Pitchfork Music Festival 2006:
My Take on Day One.
Day Two's recap is below this one.
Before this weekend, I possessed a rather intense dislike for festival shows. The last one I attended (not including the smallish Desdemona) was the Beale Street Music Festival in Memphis five years ago, where a combination of intense heat, lots of alcohol and the ubiquity of about 100,000 people in all directions caused me to have a small panic attack on the third day during Willie Nelson’s set. What started there as health-related pragmatism gradually turned into general festival antipathy, though, and if Pitchfork wouldn’t have been so cheap (thirty bucks for two full days), I probably wouldn’t have ended up going at all. And that would have been a shame, because the organizers can claim to have put together one of the most progressive, artist and patron-friendly, decidedly mature festivals I’ve ever attended. The first few Lollapaloozas still hold the all-time festival crown due to the fact that I was 15 or 16 and in quasi-religious awe, but Pitchfork, in its first year on its own, put on a pretty perfect event.
The music setup was a model of efficiency, with two main stages and one on the side where the electronic people and the non-Mutante Brazilians played. While one band was playing on one main stage, another was setting up on the other, so there was seldom a large gap between performers, and those on blankets or in camping chairs could just turn 90 degrees. This also resulted in more than a few occasions when one band would be in the middle of its set, and half of the crowd was standing at the other empty stage, getting good spots for the next set while trying to watch the current band from across the park. The only option-weighing I had to do was the occasional small-tent vs. big stage conundrum, but those taste-lines were pretty much drawn for most---for instance, most people probably didn't have too much trouble deciding between CSS and The National. As an aside, perhaps the best and definitely the most surprising thing was that the food and beverages were pretty good and really cheap, especially bottled water, which was only a measly buck per bottle.
Pitchfork capped each day’s attendance at about 15 grand, so there were enough people present to make it a huge-seeming event, but not too many to make it an unwieldy mini-city. It seemed like every fourth person was looking for his or her group, and there were plenty of people holding water bottles and occasionally umbrellas (above) in the air as beacons. Day one was pushing 100 degrees with severe humidity, and that led guys who would never do so under normal circumstances to shed their shirts and bare their pale, pec-less white chests, and others to don the apparently hip but often very unpleasant summerwear trend of too-small trackwear (below). There were also a surprising amount of sweaty, shirtless guys who looked like the drummer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers for balance.
We arrived at the festival right as Man Man was going onstage. My silent self-flagellation (in an amazing feat of stupidity, I managed to forget my cell phone, pen and paper and recently fixed digital camera), coupled with my desire to get used to my surroundings meant I stayed back and sort of watched them from afar. They were hilarious and entertaining with all their warpaint, white clothes and boundless energy, not to mention stunts with firecrackers and kitchenware. And they played the irresistable “Black Mission Goggles” (mp3), which was all I really needed from them.
Mountain Goats was the first show I actually watched, still from afar. John Darnielle, who I've never seen live before, was in fine form, almost giddy at times. Despite its size, he knew how to play to this particular crowd, opening each song with an extended, light-hearted spoken intro jam-packed with self-deprecating irony. He preceded one song with an extended caveat on pogoing during it—it’s a long song, he warned, so if you’re going to start pogoing, be prepared to take it all the way. He later started introducing another song (sorry, I don't know my Goats songs too well), then abruptly and with great comic precision stopped for a minute and took a drink of beer, then returned to the mic and said with all due hipster sarcasm, “this was on my first 7-inch,” no doubt aware that there were hundreds of dudes in the crowd who had said the exact same thing at some point in their lives. He also appropriately played “Cubs in Five,” which he apparently never does anymore since it gained a life of its own as a drunken Midwestern frat-ode to athletic mediocrity.
Destroyer was the first half of the mid-Saturday "meta-band" portion of the festival, to be complemented directly afterward by Art Brut. The band was in fine form and Bejar was animated and fervent in his delivery, taking special pride in lyric-ending falsetto melisma. The songs he played from Rubies were especially good, notably the Band-meets-Aladdin Sane nostalgia of “European Oils” (mp3), which rode the thick, wet air of the afternoon and flitted around my head like the birds from cartoons. We were eagerly anticipating some sort of unifying gesture during the unifying gesture part of the song where he says “the fucking maniac!”, but were spurned when he backed away from the mic, leaving pockets of the crowd to belt it out somewhat audibly.
