For the fourteenth consecutive year, Grant Park in Chicago became home to one of the largest music festivals in the world for one weekend. The brainchild of Perry Farrell, former frontman of Jane’s Addiction, Lollapalooza returned once again this summer, kicking off on Thursday, Aug.
Securing a front-row spot for Tame Impala was no small feat. I had to sacrifice seeing Janelle Monae, Childish Gambino and, to a lesser extent, Bring Me The Horizon. I had to remain standing in a cramped crowd, shuffling slowly forward for three-and-a-half hours.
Near the end of the set, Washington and his band joined Hancock on stage for a final jam that brought the house down. The crowd left their seats and huddled toward the platform, moving with each other in a happy frenzy of music. Hancock, still carrying his keytar, jaunted back and forth between each side of the stage, making sure to play to every angle of his excited fanbase there that night.
There are 480 million acres of Midwest, filled with 68 million unique human beings. Hundreds of rivers and lakes amble through plains and forests. No one Midwestern state is quite like the other.
Nestled deep into the sonic layers of “Redbone” is ‘70s funkadelics staple “I’d Rather be With You” by Bootsy’s Rubber Band. Lead by Bootsy Collins, the song was released in 1976 to moderate commercial success. The OG song rides on a groovy, ambient wave of low-pitched electric bass with scattered jazz offbeats and accents.
When I asked about their music-making process, Fortino said, “You can’t appreciate the lovey-dovey good stuff without understanding and at least recognizing the chaos and nastiness. They sort of need each other.”
In a cramped theater, at the emotional climax of Lulu Wang’s (“Posthumous”) “The Farewell,” an entire row bursts into laughter. Those on the aisle and a family sitting below the main speaker join in, too.
Reading her essays makes you feel like you could learn anything, because hey, Jia did. Knowing yourself is a more crucial asset than anything else these days, and allows for a bigger worldview. Tolentino’s talent is capturing this perspective in words, inspiring her readers to take the same leap.
“You can never publish my love,” Rogue Wave chants, in the song that the title of this series riffs on. Maybe that’s true, and we can never quite account for our love on paper or in print, but we sure can try. That’s what this series is devoted to: publishing our love.
