Lolla Chicago: New Celebrity Boyfriend

Good Morning! It's rainy here and I'm ever so slightly hungover. Craig and I spent the day in Chicago at Lollapalooza yesterday. We had a blast! Totally thought we had spotted Lindsay Lohan and Sam Ronson backstage during Mark Ronson's set - but alas, the girls had left town Sunday morning. I am pretty sure we saw Mark's girlfriend (Gavin Rossdale's daughter), Daisy Lowe. But regardless of who was backstage - it was what was happening on stage that was the draw. Mark Ronson's performance was BY FAR my favorite of the day. He and his band really brought it! Such diversity and energy. As a result of his awesome set I must proclaim Mark Ronson as my new #1 Celebrity Boyfriend!! He looked super hot in his gray suit, too. Time Out Chicago has a great review of his performance:


(Linds on Saturday)
Kicking off the set with his all-female string quartet playing “Eleanor Rigby,” things quickly detoured into a giddy celebration of under-appreciated classics. A Brooklyn singer named Tiggers did Britney Spears’s “Toxic,” our own Rhymefest came out to do a live version of the Kanye-produced “Brand New,” (Kanye cameo, please? No.), the Australian singer Daniel Merriweather did Coldplay’s “God Put A Smile Upon Your Face,” and many more. Also on hand were Phantom Planet’s Alex Greenwald, the Liverpool diva Candie Payne (in the Winehouse mold), the Philly hip-hop duo Plastic Little and the singers Kenna and Wale. While some of the hip-hop covers were verbatim (except for the fact that live instruments replaced the samples), most everything was re-arranged into immaculate Northern Soul r&b. Each song involved darting horns, Ronson’s chik-a-chik-a guitar, and delirious grooves from the taut rhythm section. In fact, if I had one complaint about the set it’s that it was too tightly scripted. It would have been nice to see more spontaneity out of the blatantly capable musicians.

While the musicians weren’t letting loose, per se, Ronson packed enough surprises to keep the audience on their toes. Not only did Alex Greenwald, of Phantom Planet, come out to sing Radiohead’s “Just,”(Thom Yorke cameo, please?? No.), the entire Phantom Planet band was brought onstage to do their eternal summer classic “California.” A bit strange that a song about Cali stirred up so much emotion from the crowd at a Chi-town music festival but I digress. And Ronson did get in one priceless bit of banter: “I’m not pandering here. But I finally got my American passport and citizenship so I can vote for Barack Obama.”

The set finally ended with a somber version of Morrissey’s “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before” morphing into a hi-octane version of The Supremes’s “You Keep Me Hanging On.” Memo to Girl Talk: That is what you call a mash-up.

I was really excited about Girl Talk, but it was disappointing. Also disappointing: Kanye. Most disappointing: it had been rumored all day that Barack Obama was going to be introducing Kanye and he didn't. But still - spending the day enjoying the sun, drinking beer while listening to great music - what could be better? Oh, I know...having VIP passes so you get free drinks and get to use REAL, air-conditioned toilets instead of port-o-potties. THAT definitely helped make the day!