Lollapalooza 2008
Старейшая газета "Чикаго Трибьюн" о самом крупном фестивале альтернативной музыки в США.
How Lollapalooza changed Chicago's concert landscape
By Greg Kot Tribune critic | Chicago Tribune critic
July 27, 2008
The road that Lollapalooza built in Chicago for Texas promoters C3 Presents could lead to the 2016 Olympics, if C3 co-founder Charlie Jones has his way.
"I would love nothing more," Jones says. "I don't think there is any doubt the city will get the Olympics … [and] when they get it, I would love nothing more than to help the city bring that event to the world. Public assembly is my passion. And I feel we're very good at it. There are people in the city who have seen our attention to detail and we run a pretty tight ship, and I think we are educating other event producers in town on how to elevate their game. I hope we get the opportunity, whether working any of the Olympic arenas or stuff that happens around it, or helping the city prepare for it. I'll be in the bullpen waiting."
A mix of Texas-size bravado and I'm-here-to-serve earnestness, Jones, 39, represents the heaviest new hitter on the Chicago entertainment promotion landscape. Jones' previous company, Capital Sports Entertainment, revived the Lollapalooza name in 2005 and implausibly found a new home for it at Grant Park, the city's most revered piece of public property and previously inaccessible to big rock shows. Jones and his current partners in C3, 40-year-old Charles Attal and 36-year-old Charlie Walker, also have forged contracts with the Congress Theatre to book shows at the 4,200-seat theater and with the Philadelphia-based facility management firm SMG and the Chicago Park District to bring events to Soldier Field.
Next weekend, more than 100 bands will play Lollapalooza over three days in Grant Park, and Jones says it will be the biggest festival yet, with capacity audiences of 75,000 expected all three days. Indeed, the 2008 edition of Lollapalooza has the most enticing lineup of headliners booked by any major North American festival this year: Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Kanye West and Wilco.
C3 Presents is based in Austin, Texas, where it has a 75-person office and promotes events throughout the state. Attal and Jones first partnered as promoters for the Austin City Limits Festival, which began in 2002 and has grown into one of the nation's biggest and most successful festivals, drawing 225,000 people annually. Its success led to a deal with the City of Chicago to launch Lollapalooza in 2005, breaking a long-standing resistance to major rock shows in Grant Park. Later, the Texans hired Mark Vanecko, an attorney and lobbyist who is Mayor Richard J. Daley's nephew, to help them negotiate a five-year deal with the city to keep Lollapalooza in Grant Park through at least 2011.
The Lollapalooza, Congress Theatre and Soldier Field contracts have turned C3 into the third major force on the Chicago concert scene, along with a local institution, Jam Productions, and the nation's largest concert promoter, Live Nation. Jones says there's room for all three to thrive. But Lollapalooza is blamed by many local club owners for seriously cutting into their summer business, because of exclusivity clauses that restrict bands on the bill from playing local concerts six months before and three months after the festival.
"Bands play Lollapalooza because they get paid a lot of money," says Nick Miller, longtime club talent buyer for Jam. "It sucks up all our talent during the summer."
Ray Quinn, owner of the Lincoln Avenue club Martyrs', says, "We try to stock up the rest of the year for the long cold summer. It's like hibernation [for clubs in Chicago]."
Exclusivity clauses are common practice in the concert promotion business. Every major festival has them. They're designed to protect promoters' investment in a band against other venues. But club owners argue that smaller bands on the Lollapalooza schedule don't affect ticket sales that much and shouldn't be subject to the same restrictions as headliners such as Radiohead.
"If I put up trillions of dollars to put on a festival, I would want to put those [exclusivity] clauses on," says Bruce Finkelman, owner of the Empty Bottle on Western Avenue. "But I don't see how a band playing at 2 o'clock in the afternoon at Lollapalooza, opening for Radiohead, is going to make much of a difference [to Lollapalooza's bottom line]."
Attal, the primary talent buyer at C3, counters that the exclusivity clause is often just a formality. "It's in 90 percent of the contracts for all the big promoters," he says. "But if a band wants to play another show in the area, it's usually not a problem. We make exceptions all the time."
