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!
5 Comments »
Eh, of Montreal Schmof Montreal, I’d have been listening to Malkmus do Pavement songs. My best friend went to the festival and said Mastodon were great. I mean, what’s not to love about “Cut You Up with a Linoleum Knife”???
No one needs to hear that much metal that loudly, ever.
This statement is just plain flat-out wrong.
The sound system had nothing to do with the “bad sound” of the festival. 99% of it had to do with the engineers that came with the bands. The Sound system used on the “A” stage was the same one used for the Allman Brothers tours for years. Unfortuneatly, when you have inexperienced “hole in the wall bar” engineers at the helm, “Garbage in” equated to “Garbage out”. I also questioned if most of the bands even knew how to conduct their stage volumes for an event like that. Some of them had WAY TOO LOUD stage volumes while others whispered like mice.Pitchfork fest is really “amateur fest”…..produced by amateurs and performed by amateurs. You can only blame the person at the wheel for bad driving, not the car.
Well maybe the Allman Brothers should have lent Pitchfork their sound guy. Touring bands who are used to indoor venues (capacity say 500 to 2,000) can’t be expected to magically know how to coax the best sound out of a huge outdoor park.
That said, I think ALL outdoor shows sound pretty assy.
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Comment by JoshD — July 17, 2007 @ 11:36 am
Hipsters still aren’t hip enough for Yoko?
I lol’ed.