Lollapalooza 08: Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste blogs his Friday

We were told Grizzly Bear singer/songwriter Edward Droste was a huge fan of EW, so we decided to let him blog his Friday at Lollapalooza-- during which he wore a stellar pair of shorts (pictured).  Read on! Let the indie goodness wash over you!

Lollapalooza is a hot massive field with as many people as the eye can see. It's really fun to be at a festival with an urban backdrop, particularly one as spectacular as Chicago's. We'd been anticipating playing the festival for some time now and luckily got in just in time to catch our friend Yeasayer's amazing set. They've grown so much since I last fall them this past fall in Montreal and imparted some wisdom upon us about "making it big" in England. You need to have "chants" they told us, "the British love chants, it reminds them of football games." I think that makes perfect sense, really.

Unlike Bonnaroo's dust clouds and Roskilde's fields of mud, Lollapalooza was a very clean, manageable festival. We wandered around a bit confused, getting our bearings after Yeasayer, trying to shake off our bad night's sleep (was our first night ever sleeping in the coffin-like beds a sleeper bus has) and eventually we joined forces with our favorite festival friends CSS, who were playing immediately following us on the Citi stage. It's always funny to see them on tour because they are continually in the best mood and bring the cheer. Lovefoxxx's outfits continually impress me each time I see her. She must own at least 50 body suits of varying patterns and colors.

I'll be honest: we both love and are scared to play festivals since we aren't like CSS or say Bloc Party, with whom anyone can bounce around and have a dancey ol' time. But we were really pleased with our set this time around. We've had duds in the past at festivals and are continually trying to figure out how to translate our music to an outdoor, festival-going crowd. Seemingly this time, by cutting out virtually all our slowish songs, it worked better for us. The crowd was amazing, shouting out requests and already singing along to some of our newer songs we've barely started playing.

After the set we decided to unwind and watched both CSS and Radiohead's set. Tomorrow we meet Radiohead for the first time and to say we are beyond excited is an understatement. It was surreal watching them with Kele from Bloc Party and the Yeasayer guys all just marvelling at how insanely great Radiohead are, and how universally loved. Literally what I would guess was 70 thousand people singing along to "All I need" is a pretty spectacular sight. I can't even believe we get to share the stage with them the next few weeks.

Wish us luck!