Hey --

I came back from my holiday on Wednesday and another early call as soon as I got into Chicago. Me, the band, and the crew had to be up in time for a 5:45 call on WGN Morning News to play "Last Request." But on the bright side we were supplied with a lovely greasy breakfast, so I didn't moan too much! The only good thing about such a painfully early call time is we usually get to finish up quickly giving me the day to myself to have a look around and relax a bit.

I managed to get a bit of shopping done before I had to head out again to play Galapolooza. We were on before an American band called Spoon, and the show was a sort of 'warm up' before Lollapalooza to raise money for the Parkways Foundation. It was a bit of a strange gig to play though because it was all seated, and the crowd was quite reserved. We tried playing a couple of our more upbeat songs to try and get them going and that seemed to work -- after "Funky Cigarette," everybody seemed to have perked up a bit! We were playing the Adidas Stage, which is the same one as we'll be playing on Sunday at Lollapalooza, so we all got the chance to have a bit of a practice and get a feel for the layout of the park.

It's a huge festival -- apparently, it holds 70,000 people and takes nearly 40 minutes to walk from one side to the other. I think Donny may have bagged us a golf cart from one of the organizers to get around in. That'll be ideal because Kings of Leon are on straight after us on the other side of the park, so it'll come in handy when I'm off to see them. They were good earlier this year at T in the Park, but I didn't get to see their whole set.

Next up, we're playing in Atlantic City at a casino. I'm looking forward to it -- should be a bit different to the casinos you get in Scotland. My mate back home is a croupier, so he'll be gutted when he finds out he's missing it! Anyhow I'll let you know how that goes next week, cya.

-Paolo