- Aqualaygualry in arcade fire - black wave/bad vibrations Today i watching overlay from here. this is wondeful film. Who are watching this?
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so i am kind of over big outdoor festivals, guys. yeah, i went to the first couple of lollapaloozas when it was still a traveling festival and caught some amazing live acts (like the beastie boys and jane’s addiction the first time around), but apparently now i’m old or something. i prefer to see bands in small dark bars where i can hear them clearly and oh, WATCH them play their instruments, as opposed to being hot and so far back in a mass of other sweaty people that i can’t even see the bands’ facial expressions, let alone hear the music for shit.
that being said, i am all about the pitchfork festival held here in chicago every summer - it’s easy to manage, easy to see who you want without having to print out a damn map and hike a mile to get there (cough*lollapalooza*cough), and, as much as i like to scoff at pitchfork for being pretentious, at least the people who attend their festival every year tend to be true music fans and thus less annoying than the crowd who shuffles in to see the dave matthews band at bonnaroo or something. come on, you know exactly what i mean.
anyway, i’m a little late to the party, but here’s the line-up for the 2009 pitchfork festival. let me just inform you that the last 4 bands on saturday evening are 4 of my very favourites. the pains of being pure at heart, yeasayer, beirut and the national? in order? on a beautiful chicago summer evening? um, YES PLEASE! so you know where i’ll be july 18th of this year. i might even have to break down and go sunday too, since the flaming lips are doing an all-request set, including random covers. how awesome is that?
The 2009 Lollapalooza Festival’s lineup, though partially leaked weeks ago, was announced earlier this week. Every year this causes a lot of predictable complaining and hand wringing on the Internet about how so-and-so headliners are old and how bloated and corporate Perry Ferrell’s festival is. Some of these complaints are valid - but it’s hard to argue that there won’t be some great acts at the festival,scheduled for August 7-9 at Chicago’s Grant Park.
The 100-plus acts will be led by headliners Depeche Mode, Tool, The Killers, Jane’s Addiction, Beastie Boys, and Kings of Leon. Solid, but not as good for my money as Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Kayne West and Nine Inch Nails and Wilco in ‘08.
And yes, the heydey for most of those bands is the 90’s, but most of them do make sense for headliners. Let’s face it, the disappearance of music on MTV, the decline of rock radio and the fragmentation ofthe music market because of the internet means today’s big rock acts don’t have the mainstream success as their 80’s and 90’s predecessors. The big mystery here is Kings of Leon, because the “second tier” of Lollapalooza includes artists like Lou Reed, Ben Harper, Ben Folds, Snoop Dogg, TV on the Radio, Neko Case, Andrew Bird and Rise Against.
The rest of the lineup is filled with mostly current (or last year’s) indie rock darlings: Vampire Weekend, the Decemberists, STS9 (Sound Tribe Sector Nine), Animal Collective, Band of Horses, Of Montreal, Arctic Monkeys, Coheed and Cambria, Fleet Foxes, Silversun Pickups, Kaiser Chiefs, Bon Iver, Crystal Castles, Santigold, etc.
As someone who bought a three day pass last year, I’d say go if you have the $200 bucks lying around and you have plenty of endurance. Three days under the hot Chicago summer sun, even with good tunes around,can be a feat for the best of us.
Bring me your tired, your poor punk rockers, your huddled Chuck Taylor wearing masses and send them to the Warped Tour. Tickets went on sale yesterday.
In my mind I kind of associate the Warped Tour with Hot Topic, a relic of the mall-punk 90’s but here it is still going in 2009 - its 15th year anniversary. Not that it hasn’t had it’s moments – I went once in the late 90’s in Kansas City and enjoyed seeing NOFX, Bad Religion, Propaghandi, the Deftones and others despite the high ticket prices, the sweltering heat, and all of the testosterone-fueled idiots who wanted to mosh (kicking up a ridiculous amount of dust in the process) no matter who was playing.
