Pitchfork Fest 2013

The last few storms, at least where I am, brought flooding and 70 mph gusts.

Thanks, Josh. I'm coming from Edmonton, where's it's been 22-26 and rainy over the last week.

i'm in tonight from angel olsen through bjork
already mentally trying to embrace the rain and it's not even 9am
maybe it will be a good night for howling banshees (and wire)

Seen Wire several times. Seen Newsom three times, Seen Bjork four or five. On the fence whether it's worth the potential hassle of extreme heat followed by thunderstorms. :(

Also, Newsom and Bjork is an almost perverse double-shot, bless 'em. They should duet. Wonder what Bjork's hot-weather wear looks like?

Or, a Zeena Parkins/Newsom duet!

i've seen all of these people (including you!) 0 times so what do i have to lose aside from some humidity

rustie is a child y/n?

He's 30.

Nothing on their YouTube channel yet. Will they show it, like last year?

yesterday was ok, but today tooooootally ruled
saw julia holter, parquet courts, little bit of merchandise (was kinda zzz), swans, breeders (who warmed up with "shocker in gloom town"), low (who ended with rihanna's "stay"!!!!!), a little andy stott and then danced my feet raw in the rain with belle & sebastian and it was 100% bananas awesome fun.
good day! i even had decent food and met nice people.

i guess the jury's out on tomorrow until i figure out if i will ever be able to move my legs again.

You didn't see Savages? That's what I was bummed to miss. I'm in Philly :(

I did! They were great! I wasn't up close for them though -- I mostly heard from a little further away than the rest. The singer seems like a very intense person. I think "Fuckers" was my favorite. I didn't know much about them before, but I'm more interested now that I've seen them.

them = Savages (not fuckers)

who ended with rihanna's "stay"!!!!!

omg can't believe I missed that; I cut out to see Solange

Ok so now that it's all over, Friday was completely snoozy in retrospect. I saw so many great performances in the last two days that I don't really miss not-meeting any of y'all* (though n/a and jaymc and je55e and i hung out of course.) i made several completely new friends, including a young man who called himself Burger. I also met someone who analyzes data and creates the graphics for the census materials that go out to educators, among other people, (which I have received) to make sure people understand the purpose of the census. Apparently if you want information/data analysis about demographics, all you have to do is call the census office?! What? I also met a mathematics professor and we dished about teaching, which was fun.

No one puked on me, R Kelly was fantastic, YLT played my favorite YLT song, and Killer Mike shouted out to Ameena Matthews which was super cool and I took every opportunity to ask the people I was talking to if they knew who she was and no one did. I then proceeded to talk their ears off about it and that was met with varying degrees of interest.

Now I'm at home and discovering that I really hurt my neck when that gross kid and security guy splashed into me during the El-P set. You can clean off the mud, but the pain lasts a while apparently. hooray for pfork 2013. zzzzzzz

*alfred i am 80% sure that i saw you waiting for an ashland bus around 2:15 this afternoon? if you saw someone staring at you from a white car, that was me :)

Gaga was there, hangin'.

I think.

lol that was me, actually, waiting for a taxi and impatient to get to Killer Mike (whom I saw anyway). Notes:

The sound problems helped MIA, who concentrated on sloganeering and fabulous beats.

Awful: Sky Ferreira, Lil B

Boring: Savages

Good: Breeders, Waxahatchee, Wire, Ryan Hemsworth, R Kells, Phosphorescent (a surprise), Solange

Excellent: Chairlift, Killer Mike, Parquet Courts

Parquet Courts

Anecdotally the biggest beneficiary of the weekend.

Based on Sky Ferreira's performance, I'm excited to hear the album she's working on. (I already like a couple of her singles.) But her youth and inexperience showed a little too much in that performance.

And I missed "Blue Line Swinger" for it! Bah.

btw I'd a loved to meet up with some of you but phone service was mediocre to terrible for me; a couple times I shut it off to conserve battery.

i skipped sunday, highlights for me were pissed jeans, bjork, parquet courts, and breeders. woods and mac demarco were the most positive surprises.

it was weird how quiet joanna newsom was, usually you can hear the musician on one main stage while you're standing at the other main stage but i couldn't hear her at all. i know she's quiet but it seemed quieter than it should have been, even when she was playing piano. i wonder what was going on there.

did anyone get there early enough on sunday to see tree? i saw on instagram that he played with a live drummer.

Oh phone service was terrible! I gave up yesterday even though somehow I managed to send jaymc 2 crucial texts -- good thing I wasn't trying to do anything else. I didn't even take any pictures, was so busy dancing and having fun. I said it about 500x yesterday, but I had a surprisingly good time all weekend. Also, Killer Mike is my new favorite person.

Blue Line Swinger was amazing, and I'm rill sorry you missed it for silly Sky Ferreira, who I think is totally putting on that boohoo baby act. Sadly, YLT/BLS was transcendent.

i missed tree -- wanted to see him but couldn't make it there in time. i did see him walking around though! i also saw a kid in a tree tshirt.

I saw Newsom from the side of the stage and yeah she was pretty quiet

I saw her too and it was duuuuuuuuull and quiet. Not sure if that's what was asked of her, but some people appeared to enjoy it. I was not one of them. Friday was kinda bleh for me, but that's ok. I feel like I got my $ worth (even though that list of prices upthread makes me a bit wistful).

Bjork was good if a bit tentative in the "hits" portion of her set. Loved that she did "Sun in My Mouth."

Excellent: Chairlift, Killer Mike, Parquet Courts

How was the sound for you at Chairlift? From where I was, it was excruciating. If your set is going to be 70% prerecorded, you at least need to get the mix right.

They had some sound issues for the first couple of songs, but it seemed to worked itself out after? I was fairly close to the stage, on the left side.

