Thanks for the uncomfortable reminder, Lolla

Some people are impervious to the negative aspects of music festivals. Until Saturday afternoon, I thought I had become one of those people: able to enjoy a live outdoor music experience despite overwhelmingly large crowds of people, penetrating heat, overpriced food and drinks and advertisements everywhere one turns. What fostered my perceived tolerance of music festivals must've been the fourth-annual Pitchfork Music Festival that took place two weeks ago here in Chicago. I don't mean to blow on Pitchfork's horn too much here—I’m a little apprehensive to do so at all—but, of all the outdoor festivals I’ve attended, none’ve really compared to it.

So here’s my confession: I only spent two hours at Lollapalooza. I was, however, looking forward to it and planning on spending the majority of Saturday there. I arrived around 3pm and was greeted by swarms of thousands of sweaty festival-goers swarming the outside of Grant Park negotiating ticket sales, circumnavigating the park to chance a chink in security, or innocently taking in the sounds from behind the fence. I scraped by all of them in a bit of awe at the spectacle. This was my first time to Lollapalooza. I had a very specific blueprint in my head and this wasn’t cohering. I finally stepped into the park to the warm grooves of MGMT. They provided a pleasant backdrop to the process of me getting my bearings but that’s about where the pleasantries ended. From every vantage point, I was surrounded by advertising. Each stage had a corporate sponsor’s banner hanging on it as did every tent or lounge along the way. Every festival-goer over the age of 21 had a Bud Light advertisement dangling from their wrist indicating that they were permitted to wait in line to purchase $5 plastic cups of Budweiser or Bud Light. I didn’t even want to know what it would’ve been like to duke it out for some dinner in that place.

So what did I expect? I don’t know. Maybe a bit more modesty. There was no expense spared on behalf of anybody—music fans spun from stage to stage like chimps on speed, the schedule abetting their short attention spans. But I should’ve known. Lollapalooza is one of the biggest festivals in the country and arguably the most recognizable brand name in the festival market. It exists to sell.

Maybe I expected a bit smaller crowd. According to Lollapalooza officials, the sold-out festival hosted an estimated 225,000 fans. That doesn’t include the thousands standing outside just trying to catch a glimpse of Trent, Zach or Thom. Cell phone interference was widespread and finding anyone I knew was a mirage, a water oasis in a suffocating desert.

So I have two theories to cap all of this meandering. Firstly, Pitchfork is still in this ever nubile stage where they have enough of a brand that they can attract some pretty high caliber talent and can still do it without having to bow to overwhelming corporate assistance. For example, remember the Fuze Mist Tent that has stood behind the record tent at Pitchfork the past few years? It’s kind of an anomaly to me. It sticks out as a lone sponsorship deal among a sea of record and merchandise tables banded together by mostly local artists and locally-operating indie labels and staff. The theory is that, over the upcoming years, Pitchfork’ll slowly have to accept more advertising dollars to make the festival more profitable and enduring over a longer stretch of time. It’s a lucrative market and it’s only a matter of time before they’re forced to make some compromises. That is, unless they remain as principled as they have thus far in evading it.

Theory number two is one that I adopted years ago. It kind of goes hand-in-hand with that Groucho Marx joke that Woody Allen tells in “Annie Hall”: “I would never want to be a part of a club that would have someone like me for a member.” Festivals—be it a neighborhood street fest, music fest, city fest, food fest, etc. etc.—just fool people into thinking that big groups of people are fun. They fool you so completely that you go and you spend money thusly making it possible for the festival to take place again next year. Most people suck and, the more people you gather together, the higher the total number of sucky people there will be.

Post-text: There were three quality celebrity sightings: Aziz Ansari, Pete Wentz and Alia Shawkat (Maebe from Arrested Development).