Lollapalooza: one of the United States’ biggest musical festivals. Hundreds of thousands of people descend onto Chicago’s Grant Park every August to see their favorite artists perform at a four-day-long music extravaganza. For most fans, Lollapalooza is a chance to see their favorite music icons rock out on stage. However, one Mac student didn’t just watch: he performed front and center.
Oscar Reza Bautista ’27 was invited by the band The Killers to play the drums with them during their set. This journey was not a happy accident; Reza Bautista had been planning his live debut for quite some time.
Reza Bautista already possessed some musical chops. He played piano and synth in a high school band at UWC Atlantic, where he often pushed the group to perform songs by The Killers. However, he had never played a drum set before.
The Killers, Reza Bautista’s favorite band, have a tradition of inviting fans onto the stage to play the drum set part in “For Reasons Unknown,” one of Reza Bautista’s favorite Killers songs. When Reza Bautista found out The Killers would be performing at Lollapalooza, not too far from his summer job at Macalester, he set himself to learning “For Reasons Unknown”.
“In my mind it was just funny,” Reza Bautista said. “[I thought] ‘oh it would be very hilarious if I just go onstage and play the drums and play the full song.’”
Reza Bautista spent the next two months learning the song on a well-loved drum kit at Macalester. Having little prior percussion knowledge, he simply arranged the various drums and cymbals as he felt comfortable. In his practice sessions, Reza Bautista worked his way up from trying to replicate the sound of the album version of the song to filling in the percussion part on a drumless track.
Finally, the day came. The doors to Lollapalooza opened at 11 a.m., and Reza Baustisa was there two hours early. As soon as he got through security, he sprinted towards the barricades of the stage on which The Killers would perform. One mile later, Reza Baustisa was first in line and got a front-row spot.
Twelve hours after Reza Baustisa first arrived at Grant Park, it was time for The Killers’ set — and the final piece of Reza Bautista’s plan. He had to get The Killers’ attention somehow, a challenge for which he had prepared in Macalester’s Idea Lab. He created a sign that read “Can I Drum?” in the style of the “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas” sign, a shout out to The Killers’ hometown.
His sign sealed the deal.
“Your sign is better than [that other fan’s] sign; that is abundantly clear,” lead vocalist Brandon Flowers called to Reza Baustisa from the stage. “But are you confident? There’s 100,000 people out here. You know it? You’re ready for it? You’re not gonna play slow and quiet? All right, let him up.”
Security led Reza Bautista backstage. He remembers seeing the background vocalists and instruments — and then suddenly being face-to-face with Flowers.
“From there on, everything is kind of a blur, which is a bit unfortunate,” Reza Baustisa said. “But, of course, I remember how it felt. No words, honestly, can picture what I was exactly feeling.”
He does, however, remember both the happiness and the nerves of playing with his favorite band on that stage. Even though Reza Bautista had played in front of crowds before, they had not been anywhere near the size of Lollapalooza.
“What many people ask me is ‘did you look back at the crowd, and how did it feel?’” Reza Baustisa said. “I looked once at the crowd and had to instantly look back at the drums.”
Reza Bautista decided to make himself believe he could be a drummer for a bit, declaring that he was confident — and it paid off. Onstage, he was grinning, singing along, playing to the crowd and drumming at a level far beyond his two months of experience.
Since his performance, Reza Bautista has been dubbed “Oscar from Chicago” after Flowers introduced him as such. Some of his friends from home poked fun at this, in addition to expressing their surprise that Reza Bautisa even knew how to play the drums. In interviews with multiple media outlets, Reza Bautista has made sure to clarify that he is not from Chicago; he studies at Macalester and is originally from Tijuana, Mexico.
Reza Bautista’s Lollapalooza performance has followed him back to Macalester. Some of his classmates and residents have heard about his Lollapalooza experience and stopped to ask him if he is “Oscar from Chicago.” Ironically, his summer housemate, a recent Mac graduate, didn’t know about Reza Bautisita’s mission to perform with The Killers. When he saw the viral videos of Reza Bautista for the first time, he said, surprised, “I think that’s my roommate.”
Reza Bautista’s best friend from high school, Ayman Raakin, summed up Reza Bautisita’s Lollapalooza experience when he said “[he] did it because [he] thought it was funny, but [he] just broke expectations of most musicians [his] age.”
Reza Bautista still practices drums. Before Lollapalooza, the only song he had played on the drums was “For Reasons Unknown.” He has continued to practice and listen to this song while adding more rock songs into his collection, with a heavy emphasis on others by The Killers.
In addition to the drums, Reza Bautista considers adding new instruments into his rotation, as well as continuing to play the piano and synth. He invites other Mac students to talk about and play music with him.
