A Digression: Lollapalooza '09

I could offer up one of my long-winded monologues but you know what? I don't think so. I'm just too ecstatic, too still-basking-in-the-moment. So in an effort to be succinct (or as succinct as is possible for me) yet still hyperbolic I'll say this...

Ra Ra Riot makes me really happy. Like, insanely happy. No band since Arcade Fire has made me as happy. They make me smile and make me sing along and make me dance (kinda, sorta, at least in public - at home, a little bit more than kinda, sorta) and make me really, really, really glad to be alive, even if I'm watching them in 100 degree heat and drinking Bud Light (ugh). And even if I'm lying in bed after being outdoors on the hottest day of the entire summer in Chicago for 9 hours and surrounded by a sweltering mass of humanity and the scent of ganja every which way and can't go to sleep because my head hurts and my stomach hurts and I'm sunburned and I have to go to work tomorrow, well, I just slip on the headphones, play a little "Oh, La", go back to Ra Ra Riot's set at 12:30 earlier that afternoon in my mind, and it's all gooooooood, baby.

They were f---in' awesome yesterday. I just wanted to get that on record. When my friend Dave and I left Wicker Park Fest last summer after seeing them for five bucks I remember telling him in a couple years we'd be coughing up a lot more to see them at Lollapalooza '10. (So I was off by one year. Close enough.) Well, yesterday as we wandered away from the stage after their set I told him in a couple years we'd be seeing them at Lollapalooza when the sun was setting (i.e. Future Headliners).

We shall see. If God is just....