So, this weekend's Lollapalooza Festival provided all its usual excitement, and a few incidents of note. The Cold War Kids' set attracted an "overflowing crowd", according to NME.com, while I'm From Barcelona brought in an audience member to play kazoo amongst their 29-strong line-up. Though all the real fun to be had was on the new stage designed for younger festival-goers, the Kidapallooza stage. Those kids parked in front of the new area were in for quite a few surprises, most notably an unexpected set from punk poet Patti Smith and a rendition of 'The Rainbow Connection' - made famous by The Muppets - from My Morning Jacket's Jim James.
Hopefully those kids weren't really there to see CSS, because there would have been tears before bedtime if they were, because the buzzy Brazilians had to cancel their headline slot on the Citi stage after getting stranded at New York's John F Kennedy airport. Reacting to their misfortune, the band issued this damning statement via their Myspace blog, blaming United Airlines for the problem: "Are you a lawyer? Do you like us? Did you read what United Airline did to us? Wanna talk?" They allege that despite them arriving three hours early for their flight, United Airlines had over-booked it, leaving the entire band stuck. Which isn't anything unusual, though you'd think if an airline official was left with a choice as to who to bump off a flight, they wouldn't pick a band on their way to headline a stage at one of American's most high profile music festivals, but there you go.