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Click here for a playlist of the biggest songs at this year's Rock the Bells festival.

The live summer blockbuster Rock the Bells has lasted nearly 10 years by catering to the notion that "classic" and indie rap acts keep the flame of real hip-hop alive. It's clearly a fantasy, but the fault lines remain — Southern rapper David Banner left the 2007 tour after the audience greeted him with boos on a few dates. For better or worse, it's still known as the old-school festival.

Still, no other event — save smaller packages like Atlanta's A3C Festival (which assembles a better range of regional styles) and L.A.'s indie-leaning Paid Dues Festival — offers a comparable experience. Unfortunately, stereotypes persist that rappers show up late (or not at all) to concerts, put on uninspired performances and often incite gang violence. Acclaimed headlining sets by Eminem at Lollapalooza and Kanye West at Coachella are just two recent examples that disprove this misconception. But there's enough random evidence, including Big Boi's guileless recent cancellation at San Francisco's Outside Lands fest despite Tweeting pics of himself backstage, to fuel the perception. Perhaps that's why people embrace Rock the Bells with such irrepressible enthusiasm: it's a chance for artists without the selling power of Eminem or Kanye to get their festival moment, too.

Mos Def. Pics by Mosi Reeves.

Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star, with J-Rocc on the turntables.
Listen to: Black Star, "Re:Definition"

Gone Phishing at Outside Lands. Pics by Stephanie Benson.

Rhapsody trekked out to the fourth annual Outside Lands Music Festival in San Francisco's picturesque Golden Gate Park to catch acts including Phish, OK Go, The Roots, Foster the People, Beirut, The Black Keys, John Fogerty and more. Check out photo highlights from the three-day extravaganza.

Bow down to Deadmau5, oh ye water-logged masses. Pics by Garrett Kamps.

The final day of Lollapalooza's 20th-anniversary fest began so beautifully. The sun shone, the birds chirped (probably -- it was hard to hear them over the ovaries-rattling bass from Perry's Stage, which reverberated through the entire park today), the crowd skipped happily from show to show, and the perpetually friendly Lolla staffers smiled and thanked people as they crossed the gates. Did I mention that early-afternoon shining sun? Focus on it. Bask in it. Because after that? It rained. A lot. And then it rained again. A lot. And then there was mud. So, so much mud. The proceedings ended in drenched streets and unrecognizably filthy festies and shoe-swallowing, phone-destroying craters of mud. And that, too, was beautiful.

Rain at a festival, while not exactly ideal, is the great equalizer. Yes, it was unfortunate that Arctic Monkeys' set (among others) got delayed by the first storm. But the people I was huddled with under the Estancia lounge tent were laughing, bonding, making new friends -- and watching the dripping diehards at Cage the Elephant catch Matt Schultz's increasingly slippery body as he (and his mic) stage-dove again and again. And when the first downpour stopped and all 90,000 of us came together again, those of us who weren't drenched quickly got painted with mud. What beautiful people? Everyone was beautiful, everyone was ugly -- and everyone looked like they were paying homage to the classic images of joyfully muddy hippies at Lolla progenitor Woodstock. And when the second deluge began minutes before the headliner sets, it seemed almost fitting, as if Deadmau5 at one end and Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters at the other had called the rains down for their legions of ravers and rockers to play in. The crowd, many covered in trash bags donated by the ground crew, collectively said "screw it" and bolted for the field, helping each other up when they fell, and using the mud as a dance partner that could spin and slip them around.

Just sing, man: CeeLo does his Rock God thing. Pics by Garrett Kamps

The ironic charm of music festivals, as everyone knows, is that they're actually a pretty crappy place to hear music. The festgoer paradox at an event as massive as Lollapalooza (which completely sold out beforehand for the first time this year) is this: should you fight your way to the front of the stage and stake out a spot early enough to actually see your favorite band, which means you aren't going anywhere, including to other stages where other bands are playing, until the show's over? Or should you try to "see" as many acts as you can from the back of the lawn, behind a tree, next to a bunch of drunk people who are talking louder than the band is playing? Ultimately, the best decision is to just focus on creating an experience.

