Daily Archives: August 10, 2008

2008, live, music, reviews

Pitchfork Music Festival Day 3

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This is finally it, the end of the festival that I wait all year to go to. Day three didn’t have nearly as many acts that I was excited about performing, which made it the perfect opportunity to check out the record tent and the Flatstock poster fair. I purchased the official pitchfork poster, by Chicago’s own print artist Jay Ryan.  I purchased the new Dirty Projectors album from the Permanent Records booth (they are a record store near my brothers apartment.

The weather for Day 3 was much better, not too hot but the sun did give me a pretty rad sunburn that I was able to showoff for days. It eventually turned into a beautiful farmers tan, which I am still sporting to this day. Anyway, these are the acts I took in on day 3, reviewed in the same, direct to the point, sans bullshit style that I reviewed day 2:

Times New Viking:  Rock. Good, I remember liking them at the time, but I don’t remember them now.

Dirty Projectors: Crazy harmonies, edgy singing, complex songs and guitar parts. Very cerebral. Loved it, my favorite from the weekend. I stood in awe watching them much the same way I stood in awe 2 years ago watching Liars perform.

Boris: Pure metal, loud aggressive and fun. Too bad they had to cut their set short because, apparently, they could not get the power that they required. “Not enough electric power” they said after the drummer jumped into the crowd, crowd-surfed and then they left the stage after about 30 minutes.

HEALTH: Good electronic set. Way better than Fuck Buttons, that’s for sure.

The Apples in Stereo: Great, poppy, retro-tastic set. I really like their songs and their live performance was tight.

King Khan and His Shrines: Zappa + Sun Ra + James Brown = awesome. We were in time to hear the end of his set, which included an army of people on stage, horns, keys, guitars, drums, backup singers etc. and King Khan performed a gospel song about cunnilingus.  He was very detailed.

Les Savy Fav: The most out of control set of the entire weekend. The lead singer walked through the audience, climbed atop everything on stage, had a camera with him so that we could see his point of view. Their set was great, entertaining and energetic. Said lead singer was seen running around the park all day, and the day before was giving out $2 haircuts to anyone that happened to pass by.

M. Ward: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz……..

Spiritualized: Tight set. Great guitar work, though I felt that the singer wasn’t really making an effort to connect with the audience. The rhythm section and backing singers were fantastic though.

Dinosaur Jr.: I find Dinosaur Jr. really kind of droll. What I did like was the fact that J. Mascis was surrounded by Marshall stacks while he played, and hearing that song that I knew was great, the one with the dudes playing golf around NYC, riding their golf carts all around the city, yeah that one.

I was standing by the other stage Jockying for position for the Spoon set.Spoon: I’m glad that I get to see these guys again. The last time I saw them was at the 2006 Pitchfork Festival, which followed the release of their album “Gimme Fiction” which I am not a big fan of. I thought it was funny that back then the only song of theirs that I knew was “Small Stakes” and now I know all their stuff. They opened their set this year with the song “Small Stakes” and I laughed to myself. Their set was really good and they played a lot of my favorite songs and I was really looking forward to them, the lame thing was the audience.

The audience up front during the Spoon set just stood their, seemingly dazed for their entire set. It was infuriating to me. I was jumping up and down, singing along and really getting into it, but after a time I felt awkward and self-conscious and I stopped and just stood and watched like the rest of them. Attention: concert goers….it’s loud, it’s outside, it’s a rock concert, get animated, move around! Get into the music! Don’t just stand there!

All in all it was a great festival, as usual. I always have a good time at the Pitchfork Music Festival. As before I have included some videos below from that day. I didn’t take too many, my camera has been giving me problems, the battery won’t last long enough to take tons of video anymore.

2008, live, music

Pitchfork Music Festival Day 2

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The weather for the 2nd day of the festival did not start off by looking very promising at all. It looked as if it was going to rain forever and not stop. The thought of spending an entire day soaking wet, probably cold and miserable around a bunch of muddy people was not exactly the most intriguing thing in the world to me, but I was willing to go through with it if it meant that I would get to spend the entire day discovering new music. I had made peace with the fact that sometimes perfect weather just isn’t in the cards.

Now, it is impossible to see all of the performances at Pitchfork, the way that the schedule is set up the Aluminum and Connector stages alternate back and forth all day but the Balance stage is off on the other side of the park and the sets run in syncopation with the other two. So if you wanted to catch anything on the Balance stage (reserved mostly for more electronic acts like Atlas Sound, Fuck Buttons etc. and “less popular” acts like King Kahn and his Shrines) chances are you would have to skip out on some or all of a full performance on one of the main stages.  I did try my best to catch as much as possible. I would now like to sum up my Day 2 experience in as few words as possible. I joked with my brother that I would write “one word” reviews. They won’t be one word, but I am going to boil down my thoughts as simply as possible for each of the bands that I saw this day.

Titus Andronicus: Loud. Many guitars, a lot of noise and lots of energy. It was raining when they played but they didn’t care, and because of that neither did I. I’m keeping my eye on them.

A Hawk and a Handsaw: I actually missed them, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to see them, it was because I was going to be seeing them the next week at the Calgary Folk Fest. I loved them. More on that when I blog about the Calgary Folk Fest in the next couple of days.

Jay Reatard: Punk energy. Numbskull Flying V-guitars and a lot of atitude. Good for a half hour set. Too much schtick, not enough substance. Using metal/glam/punk gimmickry ala FUBAR as some sort of ironic statement. No thanks.

Caribou: When they played “Melody Day” the rain stopped and the sun was shining for the rest of the day. In other words I was standing there in awe and it was absolutely amazing.

Fuck Buttons: You know when you are young and you wander into a Radio Shack and play with everything they have? I was excited for them, and then after 10 minutes I realized they weren’t going to do anything and I left. Fuck Buttons? more like Suck Buttons. Fuck you, thanks for wasting my time, you fucking untalented assholes.

The Ruby Suns: Good songs, I liked them. Performance could have used a little bit more energy, and a bit more instruments being played live, less prerecorded sound. What’s the point of a live performance?

Vampire Weekend: Jimmy Buffet for 20-somethings.

!!!: Great set. They make  you dance. The most the crowd moved the entire weekend was during this set. The first sign of crowd-surfing. I love !!!.

The Hold Steady: Pretty straight forward punk rock with the edge cleaned up a little bit. I liked it. They were definitely all about getting the crowd going. Great polished set.

Atlas Sound: Moving. Ambient. Great.

Jarvis Cocker: He is so British you can hear his accent upon sight. Jarvis Cocker loves to fuck, as is evidenced by the three types of songs that he writes: songs about women he has fucked, songs about women he is fucking,  songs about women that he wishes he had taken the opportunity to fuck. All of these songs were great. Jarvis is a great showman.

Animal Collective: An amazing barrage of new material that held me and the rest of the audience transfixed for over an hour. The sound didn’t stop for their entire set, and I have never experienced an hour and a half go by so quickly. Amazing end to the day. I think Animal Collective should only ever play in the dark. It worked so well in an outdoor festival setting.

That’s my day 2 roundup. I hope you enjoyed it. You will notice the video player below, it contains my videos from this day. Featured in the videos are Titus Andronicus, Animal Collective, !!! and Jarvis Cocker. Tomorrow will wrap up the Pitchfork Festival, day 3.