Lollapalooza: an enthralling and accessible music festival just outside the Ann Arbor Loop

by Ellis Hamburger

Originally published in LEAD Magazine

Every August, 95,000 music fans from around the country make a mass exodus to Chicago to hear their favorite bands play at the Lollapalooza Music Festival. You’d be hard pressed to find anything quite like the eccentric three-day event, with its astounding variety of acts from Hip-Hop to Indie Rock to Folk to Rap. Located in Grant Park alongside Lake Michigan in downtown Chicago, the festival is only a few short hours’ drive, Amtrak train, or MegaBus trip away from Michigan students staying in Ann Arbor for the summer. The Magnificent Mile shopping area, as well as the towering John Hancock building, are steps away from the music, and you can often hear the steady thump of a band’s kick drum from several blocks away. This is exactly what makes Lollapalooza such a unique experience—the hipsters brushing shoulders with the highbrow, and the synthesis that takes place between a modern city like Chicago and 95,000 music fanatics nestled in its most famous park.

Lollapalooza Lawn, photo credit: Ellis Hamburger

Lollapalooza 101

Many different facets of Chicago culture seem to have their place at Lollapalooza, from the vibrant music culture to green energy innovation and organic food (which you can find on the “Green Street” area of the park), to incredibly hot and humid summers (bring a tank top and sunscreen to survive the 100-degree weather). What began as a traveling road show, Lollapalooza finally settled in Chicago in 2005 and has since become a landmark event each summer. Our neighbors to the Southwest provide a homey Midwestern sense of hospitality—and while there is violent moshing aplenty at the more hardcore band performances, as well as an aggressively priced general admission ticket (at 200 dollars), the atmosphere is almost always friendly and benevolent.

The festival boasts eight stages and 95 bands, as well as 36 DJ’s who take turns spinning all day at Perry’s Stage—a rave of sorts where people of all ages go to dance and sometimes, even, cover themselves in paint. The contagiously energetic tribal dances and rituals that seem to be transpiring at Perry’s always draw a large crowd and are worth checking out.

Lollapalooza Crowd, photo credit: Ellis Hamburger

Advice From a Four-Year Lolla Veteran

It is not uncommon to hang out on a patch of grass waiting for your favorite band for a few hours, where you may come to meet an incredible variety of people. There is no formal “seating” available at Lollapalooza besides in the astronomically expensive VIP area, so prepare to sit and stand on the grass for the entirety of your time in the park. I’ve met music fans from China, California, and many other corners of the world that have all made the mecca to Chicago for the music festival. The more open you are to talking to strangers, the more fun you’re bound to have at the festival, and the less distracting the omnipresent stench of wet socks and body odor will be.

One nagging predicament for festival-goers each year is deciding which bands to see. The festival schedule is published a month or so beforehand, so you have some time to ruminate about your priorities and cry over the fact that two of your most beloved bands are playing during the same time slot at two opposite ends of the park. Accept it—it is impossible to see everyone. Get close to the stage for your favorite bands and those bands you haven’t seen before, and you will not regret it. While it was a disappointment to have missed Hot Chip and The Dirty Projectors, seeing The Strokes for the first time (and from fifteen feet away) is a memory that will be impossible to forget.

Phoenix at Lollapalooza, photo credit: Ellis Hamburger

Over the last four years that I’ve attended the festival, I’ve noticed that the festival organizers have steadily increased the capacity of the park, causing shoulder-bumping and a mild form of claustrophobia at every turn. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, because it made me realize that Lollapalooza isn’t as much about the “festival” as it is about the co-mingling of the bands and the people attending. I found myself having a sort of spiritual experience during Arcade Fire’s performance, dancing and bobbing jubilantly, covered in my own sweat and the sweat of twenty others around me. The sense of camaraderie is what the festival is about—nearly a hundred thousand people all rejoicing in the love of music, singing along in unison to Arcade Fire’s song, “Wake Up.” Considering that the festival is so close to Ann Arbor, it is an American experience too good to pass up for Michigan students.

“Call of Duty: Black Ops” a huge hit with UM students as well as gamers worldwide

By Ellis Hamburger

Originally published in LEAD Magazine

Ten years ago, if anybody had used “video game profits” and “360 million dollars” in the same sentence, they probably would’ve been dubbed a raving lunatic. But times have changed, and today, Activision Blizzard Inc. announced that their newest title, “Call of Duty: Black Ops” has become the fastest selling (and one of the most profitable) games in history, grossing over 360 million dollars in the United States and in the United Kingdom on its launch day, November 9th.

