Being a Lollapalooza virgin is kind of like wanting to try out that one restaurant that’s gotten mixed reviews. When the Doppler radar turned orange and the rain began to fall, I was worried my first impression of the mayhem in Grant Park might be simply soggy. But the mud and downright nastiness only added to the memories.

As the rain trickled down upon the early-arriving fans, the slick vibe from funk-greased Austin blues band Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears washed over the damp crowd. With six members riffing on classic blues progressions, Black Joe clearly understood that if you are gonna play the blues in Chicago, it better hit hard. “This is my first time I’ve stayed on the South Side,” Lewis, a potential Dave Chappelle stunt double, said to the fans gathered in Southapalooza before ripping into a James Brown–meets–John Fogerty jam called “Bitch, I Love You.” With swagger and just enough doo-wop to keep the heads bobbing, Lewis was able to transcend the moment and jam out to tunes like “Booty City” as if he were playing a weekday gig at Rosa’s. Lewis’s energetic performance provided a fiery start to a day that one could sense might be dampened, both literally and figuratively, by the dark clouds that sneered from above.

With Congolese-Belgian vocalist Marie Daulne’s Zap Mama running a few minutes behind schedule, British alt-rockers White Lies paraded onstage a few minutes past their scheduled 2pm start time. In the meantime, the waterlogged crowd, packed in tight and eagerly playing to the roving camera that hovered above, kept themselves amused. Dressed in black vests and knickers, the four band members clearly have started to grasp their indie roots, or at least their inner fashionistas. The thumping bass line from Charles Cave overpowered the experimental sound emanating from the group of English schoolboys as they opened with “A Place to Hide”—a U2 arena-rock spectacle of sorts which proved to have quite the appropriate lyrical significance. Singer and guitarist Henry McVeigh wailed into the abyss, “I need a place to hide before the storm begins.” The desperation and anxiety felt by McVeigh seeps into his band’s music—a organ-laced collection of Talking Heads-influenced indie-pop. Perhaps not an act I would run out to see again, but it left a good taste in my mouth—but couldn’t do a thing about the 50-lb jeans that weighed down my every movement.

An hour later at the Budweiser stage, the mood was quite different as quirky suburbs-rocking pianist Ben Folds, wearing a 1920s newsboy hat and glasses, toyed with the crowd’s dedication in the less than pleasant conditions. “Fuck it! It can rain harder,” Folds laughed. “This is a rain dance.” Folds’s nasally vocals have always been a personal-preference type deal and Friday was no different. On songs like “The Bitch Went Nuts,” Folds showed his full spectrum of talent. From comical storytelling lyrics like “She stabbed my basketball/And the speakers to my stereo/She called me cunt,” to sophisticated jazzy piano runs, Folds kept his set fresh and tight, if a little like Dana Carvey’s “Choppin’ Broccoli.” “Effington,” a melancholy ballad, drew roars from the crowd as Folds gave a lyrical shout out to Normal, Illinois. The set was highlighted by Fold’s raucous, ironic cover of Dr. Dre’s “Bitches Ain’t Shit,” bringing both booty-shaking and swagger to a high point.
The Pacific Northwest officially took control of Northaplooza between the hours of 5-7 on Friday. As Robin Pecknold and his fellow Seattle folkies Fleet Foxes ended their sedating set on the PlayStation Stage, Portland’s The Decemberists frolicked onstage, while an ominous organ playing horror-film soundscapes hummed in the background. The rain continued off-and-on for the hour-long set, yet the breezy melodies and rich vocal performance by guitarist and lead singer Colin Meloy washed away any harbored annoyance felt by the crowd. In bold fashion, Meloy and co. ran through their new album in its entirety—the rock-opera  The Hazards of Love—which combines their knack for maritime-indie musical explorations. With wispy theatrical tunes like “A Bower Scene,” the Decemberists kept the smattering of entranced twentysomethings fully enamored and warmed for Chicago’s own Andrew Bird to combine triple-word-score-worthy vocabulary and violin.

Rain may have put a slight damper on the overall energy level for Day 1 of Lollapalooza, but for this Lolla’ virgin, rain or no rain, the music shone brightly.