A Musical Interlude

As I’m sure we’re all aware, this one of the least interesting times for sports. All that’s around is midseason baseball, the occasional NBA offseason move (Rashard Lewis! Mo Williams! It’s Faaan-tastic!) and maybe an NFL player or two getting in trouble with John Q Law.

This is not exactly fodder for passionate daily blogging, that’s for sure.

Soon I will be writing about my current relationship with baseball fandom in a new weekly series that I’m working on (ooooh, a Sherman Avenue Block Party tease!) In the meantime, I will again report from the world of music festivals.

This past weekend, I attended the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago. It is a three-day festival put on by the big daddy of independent music web sites, Pitchfork Media, held in Union Park, a nice small city park in the West Loop.

Some of the great things about this festival:

- Cost. It was $50 for a three-day pass.

- Location. I can get there by public transportation (the train) from my apartment.

- Setup. The park is pretty small, so it’s easy to get around, meaning we didn’t have to walk 40 miles a day to see all the bands.

- Weather. Lucky this year, as it was gorgeous all weekend, in the mid 70s to low 80s, not at all humid. I went to this festival last year, and it was the hottest weekend of summer, 90s and humid and all around unpleasant.

- Lineup. This is the whole point, right?


Now, I’ll go ahead and state for the record that I am a music snob. A music nerd. An “art house goon” in the words of my colleague Mr. Kris. My tastes are not at all mainstream, and I am proud of it.

So not all of these bands I’m going to talk about will be familiar to some of you. Deal with it (and do yourself a favor and look them up. Act like you know.)

Here are the day-by-day highlights of the festival:


Friday

This night was co-sponsored by All Tomorrow’s Parties, and it featured three bands playing their classic albums from beginning to end: Slint would play Spiderland, GZA would perform Liquid Swords, and then finally Sonic Youth would play Daydream Nation.

It is a really cool concept, and I was really looking forward to this, as these are three of my favorite albums of all time.

In practice, it was a bit of a letdown. Part of the fun of live shows is the excitement of not knowing the set list, that anticipation of “what will they play next” along with the elation when you say “yes! They’re playing that one!” In this case, they were playing the albums in order, so you knew exactly what was coming.

There were also some sound problems. Sonic Youth wasn’t loud enough (people in the crowd were actually yelling “turn it up!”) And GZA fell into the classic trap of live hip-hop, namely that they didn’t do a good enough sound check so the beats sounded terrible, and that there were too many guys yelling on the mic instead of just saying their rhymes.

All in all, though, it was really cool to see all these bands, and to hear all these songs live, a lot of which these bands don’t normally play. There were definitely moments that delivered on the promise, especially Slint doing “Good Morning Captain”, the GZA doing “Shimmy Shimmy Ya” during the encore, and Sonic Youth ripping through “Candle.”

So while it wasn’t as uplifting-ly awesome as I had hoped, it was a solid way to open a weekend festival.


Saturday

Now we are into the heart of the festival, with bands playing all day. Here is what I saw:

Battles. Intricate, experimental, noisy rock. Not only did they sound great, powerful, heavy, but they were interesting to watch as they played around with electronics and processed sounds and switching guitars. Fans of drummers (yes, you, Matt) would have dug this – this was the former drummer from Helmet, and he keeps the whole weirdness grounded.

Mastodon. Metal. Our faces: rocked off. Completely.

Clipse. It was odd to switch from metal to coke-rap, but it fits both the festival’s aesthetic and my own personal taste (this switch could happen if my iPod was on shuffle.) Clipse proved that hip-hop can sound great live, even without a band. “Mr. Me Too”, my favorite song of theirs, had the heads nodding appropriately.

Cat Power. She’s got a great voice, and this was a pleasant set. Though after Battles and Mastodon, it wasn’t moving.

Yoko Ono. All I can say is now I’ve seen Yoko Ono. I suppose if you’ve ever wanted to hear a Japanese woman in her 70s make orgasm noises…well, if you want to hear that, you’ve got a whole other set of problems. Needless to say, we didn’t stick around until she finished.


Sunday

Did I mention that the weather was beautiful? It wasn’t even really hot in the sun, and there was zero humidity. If Chicago had weather like this all the time, no one would even know about San Diego.

The Sea and Cake. These guys, all talented musicians, do the jazzy-rock thing, and their music can always be described as “pleasant.” It’s music that makes you want to sit on a blanket and enjoy the breeze on a sunny day. Perfect for 4pm on a lovely Sunday.

Jamie Lidell. He came out in this odd gold coat and hat, looking like he went shopping at a Sun Ra garage sale. He did this weird white-boy soul mixed with odd one-man band soundscapes, with Theremin. I like the weirdness, and this was strangely compelling.

Stephen Malkmus. He was solo, without the Jicks, just him on guitar. He did more Pavement songs than I would have expected. He played with Bob Nastanovich for a couple of songs off Slanted and Enchanted. If you know Malkmus and Pavement, you’ll think this was very cool.

The New Pornographers. Great pop band. They sound crisp, sharp live. However, they are not playing with Neko Case tonight. The girl in her stead was perfectly fine, but can’t match what Neko typically brings to the table. So this set is merely good.

And then to close out the festival:

De La Soul.

De La Soul is one of my all-time favorites period. My musical tastes are very much shaped by the tape of De La Soul Is Dead, recorded for me by one Martin Kester during freshman year of high school, that I listened to incessantly for about two years (I can still recite just about every lyric on that entire record.)

I’ve seen De La twice before. Both of those times they were pretty good.

This time, though, they were outstanding. They came out with tons of energy, very into what they were doing. They made the crowd move. They knew how to sound right in an outdoor setting. They knew how to not yell into their mics and say their rhymes. They knew how to play around with their songs, mixing things up. They knew to mix in the older songs with the newer songs. They were making each other laugh, in a way that was infectious.

They even brought out Prince Paul as a special guest.

They were on for an hour and a half. All 17,000 people or so that were in this park were dancing, moving, waving their hands, getting their damn hands up, singing along to the choruses. De La has been doing this almost 20 years, and their experience showed in their stage presence and showmanship. Though with the enthusiasm they had, you could be forgiven for mistaking them for younger men.

They could have gone on for another hour, and no one would have left.

I was pretty close to the front of the stage for this show, that now ranks as one of the best I’ve ever seen in my life. Lucky way to end an overall spectacular music weekend.


End musical interlude.