“Black Ops” comes as the most recent iteration in a long line of critically acclaimed “Call of Duty” titles, which have been lauded for their big-budget action set pieces and incredibly addictive online multiplayer. The multiplayer online aspect of the game has put a spell on teenagers around the country, including students at the University of Michigan. Last year’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” is by all means still a very popular title online for PC, Xbox 360, and Playstation 3, and all fans of that game seem to have gone out and purchased the new one without even needing to consult reviewers around the Web. Video game developer Treyarch took the reins from developer Infinity Ward for this title, and seem to have done the series justice, judging from its 87/100 rating on review aggregating website Metacritic.

On November 11th, Stu Parnes, a salesperson at Get Your Game On on Packard and State said that “Modern Warfare 2” was a huge seller for the store, but the demand for “Black Ops” has been unprecedented. The store’s customers are almost exclusively students, according to Parnes, and the store sold out of the game almost immediately for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. “Probably one person comes in every hour looking for the game, and one to two people call in every hour looking for it, but we’ve sold out both our first and second shipments.” Get Your Game On has been trying to order more copies of the game as soon as possible, but the store’s suppliers are even having trouble meeting demand. “We sold almost 70 copies of the game, and we can’t even get our hands on any more right now. Our supplier is completely sold out of the title for Xbox 360.”

A big budget movie such as “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” cost around 200 million dollars to make, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, and grossed 400 million in the United States over the months it was in theatres, with 495 million dollar opening weekend. In comparison, “Black Ops” cost about 50 million to produce, and managed to rake in 360 million in a mere matter of hours. Not even the opening weekend of “Avatar” could hope to achieve this kind of milestone. “Black Ops” serves as a testament to the fact that video games are quickly becoming an elemental part of the media industry alongside TV, movies, and music, and might even surpass these industries in gross revenue in the near future. But don’t forget—it only costs ten dollars to see “Transformers” and nearly sixty dollars to secure your own copy of “Black Ops.”

Update – November 18th, 2010: Internal estimates put current “Call of Duty: Black Ops” earnings at over 650 million dollars worldwide.

Sources:

BusinessWeek

Venture Beat

BoxOfficeMojo

Metacritic

USA Today

Facebook Announces New Messaging Platform

By Ellis Hamburger

Originally published in LEAD Magazine

November 15th, 2010

At 1PM Eastern Time today, Facebook announced a brand new messaging platform that “is not an email killer,” according to CEO and Co-Founder Mark Zuckerberg, but is a “messaging system that includes email as a part of it.” Internet media sources speculated that Facebook would simply give users an @facebook.com email address, but instead, Facebook decided to create a new platform that blends texting, instant messaging, Facebook messaging, and email into one cohesive package. Zuckerberg hypothesized that today, he sees “a subtle shift towards real time, simpler communication,” and the new platform enables you to get in touch with your friends, no matter where they are, and no matter what service they’re currently logged in to (such as Facebook, Gmail, or another email account). The “big problem with email,” according to Zuckerberg, is that you get a lot of things you don’t want. The new platform has one simple goal: to reach your friends as quickly as possible without having to sift through the things that aren’t as important that often get mixed into your email inbox.

Zuckerberg views the new platform in terms of “conversations” with your friends, similar to the way Gmail threads messages into conversations with your contacts, except the new Facebook platform also has some traits in common with texting on mobile phones. You will use an @facebook.com address to communicate using the platform. You view your conversations in a “social inbox,” which only includes messages from people you are friends with; other messages “such as bank statements,” Zuckerberg says, are reserved for another inbox within the platform. This other inbox is for things you “care less about,” and for things you might only care to check on once a day, whereas you’d probably check your social inbox very frequently. The new platform puts a very high priority on communications with the people you care about the most, not dissimilar to Gmail’s new “priority inbox” feature.

The platform boasts several enticing features, such as the ability to receive messages on whichever device you are currently using. If you are logged into Facebook and are chatting with somebody, you will receive the messages on Facebook, but once you leave the website, you can opt to receive these messages on your phone. Another feature is the platform’s ability to integrate with other messaging systems such as Jabber (AIM, Adium, etc.), IMAP email accounts, and more (although IMAP support will not be immediately available). It seems that the walls between instant messaging and email are slowly falling down, but “there is no need to shut down any of your other email accounts,” Zuckberg noted. He hopes that the new platform will not necessarily replace email, but will become a pioneer in a movement towards a new kind of digital communication that revolves around the people you care most about.

Facebook engineers have spent more than a year scaling up their messaging systems, and Facebook plans to roll out the new platform “over the new few months.” Facebook is releasing the platform on an invite system, as Gmail originally did a few years ago, but will eventually invite the public to jump in. The company plans to give users a “genuine control” over how they communicate with each other, and only time will tell if they can succeed in launching a new platform in the midst of so many other compelling communication solutions.