With 130 bands upon eight stages ov...

With 130 bands upon eight stages over three days nearest weekend -- a sprawling site covering all 319 acres of Grant Park -- and a total attendance that could top 180000 the next to the first installment of the reinvented Lollapalooza Music Festival will make history as the biggest concordance Chicago has ever hosted. u on the contrary the promoter, Capital Sports & Entertainment, is an Austin, Texas, company that remains an enigma to many local residents. Who exactly is throwing this enormous and unprecedent lakefront party? u The driving force is an energetic and wildly ambitious tag team that a certain number of in the music industry simply call "the pair Charlies" -- 37-year-old Charlie Jone undivided of Capital Sports' three principal partners, and his friend, 38-year-old talent booker Charles Attal.

Outside the music business, their names are barely known. on the contrary the man who launched them onward the path toward success is a different story: bicyclist Lance Armstrong, winner of seven consecutive Tours de France in 1999-2005

THEY HAD US AT HELLO

The Capital Sports story starts in 1995 when Bill Stapleton, a native of downstate Edwardsville and a former Olympic swimmer, was working at a law firm in Austin and heard about an up-and-coming cyclist from nearby Plano who requireed an agent. A year later, Stapleton left the law firm to start a sports agency. It was a representation right out of "Jerry Maguire," if it were not that things got off to a hard start when his only client, Armstrong, was diagnosed with advanced testicular cancer.

At the time, Jone had risen from working in the devise business as a runner or gofer to booking an Austin coterie called the Backyard under the aegis of the city's then-dominant harmony promoters, Direct Events. "Lance had just literally gotten his hair back after the cancer when just coincidentally we met" Jone said. "He wanted to draw near to shows at the Backyard, in like manner I would hook him up and we more or les became beer-drinking and golf buddies."

allowing he knew Armstrong was "a famous cyclist," Jone wasn't largely aware of his friend's status in the sport. "I remember in the summer of 1999 me and him would e-mail back and forth, and he was in Europe training. He delegates me an e-mail saying, 'My coach sum ups me that I have to transfer my computer off because I have to pass ride this race now.' I said, 'Well, have a upright time, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.' That weekend, I'm flipping to ESPN and there's 'Lance Armstrong wins the first stage of the Tour de France.' And I was like, 'Holy s---!' "

When it began to anticipate like Armstrong would win the entire race, Jone started to plan a individual homecoming. "We don't have a Chicago White Sox or a Dallas Cowboy in Austin; we have Lance Armstrong," he said. "I said, 'If he brings something big hearth we need to do a citywide celebration.' lengthy story short, he wins, I deposit this citywide celebration together, and that's to what degree I met Bill [Stapleton]."

A short time later, Jone left Direct affairs and started his own promotions company, Middleman Management, specializing in booking adventures such as Austin radio station KROX's annual Christmas and summer concocts He shared office space in a 900-square-foot house with another young promoter Charles Attal, the former guitarist for what common Texas critic called "the dreadful touchwood rock band Clown Meat."

In the mid-'90s, Attal had been dabbling as an auctioneer for rare works -- his Lebanese father is a noted antiques appraiser -- when he stumbl into the character of talent buyer for a 2,200-capacity nightclub and barbecue restaurant called Stubb's.

"A buddy of mine was starting up Stubb's and said, 'Hey, we're doing this thing, do you want to finish involved and help with the bands?' " Attal said. "I went from there to being an investor, investing my sweat equity and the little bit of cash that I did have." Like many inexperienced promoter Attal made one memorable mistakes -- he forfeited nearly $15,000 booking a George Clinton exhibit to -- and by his have admission, "Stubb's almost went below a couple of times. The first tie of years were really rough"

"When Stubb's armed forceed the platinum-selling Fugees in 1996 Attal meditation the name was pronounced 'Fudgies,' " Austin American- Statesman music critic and feature writer Michael Corcoran wrote lately

on the contrary Attal learned quickly -- he at so early an hour earned the nickname "Wolfie," as a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of for his voracious appetite in business as the fact that his given first name is Wolfr -- and easily he was booking other venue in Austin, as well as branching public to Houston and Dallas.

The sum of two units Charlies -- as one

Although many Chicagoans think of Austin as a Mecca for live music, thanks to the annual southern by Southwest Music Conference, for greatly of the rest of the year, the city is a backwater that attracts a simple fraction of the touring acts that play Chicago. There's no comparison to the cut-throat competition in this city. In fact, things were thus cozy in the small offices Jone and Attal shared that on the same level though they had different phone numbers, a certain number of people in the music business bewildermented if the two Charlies were actually the same living body