Festgoers were welcomed to Day 3 of Lollapalooza with sunshine, temperatures flirting with a hazy 90 degrees and a surprise set from Skrillex.
The California-based DJ, who was slated to perform Saturday night, announced an additional noon show on social media late Friday. The EDM-focused Perry’s stage was renamed Sonny’s for the day in his honor — Skrillex’s birth name is Sonny John Moore.
As Chicago’s big annual music festival stretched into a sold-out weekend in Grant Park, day-capping sets Saturday were from the rap collaboration Future X Metro Boomin, Skrillex, Japanese pop duo Yoasobi and, on the T-Mobile mainstage, the rock band The Killers.
After the news of the early Skrillex show broke, fans hurried to Grant Park.
“We were originally going to take a later train, and we immediately decided otherwise when we got the text,” said Abby Helm, 19.
Helm traveled into Chicago on Saturday morning from Northwest Indiana with her friends Nevaeh Cort and Paige Luebke. They said they expected the daytime set to be “crazy,” but added that Skrillex’s later nighttime concert would likely be “even crazier.”
Humberto Villarino, a 26-year-old from Montreal, had also decided to get to Lollapalooza early after seeing a post on Reddit. “It’s interesting being this early watching such a big artist,” he said.
Over a thousand people flooded Sonny’s stage as Skrillex’s performance began. The crowd stretched all the way to the back of the field, which would often be empty during the earliest concerts of the day. Hundreds of others watched from the sidelines in a shaded stretch of trees.
Skrillex performed in a baseball cap and T-shirt, playing a house-influenced set that included classic hits like “Cinema” and “Bangarang” while also sampling from rap and Latin music.
Decked out in body glitter, colorful outfits, and scarves, festival goers danced and waved large fans under a scorching midday sun. A flying drone filmed from above as they threw around a giant beach ball.
Kat Pickrel, 25, described herself as an “O.G. Skrillex fan,” having listened to the artist since she was 12 years old in the early 2010s. The DJ’s music — and aesthetic — has changed a lot since when she first saw him perform in 2014, Pickrel said.
“He’s no longer our emo prince,” said Tara Giesen, also 25, who had traveled with Pickrel from Austin, Texas, for the festival.
Hot in the shade
As the heat index climbed above 90 degrees, cousins Evelyn Allison and Danni Rivara sat in the shade under a canopy of trees near the Bacardi stage. After staying to see headliners SZA and Stray Kids the previous night, they had decided to have a more relaxing day on Saturday. Allison, 20, said they had just finished watching a “really good” set by soft rock band Infinity Song on the Bud Light stage and were resting out of the sun before TV Girl’s 5 p.m. performance.
Security in front of stages did a brisk business of tossing out boxes of water to whoever waved for one in the crowds. Parked CTA buses served as cooling centers around the grounds, and 10-foot fans blew misted water at the hydration stations.
Singer Briston Maroney paused in the middle of a song on the IHG stage to say “sorry, minor heat stroke,” seemingly directing security to someone who had passed out.
In line for a cold treat at an Italian ice stand, Brian and Yoshimi Ambelis said that although the weather was brutal, they were used to such days in their home state of California. Brian said that the act he was the most excited for out of the entire four-day festival was Deftones. He planned to watch their headlining performance that night.“This will be my first time seeing them live, so I’m excited,” he said. “I’ve tried playing (Deftones songs) on my guitar a little bit.”
Maikel Bakker, on the other hand, was less accustomed to the heat and humidity. He stood back in the shade, watching from afar as New Zealand electronic pop band Leisure performed on the T-Mobile stage. “I gotta get some shade,” Bakker said. “I was up there (near the barricade) all the time, but I’m not used to these temperatures. … I’m from the Netherlands, and we don’t get a lot of hot days over there, so I can’t handle it.”
When asked how he was feeling, he simply replied, “sweaty.”
Destroy Boys love
Fans opened up a mosh pit and crowd surfed during the 2 p.m. set of punk rock band Destroy Boys at the IHG stage. The band’s lead singer Alexia Roditis danced in black leather chaps and sunglasses, undeterred by the heat. At one point, Roditis (who uses they/them pronouns) asked if there were any trans or gender-non conforming people in the audience; they were greeted with emphatic cheers. “There’s nothing wrong with expressing yourself and dressing how you want to dress and loving who you love,” Roditis told the crowd.
Wearing a Destroy Boys T-shirt, Caitlin Baker, 23, said that the band’s appearance at Lollapalooza was a major factor in their decision to make the trip from central Missouri. “Their music resonates with me very much,” said Abby Selnick, a 21-year-old from Buffalo, New York, while waiting for the Destroy Boys show to start. “I love them.”
Local acts at Lolla
Two Chicago-based bands made their Lollapalooza debuts early Saturday afternoon.
Five-piece boyband Brigette Calls Me Baby opened the IHG stage. The up-and-coming band did not attract as many people as Skrillex, but those who were there were dedicated.
Patrick Murphy, 28, from Lakeview, bought a one-day festival pass after seeing the Logan Square-based band perform at Lincoln Hall in June.
He bonded with other fans who came from Nashville and Virginia over their favorite songs off the band’s first LP, “The Future Is Our Way.” Their descriptions of the boyband ranged from “very 1920s” to “2014 Tumblr, but updated.”
The conversations quickly turned to screams when band members walked on stage dressed in monochrome and sporting sunglasses, hot off an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” last week.
Even though they are quickly taking off, the band members have no intention of leaving Chicago for Los Angeles or New York City.
“Chicago provides a freedom not to be in the rat race,” lead singer Wes Leavins told the Tribune on Wednesday. “Here, we have trendsetting artists. You have people doing authentic, genuine work and influencing what happens in these bigger cities.”
Twenty minutes later, Friko, an indie-rock duo from Evanston, took the Bacardi stage with a powerful guitar and drum intro that could be felt in the chest.
“It’s a dream come true,” Niko Kapetan, 24, told the Tribune on Wednesday. He remembers riding the Metra from the suburbs to attend the festival as a high schooler, scheming “the most creative ways to sneak in alcohol” and watching fellow Evanston Township High School alum and rapper Kweku Collins in 2017.
Kapetan and his Friko counterpart Bailey Minzenberger, 25, met their senior year at Evanston Township High School. They currently live in Rogers Park and Humboldt Park.
Kapetan told the Tribune he was most excited to play “Get Numb to It!” He said he wrote the song while working a warehouse job before pursuing music full-time last month.
“It was just a particularly (expletive) day. (The song) is just about getting through when there’s nothing there to get you through,” he said. The irony of now performing the song at one of the nation’s largest music festivals doesn’t elude him.
For the youngest fans
Kidzapalooza was a reprieve from the crowds and sun. The family area tucked away on the east side of the grounds has seating at perfect height for little ones and milk samples instead of energy drinks in the shady section by Grant Park’s Turtle Boy fountain.
Right before Chicago-based hip hop theater collective Q Brothers took the stage, Abel Kooinga, 8, finished up a freestyle rap about wrestling at the Hip Hop Workshop booth.
“My dream job is to be a wrestler,” he said, though he acknowledged he may also have a career ahead of himself as a rapper.
He traveled to the festival from Northwest Indiana with his mom and dad, both 33, and younger brother, 2. The whole family was most excited to see the Deftones. But, first Abel and his brother Adam stomped their feet to the Q Brothers.