So what was the experience of Lolla like on Saturday? Well, day two began with rain: buckets of mud-producing, sludge-inducing rain that quickly coated the extremities of festgoers. The day ended with heat: the sun came out with a vengeance, the temperatures rose, the humidity was oppressive. And somewhere in the middle, everyone got drunk. Really, really drunk. Yesterday's beautiful people? Gone -- or at least so covered in mud that they were unrecognizable as such. The festival grounds, which were expanded to make for a sprawling 115 acres in 2010? Still navigable, thanks to the crisscrossing network of paths and streets that make up Chicago's Grant Park, but it still requires an inner pep talk every time one is faced with the task of navigating through tens of thousands of sweaty bodies. The port-a-potty situation? Grim. What else was a girl and 90,000 or so of her closest friends to do but give in and just enjoy the ride, with all its highs and lows, twists and turns, uppers and downers?

Cults indie-rock out for all the beautiful, suspiciously bohemian people. Pic by Garrett Kamps.

Twenty years old. Seems like just yesterday Lollapalooza was traipsing around the country, joyously introducing itself to the world as a music festival unafraid of genre diversity or political activism, one just as likely to showcase a Shaolin monk as a post-punk band. And now our little Lolla is all grown up. So what does America's biggest freak show and its "alternative nation" look like now that it's (almost) legal, and confined to one long weekend in Chicago?

That's the question on my mind as I join the already-sweltering masses who are (mostly) patiently waiting to scan their Sponge Bob-esque orange-and blue-wristbands and rush onto the festival grounds for the first day of Lollapalooza's 20th-anniversary bash. We'll attempt to answer that query for the next three days, at least when I'm not busy chowing down on lobster corn dogs or slipping over to the craft beer tent or dodging drunk kids or, you know, seeing like a gazillion bands. And Lolla, accommodating pal that she is, provides several stellar snapshots of what that answer might be right as I walk in the gates.

Impression One: wow, this place is swarming with kids who look to be about the same age as Lolla, kids who probably have no idea who Perry Farrell is. And not just any kids, but these ethereal, flowing-haired Mischa Barton (is she still a person of interest? OK, then maybe Ashley Greene) lookalikes impeccably clothed in those neo-bohemian fashions the celebrities are all so fond of these days. People in Chicago do not look like this, at least not enough of us to reach these numbers. It's as if these kids went to Coachella, then spent the next couple months living on some kind of post-hippie cloud before descending upon Lollapalooza. And they all seem wasted already. At noon.

Even for a 40-year-old gawker like myself, it was easy to feel welcome at last month's Electric Daisy Carnival, a three-night bacchanal where as many as 75,000 ravers wearing beads, body paint and, often, very little else came together at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway to hear some of the biggest names in electronic dance music. That's not just because virtually everyone there was unusually friendly and unfailingly polite. (Even police officers at the scene reported kids giving them high-fives throughout the course of the dusk-til-dawn extravaganza — a marked contrast from an earlier E.D.C. event in Dallas marred by multiple hospitalizations and one death.) No, it's because no matter where you went, you were bound to hear Martin Solveig's "Hello" blasting out at you from speaker stacks as tall as a midsized office building. DJ after DJ latched on to the French producer's poppy, singsong refrain, sometimes making you wonder if you had wandered into some gigantic, Glee-themed call center from an alternate dimension.

As the sun shyly reintroduces itself, the alluring pull of summer becomes a strong tug at the heart. Visions of warm weather, barbecues at water's edge and a general sense of relaxation pervade mind and body. And with summer comes an insane amount of music festivals. But where are they? Who is playing at them? Which ones, if any, are family-friendly?

We're running down country music's Top 5 summer festivals, giving you the inside scoop on the performers and the highlights each festival has to offer concertgoers. Get ready for summer!


Stagecoach: Indio, Calif., April 30-May 1

The dust will barely have settled (literally) from the alternative music festival Coachella when the boots-and-buckles crowd descends on the same venue, the Empire Polo Club in Indio, for the two-day country event known as Stagecoach.

Stagecoach debuted in 2007 and immediately filled a gap in the West Coast touring circuit. That first year, the festival featured Alan Jackson, Sara Evans, George Strait and newcomers Miranda Lambert and Eric Church. With that home-run lineup, the festival was off and running.

Stagecoach features three pricing tiers: the $149 general admission weekend pass is, without a doubt, the most economical. Additionally, there are two reserved seating areas: at $799 per weekend ticket, the P1 area places you right in front of the mane stage (mane stage. Get it?), while the P2 seating (at $499 per weekend ticket) puts you in the section just beyond the P1 area. Both reserved seating areas have access to an adjacent VIP area that consists of shaded areas, picnic tables, couches, extra restrooms, food & beverage vendors, and a full cash bar. Sounds heavenly after a hot afternoon baking under the desert sun!