Also, Joanna Newsom sounded fine, volume-wise, but again: I was near the front. I liked the performance well enough, but I can't imagine anyone who wasn't already into her would've been converted by it.

Chairlift frontperson wore a lovely lime-green pantsuit.

Every year I hope they'll open up that area around the blue stage so the crowd doesn't get so bottle necked. I guess it's not gonna happen.

i like the woodsy intimacy of it -- it was perfect for low and julia holter imo. i think they just underestimated the interest in some of the acts that were booked back there.

Chairlift outgrew it imo

oh dear

The very mundanity of Kelly’s performance leads to my second, sadder conclusion about his presence at Pitchfork: That the formerly Chicago-, now Brooklyn-based brains and businessmen behind the festival and the Webzine, Ryan Schreiber and Chris Kaskie, just don’t think that the music we embrace means anything at all in the real world. It’s just a cool, digitally stored backing track for your oh-so-hip and groovy lifestyle at home, and every bit the ideal tool in concert for marketing and money-making that we see at the festival’s larger corporate cousin, Lollapalooza.

Why talk about ruined lives? It just brings the party down. But this lack of soul or conscience wasn’t always the case at Pitchfork.

Perhaps it’s just the nature of the Old Country Buffet smorgasbord model that as a festival becomes increasingly successful, well-established, and ever more commercialized, the ethos upon which it was founded becomes increasingly obscure. The greater meaning, if ever there was one, slips further and further away. Any role that the fest had in both reflecting and stimulating a musical community inevitably erodes. And everything is reduced to mere entertainment.

http://www.wbez.org/blogs/jim-derogatis/2013-07/pitchfork-2013-here-we-are-now-entertain-us-108129

what? that's horseshit.

I'd actually love to see more analysis of how we got to the cultural moment in which R. Kelly is headlining Pitchfork Fest -- like, there are interesting stories about the evolution of Pitchfork's brand, the values of the "indie community," etc. -- but DeRo's only interested in out-of-touch axe-grinding.

if i understand things correctly, someone delivered a tape of kelly abusing a child to dero's house. so i think he's got a right.

aw, I wish I'd gone to this! I was just kind of outdoor-ed out and not quite budget-ready for two weekends straight of travel

if i understand things correctly, someone delivered a tape of kelly abusing a child to dero's house. so i think he's got a right.

no one saying he hasn't got a right, but his prose and thinking are a lot of wrong

yeah, i won't complain, but nor do i want to read what he has to say about it anymore

agree
i don't really care what he (or anyone really) has to say about it anymore

"Only an idiot could deny that this year’s festival belonged to Savages."

Oh, well, hm.

Also I mean it's great that someone is critiquing misogyny but Jesus Christ there's a ton of indie bands out there that are just as bad. Why single out the rap and R&B performers? Why nothing on Solange or Sky Ferreira—is it because they're not operating in a guitar-bass-drums vein?

The small slights and "accidental" results of all-male hegemony that transpire in indie damaging to its culture as a whole, too. Good luck trying to get people who are convinced they're doing something revolutionary by liking Savages or White Lung (and pointing out that HEY LOOK WOMEN!! OMG!!) to notice that.

Savages is like the neo-rockist trifecta: female, play instruments, sound like bands from back when music was "better."

I had friends who kept talking up Savages, for a couple weeks in advance. "We really want to see Savages," etc. So during Savages set I follow them out into the crowd to watch and they just keep walking, toward some other stage, right past and away from Savages. I call them back and ask, have you even heard Savages? "Well, just a few seconds," they admitted.

as usual, maura is otm. there's always something subtly disrespectful about someone going out of their way to tell me how much they respect me and these other people don't -- it's just suspect behavior, in general. it's like when someone talks about how much they love their partner loudly and frequently -- there's nothing wrong with what they're saying, but what would make someone feel the need to say that so much and so often?

i was disappointed in gira when he said "how about those lady savages?" from the red stage after they (savages) had played on the green stage.

Really?

There’s no difference; it’s all just show biz. Pay your money, get your kicks, enjoy the tunes, or just wait until the next set starts in 20 minutes.

is he talking about the Beatles at the Star Club in Hamberg?

I was going to say, that's just a description of any venue that has multiple bands on a night or any music festival.

Look at these fucking hipsters:
http://www.claytonhauck.com/blog/2013/pitchfork/9.jpg

is there a good place to look for crowd pics (aside from google obvs)? i saw someone official looking with a big-lensed camera and it was pointed right at me and i'm juuuust vain enough to think that it will show up somewhere.

I saw slideshows at Pitchfork, Time Out Chicago, and Chicago Magazine.

Photo I posted was from this gallery, though I didn't see you in any of them.

yeah i guess you would have told me if you had seen me :-/
nm

vanity checked

Lots of style here:
http://www.tresawesome.com/search/label/Pitchfork%20Music%20Festival%202013

and
http://www.chicagostreetstyle.com/

I usually root around on flickr and the like

i'm 100% sure it was not a style photo, i just remember turning my head and seeing someone pointing a huge camera at me and trying to pretend like i didn't notice.

http://www.spin.com/sites/all/files/styles/style620_413/public/130722-Pitchfork-Fest-1.jpg

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/img/tg/chicago/music/pitchfork-day-3-july-21_ah/9-yolatengo/yo-la-tengo-15.jpg

the 'pee on me' guy is under a tree so obv way too far away from the stage for r kelly to see him, let alone pee on him

good to know those types are still making their signs and going to music festivals

his bitch is an ant on the ground! that's kinda cute.

x-post

yeah also it wasn't light out when r. kelly was playing, so

This year's Reader cover

http://www.chicagoreader.com/binary/bb78/ReaderP4K-2014.jpg

I thought there was a 2014 fest thread but I guess not?