North Coast Music Festival, Chicago, August 31, 2024
A couple of years ago, my son needed something to look forward to. He knew that his favorite music artist, Illenium, was playing at Chicago’s North Coast festival that summer. He also knew that money was tight, and with tickets, hotel, and gas, it’d cost a few hundred dollars, even if we only went to one day. I said we’d make it work; just let me know when he found out on which day of the festival Illenium was performing.
I pestered him for a playlist of songs he thought most likely to be played by the artists he was most excited to see at the festival. My favorites ended up being songs from Illenium, Dabin, Said the Sky, Slander, and Seven Lions.
As it got closer, I started stressing about what to wear. I wanted to dress in a way that showed that I knew I was at an EDM concert and showed respect to the artists, but also showed that I was cognizant of my being a 50-year-old mom. My son said anything would be accepted; most guys would be in a t-shirt and shorts. He also warned me that some of the girls would likely not be very covered. I settled on a slim black t-shirt, pants, boots, and blue diamond necklace and ring.
Concert day, we drove six hours, checked into our hotel, freshened up, and drove to North Coast. We did the Ferris wheel, wandered around and peeked into tents, and bought some Illenium jerseys. We meandered into the largest venue on the grounds (the stadium), found some seats above the crowd with a great view of the stage, and settled in. AllyCvt was playing; everyone was going crazy. As the sun began to set, Armnhmr took the stage with awesome visuals and music. Dabin and Said the Sky put on a combined show–Dab the Sky–which was full of really cool images, one awesome song moving into the next, everyone jumping and singing, songs I knew well and other songs that became my new favorites. Then Seven Lions did a set of what to me sounded like death metal–nothing like his songs on the playlist my son sent me–but the crowd loved it (and the Viking-esque images that filled the gigantic screens). Finally, Illenium came on. What a performance! The music was amazing, but with fireworks, shooting flames, lasers, and huge screens full of artistic images.
Near midnight, a security guard came by and said the entrance to the balcony had been blocked off a couple of hours ago and that no one was supposed to be up there. We went down into the thick crowd and found a place to stand against the upper wall of the lower seating. We settled just in time for the opening chords of “Good Things Fall Apart.” It hit me hard. I felt embarrassed at the tears running down my cheeks, but I told myself that no one was taking any notice of it, and they wouldn’t be too critical if they did notice, so I kept singing out with everyone else.
Since then, Illenium has played at a bunch of “over 21” venues, which my son is too young to enter. Illenium played at Red Rocks, but at the one time we couldn’t get there.
Making Plans for Sphere 2026
A few months ago, my son told me Illenium was doing a residency at Sphere. I asked if there was an opening act, like Dabin or Said the Sky, and he said nothing like that had been announced. He got on the list to be notified as soon as tickets went on sale. When they did, we got the best tickets we could afford, which were on opening night. I immediately opened a new credit card that had a sign-up bonus for airfare and travel, and I booked the hotel, plane, and rental car.
A couple of days later, my son said, “Illenium just announced that there are opening acts.”
I said, “Who did we get?”
“Alok.”
I only knew him by his song as a featured artist on the new Illenium album, “Odyssey.”
He continued, “Guess who’s opening the next night?”
“Oh, no. Don’t tell me it’s Dabin or Said the Sky.”
He said, “No.” Then he added, “It’s Dab the Sky.”
“Augh! If only we’d known!!!” Then, half-jokingly, I said, “How much are tickets for the next night?”
I ended up getting us one more set of tickets and one extra day at the hotel.
I stressed again about what to wear. My son again assured me that anything was fine, but Las Vegas can skew rather upscale, and I didn’t really have anything. I shopped local, but there was nothing modest, flattering, slightly upscale, EDM-scene-ish, and affordable. I tried altering the jersey I bought at North Coast, but ended up ripping out the darts and seams I’d carefully put in after deciding it looked much better as a boxy jacket than as a fitted shirt. Then I spent a few days searching for an outfit on eBay. I found three possibilities and ordered them all (less than $100 for all of them). One of them was just about perfect–a black substantial stretch-knit cap-sleeve knee-length fitted Ralph Lauren dress. I also ordered a big sparkly pendant. A couple of days before the trip, I realized I’d forgotten about shoes, and I certainly didn’t want to wear high heels. I found some chunky black platform slides on clearance and bought those.
