On Friday, August 29, I attended 101 WKQX’s festival, PIQNIQ. The bands were great, the music was amazing, but the organization and management of the festival was horrendous.

To clarify, PIQNIQ is a musical festival hosted by the radio station 101.1 (WKQX) that features alternative rock bands. This year included in PIQNIQ was the Carnivores Tour which includes Linkin Park, 30 Seconds To Mars, and AFI. The Carnivores Tour is a separate entity than PIQNIQ, it just happens that one stop for the tour was the festival, PIQNIQ.

PIQNIQ occurred at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park, Illinois. That was one of many unfortunate elements of PIQNIQ.

I got to Tinley Park at 1:30 PM because the time on my ticket said 3 PM. I knew that it would be pretty early to get there, but when I did, there were at least 20-50 other cars attempting to pull into the parking lot. To my disappointment, the people at the gate were turning the cars away and making them drive to a parking lot, unrelated to the venue, to wait half an hour for the gate to open.

When I finally got to the venue’s parking lot I parked in the “VIP” parking area because I had bought a $30 parking pass to avoid getting into the rush to leave after the concert ended. This later proved extremely worth it because of the backup getting out of the free parking exit.

After parking I waited in line to get into the venue for a little less than half an hour. I first waited in the general admission line, but when one of the venue’s workers yelled, “You don’t need a Fast Track ticket to go in the Fast Track lane!”  I took part in a mad rush to the extremely short line. Luckily, I made it near the front and was one of the first people to enter the venue.

When I got to the front of the “Fast Track” line, people were being separated into two lines, “women” and “men”. They made the men remove everything from their pockets and made the women open their bags. Then they patted down everyone that walked through that gate.

After getting past the gate, the first band on the side stage went up. The bands that performed on the side stage were: Wild Cub, Sleeper Agent, and Junior Prom. I watched a bit of the first band’s performance, but I wanted to get good seats on the lawn (general admission), so I ran to the line that people were standing in the get lawn seats. I was near the front of the line, but that proved to be useless later.

But, unlike what everyone thought would happen, instead of letting the general admission ticket holders onto the lawn at 3 PM, they let us through the gate at 5 PM. I stood in line, elbow to elbow with strangers in 95+ degree heat, to get lawn seats for 2 hours. Everyone in that line was agitated, which was justified. All of the general admission tickets listed 3 PM as the start of the concert, yet they would not let us into the lawn area until 5 PM.

If that was not enough, waiting in the line turned out useless because, unlike other well organized concert venues, the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre did not set up any ropes to make “cutting” in line impossible. Instead, people start massing around the entrance to general admission, pushing those of us who had waited in line back.

When they finally opened the gate to the general admission at 5pm, it was basically a stampede to get good lawn seats. To my surprise, I managed to grab good lawn seats.

Once on the lawn, I sat down and waited for another 45 minutes for the first main stage band to go up, which was Local H.

Local H is a good band, but not everyone knew of them. I knew some of the songs they played and they sounded fairly good live, considering that the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre’s speakers were of bad quality.

The band that followed Local H started the Carnivore’s Tour set, AFI. AFI was very good live, but those two bands were not the bands that everyone in the audience was there for.

30 Seconds To Mars was up next and their performance was awesome. Jared Leto is an amazing singer live and he got the audience really pumped up and energetic. He would jump off the stage and walk through the audience.

During 30 Seconds To Mars’ performance, I screamed my lungs out to the songs. Them being my second favorite band to Linkin Park, I knew all the lyrics and loved every second of their performance. The band was very entertaining with their performance and their use of confetti cannons and hug balloons they dropped into the audience and even sent some back to those of us in the lawn seats. I honestly can say that I can not pick a favorite song they played because all those that they played were amazing live.

Also, during the last song, “Closer To The Edge”, he hand picked people in the audience to come up on stage with him.

There was a point when Leto took an acoustic guitar onto a smaller stage, in the center of the audience, to play a song of the audience’s request. Before he played the song, he pulled a little boy up onto the stage with him and interacted with him. Leto told the boy how this would be the best concert of his life.

After 30 Seconds To Mars’ performance, Linkin Park took the stage, and they blew the audience away. They opened up with a mashup of “Session”, “1stp Klosr”, “The Requiem”, “The Summoning”, “The Catalyst”, and “Guilty All The Same”. Throughout their performance they did a few more mashups. One of which was my favorite that they performed: “Leave Out All The Rest/ Shadow Of The Day/ Iridescent”.

Linkin Park not only played songs off of their most recent album, “The Hunting Party”, but they also brought back many from the back of their discography. They definitely pleased both new and old fans. They played a total of 28 songs during their performance, including the encore, and none of them lacked energy.

Linkin Park’s performance was more than I ever expected. I personally have dreamed of seeing Linkin Park live since I started listening to the band, shortly before A Thousands Suns was released. Watching Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda on stage along with the rest of the band was purely amazing to me.

Even though the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre’s speakers retract from the sound, Linkin Park still managed to sound great during the performance. Their creative use of LED screens both on the sides of the stage, behind the turntable, drums, and keyboard, and the screens that encased John Hahn and his turntable and Rob Bourdon and his drums, only added to the amazement I felt when I watched the band perform.

Overall, I had a lot of fun watching 30 Seconds To Mars and Linkin Park. They are both great bands that are a must see live. But, I have decided that I will never see another concert at the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre or go to PIQNIQ again due to the confusion caused by the time on the tickets and lack of organization of the venue.

I highly recommend seeing any of the bands that played if they come back to town. They are all great live and put on an amazing show.