Warped Tour
Still, I find it a bit surreal that the same bands – Bad Religion, Less Than Jake, Flogging Molly, etc. are still anchoring a lineup featuring lots of no names (The Devil Wears Prada is now a book, movie and punk band?). Hopefully we don’t see these guys in five years when they could become the punk rock equivalent of a Journey – Survivor – REO Speedwagon state fair tour.
Still, the big concert tours have slowly given way to big destination two or three day festivals (Lollapalooza, Pitchfork, Sasquatch, etc.) so this might be the only way you get to see a few decent bands outdoors.
Lollapalooza ‘08, as of print time, is just four hours old, and you are not there because…
1) Ticket prices were too high due to insufficient corporate sponsorship
Sure gas prices are a bitch this summer, but tickets… whew! How can we be expected to pony up $200 for three days of music unless AT&T, Budweiser, and friends lend a bigger hand and put their names in more nooks and crannies? Write your Congressman and as him to vote for more endorsements to help make tickets more affordable. Outright selfish.
2) Everyone there is just like you.
The experience will remind you that everyone else will also blog out it for weeks to come, likes the same bands as you, and has at least three songs they’ve recorded on GarageBand sitting in their computer at home just waiting to be uploaded to myspace.
3) You’re too old for this.
You won’t admit it, but even during the first three years that you did go to Lollapalooza, you wished you were at home with a margarita that didn’t cost a week’s pay, air conditioning and predictability. You went so you didn’t have to avoid eye contact w/ friends who would come back the next day and say, “Oh, I saw [this band], and [that band], and [this other band] rocked…”. But don’t worry - they secretly wanted to stay home all along, just like you.
4) You’re too young for this.
This isn’t a Phish show, so don’t expect to walk into Grant Park and magically get high, or find some dude hocking pot brownies and rough crispies. That’s what you go to shows for anyway, so stay at home and don’t burn through the political capital you have w/ your parents… you’ll need it when they find your poorly hidden stash.
5) You don’t know any of the bands there.
Wait, that was Pitchfork… you mean…
5) It’s not indie enough.
You’ve seen Wilco before, so who cares? No one over 21 really likes the Raconteurs anyway. It’s just too mainstream.
So that’s why you’re at home wondering what you and your friends are going to do tonight. Maybe a Lollapalooza after-party! But that’s kind of lame seeing as how you didn’t go to the party in the first place. Fuck you.
Here’s the full lineup (finally!) for the 2008 Lollapalooza, held in Chicago August 1-3. I have starred the bands I am excited about seeing, since I know you all care.
Radiohead*
Rage Against the Machine
Nine Inch Nails*
Kanye West
Wilco*
The Raconteurs
Louis XIV
Love and Rockets*
Gnarls Barkley
Bloc Party
The Black Keys*
Broken Social Scene
Lupe Fiasco
Flogging Molly
Mark Ronson
Cat Power
The National*
G. Love & Special Sauce
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Explosions in the Sky
Brand New
Gogol Bordello
Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Dierks Bentley
Okkervil River*
Amadou & Mariam*
Blues Traveler Read more »
rumour on these here intarwebz is you can pick up a track from every single band playing this year’s SXSW festival right here. hurry up before the powers that be take it down. those bastards.
breaking insider info, dear readers:
This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival will take place on Friday, July 18 through Sunday, July 20, 2008. The location remains the same — Union Park, Chicago, IL — and the tickets will go on sale this Wednesday, March 12 at noon CDT.
Friday
Pitchfork Music Festival and All Tomorrow’s Parties Present: “Don’t Look Back” - featuring Public Enemy performing “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”
Saturday
Animal Collective, !!!, Vampire Weekend, Dizzee Rascal, No Age, Atlas Sound, Fleet Foxes
Sunday
Spiritualized, M. Ward, Boris, Extra Golden, El Guincho
well meh. public enemy’s a pretty cool score, of course. and i love me some spiritualized, but that’s really all i am excited about so far. and yes, that includes animal collective. go ahead and sue me for being a bad indie hipster.
