I imagine I’d spend at least some time in one of those, occasionally ducking out of the hot sun. But they’re just so omnipresent, their pointy, white tent tops reaching high into the sky, separated from the rest of us by opaque, security-guarded fences. No one attends a rock show planning to be reminded every now and again of his/her societal status. It can get a little unnerving.

However, those are forgivable complaints when weighed against all the good stuff, of which I’d argue there’s a lot. Here we go...

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