As I drove us from Alpine, Utah, to Las Vegas, my son made a new playlist on my phone with all my Illenium, Dabin, and Said the Sky. We talked about our favorite songs, he talked about some of the technical work going into the songs, and he didn’t object when I sang along to some. Passing through the beautiful Virgin River Gorge, I started to get excited. At Las Vegas, We checked into our hotel, then spent the next couple of hours looking at the shops on the Strip and eventually hitting Gordon Ramsey’s Fish and Chips for dinner (incidentally, not quite authentic because the fish and sauces actually had flavor, unlike any fish and chips, or any meal, really, that I ate the entire time I was in England) (still, I would’ve liked the sauces and batter more flavorful; my number one is still Boshamp’s Grouper Sandwich with house tartar sauce in Destin, Florida).
Opening night at Sphere: March 5, 2026
After dinner, we headed back to the hotel and got ready for the concert. I tried to straighten my hair (it is the desert, after all, so it should have worked). Google Maps told us to walk around the block, which ended up being a very windy trip (so much for my “straightened” hair!) to Sphere. We took some selfies, and then we went inside to wait in the crowd mingling in front of the inner doors. First I noticed that every girl had perfect hair, and many had incredible up-dos and/or colors that matched the Odyssey album. Then I noticed how much cool customization different girls had done to their Illenium gear–alterations that actually worked to give their jerseys a more feminine fit; sparkles in the fabric; gems outlining the trim, number, and phoenix; tricked-out half-shirts with chains; etc. I told my son that I was just going to cover my head with my North Coast jersey for the next 45 minutes. When I started to carry out my threat, he snapped a picture and said I looked like a nun.
I said I was the oldest person in the crowd by far. He said, “No, that guy’s older.” I looked where he pointed, and said, “No, I think I’m older than him.” He said, “No, THAT guy,” and pointed over everyone’s heads. I said, “Okay, so I’m ALMOST the oldest one here.”
However, I soon realized that pretty much everyone was kind and interested in each other–it was less inspection and more curiosity–and all of us were unified in being filled with anticipation.
The doors opened, everyone cheered, and we flowed in. The interior room was decked out in Odyssey colors, there were huge golden phoenix inflated “statues” for selfies, there was a huge panel of little fans making hologram-ish displays of rotating angels.
They checked our tickets again at the doors to our section, then we found our seats (in the 200 level). The circular interior was lit up with an image appearing to be a humongous quilt made of squares cut from Illenium jerseys from tons of past shows, detailed down to the quilt stitching on the edges of every square, the quilt appearing to gently undulate, light and shadow playing across it as if it were a gently blowing curtain.
We talked to our neighbors–one of them had been to Paris not too long ago–we agreed that the food in Italy was the best we’d had in Europe. We talked about where we’d seen Illenium before and what each concert was like.
When Alok came on, lots of people loved his show. However, the bass (or “wub-wubs”) was so strong it made my heart and upper ribs feel like something was going wrong with them. I hadn’t said anything, but my son looked at my face and said, “No, Mom, it’s not going to give you a heart attack.” I stayed as long as I could stand it, and then I opted to go hang out in the halls for the duration. I visited the girl’s room, and I was surprised to see that the line was SHORTER than the men’s room line and was actually moving quickly–I’ve been to so many concerts (and other events) where the guys have plenty of bathrooms and the girls are missing half the event because there aren’t a proper number of bathrooms for them. A couple of girls in line with me were joking, “The guys finally know how it feels!”
When Alok ended, I went back in and saw a timer counting down on the black ceiling, a swirl of light around it. The crowd counted down the last seconds together, and then everything went dark.
Illenium began the performance with the actual start of the “Odyssey” album, surrounding us with intriguing images. Then there were a few chords that I expected to transition into one of my favorite songs on the album–”Into the Dark.” But I was teased, and he made a different song materialize, with images of light and dark, breaking apart, coming together–swirling galaxies (one light, one dark) with black holes in the middle, turning into planets, one light, one dark–with releases of energy.
