Yelling until you feel the sides of your throat start to stab with pain, and then finding a new decibel level after you get inadvertently elbowed in the ribs by the stranger next to you who is feeling the vibe. Grabbing your friend by the collarbone and shoving him into your other friend who isn’t looking. Hearing a great sound or beat that stops in your tracks and compels you across the field to check out who is making you nod your head subconsciously. Jumping up and down like a lunatic without a care in the world.
Those feelings and actions are all signs of a good concert. The music starts vibrating inside of you and all of your thoughts stop. It’s what will make music never go away, why concerts and raves will always be popular, those moments when you are listening to music and can think of nothing else.
Lollapalooza 2007 in Chicago provided a lot of those moments. The band that made me stop in my tracks goes by the name Ghostland Observatory. I was trying to leave the show to get in a triathlon swim workout before the bands I really wanted to see were scheduled to come on. I kept hearing this sound and looking wistfully down at the stage that was about 10 football fields away. Yep, another triathlon swim workout was about to get blown off. Ghostland Observatory is a 2 man band, there is one guy that does all sorts of electronic noises while also playing the drums. Then there is the singer who also occasionally plays guitar. I have never seen a singer who became more one with his music; it was like he had a demon inside of him. Plus the beats that the electronic guy kept spitting out, the crowd was really into it. I was so into the tunes I did not realize I had my shirt off for over an hour, until my face starting feeling tight and it felt like someone was holding a hot skillet against my neck. Sigh. Yet another sunburn has snuck up on me. Ghostland leaves the stage and I go take refuge from the sun.
Daft Punk light show – If someone were to tell me “I saw this awesome light show at Lollapalooza” I would smile and think “doubtful”. I would base this opinion after the lightshows I have seen through the years, where the show consists of some grade-school level designs in a planetarium dome while Pink Floyd’s the Wall is playing. I would be, once again, so completely inaccurate and wrong it is ludicrous! I have uploaded some of the videos taken from my phone to try and do the lightshow justice.
In order to view these files, right-click on the link, choose save target as, and then save them to your desktop and double-click on them to view in windows media player.
Download daftpunk_3.wmv
Download daftpunk_3.wmv
Download daftpunk_2.wmv
Download daftpunk_1.wmv
I spent a lot of time with my mouth gaped open. How the hell do they do that? Daft Punk is 2 guys that dress up in full motorcycle gear, so you cannot see their heads due to their helmets. The stage consisted of a huge 50 foot tall pyramid, and the top opened to reveal the two of them at their turntables. Lights would …how do I say this? Lights would somehow create these shapes and lines zapped all over the pyramid and onto the 80 x 300 foot stage behind them in perfect synchronization with the music. I’ve uploaded some phone videos to try and due justice to this show.
I had randomly heard mention of Silversun Pickups on the web and downloaded a tune that I absolutely loved. They had become my blogging band. I put them on when I am getting ready to write. None of my friends had seemed to have heard much about them, and they were playing on a smaller stage at Lolla. However, apparently my friends are just not in the know like I am, because it was a mob scene at their stage. I heard someone behind me remark that he didn’t realize anyone else had heard of them, I was thinking the same thing when he said it. Listening to Silversun without having seen them in person before, I had no idea what sex the singer was. Come to find out it was a guy, who has perfected this higher pitched squeal as his singing voice. Silversun would start most of their songs with ethereal, long, different sounding guitar notes that would leak into each other, creating a synthesizer effect. Then the tell-tale opening riff of the song would start and the crowd would start bopping. Some guy that had to be at least 55 pushed up next to us, and I am not sure if he was on Ecstasy for the first time, was one of Jerry’s kids on the loose, or…well who knows, but he was going berserk with fist pumps and jumping, and it was so off-beat it was comical. Picture a song that has tempo switch, that is suddenly just acoustic guitar strumming and slower lyrics, and this guy is jumping, off-beat, and grimacing his face like he just did something pleasurable, while doing ¾ arm length fist pumps. I was distracted for half the show marveling at him trying to figure out how he existed.
