concert musings

last week, perry ferrell's circus extravenganza of bands showed up in chicago for three full days of sore legs, music, and sweat... at least this year it wasn't 100+ degrees, and we didn't have anyone we were in dire straits (yes, i spelled it like the band) to see (as we were last year with the killers, when we waited hours on hours end in sweltering death valley temps), we were able to take it easy on cramming in front of 60-70,000 plus people... although, cramming last year did get both j and i in the lollapalooza tv spot commercial for this year (i have a video of the commercial, that'll i'll post eventually)...

i have to say that the flaming lips left the biggest impression on me... we had left the smoking popes stage about 30 min early, in order to try to meander into a good spot for the lips... unfortunately for us, everyone else had setup camp about an hour or more earlier than we arrived... eventually hazen and i were able to skimmy and weave our way somewhat into the crowd and got a little closer... the show was extravagant... wayne had santa clauses (yes plural), aliens, giant robots, streamers, confetti, balloons, and who knows what else that i couldn't see... he started the show off coming out in his "human" bubble, and rolling around in the crowd, then returning to his command post and ordering the releasing of 25-50 giant blue balloons, with intermingled blow up dolphins, lemons, and anything else in the mix... simply beautiful, in the flaming lips, "odd" way...

other highlights for me were:

• Panic! covering Tonight, Tonight
• Chicken on a stick at Lee's Concessions
• Rawkin' (or not so much) Guitar Hero 2 with Hazen
• coheed & cambria and ween shredding
• the go! team
• kanye and TWISTA! (since it'll prob. be the only time i ever attend a rap concert)

i did see something quite interesting during the queens set... there's apparently some ritual to moshing now-a-days... when queens started, josh (singer of QOTSA) seemed to part the sea of people like moses, but rather than creating a calm pathway for his followers, he summoned serveal charybdis, churning all with shirtless sweaty men... they opened up all around us... but as i watched, i noticed something odd... the moshing eventually "evolved" (if you can call it that) into some ritualistic/sumo-esque technique... someone had brought a straw mat (maybe 2 x 4 feet) and laid it out in the middle of the pit... the pit stops, and then two bare skinned men, shook hands, and continued to "sumo/mosh", running into each other until one tired out... in between matches, the roughed up mat, was fixed and flattened, awaiting for it's next match... i was quite confused by all this... as it continued for about 3-4 other matches... eventually, the entropy started back up again, once "little sister" started up... and i was left confused...

in any case, i did discover that i like jack white's and benson's new outfit the raconteurs... i'll definiately be picking up that cd soon... 30 seconds to mars was also pretty impressive, except it took me awhile to get over seeing jordan catalano (sp?) playing rock... leto did rawk pretty hard, but he kept doing this amateurish looking guitar spin when he played... it looked awkward to me, but maybe that's because i kept seeing jordan...

there's lots more.. but you can read janelle's blog about it, and look at her pictures, as she's the less lazy one between us...

oh, i did see this person... who i swear looks exactly like my friend ryan, with facial hair... fortunately, he posed for me as i took this picture.. i wanted to paint him...