Welcome To Chicago’s Great Music Festival – Lollapalooza 2014!
Chicago’s annual love affair with all music is underway again! Lollapalooza is back!
Founded by Perry Ferrell in 1991, Lollapalooza used to tour the country, but found a permanent home in Chicago ten years ago, where more than 160,000 music fans get three days of incredible live music!
Welcome To 2014’s Best Music Festival!
Even with more than 100,000 fans each day, this is a relaxed, fun, and surprisingly uncrowded environment…here’s what it looks like when you enter Grant Park, located in Chicago’s Loop:
The city and festival organizers have done an amazing job with this festival: the entry is easy and orderly, even with more than a hundred thousand people around you:
There were great food and drink options everywhere, along with cash machines and a way to pre-register your wristband to go cashless….so easy and fast…
Grant Park runs the length of the Loop, and for these three days, the Buckingham Fountain is enclosed for the festival goers…at night it looks gorgeous…
There are multiple stages inside, with acts big and small doing their thing…here is the energetic “Cash Cash”, which whipped the crowd into a frenzy!
Other acts performing Friday were The Kooks and Broken Bells, which I missed because you can only be in so many places at once! So while Broken Bells were performing at the sound end of Grant Park, we were at the north end for one of Lollapalooza’s hottest artists…
Lorde Over Us!
Lorde took over the biggest stage and tens of thousands of fans packed in to hear her energetic, hour long set, such as her smash hit “Royals”:
And while we were packed in, it didn’t matter – Lorde’s hypnotic beats kept the crowd enthralled for an hour…even if some of them had to get a higher view…
One of the best parts of Lollapalooza is, interestingly, that ALL of the acts show up and perform on time! Yes, it is meticulously organized for the benefit of the music lover like Alex!
After this set, it was time to take a long walk to the south end of the park – Alex got a shot of me in the crowd…
Oh, and speaking of crowds, we weren’t alone…
It took about fifteen minutes to make our way down to the main south stage, and as you can see, some of the people were moving faster than we were….but there was a good reason to movie fast, because a HUGE crowd was forming at the other end of the park for:
Eminem!
Yes, day one’s headliner was the one and only:
Eminem began promptly at 8:30p, just as the sun was setting, giving us all a beautiful view of Chicago’s skyline:
Eminem sounds terrific as usual, with tons of energy…and you can see we were far away from the stage, but it didn’t matter, you could hear perfectly:
Rihanna!
Yes, Rihanna showed up and performed “The Monster” with him, as well as doing Dido’s part in “Stan”…you can click here to see it:
http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/08/watch-rihanna-joins-eminem-at-lollapalooza-performs-stan/
FYI, at the other end of the park at the same time, headline the north stage, were The Arctic Monkeys!
Hungry?
Oh, and don’t worry, there was no reason to go hungry. There were multiple food locations spaced out in the park, so we found one to sample:
Yes, these is a garlic-infused roasted cheese on a stick! Alex had the jalapeño sauced version…
Of course, we had to order some pinot grigio to go with it, nicely presented in a collectable, plastic Lollapalooza bottle…
There were so many other options, like Chicago’s famous deep dish Pizza….
And lots of beer and wine as well…but the entire event was orderly, chill and lots of fun….
No matter where you wandered, there was live music being performed, and everyone was having a great time…
By the end of the day, it was time to head out – which was also painless – just a well organized day of music…
And leave it to an enterprising Chicago college to make sure the kids remembered there was more to life than just music:
There’s a look at the food and fun of day one Lollapalooza 2014! Kudos, Chicago!
Categories: Books / Media, chicago, Classic Rock, Exotic Travel, Food, Food Review, Music, Obscure Music, Talent/Celebrities, Travel, Travel Adventures, Travel Memoir, Uncategorized, Wacky Food, wine
johnrieber 
looks like you two had fun! It sounds awesome, the food looks great…But, I’m not a crowd fan. That type of crowd would ruin pretty much anything for me. I’ll just enjoy it from your post, it’s safer for humanity that way.
; )
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Melissa, considering there were 100,000+ there, it was very spread out and food and drink lines were rarely over 4-5 people deep…and with 6 different stages – and sound so good you could hear it easily from the back, it wasn’t really crowded at all! Well, unless you wanted to be up close then it WASTHISCLOSEANDEVENMORESO
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