LCD Soundsystem had a large crowd waiting patiently an hour before they came on stage. Much like Silversun Pickups, LCD has a big contingent of fans. They took the stage and did not disappoint. People were going BERSERK over the show! I can’t say I blamed them, or noticed all that much, I was jumping around like a fool the whole time myself. An LCD song starts slowly and continues to build, the tempo speeding up a half beat, the volume inching up, and before you know it at the end of every song you are screaming and bopping around. The crowd becomes one big tidal wave of sounds and screams. One song they played consisted of increasingly fast and loud rhythms, and the singer would scream “yeah yeah yeah” on the same cycle. That was it, a faster rhythm and beat, while he would scream “yeah yeah yeah”. Sounds dumb, but if you were there, you loved it. I think that is the problem with writing about a music show. A concert is a visceral experience, you feel and see and hear. Why was I excited about “yeah yeah yeah” being repeated over and over? I have no idea, but I loved it.
Pearl Jam was the closing act. I had high hopes. I had seen them once before and they had blown my doors off. This time, not so much, there were some decent moments but the show was kind of like eating Chinese food at 10pm. You are excited for it to arrive, you wolf it down, it seems to taste good, but you could’ve sworn it tasted better last time, and you are hungry again at midnight. Part of the trouble with a Pearl Jam show is the wide library of songs they have. There is no way they can play all of them. But they were closing out their set with Rearview Mirror, my favorite song of theirs. However, they decided to freestyle it a little bit, right at the best point in the song 2/3rds of the way in. I don’t understand this. A song becomes popular because people like that version of the song. Why do I want to have to interpret the song in an entirely new fashion, live at a show? So that was not a high point for me. Also, for the encore, they did an anti-war song and had a veteran onstage. That was a nice gesture, but the song wasn’t any good, and the veteran onstage rattled off a bunch of websites to go look at. I wish they would’ve shown the websites on the video monitors, because they were long and confusing, and I would’ve went to the sites but I had no idea what the guy was saying. It was still sweet that they honored the veterans though. The last song they invited about 15 people on stage from other bands. Ugh. I am not a fan of a mob of musicians jamming out to the same tune. It just bores me to tears. So we were able to beat the rush of people and scoot out of there.
, on the book rack and thumbing through it. No matter where I flipped to in the book, I stood entranced by what I was reading. Somewhere in my scanning I found out the author lived in Maine, any other hesitations about buying the book faded once I found out the author was a fellow Mainer, I added this book to my stack of items I was purchasing. 
. The books are meant as companions to understanding The Course in Miracles. The Course in Miracles consists of 1300 pages of material channeled by Jesus on what his teachings meant, how to view reality, the real meaning of the crucifixion, and so many other things I can’t being to tell them all in a blog post. Now, I realize the statement “channeled by Jesus” is going to be interpreted wildly differently by everyone. On one end of the perception spectrum, people with exposure to metaphysical teachings might read that statement without skipping a beat. At the other end, Verne in Maine who still can’t believe I won’t eat chicken anymore will probably say “Desgrosseilliers you have lost your mind!” and then write a story about this on our fantasy football site! When I am reading something, and this is especially important when it is a new or esoteric concept such as metaphysics and perception of reality, I suspend judgment and take the author’s side during the reading. Simultaneously I keep tabs on how I am feeling while I read it. I find this approach allows me to assimilate the information easier when the inner judge/critic is not constantly evaluating every statement. But when feelings of “this is total horseshit” rise up inside of me, I hopefully will take notice and quit wasting my time on the book.
is on, I find my emotions churning with every gut-wrenching scenario faced by the Strike Team. Planting evidence, pummeling bad guys, sleeping with enemy wives; This is routine for a 10 minute span of Shield drama. My body enters a fight-or-flight state, tense and focused, hanging on every word or punch.
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