south of the loop

Pitchfork Music Festival tickets … $30

16 liters of water … $22

Thousands of ironic hipster t-shirts … priceless.

* * *

I’m not sure I’m up to the task of a full-fledged Pitchfork Music Festival review, especially with Lollapalooza a mere 72 hours ahead. The last few days have been particularly exhausting, so I have only a few notes for now; Brendan has pledged to contribute toward a review, so hopefully these pages will soon feature a guest blogger with more thoughtful and exciting commentary than what I can provide right now.

Pitchfork was exactly what I had hoped for: cheap and relaxed with lots of good tunes. The park was set up with two large stages that were relatively close to each other; the festival alternated between the stages with only no more than 10 or 15 minutes between sets. Getting from one set to the next was no more taxing than pointing our feet (or in Brendan’s case, his checkerboard slip-ons) in a different direction. I didn’t love all the music I heard, but I discovered enough new bands to keep me happy for awhile: Art Brut, The Futureheads, Silver Jews, CSS, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, Os Mutantes. Silver Jews performed the last set on Saturday evening, and poet-turned-musician David Berman proved himself as funny as he is tortured: “This is probably the most musically-educated crowd I’ve ever played to. A lot of you have bands, and in a few years, you’re gonna take ‘em to the road. And when you do? Leave the Brian Wilson at home.” Not a Beach Boys fan, it seems.

Spoon delivered the penultimate set of the weekend, a fantastic and tight hour of music with nary a wasted note. And only Os Mutantes could follow: a little rough around the edges, but as one of them said, “it’s been 30 years!” The Reader aptly describes Os Mutantes as “the rock n’ roll arm of tropicalia… at their best they transcended genres.” And how! They had a blast on stage, shaking tambourines, dancing, throwing together psychedelia, samba, and rock n’ roll. The arrangements were in some places so tangled and complicated I wondered if they could come out of it, but unlike Silver Jews, they didn’t stay trapped in the song.

The best non-musical part of the weekend was finding ourselves at the pearly gates of hipster heaven. Aside from the requisite The Smiths t-shirts and nods to ’80s fashion (if I had pulled out my old gym shorts, I would have fit right in), we were awash in a sea of ironic tees. From the thrift store finds (“Help prevent Gringo food!” advertising a Mexican restaurant) to the hand-made, the park was saturated. Brendan and I made a list of nearly 70; we had originally planned to cull them into a Top 25 list, but I think the list itself is so impressive that it must be reproduced in its entirety. Stay tuned.

Here’s a t-shirt teaser for you; this guy summed it up with a handmade number that recalls Pitchfork’s rating system:

Well put.

* * *

current book: Stuart Dybek’s I Sailed With Magellan. The writing is lovely, almost too lovely. The descriptions are so rich and beautiful that it interrupts the narrative pace.

current music: CSS’ “Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death from Above.” CSS, a wildly energetic Brazilian dance-punk-pop outfit, turned out to be the sleeper hit of the whole festival.

current socks: No way. It’s hot as balls outside (read: like Texas in late Spring).

Posted 1 August 2006

Filed under: chicago, music by admin2

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