Whenever I first heard of Art Brut, probably late last year, I liked them fine, but for whatever reason was not curious enough to dig into the record. I liked “Rusted Guns of Milan” and “Formed A Band,” but the full-length ended up as one of those that just sat on the rack forever. Well, like a week ago, coincidentally enough, their promo company sent me the CD (that US/European dual wave of staggered release dates in full effect here), and I finally sat (drove) with it and I sort of fell in love with it. But not anywhere near the extent of the love I have for the band and Eddie Argos after seeing them perform Saturday afternoon. We were pretty far away, but the charm and ease with which Argos manipulated, humored, and mesmerized the crowd was readily apparent. He’s a hell of a performer, all right, but not just in the sweat-soaked maniac guise, but also along the lines of a tireless emcee never at a loss for a quip and never leaving a spare second between the end of a song and the beginning of the introduction to the next one. He was frank in discussing his sexual history in all of its adolescent awkardness, he repped the Polish barber (in Chicago) who gave him his “Britpop” haircut, and goofed to the p2p-savvy cover-craving crowd about performing a version of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” for the only time ever, which of course didn’t happen (or it'd totally be here). But most impressively, at the end of “Formed A Band,” at the “eight weeks in a row on Top of the Pops” part, he started riffing on almost every other band who’d played that day, inserting their name in the place of “eight weeks in a row.” It was deferential, communal, and perfectly delivered. If you don’t have their CD, you need to buy it now, and if you get a chance to see them, do it and you’re guaranteed to like them.
Matmos put on the best set of day one, playing to a jam-packed overflowing crowd of Drew Daniel acolytes in the small, oven-like Biz3 tent. We started at the back of the crowd as the band was twisting and transforming Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” (which by title alone should be the perfect song for the festival, I guess), but worked our way up during the set because it felt like what needed to be done; I needed to be closer to what was going on. Daniel was partially silhouetted and rose above the crowd, his body hunched over an iBook and whatever other contraptions I couldn’t see, bobbing in lockstep to the irresistable bubbling rhythm-goo he was making. At one point, as a song was fading out, Daniel abruptly cued a loud hiss of white noise through the speakers that stayed in the tent for what seemed like minutes. I swear it felt like a fan blowing cool air on me. The tent was amazingly hot, trapping the 95 degree heat outside with that of the hundreds of undulating bodies inside like a massive convection oven, but it only accentuated the pulsating, highly sexualized buzz in the air. They closed the set with the gorgeous highlight of the new record, “Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan,” and accordingly received an extended, rapturous applause.
I pretty much hung loose during the Walkmen and the Futureheads, both of whom I’ve seen before. I was anxious for the Silver Jews. None of the gang I came with were familiar with them, but the fact that they were the day one headliners no doubt gave them cause to suspect they were something pretty great. Judging by what I overheard walking around both days, I think that sentiment could probably be applied to about 30-40 percent of the festival-goers (The Jews were a headline replacement for Sleater-Kinney, originally pegged to close but who took Lollapalooza dough instead). They were also no doubt added to the lineup solely on their impeccable indie-credibility and not their reputation as a live band, which they’ve only been for less than a year now. I saw the Jews back in April in a small venue and they sounded great, but in a big field in front of thousands of fans they sounded, frankly, horrible. I had high hopes when they opened with “Punks in the Beerlight,” in theory a perfect bit of loudness to gain the crowd’s attention and never relinquish it. But once David Berman started singing, it became clear that he was soundly over-matched by the event's size. His voice was recessed in the mix like a Parliament cigarette filter, just barely audible because he has no earthly idea how to project it out to a huge crowd like the one he was faced with. I found myself feeling sorry for him as he bravely played stone-classics like “Smith and Jones Forever” (mp3) and the exquisite metropolitan alchemy “Dallas,” both of which sound great in my living room, but were lost on those Saturday night who weren't already fans. I heard from someone who may be in the know that Pitchfork planned the Jews last specifically because they wanted to give people the opportunity to leave for the night, and not have to wait through them for another band. It sounds plausible and practical enough, but I still feel sorry for David Berman, who should never, regardless of how much money he's offered, put himself in the position to misrepresent his music like that.