The motif of light and dark in conflict reappeared throughout the immersive experience, but it wasn’t always overtly constant. For example, at one point, suddenly the entire Sphere surface turned “the blue screen of death” we’ve all grown up with, and a computer text error message appeared. I was 99% certain it was part of the show, but still a little part of me wondered if it was possible, on this opening night, for something to have gone wrong. I could hear similar non-verbal expressions around me. Then there was an error message in a text box, and then more, and more, with crazier and crazier error messages that got us all laughing, and then the text looked like the Phyrexian text on some of my Magic the Gathering cards, and then everything melted down and was replaced with a computer text “Bring Me to the Horizon” that raised a huge cheer, and then the title of the next song, followed with something that I found creepy but which as I watched I thought: “My daughter would LOVE this. I’ll have to record it tomorrow night.”
There was something for everyone, and something to appeal to different parts of each of us: fight scenes, sweet scenes, mysterious images, scary images, songs that got us jumping up and down with our arms in the air, songs that made us slowly sway back and forth, music to let flow over us as we silently listened, and music to bring out the bold singer in all of us. At just the right moment, Illenium gave us “Into the Dark.” What a payoff!
One of my favorite parts was a surprising mix of “Paris,” a beautiful instrumental track on “Odyssey,” with “Gorgeous,” a song on an earlier album that I like well-enough. I never would have thought of combining them. Together, they were much more amazing than either is, alone; and the images of the light angel with the white swirls and spirals of feathers around her as she sent rings of white energy above her was as gorgeous as the music claimed it to be.
“Paris”/”Gorgeous” Light Angel
Too early, Illenium was telling us it was time to part. He invited us to thank his guest performers (strings, piano, soloist), which we did. As we clapped and cheered him for the experience he’d just given us, I told myself I couldn’t really be seeing tears in his eyes, but then he said, “I’m [strong expletive] going to cry. I love you all so [strong expletive] much!”
We stayed and read the end credits while listening to the sweet (but dark) waltz of “Monster,” and we laughed at the last image of all–Illenium’s wife’s doggie in the form of a nebula.
We followed the crowd back through the adjoining hotel (a much shorter trip, as it turned out, than Google had directed us to take there). I listened to bits of conversation around us. Many people were talking about what the angels represented, and their views were highly divergent. We ended up joining the conversation of a couple of guys walking to our same hotel. One said the two angels were really the same person. The other disagreed, saying they were more like sisters growing up with an overbearing father. I nodded slightly, as in an instant thoughts I’d had during the concert flashed through my mind (I’d thought that one of my brothers would see God in the giant, controlling man; but my experience is that the more decent I want to be and try to be, the more I feel that God sees me as needing less detailed guidance and that He sort of “sets me free” to do whatever good things I want; and if He’s arranged things in a certain way so that I have tough things happen, I’d rather be like Paul’s term “a fool for Christ” or like Job’s “even if He slay me, I’ll trust in Him” than someone who lies, cheats, steals, takes advantage of others, etc.), and in the next moment I pointed out different symbols, story events, and images that supported the first guy’s interpretation. We kept talking until they got out of the elevator on their floor.
The conversation made me think about my English major classes. Not just the interpretation of symbols and motifs, but the various approaches to experiencing and interpreting literature (and all art). In particular, the audience response analysis insists that the author has no interpretive power over a text that’s been released to the world; each person experiences the text uniquely based on their own life experiences, and if a person finds within a text meaning the author never intended, that meaning is just as valid as the author’s own interpretation. (Sort of like how I read “Birches” as a male narrator who delights in remembering his sexual conquests in boyhood, and I hate him for it; when Frost’s intent was likely entirely innocent.)
The conversation also made me think that the concert was almost an epic version of those Rorschach tests, where sometimes the image is obvious, but more often it’s a key to unlock what’s going on in the person’s subconscious mind (or what’s coloring, or even dominating, all their thought processes).
We slept late the next morning. Eventually, we went out looking for breakfast. After winding around for a couple of miles through the Forum at Caesar’s Palace and the Venetian shops, we ordered crepes, a turkey BLT, a pizza, and lemonades from a French place. After that, we saw the Bellagio fountains show. Then we scanned the QR code to enter the Illenium “pop-up” shop, entered through a somewhat mysterious dark passageway, and found ourselves in a line to take a selfie with a phoenix on its nest. Although I hadn’t really formed an intent to get anything, I ended up buying my son two jerseys. I also realized the Illenium pashmina was the perfect accessory for that night’s performance, so I got one for me. We walked back to the hotel (with the uneaten pizza), and I read a book on my phone while my son took a nap.
