I was somewhere around the Loop on the LSD when the hangover began to take hold…All photos by K. Tighe.
By K. Tighe
For concert attendees, Lollapalooza doesn’t start until Friday morning, Aug. 1, but for intrepid journalists and their diligent plus-ones, there are kickoff parties, sponsor events, and Chinese dinners that all lead up to the main event. Thursday afternoon, I found myself in the Crystal Ballroom of the Blackstone Hotel, listening to a Sonoma winemaker attempt to explain about the inner workings of my brain and memory. Delving into the deeper recesses of clinical psychiatry and viticulture preferences might not seem like a rock ‘n’ roll time, but believe me it was.
“This is the place where cocaine and chocolate live,” Clark Smith was explaining to a room full of food, wine, and music journalists the topic of euphoria, a buzz word in his recent study: that wine is able to carry emotion in the same way that music can.
From his research, he’s discovered that certain vintages taste differently when paired with certain songs, a phenomenon he proved to us by piping tracks from Lolla artists into the ballroom and making us sip, sip, then sip some more. From my afternoon at the Blackstone, I discovered that Cat Power makes a Pinot Grigio soar, Dr. Dog does wonders for Pinot Noir, and the Love Theme from Superman can make even Sutter Home White Zin taste like a million bucks. I left the hotel drunk (I wasn’t spitting, as proper wine tasting calls for) and starving. My cohort and I dove into some Chinese grub in Wicker Park before heading to the Venus zine kickoff party at the Debonair Social Club. Mates of States were manning the DJ booth, and I was taking care of the bottle service at our booth, alternating nips from the bottle of merlot in my bag (goes great with Stephen Malkmus).