A number of artists on this year's Lollapalooza technically violated the exclusivity clause with C3's blessing, Attal says, including Yeasayer, Jamie Lidell, the National, Lupe Fiasco and West. Next year, he says, he will narrow the exclusivity clause to three months on either side of the Lollapalooza dates. "That's pretty fair, considering I'm not enforcing it anyway," he says.
The olive branch is part of C3's effort to ingratiate itself with the city and its music community. Each year, it funnels $1 million to the Chicago Parkways Foundation for park improvements. Next weekend, Lollapalooza will partner with clubs such as Metro, Schubas, the Abbey, Double Door, Empty Bottle and House of Blues to host 18 "after-parties" with 30 festival bands.
"We've got two Lollapalooza shows [on Friday and Saturday] that are great shows," Finkelman says. "We are starting to have a relationship with [C3]."
Jones invokes buzz words such as "relationship-building," "community service" and "social responsibility" frequently. C3 Presents is in the second year of a five-year deal with the city to promote Lollapalooza, but it's already looking beyond that. It established a small office in Chicago last year, but Jones says it will expand by the end of this year to handle business for the festival as well as booking events at the Congress Theatre and Soldier Field. He's contemplating a similar move with his family, which includes his wife and two daughters, ages 3 and 3 months.
"I'm very close to moving my family here, and probably someday I will," he says. "Every time my wife comes here and brings our daughters, we get more and more comfortable. I love the city. I'm going to be around a while."
At least, it appears, until 2016.
Lineup (я отметила розовым тех, на кого успела попасть):
Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Nine Inch Nails, Kanye West, Wilco, the Raconteurs, Love and Rockets, Gnarls Barkley, Lupe Fiasco, Bloc Party, the Black Keys, Broken Social Scene, Flogging Molly, Mark Ronson, Cat Power, the National, G. Love & Special Sauce, Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, Explosions in the Sky, Brand New, Gogol Bordello, Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks.
Dierks Bentley, Okkervil River, Amadou & Mariam, Blues Traveler, John Butler Trio, Girl Talk, CSS, Battles, Jamie Lidell, Butch Walker, Mates of State, Spank Rock, Brazilian Girls, Chromeo, Duffy, the Kills, Rogue Wave, the Go! Team, Mason Jennings, the Gutter Twins, Yeasayer, Grizzly Bear, MGMT.
The Weakerthans, Booka Shade, Santogold, Black Kids, Black Lips, Louis XIV, Dr. Dog, Nicole Atkins & the Sea, the Ting Tings, Kid Sister, Office, the Cool Kids, What Made Milwaukee Famous, Does it Offend You, Yeah?, the Whigs, Manchester Orchestra, Foals, Uffie, the Octopus Project, Cadence Weapon, Ferras, De Novo Dahl, Noah and the Whale, Margot & the Nuclear So and Soâs, KâNaan, Serena Ryder, Newton Faulkner, Your Vegas.
Eli "Paperboy" Reed & the True Loves, Steel Train, Bang Camaro, the Blakes, Tally Hall, White Lies, Magic Wands, Electric Touch, Innerpartysystem, the Postelles, the Parlor Mob, Bald Eagle, Krista, Ha Ha Tonka, Witchcraft, We Go to 11, Sofia Talyik.
Помедленнее и по-русски
"Путешествующий фестиваль Lollapalooza на период с 2005 по 2011 год прописался в Чикаго, штат Иллинойс. Lollapalooza - самый крупный в США фестиваль альтернативной музыки, на котором представлены самые разнообразные стили и течения современного музыкального творчества.
Фестиваль нынешнего года стартовал в пятницу выступлением британской группы «Radiohead». На нем выступили 120 групп и исполнителей, начиная с панк-роковой американо-ирландской группы «Flogging Molly» и заканчивая «Amadou and Mariam», слепыми блюзменами из Мали. Завершился фестиваль в воскресенье выступлениями звезды хип-хопа Кенни Уэста (Kanye West) и легенды индустриального рока, группы «Nine Inch Nails».
По подсчетам устроителей, каждый день в парке Грант присутствовало около 75 тысяч любителей музыки. Сотни безбилетников, в неуемном желании увидеть своих кумиров, прорывались сквозь полицейские кордоны и ломали ограждения."
Собственные впечатления и фотки - позже. вливаюсь в рабочую струю. ааааа