The music setup was a model of efficiency, with two main stages and one on the side where the electronic people and the non-Mutante Brazilians played. While one band was playing on one main stage, another was setting up on the other, so there was seldom a large gap between performers, and those on blankets or in camping chairs could just turn 90 degrees. This also resulted in more than a few occasions when one band would be in the middle of its set, and half of the crowd was standing at the other empty stage, getting good spots for the next set while trying to watch the current band from across the park. The only option-weighing I had to do was the occasional small-tent vs. big stage conundrum, but those taste-lines were pretty much drawn for most---for instance, most people probably didn't have too much trouble deciding between CSS and The National. As an aside, perhaps the best and definitely the most surprising thing was that the food and beverages were pretty good and really cheap, especially bottled water, which was only a measly buck per bottle.
Pitchfork capped each day’s attendance at about 15 grand, so there were enough people present to make it a huge-seeming event, but not too many to make it an unwieldy mini-city. It seemed like every fourth person was looking for his or her group, and there were plenty of people holding water bottles and occasionally umbrellas (above) in the air as beacons. Day one was pushing 100 degrees with severe humidity, and that led guys who would never do so under normal circumstances to shed their shirts and bare their pale, pec-less white chests, and others to don the apparently hip but often very unpleasant summerwear trend of too-small trackwear (below). There were also a surprising amount of sweaty, shirtless guys who looked like the drummer from the Red Hot Chili Peppers for balance.
We arrived at the festival right as Man Man was going onstage. My silent self-flagellation (in an amazing feat of stupidity, I managed to forget my cell phone, pen and paper and recently fixed digital camera), coupled with my desire to get used to my surroundings meant I stayed back and sort of watched them from afar. They were hilarious and entertaining with all their warpaint, white clothes and boundless energy, not to mention stunts with firecrackers and kitchenware. And they played the irresistable “Black Mission Goggles” (mp3), which was all I really needed from them.
Mountain Goats was the first show I actually watched, still from afar. John Darnielle, who I've never seen live before, was in fine form, almost giddy at times. Despite its size, he knew how to play to this particular crowd, opening each song with an extended, light-hearted spoken intro jam-packed with self-deprecating irony. He preceded one song with an extended caveat on pogoing during it—it’s a long song, he warned, so if you’re going to start pogoing, be prepared to take it all the way. He later started introducing another song (sorry, I don't know my Goats songs too well), then abruptly and with great comic precision stopped for a minute and took a drink of beer, then returned to the mic and said with all due hipster sarcasm, “this was on my first 7-inch,” no doubt aware that there were hundreds of dudes in the crowd who had said the exact same thing at some point in their lives. He also appropriately played “Cubs in Five,” which he apparently never does anymore since it gained a life of its own as a drunken Midwestern frat-ode to athletic mediocrity.
Destroyer was the first half of the mid-Saturday "meta-band" portion of the festival, to be complemented directly afterward by Art Brut. The band was in fine form and Bejar was animated and fervent in his delivery, taking special pride in lyric-ending falsetto melisma. The songs he played from Rubies were especially good, notably the Band-meets-Aladdin Sane nostalgia of “European Oils” (mp3), which rode the thick, wet air of the afternoon and flitted around my head like the birds from cartoons. We were eagerly anticipating some sort of unifying gesture during the unifying gesture part of the song where he says “the fucking maniac!”, but were spurned when he backed away from the mic, leaving pockets of the crowd to belt it out somewhat audibly.
Whenever I first heard of Art Brut, probably late last year, I liked them fine, but for whatever reason was not curious enough to dig into the record. I liked “Rusted Guns of Milan” and “Formed A Band,” but the full-length ended up as one of those that just sat on the rack forever. Well, like a week ago, coincidentally enough, their promo company sent me the CD (that US/European dual wave of staggered release dates in full effect here), and I finally sat (drove) with it and I sort of fell in love with it. But not anywhere near the extent of the love I have for the band and Eddie Argos after seeing them perform Saturday afternoon. We were pretty far away, but the charm and ease with which Argos manipulated, humored, and mesmerized the crowd was readily apparent. He’s a hell of a performer, all right, but not just in the sweat-soaked maniac guise, but also along the lines of a tireless emcee never at a loss for a quip and never leaving a spare second between the end of a song and the beginning of the introduction to the next one. He was frank in discussing his sexual history in all of its adolescent awkardness, he repped the Polish barber (in Chicago) who gave him his “Britpop” haircut, and goofed to the p2p-savvy cover-craving crowd about performing a version of Kim Wilde’s “Kids in America” for the only time ever, which of course didn’t happen (or it'd totally be here). But most impressively, at the end of “Formed A Band,” at the “eight weeks in a row on Top of the Pops” part, he started riffing on almost every other band who’d played that day, inserting their name in the place of “eight weeks in a row.” It was deferential, communal, and perfectly delivered. If you don’t have their CD, you need to buy it now, and if you get a chance to see them, do it and you’re guaranteed to like them.
