Muse brought all the firepower anyone could want to the stage at Lollapalooza. Many said it was the best performance by #Muse they had seen yet, and I agree, though I only have 2 others for comparison. I always say the setlist does not matter much to me, and it’s true; I was thrilled to hear Butterflies & Hurricanes AND Citizen Erased (played on a 7 string Manson, see Hillary VanGuilder's photo below) live for the first time, but it was the energy of the band that really blew me away and got my tired , dehydrated body jumping up & down & singing along
To backtrack to how I got tired and dehydrated when I consider myself in good shape for my age…I drove in 30 miles from my sister’s to Grant Park the day before the festival to get my wristband so I would not have to worry about it the next day. Traffic was more miserable than I remembered ( I grew up in the area) got my wristband easily enough and scoped out the grounds for the next day. On the way back traffic was worse, my car engine temp started to climb, so I shut off the AC and sweated the rest of the way back to the suburbs. All this convinced me to take the train the next day! But it may also have set my fluid balance back a little. Here's a shot of the stage being set up:
I caught a very early train in, but I was not lined up at the gates at “fuck o’ clock” like some of my Muser friends
But I made it by 8:30 am , applied sunblock and enjoyed their company until security let us in.
I thought security did a great job sorting us, though some felt we were having a staredown since we were lined up quite a while. The run for the barrier was long, too long for many of us to actually run it with backpacks on, but the people who had been first in line did get their spots and I was right behind them.
It was hot but we had some shade and a lake breeze. OTOH, I had imagined it would be easier to keep taking bathroom breaks at a festival but this is not true. People started moving forward 2 bands before Muse; can't blame them when it was the likes of the White Lies and A Perfect Circle. I also began to get nauseous from 2nd hand smoke, regular cigarettes-the other kind don’t bother me as much! I did not want to be passed out or throwing up while watching Muse so I bowed out and started trying to find other Musers who were not in the pit.
Cell phones were acting weird, but finally did find some of my other Muser friends , and it was a bonus to be able to spend some time with them too
Though I ended much farther back in the crowd, not fighting to hold a barrier position allowed me to just get into the show and feel Muse’ energy more. And it was high! Stockholm Syndrome may show this the best; I could just feel that Matt was going to throw his guitar into the drum kit quite early in the song!http://youtu.be/p9cnDpiCoBI
Thankfully many of my friends got excellent photos because they were able to stay at the barrier
this may have been during Map of the Problematique, my favorite Muse song before Exogenesis came along. A reviewer erroneously referred to it as "Touch the Other Side" LOL, but it is otherwise a good review by someone who seems to have some actual understanding of music
Time Out Chicago review
Though every Muser longs to hear Citizen Erased live, I may have been slightly more over the moon to hear Butterflies & Hurricanes live for the first time, I love the piano solo and the lyrics
http://youtu.be/09snxS4U6cI
lots of sexy moves from Matt in several songs, even as far back as I was, I noticed!
Lindsay LaBarre caught the knee slide
a couple just plain beautiful shots
Jessica Sandoval's:
in these you can see Dom is egging Matt on to toss that guitar!
and here it comes!
the drum kit got repaired to allow for an encore including Plug In Baby and Knights of Cydonia
Dom always does the good-bye speech
Getting back to the suburbs afterwards was surreal. The streets felt safe enough with so many Lolla attendees still out and about. I ended up behind some tipsy teenage girls as I got near the train station, they were singing the theme song from Titanic, wtf? Even drunker teenagers were on my train, sitting on each others’ laps and taking so loudly we could not hear the stops being announced. But an experienced rider helped us out of towners identify where we were, and I guess we should be grateful these kids were not driving.
A lovely postscript was meeting Catherine downtown for some real Chicago deep dish pizza on Monday.
As of this writing, I’m still kind of high from it all, but beginning to miss my fellow Musers. It will be many months before we have another Muse gig to gather at as they will be working on a new album this fall
Musers I know are still working on their uploads, but quite a bit of video from the show can be seen here:
http://veokami.com/event/muse-lollapalooza-2011/
more postscript, found a couple cool pics with a wider view in the Lollaplooza flickr account
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