Pitchfork 2010 - Friday

I think this may be the first Friday of Pitchfork that I’ve ever attended. Leaving the wife and child at home because one of them doesn’t like Modest Mouse and one of them is already asleep. Can you guess which is which?

The Beer Line

I stand in line and purchase my beer tickets. Then I stand in a longer line to purchase beer. The line moves at a glacial pace. After about ten minutes I realize my phone is dying so I choose to stare at all the dirty feet in the vicinity. Man, there are a lot of dirty-footed people here.

Then I see the wristband on the guy in front of me. Turns out I need a wristband, but I can’t get one in this line. I need to get one from the previous beer ticket line. So I secure an uneasy agreement from the folks in front of me that they will pretend to know me when I come back to recut my way into line. We will high five, chortle about some old in-joke, reminisce over that one time that we ate a pound of raw cookie dough on a dare.

The nice Russian lady at the beer ticket line tells me that the wristbands have “disappeared.” Oh good. Nearly 15 minutes of waiting time, missing Broken Social Scene, and I am close to losing my spot in the beer line. I run to another beer ticket tent, weaving in and out of a gaggle of anorexic youths, find a wristband, run back, and barely wend my way back into line.

Two beers achieved. Half hour spent. A fair trade. It’s boiling hot and I need this.

Modest Mouse

They disappointed me back at Lolla 07, so I’m not sure what to expect, but they instantly win me over with a brilliant opening trifecta: Tiny Cities Made of Ashes, Here it Comes, and The Devil’s Workday. I am putty in Isaac Brock’s yowling, full-throated hands, if hands could yowl and have throats.

Brock has clearly been freebasing whiskey all day as he makes some of the most bizarre and wonderfully entertaining banter, from “Take half a breath. Half. Wither. Wilt. And buy some name brand water,” to “I thought if I bit this glow stick it would make my mouth glow but it was already broken and now my spit glows and my mouth tastes all chemically. These things glew, glow, gloweth,” to “Thanks to all the bands that graced the stage before us, no that sounds presumptuous, slur, slur, slur…”

Anyhow, MM sounds great. By the time they rip through a massive version of Dramamine and then Parting of the Sensory, all is right with the world.

My joke I made up that I'm pretty sure many other people have made up before me but I'm going to pretend is original

As I walk around looking at all the young, cool, young, skinny, young kids, I think "I need a hipster replacement."

Good, right? Never heard it before have you? Right. Awesome. Stay tuned for the report coming out of Saturday.