I’m a concert nerd, or rather, an aficionado. I have been to upwards of thirty concerts throughout the past four years of high school, in addition to several music festivals including Van’s Warped Tour and Austin City Limits. Despite having experienced all of this, nothing seemed to prepare me for the full scale and sheer “awesomeness” of Lollapalooza.

An annual 3-day music festival, Lollapalooza began as a tour and recently has set down roots in Chicago, evolving into something more stationary. This year’s most notable bands include Coldplay, Muse, the Foo Fighters, Deadmau5, My MorningJacket, and Eminem.

To help you understand the sheer scale of this event, imagine the amount of people and excitement at any concert you have ever been to and literally multiply that by 10. That level is roughly what Lollapalooza 2011 was like.

To give you an idea of just how many people attended, 270,000 tickets were sold over the course of the entire 3-day festival (these included 3-day passes). At Eminem’s concert alone, there were an estimated 100,000 people. With such massive crowds, you can imagine that the 319 acre park was full from corner to corner at all hours of the day.

For me, Lollapalooza became the concert that never slept. True, it was a 3-day event and it had an individual schedule for each day. But for me, with my 3-day bracelet in hand (or rather, on wrist), it seemed less of a 3-day experience and more of a seamless integration of pure music and fun times. I spent three solid days, on August 5-7, from 11 AM to 10 PM standing in large crowds of people, sucking on my 3 liter “CamelBak” to quench my insatiable thirst. Luckily for me, I had built up this thirst due to the excessive amount of time I had spent dancing, moshing, and having a good time in Grant Park.

So what made this experience in Chicago so much better than something that residents of Texas can experience every year, right here in our state capital of Austin? In some cases, it is just personal opinion. Austin City Limits and Lollapalooza have many similarities: they both feature a 3-day lineup and both take place in the downtown parks of major U.S. cities. They both attract fans from around the world and both hire the most popular bands possible in order to get the biggest turnout.

But for some reason, Lollapalooza had something extra for me. Granted, there were 25% more people at Lollapalooza 2011 than at Austin City Limits, but the show in Chicago just seemed to take the experience to the next level. Perhaps it was having the magnificent skyline of the city as a backdrop for every band or maybe it was the gorgeous weather in the low 80s with minimal cloud cover.

Whatever “it” was, when taking all of the other factors into account, it created the one experience that every self-proclaimed concert fan has the duty of fulfilling at least once in their lifetime. It is hard to put into words exactly how amazing it all is, but I can assure you that at no point during a music festival will you ever be disappointed.

It is simply a matter of taste that determines which show you want to see; whether that is Austin City Limits in Austin, Texas, Lollapalooza in Chicago, Illinois, Bonnaroo in Manchester, Tennessee, or Coachella in Indio, California, I can assure you that you will never be disappointed with going. Festivals provide you with that extra bit of pure music and fun that cannot be had anywhere else. They are an experience that every concert fan owes to themselves to try at least once.