A Louisvillian’s 3 days at Lollapalooza 2010

I got back from my first music festival yesterday. The Lady (not Gaga) and I left Thursday afternoon from Louisville for Chicago and spent the next three days and nights enjoying our first Lollapalooza experience. There were apparently more than 130 bands on 8 stages spread all across Grant Park. What follows in this post is my usual event review with photos, videos, and itinerary. For a more professional roundup, I recommend the official Lollapalooza website. It’s one of the best event sites I’ve ever used – their blog has a great review of each day with (mostly) better photos and videos than the ones we were able to capture. (August 15th photo and video update @ end of post.)

Us at Millenium Park

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Mute Math – 2009 Memphis concert

If you’re wanting to see a good live show in a small venue, you’ve got less than a month to catch a MuteMath show in the States (tickets and dates on official site). I went to their Memphis show on Sunday 10/25/09 at the New Daisy with my friend Jason (who first introduced me to their self-titled CD).  This was my third time to see Mute Math in as many years and they never fail to provide perfect sonic vibrance. Arpit Mehta has a good review the LA show, so I’ll add a multimedia roundup to those thoughts.

LA 10/10/09 by Max Roper
LA 10/10/09 by Max Roper

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Hibachi, Mute Math, & birthdays

Friday was a long day. On Thurs, our new landlord in Louisville notified us that our apartment wasn’t ready for the Saturday move in. As much as I love having an extra week with friends in Nashville, the news really put a huge dent in our plans. Instead of moving everything with a big Ryder truck today, Nathan’s just going to move on Monday with just his essentials. Jon and I will go up and bring everything else next weekend. I’ll stay and Jon will return to Nashville until Sept 6th when he transfers to a different Walgreens. We still need to work out a deal with the landlord for all this inconvenience. Gotta love moving.

A bunch of us drove down to the Lenox Village area to check out the hibachi grill there – think it was called Minomi. Most of our kitchen stuff is packed, so we’re blowing money eating out. The grill was yummy. Deep South Nashville ain’t bad; haven’t really explored it much since its expansion a few years ago. Jon has switched into shopping mode to relieve the moving stress – we went into a little antique shop that used to be a country church. Jon thinks he’ll be able to get more than $10 selling the Off the Wall LP he found there. I disagree.

At 5pm, I drove down to Franklin for the Mute Math Mobile Listening Party (MMLP). If you’re a MM fan, you can imagine what a thrill it was. About 10 of us fans piled onto the big bus and got an exclusive listen to the full album Armistice (which won’t be released until 8/18). If you have a chance to catch the MMLP in your city before 8/18, you will not be disappointed with your $59 investment (gets you a shirt, concert ticket, and a bunch of other goodies)! The listening party idea is quite a novel one and I’d definitely do it for other bands if the trend catches on. We provided the crew with our feedback and intermingled a bit. I attempted to tweet the experience, but they didn’t go through for some reason. <UPDATE 8/9>Just noticed twitter SMS delays were due to Thursday’s big DoS attack. This is why these tweets finally just showed up today!</UPDATE> Here’s what’s in my phone. At least the twitpic went through.

(8/7 17:23): 3 songs into @mutemath listening party. Sounds too good already!

(8/7 17:31): @mutemath #armistice_no_response Like the darker side of You Are Mine, flavored w the sound of the new album.

(8/7 17:41): @mutemath #armistice_goodbye “If you say goodbye, my heart’s in trouble.” Poetry, and not cliché!

(8/7 18:06): @mutemath #armistice_burden Love how it mellows out @ end by borrowing from & echoing Spotlight remix.

Nathan had a big birthday gathering at Logans, so I joined them for a drink and a slice of cake. We moved on to our usual, Tribe, to play pool until about midnight.

Michael called me and picked me up to join birthday #2, this one for Fernando! I haven’t been to many East Nashville residences, but it was quite strange to be back at the place where I cooked vagina cookies in college. Prof. Alison Piepmeier used to live in the same house! I enjoyed last night’s party much more than my first experience there. Lovely people and great DJs with the Best Buy Digital Music Store. Should have been there just to see Michael dancing to MC Hammer.

But wait, we made the obligatory Cafe Coco run on the way home. One is almost guaranteed to meet someone interesting whenever visiting this fantastic little 24hr joint. Oh, Nashville. I’ll miss you. Time for a nap.

P.S. I’m not sure if it’s Flash, but my Firefox keeps eating up all my CPU time and I haven’t been able to figure out why. Been happening for several weeks now, starting with 3.5.0. I hate having to rebuild my profile, but I’m not even sure that creating a fresh one is fixing the issue. Time will tell. Anyone else have a clue?

AutoVaughn and Mute Math

On Saturday, I had the privilege of seeing two of my favorite bands, both for free. As usual, I took photos and a video each for AutoVaughn and Mute Math. AutoVaughn played for the 2009 Nashville Earth Day Festival, and Mute Math packed the Grimey’s parking lot for the 2nd international Record Store Day event. This is a day I will not soon forget.

Peculiar People
Peculiar People (Mute Math)

P.S. Mute Math’s show comes right on the heels of their new “Spotlight” video. It definitely enhances the enjoyment of the song as its initial release was tainted by being on the silly Twilight soundtrack. Forthcoming album in August!

MUTEMATH – Spotlight

P.P.S. Don’t forget to vote for AutoVaughn to win some new equipment. Vote daily on their Fender Road Worn competition page.