Lolla recap Day 1: Probably my favorite animal in the world

Some dude actually tattooed a Liger on his leg. Fantastic!


Palooza was a blast. Its hard to believe that the last time I attended this festival was in 1994 and Nirvana was supposed to be the headliner. A lot of things have happened since then, in fact I'm pretty sure there was no such thing as internet porn or even text messages. I mean, how would you be able to find your friends back then?

I escaped the New York heat for the slightly less oppressive Chicago heat. Don't get me started on the Miami Heat (I hate those guys). Got to Grant Park around 2ish and caught the tail end of the Eels set who were rockin' the house. They covered Peaches "Rock Show" and even did Tom Waits "Jesus Gonna Be Here". Next up I headed over to the Kidzapalooza stage where I saw the Blisters who are made up of four kids roughly aged 9-11 and two of them were Jeff Tweedy's kids. He was standing by like the proud papa that he is and they proved to be one of the highlights of my weekend. While none of them were virtuosos on their instruments, their covers of "Blizkrieg Bop," "She Don't Use Jelly," "Rockin' in the Free World," "Sweet Home Alabama" were more than enough to keep the crowd satisfied.

Heres lil Tweedy:


Caught some of the Editors and some of Ryan Adams, neither of which impressed me all that much and then caught the awesomeness of the Secret Machines who proved the even in the daytime and without their spectacular light show that these guys do not fuck around. By the time they finished the crowd at the AT&T stage was totes crowded to see Jacky White and the Raconteurs. Even though it seemed like we were miles away, they were great. Songs like "Level" and "Steady As She Goes" had the crowd really into it and their covers of Bowie and Nancy Sinatra seemed spot on. I left before the end of their set in order to catch a bit of My Morning Jacket and to get a spot for Sleater Kinney. After the seemingly endless trek we made it to catch a few songs of each. The Jacket sounded perfect like they always do and I was annoyed that I was forced to choose between them and the Raconteurs. I only chose the latter because I had just seen MMJ opening for Pearl Jam about a montha go. I still got to see their last three songs and was really glad that I did. However, this did mean I missed the Raconteurs covering Gnarls Barkleys summer jam "Crazy." By the way, it was one of three covers of this tune heard this weekend (the others were by Mates of State and Kanye West for anyone whos keeping score). By this time Grant Park was a total zoo. About 8:15 I made my trek back to the other side of the park yet again in order to catch my boys in Ween. These guys never disappoint and I honestly just feel sorry for anyone who were on the other side of the park watching the mediocrity that is Death Cab For Cutie. Ween was only given an hour and a half which is normally half of the time that they usually play, but it was more than enough time to absolutely kill it. They played stuff from all throughout their career and like always I screamed myself hoarse during "Doctor Rock" and "You Fucked Up." They won over some new fans including our own WiscoD. It was a great way to start of the festivities and we still had a lot more music and partying to go ahead of us.