Sunday, September 2, 2012

North Coast Music Festival, Union Park, Chicago, Illinois

Worst. Concert. Meetup. Ever.

I had just moved into my new apartment in Chicago, and even though there was still lots of unpacking to do, I took a little break to hit up the North Coast Music Festival, an annual electronic music festival held over Labor Day weekend in Union Park on the south side of the city. While I don’t spend a lot of time listening to EDM, I generally like what I hear and can easily get into it at a show or festival. However, there weren’t any acts at North Coast I was particularly excited to see, I was more going to join up with my little brother, who was much more into that scene, and I was planning to meet up with at the show.

I arrived a little after 7:30. The park was set up very much like Pitchfork, which I attended earlier that summer. The main difference was the crowd was much younger, seemingly all teenagers and college kids. I texted Michael on way in and walked over to catch some of southern hip hop artist Big Boi on the North (second) Stage. Unfortunately, I never heard back from Michael.

I moved over to the Red Bull (third) stage to see electro house musician Steve Aoki, who was quite good but not good enough to distract me from my unfortunate situation. By 8:30, I was at the Coast (main) stage to see Pretty Lights, the headliner for the evening and the artist I was most familiar with. Fun little distraction, nothing amazing. I bounced back over to Steve Aoki one more time before leaving around 9:15. Since hanging out with Michael, the real reason I even came, had fallen through, I figured there wasn’t much point to staying any longer since my absence from unpacking wasn’t scoring any points with the girlfriend/new roommate. My Chicago concert going experience is not off to a good start.

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