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Q101 Block Party - Even More Hype

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Jun 2, 2005 7:40PM

2005_06_02_q101.gifOn everyone's list for great Chicago concerts of the summer is the Q101 Block Party (Day 1) featuring Queens of the Stone Age (9:15 pm), Interpol (7:45 pm), and Hot Hot Heat (6:30 pm).

Pollstar also slates Assassins and 30 Seconds to Mars, but show times are not listed for them and times can be found buried in the Q101 website. The festivities begin early at 4:30 pm for this street-fair-type atmosphere.

They are preselling tickets (as of our purchase 5,777 had been sold and a call to Q101 confirms that capacity for each day will be 12,000). The ticket price for one day is $15 plus $7 handling fee on tickets.com. So much for being a cheaper alternative to Ticketmaster. A two day pass is $25, but don't bother because the second day is more for suburbanites and 12 year old boys; plus, it's supposed to rain. The bands on Saturday include Sum 41, Rise Against, and Unwritten Law.

Friday's lineup reeks of the conditions that could repeat 2001's Guinness Oyster Fest fiasco where the show was shut down due to overcrowding and Cake wasn't allowed to play leaving angry people in the streets searching for bars to cram into. Hmmm...perhaps that's the reason for ticket sales, but Chicagoist is unsure if such a pesky thing as limited capacity will stop Chicagoans from heading down to see Queens of the Stone Age's latest lineup or any of the other bands du jour. Normally block parties/street fairs don't have even one band of this caliber the whole weekend and Friday evening promises three. It's a veritable poor man's mini-Lollapalooza.

Thanks, Julene!