Matmos put on the best set of day one, playing to a jam-packed overflowing crowd of Drew Daniel acolytes in the small, oven-like Biz3 tent. We started at the back of the crowd as the band was twisting and transforming Chicago’s “Saturday in the Park” (which by title alone should be the perfect song for the festival, I guess), but worked our way up during the set because it felt like what needed to be done; I needed to be closer to what was going on. Daniel was partially silhouetted and rose above the crowd, his body hunched over an iBook and whatever other contraptions I couldn’t see, bobbing in lockstep to the irresistable bubbling rhythm-goo he was making. At one point, as a song was fading out, Daniel abruptly cued a loud hiss of white noise through the speakers that stayed in the tent for what seemed like minutes. I swear it felt like a fan blowing cool air on me. The tent was amazingly hot, trapping the 95 degree heat outside with that of the hundreds of undulating bodies inside like a massive convection oven, but it only accentuated the pulsating, highly sexualized buzz in the air. They closed the set with the gorgeous highlight of the new record, “Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan,” and accordingly received an extended, rapturous applause.
I pretty much hung loose during the Walkmen and the Futureheads, both of whom I’ve seen before. I was anxious for the Silver Jews. None of the gang I came with were familiar with them, but the fact that they were the day one headliners no doubt gave them cause to suspect they were something pretty great. Judging by what I overheard walking around both days, I think that sentiment could probably be applied to about 30-40 percent of the festival-goers (The Jews were a headline replacement for Sleater-Kinney, originally pegged to close but who took Lollapalooza dough instead). They were also no doubt added to the lineup solely on their impeccable indie-credibility and not their reputation as a live band, which they’ve only been for less than a year now. I saw the Jews back in April in a small venue and they sounded great, but in a big field in front of thousands of fans they sounded, frankly, horrible. I had high hopes when they opened with “Punks in the Beerlight,” in theory a perfect bit of loudness to gain the crowd’s attention and never relinquish it. But once David Berman started singing, it became clear that he was soundly over-matched by the event's size. His voice was recessed in the mix like a Parliament cigarette filter, just barely audible because he has no earthly idea how to project it out to a huge crowd like the one he was faced with. I found myself feeling sorry for him as he bravely played stone-classics like “Smith and Jones Forever” (mp3) and the exquisite metropolitan alchemy “Dallas,” both of which sound great in my living room, but were lost on those Saturday night who weren't already fans. I heard from someone who may be in the know that Pitchfork planned the Jews last specifically because they wanted to give people the opportunity to leave for the night, and not have to wait through them for another band. It sounds plausible and practical enough, but I still feel sorry for David Berman, who should never, regardless of how much money he's offered, put himself in the position to misrepresent his music like that.
Labels: concert
posted by marathonpacks at 6:52 AM
5 Comments:
First comment (as always)...
Just thought I would mention that out of the other 50,000 blog posts on the Pitchfork festival this is the only review that I have read and will read.
And as usual I needed my trusty dictionary by my side because everytime I read a marathonpacks post I learn new words. The one that stumped me the most was melisma (kind of sounds like a girl I used to date) but now I know what it means so "it's all good" (as the indie kids would say)...
Man Man was so good!
I missed Matmos, but heard from everyone they were great.
Art Brut was fun.
Very good posts, eric - thanks.
i totally agree with you about the jews. i was psyched to see them but they were just lost out there. no doubt that berman would fare much better in a dingy barroom.
Your wealth of words never ceases to amaze me. As always, it was great seeing you. My favorites of the weekend: Spank Rock, The National, Band of Horses, Glenn Kotche and Spank Rock. Did I say Spank Rock?
"Shake it till my dick turns racist!"
That's the jam, y'all!
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