Applying to a Big, Ugly, Loud, Laborious Shit-Hot Industry Trade Show (or B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.S.) like South By Southwest or this month’s CMJ New Music Marathon is a tricky proposition for a small-time independent rock band with little to no label support–ironic, since these festivals were originally started, allegedly, to showcase new, up-and-coming, undiscovered talent. Well, i’m not shattering anyone’s preconceived notions by pointing out that this hasn’t been true in awhile; after all, who are Spoon, Xiu Xiu or M.I.A. hoping to be discovered by at this point? So, sorry to say it, small-timers, but there usually is no room at the party for your stupid little band.
Still, every year, legions of hopefuls apply to hope beyond hope (that’s a lot of hope, y’all) that the genius of their unique take on Hot Topic-accessorized mallpunk or NPR-approved accordion-and-banjo driven crapass Americana “alt-country” will tickle the right ear at CMJ, and will be magically extended the Golden Ticket to Manhattan or Brooklyn. And how will they apply? These days, through SonicBids, the online Electronic
Press Kit (EPK) networking service that “has become one of the fastest-growing music communities on the web trusted by over 70,000 artists and over 6,000 festivals, music conferences, and clubs from over 100 countries” (or so says their website). For only $35 every six months, you and your band can enjoy access to quick and easy application processes for each of those festivals, all of which will charge you entry fees on top of the SonicBids subscription price! That’s right–SonicBids affords you the opportunity for quick and efficient application to and rejection from SXSW, CMJ, Milwaukee’s Summerfest, and many others!
Now, before you think i’m being unduly harsh on the bands that subscribe to SonicBids and use it to place themselves on their knees, mouths open and gag reflexes at the ready, at the gross, veiny cocks of hundreds of aforementioned B.U.L.L.S.H.I.T.S., it’s time for full disclosure–we’re one of those bands too. Or, at least, i am. The SonicBids subscription comes out of my pocket because i think it’s sort of ridiculous to ask the band to shoulder something that stupid. So, why do i do it? More full disclosure–it’s worked for us. Our SonicBids application secured us a slot at the 2005 CMJ New Music Marathon, playing Chinatown’s 169 Bar at 1:30 in the morning on the last night of the festival in front of 18 appreciative(?) concert-goers…15 of whom we knew personally. But, um, hey, exposure! Right? Eh? Eh?
Sigh. I kid, though; the entire experience was actually pretty fun and i’m glad we did it. But any notion that playing a CMJ showcase did anything whatsoever for our “career” (ha) is naive at best, delusional at worst. Still, this did not discourage me from humbly submitting the band to the mercy of the CMJ selection committee once more this year.
Unfortunately, little did i know that the recording of our next full-length would eventually get delayed until October–this weekend, in fact–when i applied. Since we’re all saddled with those albatrosses known as day jobs, taking days off for recording and a road trip to New York in the same month wasn’t going to happen, so i wasn’t very disappointed when we finally got our rejection notice (although, wow, having played before doesn’t guarantee you a future slot, eh? Good to know). What i wasn’t expecting, though, were 15 replies to the rejection notice, each from a different rejected band, each hitting “reply to all” to emphasize the fact that CMJ forgot to blind carbon copy the email addresses of 671 rejected applicants.
Uh, oops.
There is no possible way for me to recall my 3-day experience at the Pitchfork Festival without it becoming the worst college admissions essay to a music school ever, so instead I have decided to make a list of my yays and nays of the weekend’s festivities.
Yays
+ 312unes program and beer! Getting people excited about the different bands and things that Goose Island is going to do to help Chicago’s local music scene. Plus the free beer was pretty rad, and needless to mention, I was a bit drunktastic!
+ Amazing Chicago weather. We (as in the royal Chicago denizen ‘we’) lucked out. It was amazing weather the whole weekend.
+ Voxtrot. They were the first band of the Festival that I was excited about. I used to describe them as the Smiths meet Belle and Sebastian. But now, I’d say they sound like if Elton John and Morrissey had a bastard love child who looked painfully like Adrian Grenier in The Adventures of Sebastian Cole and knew how to party. Hmmm. Does that even make sense?