Friday night performance: March 6, 2026
When it was time to get ready, I had marginally more success in straightening my hair. My son wore his new Odyssey jersey. When we left our room and started walking towards the elevators, three guys wearing Illenium gear were coming down the hall from the opposite direction. They started to say “Hey!” to my son, and as I unfurled my new pashmina, they said, “Is that an Illenium pash? No way!” As we took the elevator, we started talking about the show (they’d also seen it the prior night, so no spoilers). They were friendly, but there was something weird in the air. I was guessing what it was, so when they asked if we were going to a certain other performer’s show after, I took the opportunity to say, “No; I have to get my son back to college.” Their faces cleared, and then with much more friendliness they said to my son, “You’re taking your mom to Illenium?!? Sweet!”
Inside Sphere, we shared a plate of honey barbeque chicken and fries, which were surprisingly good. I got a Liquid Death sparkling lime water and my son got a regular bottled water, and we found our seats (front row 400 level). The jersey quilt “draped” over Sphere’s interior now included a Said the Sky jersey that I hadn’t remembered being there the night before. There was also a huge glowing nylon phoenix, maybe six feet long and wide, slowly circling above the floor. We didn’t see any wires, so we guessed it was some sort of drone.
Dab the Sky put on a great show; but I knew far fewer songs than I expected to because (drum roll) they played FOUR brand-new, never-before-released songs! I noticed Said the Sky kept sneaking glances at the grand, ever-changing light display behind him; it made me smile because I know well the irony that stage performers never get to see their own show live.
Dab the Sky performing at Sphere
I couldn’t believe it when they started to close their show–how had an hour passed already? They thanked Illenium for his graciousness that once he’d achieved the success of booking Sphere, he’d invited as many of his friends as he could to share the stage with him and give them, too, that awesome experience of performing in such a unique venue.
Then the countdown clock appeared over our heads. We were even louder than the night before at “4…3…2…1!!!” In many ways, I enjoyed the show even more the second night–I was watching for things I’d missed (there was just so much going on, visually, that it was impossible to take it all in the first time), I was anticipating my favorite parts, and I had no anxiety about how far the visuals would go (Sphere is capable of some really trippy, unsettling visual effects, like the ceiling coming down to crush you).
The first time Illenium invited us to sing, I immediately responded with my best voice. The guy next to me kind of did a double-take, and then his previously barely-audible voice was freed to sing out with everyone else.
Comparing the 200 to 400 level: Vaping is strictly prohibited, but somehow there were vape fumes both nights, and they were much stronger at the 400 than the 200 level. The bass seemed much stronger/louder on the 200 level than the 400 level, but the seats on the 400 level vibrated much more than the 200 level. At the 200 level, you’re craning your neck a lot to look at everything above you; at the 400 level you can see everything in greater comfort but it’s slightly less immersive.
After thoroughly enjoying yet another amazing performance (one that also seemed to end too soon!), we made our way back to our hotel. My son showed me an Instagram “story” post by EDM artist William Black–apparently, he’d brought his dad to Illenium that night even though he was performing in New York City twenty hours later. My son said, “We’re not the only ones doing the ‘Bring a parent to Illenium’ thing!” My son later sent me this link with the comment: “See not the oldest” and two thumbs up:
We got a few hours of sleep, then drove to catch our shuttle and flight out of Salt Lake City. Walking through the airport to my gate, I was having trouble stopping myself from singing bits of song from the performance as I was revisiting the experience.
The next day, as I was sitting at the church piano using music to help twenty little kids (who were way too wired from the effects of Daylight Savings Time) to channel their energy in a positive way, I had a bizarre thought that what I was doing right then had the tiniest, mini-est, fractional speck of a kernel of similarity to what Illenium had done with 20,000 adults on that grandest scale at Sphere. Maybe that thought put a little extra soul into my rendition of “This Little Light of Mine.”
Alex Drevessa 
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