A glance at Schadenfreude's blogs offers a hint at their experience performing in front of the Lolla crowd: "The Schad show was fine. It was on a side side stage and the audience was pretty much hippies that smoked too much and needed shade and/or parents that needed to kill time while their teens were at My Morning Jacket. And the fest set up bleachers about 20 feet from the stage. You know, so people could be far enough away to enjoy, but not be too close to be offended. On Friday, it was tough because at the 30 minute mark of our set the Bud Light stage welcomed some band to the stage and it just bled through our stage and you couldn't hear us. And there were a ton of clowns and superheroes in our backstage tent. It wasn't as glamourous as I would have hoped? But in the end, the shows were fine and maybe we picked up a couple new fans."

Justin also told us that Lolla was "fine," but not set up as well as it could have been. "Actually, the stage was really geared towards kids/dorks? Lots of weird futuristic themed costumes, bright colors, clowns and goofy air guitar competitions. Oh yeah, then us. If we did it again, we would want it to be an alternative comedy stage, not a goofy corporate circusy thing. But I got to see Common perform for free and it was cool to be a part of."

Sean of Mission IMPROVable shared: "Mission IMPROVable was heavily
involved, not only doing a 45 minute set each day at 3pm, but also helping pull hidden camera pranks and adding to the overall interactivity of the games and contests that took place on the stage by dressing as these Mexican wrestler superhero characters known as the Battle Royale Superstars (characters with names like Dingleberry, The Flem and The Sponge, who illicited high fives and photo requests from the crowd almost everywhere we went). It was extremely exciting and flattering to be part of Lolla & Perry's overall vision in terms of making the festival as interactive as possible. Mindfield, being the umbrella for all of that interactivity, has such a great vibe to it that it can only get bigger and better.

And our shows were a blast! We've done so many shows over the years, but the chance to perform at Lolla was a dream come true. Our short-form style tour show was a big hit, and we grew our audience significantly each day (with about 100 folks on Friday, over 200 on Saturday and over 300 on Sunday). The challenge, of course, was performing a theatrical show while being surrounded by loud rock music (and bass really travels), but despite a few minor technical hiccups no one in the audience seemed to be fazed or find it difficult to follow along. Plus the sound crew was great, and very active behind the scenes adjusting levels to keep up with the ever changing ambient noise.

Second City and Schadenfreude (who both did sketch) seemed to have some pretty good success, too, and I think we were all surprised that our comedy shows attracted the crowds they did at such a big music festival. I think it solidified for me that long held belief that music and comedy are very closely linked... what's that saying? 'Every musician wants to be a comedian and every comedian wants to be a musician' or something to that effect?

Of course the down side was that we didn't have much time to take in all of the great music that surrounded us, but we did get to see the headliners each night, and we got to wear staff bracelets, so that was pretty cool.

At any rate, huge props to Lollapalooza for making the Mindfield Stage a real destination. Jason & Kevin as the producers and Perry as the mastermind behind Mindfield, have something very cool and transcendant on their hands, and we hope we get a chance to be part of it in the future."

Sean then gave us further details on the "crowd-roving pranksters" which we were especially curious about: "Basically, Mindfield breaks down into a couple different segments:

- Text Message games (scavenger hunt type stuff, like collect 5 clown names-- oh yeah, there were like 50 clowns at Lolla this year-- or meet a Battle Royale Star at the art walk at 4pm to jump around like a monkey)

- Hidden Camera pranks (a notable one that we were part of involved us posing as people protesting the idea of live music and holding large handwritten signs saying things like "Music makes deaf people cry" -- and it really riled up some folks who thought it was real)

- the Fake Booth (where you could sign up to get spanked or make some "Crappy Stuff" to sell, all in order to raise money for Causapalooza)

- the MF Stage (games & contests like "blood"-filled water balloon toss, plus the live comedy shows, and a couple other special events like evening dance parties and a DJ set by Mixmaster Mike)

All of these things worked together, because participating in text message activities and getting pranked result in the ability to sign up for the interactive games/contests that take place on the MF Stage where you can win cool prizes like backstage passes and such.

In general, everything was pretty well-received, and as you would expect, there were definitely some hard-core Mindfield participants who took part in almost everything. Some games and pranks went better than others, but the end result was a pretty steady flow of participants, with the most shocking thing (to me, at least) being the crowd size for the comedy sets."