For the fifth straight year since it became a destination festival in 2005, Lollapalooza gets ready to rock and rumble the masses along Chicago’s lakefront in Grant Park. And over the last five years the festival has only grown larger, signed bigger deals with the City of Chicago and sold out to capacity.
To get you ready for the weekend, here’s a preview with the latest scoop on Lollapalooza, our top picks of artists to see, details on the live webcast and special info about the official iPhone and Android app.
Leading up to this year’s festival there was controversy surrounding the radius clause that Lollapalooza, like other music festivals, includes in its artists contract. On June 25th pop music reporter Jim Derogatis of Vocalo.org broke a story about Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan investigating the radius clause imposed on bands who play Lollapalooza and the festival’s possible anti-trust violating relationship with the City of Chicago. Then on June 30th, Derogatis followed up the story with a series of key questions that probed deeper into Madigan’s motivation, Chicago’s live music community response and why some have chosen to remain silent.
As of today, Madigan’s investigation is still pending. And it’s not an issue that will stop the party this weekend. But it depending on how it turns out, the investigation could impact how future festivals and contracts are written and agreed upon between artists, promoters and city officials.
In a summer where other music festivals were canceled and the concert industry is reporting losses and decreases in ticket sales, Lollapalooza still added 20,000 more capacity to its usual 75K from last year by expanded across Columbus Drive in Chicago downtown South Loop area. But as of Thursday, tickets haven’t sold out which is a first since making its home in Chicago. So what is a wise move to expand? Can’t tell yet. And before we make a final call on their expansion decision, we’ll have to wait and see how the box office does each day and wait to see how the overall concert experience resonates with the masses.
From Friday to Sunday Lollapalooza features over 120 bands playing rock, pop, dance and hip hop and everything in between. So what’s making up this year’s mix? How deep and wide is the sea of musical pleasure for fans to swim around in? It’s pretty deep. And like most music festivals you can’t possibly see it all, so you’re forced to make choices. But with a festival as large and diverse as Lollapalooza, there’s always the certainly of seeing what you want and being delighted by a few unexpected discoveries along the way.
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