Lollapalooza & Kidzapalooza Recap: Day 3

(Did you miss the Day 1 or Day 2 recap?) Anyhow, after a day of rest and relaxation back at home with Grandma, we decided to bring the bigger of our two kiddos back to Lollapalooza on Sunday for one more day of music and fun. Besides, I needed a good reason to stay (more) sober. We also brought my brother along so I’d have someone to keep me from (or coerce me into) drinking too much. Hmm… After getting downtown, and going to a Kidzapalooza brunch party, we walked to Grant Park in the rain and it was pretty glorious. It wasn’t raining hard, but it was raining. The rain finally cleared as we started listening to Chicago hip-hop group The Q Brothers over at the Kidzapalooza stage. They were hilarious and awesome. My favorite was an improvised song they did about rain, elephants, and fruit. Seriously, they made it up on the spot (I’ll post it as soon as I get it uploaded).

My brother and I then checked out about one song from Company Of Thieves and were unimpressed, then listened to a few Switchfoot songs before going back to meet my wife and daughter for Recess Monkey’s Sunday performance. Again, Recess Monkey was awesome. This time (though) there were actually some teenagers watching and getting really into it. I dig the Monkey.

We watched a little bit of The Cribs (my brother liked ‘em but I wasn’t as convinced) as we got some drinks and then watched Minus The Bear. Minus. The. Fucking. Bear. They’re one of my favorite bands so I’m a little biased, but I thought they were great playing older songs as well as stuff from their latest, OMNI. With as many great rockin’ songs as they have, I wasn’t totally thrilled with the band opting for a handful of their slower and more atmospheric songs, but they still tore it up.

Can you guess where we went next? Yeah, back to Kidzapalooza to see Peter DiStefano (from Porno For Pyros) and Tor. At one point in the set, Peter invited all the kids up on stage to play his guitar while he DJ’ed some trance beats. It was really cool to see my daughter up there! My brother and I then checked out X Japan on the main stage and were blown away by their Japanese power metal. If you like crazy guitar solos, double bass drum, pyrotechnics, and elaborate costumes, then you need to check out this band. They’ve been around since 1982 and have sold more than 30 million albums, but this was the band’s first show ever in the United States. Simply amazing.

We made it back to the packed Kidzapalooza stage just in time to hear Perry Farrell play “Pets” and a few other songs. My wife was even able to meet Perry and had him take a picture with the kiddo. We hung around Kidzapalooza for awhile and then went to get some drinks and let the kiddo play some video games. We ended up talking to Daron from Recess Monkey while we listened to Wolfmother. He was really friendly and an all around awesome guy.

I sent my wife and tired daughter on a golf cart to the North end of Grant Park so they wouldn’t miss The National while my brother and I hoofed it. Even before the amazing happened, we both thought The National was incredible. They could play any size stage based on the strength of their songs alone. My wife texted me and said she (with a little help from her friends) got up on the stage left terrace. After we made our way over there, my brother noticed Matt (the singer) from The National had climbed off the stage and was in the crowd. Cool. Matt then climbed up on the terrace. Even Cooler. He then meandered over to my daughter, crouched down, grabbed her hand and sang part of “Mr. November” to her, even cleaning up the lyrics because he was singing to a 4 year old. She wasn’t scared at all. She just smiled at him. What a kid. (It all starts to happen at about 1:02 in the video with Matt getting to my daughter about 1:28).

I was sort of in shock after that and (needless to say) it was easily the highlight of my weekend. Tons of people got video and photos of it. A great ending to a great Lollapalooza weekend.