Music festivals of the future
There are bigger worries in this big old crazy world, but why is Lollapalooza still on?
It seems odd that the City of Chicago and Lollapalooza promoters have yet to postpone or cancel the July 30-Aug. 2 festival. Maybe there’s contracts and paperwork being worked out, but even in the best of times, Lollapalooza can be a major public health nuisance: crowds, porta-johns, food in the sun, thunderstorms. Did I mention porta-johns?
In a Thursday press briefing, Gov. J.B. Pritzker said everyone needs to “think seriously” about canceling all big summer events. Even my fearless webmaster Nick Kam who did this meme for me said he wouldn’t even go to one of his electronic dance music festivals. Pierogi Fest in Whiting, Ind. has been postponed until 2021.
I’ve seen dozens of wistful cultural images over the last several weeks. One that sticks in my mind was the post from E-Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren of fans lifting Bruce Springsteen through the audience in a stadium show. Lofgren said it made him sad, but he didn’t say why.
I became sad because I realized it will be a long time before I am witness to a stadium show like that.
How can you control social or physical distancing in big venues or even clubs? Do you limit the number of tickets sold? Do you take everyone’s temperature before entrance (cue up Keith’s 1966 hit “98.6.”) Lollapalooza skews to a younger audience and therefore a group that looks at itself as more resilient. Imagine that a vaper with with Covid-19 leaves Lollapalooza and walks over to Buddy Guy’s Legends for a beer. You wouldn’t want Buddy Guy to catch this thing.
It will be fascinating to see how live music rebounds from this. Will clubs put a real cap on capacity? This will be a boom for the doorman industry, The Chicago Blues Festival is just two months away and it also still a go. The city boasts that more than 500,000 blues fans from all over the world gather in Millennium Park for the event. Great.
Maybe someday the city downsizes the festival with small stages in diverse Chicago neighborhoods as it does with the annual World Music Festival. You have a lot of time to dream during a global pandemic.
I’d dream of one stage at the historic Chess studio, 2120 S. Michigan, a new front porch stage at the Muddy Waters house, 4339 S. Lake Park Ave. Here’s a boost for small business: alternating sets at B.L.U.E.S., 2519 N. Halsted and the venerable Kingston Mines, 2548 N. Halsted.
Or, in the spirit of Steve Goodman and John Prine, resurrect the Chicago country and folk festivals through struggling smaller live music venues and restaurants. Even old hippies and urban cowboys would not want to congregate in huge crowds in lakefront parks.
I haven’t bought into the strategy of moving festivals to the fall because we may be out of the woods then. But I also don’t buy into Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel’s (Rahm’s brother) suggesting that the U.S. should stay locked down for 12 to 18 months. Dr. Emanuel is the same ray of sunshine who in 2014 wrote a piece for Atlantic magazine saying that he only wanted to live to 75 years old because by that age, he said, creativity, originality, and productivity are pretty much gone for the vast, vast majority of us. Grandstander.
There’s been much thought about how when we come out of this people will better understand the essence of important things. I’m not so sure about that and I hope I’m wrong. But in the case of large scale cultural events we will have to learn that bigger is not always better.
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