+ Battles. They definitely dominated with their sound and presence.
+ Of Montreal. I think they alone brought down the festival. Stephen Malkmus of Pavement fame was singing and strumming his heart out and people were turning their heads in anticipation for Of Montreal. At one point, some guy did a sound check and everyone bum rushed the second stage. Hah!
+ Girl Talk. He rocked the house. Or rather, rocked the limited amount of staging given to him. But it’s amazing what one person can do with non-licensed music. AMA-ZING!
+ The Flatstock poster show. ART ART ART ART! Beautiful Art! Need I say more?
+ De La Soul. They were the perfect group to the end the festival. They kept the momentum up and the crowd happy. As I walked to the Green Line stop, De La could still be heard, playing way past the 11:00 pm shut off. Good for you, De la!
Nays
- YOKO ONO!!! I have never seen a group of people flee faster by the sheer repulsion of sound ever in my life. Click HERE if you don’t believe me. But consider yourself warned.
- Pitchfork’s sound system. I wish it were LCD. Throughout the festival, one of the most recurring things you heard people say, (other than “man, I love 312 beer”) is that the sound sucked. You think they could have put some more money into their speakers and less into Yoko ‘crapula’ Ono.
- The third stage. Who the crunk thought it a good idea to put the third stage way in the back where there was no place to stand and AND to park Toyota’s shitty wannabe transformer car, the Scion, in the middle of it all? Good job, event planner…you fail.
- The disappearing port-a-potties. There were a lot of accessible waste management receptacles, but when they would pick the strangely located scattered ones, it left behind a pile of excrement for people to happen upon with their shoes or sandals. Not the greatest festival moment, speaking from personal experience.
- The lack of bands that, well, could rock out. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Cat Power, but she was a total snooze-fest! I was already tired as it was and her wispy, sorrowful vocals made me want to end it right there. New Pornographers were okay but didn’t really get the draw of the intoxicated crowd. The one band that did know how to rock was Mastodon and it was insanely annoying. No one needs to hear that much metal that loudly, ever. If so, an ice pick to the brain works just as well.
- Did I mention Yoko Ono?
- The long lines for everything! Want to eat something? Go stand in that line. Want to potty? That line there. Want an ATM? Oh that line laps the park thrice over. You want to leave? Welcome to the line ride for the CTA Green Line. ACK! It was like I couldn’t escape standing in lines for the life of me! Oh well.
But what made Pitchfork Festival particularly memorable for me was not only seeing Of Montreal but meeting them. Both Kevin Barnes and Dottie Alexander were wonderful and frankly I was too starstruck to say anything intelligent. So yeah, there were a lot of pluses and minuses but this three-day insanity was well worth it. Lollapalooza, I’m ready. I survived Pitchfork, I can tackle you with bells on. And of course my beer tickets!
So all three days of the Pitchfork Music Festival are completely sold out, hepcats and hipsters. This even though this year’s lineup is somewhat disappointing. (Yoko Ono? What? Why not bill a crazy person stepping on a cat’s tail - sounds exactly the same, I assure you). However, there will still be enough awesome bands playing the event to make it worthwhile and something you don’t want to miss, we promise you that.
So if you are one of those lazy asses who dragged your shoegazer feet on buying tickets, only to find out that you are now s.o.l. and doomed to remain home alone two weekends from now while all the cool kids are partying down in Union Park and dancing to some awesome tunes, please don’t kill yourselves quite yet. There are still ample opportunities to win yourselves some tickets, thanks to the Goose Island Beer Company’s delicious 312 Urban Wheat Ale and its involvement in the Chicago indie rock scene. Check out the Chicago venues in the sidebar on the right for 312 beer specials, name-that-tune competitions, general good times and a chance to redeem yourself for not being cool enough to get tickets before it sold out.
Full Pitchfork Line-up: Read more »
