Pitchfork Music Festival 2009: Sunday, Part 1

As is the pervading theme of these little festival reports…

I can confirm: 2009’s Pitchfork Music Festival occurred.

If you do not believe my accounts, I have also embedded photos which not only prove that the festival took place but also that I was in attendance.

Good.  *dusts self off*.  So.  What is the point of this post then?  To inform you of bands you’ve never heard of?  Possibly, but not likely as most Pitchfork bands get considerable coverage from the curator and the surrounding “blogosphere”.  Most other blogs are probably better resources than BemBang, less typos too.

So what’s left is the telling of my personal, limited experience of this year’s fest replete with ogling hulahoop girls, Port-a-Potty waits, obstructed sight lines, and the momentary feeling I had about how festivals, live music, and everyone around me actually sucks.  This occurred about two hours into my time at the fest but quickly subsided.  Nevertheless, I was determined to have a great time on Sunday, and hey guess what, I did.

Hello There! (photo stolen from Midwasteland)

On a highly superficial note, I was very disappointed by the style this year. I, myself, am NOT fashion-forward but I LOVE to see what people are sporting every year.  Pitchfork in the past has been a Mecca for trend-spotting as much as it’s been a music festival.  Maybe because it was rainy, I don’t know, but people were not dressed to impress — the spirit just wasn’t there this year, and I’m relieved I wasn’t the only one to feel this way.  I saw muted colors, I saw an abundance of flannel and just a smattering of the nu-grunge trend we all know is coming way too fast. I saw very little florescent hi-tops and other assorted b-boy nostalgia (thank god).  I saw plenty of diving v-necks like last year, high waisted jeans (no surprise there), tights-as-pants (psst, still not cool), and Wayfarers.  But what’s NEW!?  C’mon!  I could’ve guessed all that stuff and not even gone!

I digress.

First up.  The Thermals were awesome.  They rocked through a great set.  The mix, which can sometime be muddled and echo-y on Stage A was crisp with bassist (and part-time Summer Fun Girl) Kathy Foster bobbing and weaving along to the rhythm section while Hutch Harris’ powerchords pierced the overcast day.  Not sure how much of it was irony (and at this fest there’s plenty) but their covers of  Nirvana and Dookie-era Green Day were right-the-fuck-on, and very fun.

Next up – The Walkmen.  People love the Walkmen.  I want to love the Walkmen.  It didn’t take.  Something about their show just made me very impatient.  Maybe cuz my back was sore.  The Walkmen came in waves.  Hamilton Leithauser’s voice swellled and strained in an emotional crescendo during standout “Canadian Girl”, and the band dotted the show with a well-received brass section and wood block percussion, but they put on a more or less languid performance between highlights.

During one such lull I briefly wondered why I wasn’t enjoying myself.  I then began to doubt my own abilities to appreciate live music.  I feared I had reached that stage of jaded sagacity which professional music appreciators always feign to have.  The one where everything sounds like a derivative of something else, and every band sounded better when no one else had heard of them yet.  It was scary.  It was a brief crisis of conscious that I quickly recovered from because I needed to get a Goose Island before M83 started…

Pitchfork Music Festival 2009: An Obscured View

Looking over the crowd on a splendidly cool Sunday night at the 2009 Pitchfork Music Festival I’m both exhilarated and conflicted. Here, in a park in the middle of the midwest, are musicians from all over the globe performing to an equally diverse(ish) audience.  We gush over each other in a glorious cycle of  mutual admiration.

It’s a festival that’s curated for the particular, not the universal. It’s a fest for THIS weekend THIS year, and never to be carbon-copied and rebranded, C3-style, in as many DMA markets as possible this summer. It’s a great experience. Now… what to take a picture of?

Ahhh, music in the age of blogging — when everyone’s a journalist whether they have credentials or not, and when a festivalgoer’s camera is just as likely to point towards the crowd (or towards themselves) as it is to the band on stage. When it seems fans must decide what’s most important: being there, or showing others that you were there. Or further still… how close were you? Did you have an all-access lanyard? How much better was the food in the press tent than in the the park? What celebs were there? What secret show did you make it to and how little did you have to pay?

All these things are secondary to the actual festival, but as we’ve seen since the rise of “indie movies” in the 90s with the Sundance Film Festival (and now increasingly so at SXSW and Cochella music fests), the frills are what make the fest… the frosting is what makes the cake.  The cake was good this year. The frosting? Well, it looked good from where I was standing, but you’ll have to ask someone else.

Brian’s recap of Saturday here .

Brian’s recap of Sunday, Part 1 here.

Too good to be true? Sounds like it.

Brian sent me this invite to this Vice/Colt 45 party with Har Mar Superstar headlining at the Three of Clubs. It’s free, and it says open bar all night, but you have to RSVP here. He said, “Being on lists in other cities makes me sad.” Oh well. Tortoise is playing a ‘by-request’ setlist at the Pitchfork Music Festival tonight (not yet sold out! Omgz), so I don’t know if it sucks to be you or if it sucks to be me!