Pitchfork 2010 - Saturday

In preparation for Saturday's festival, I go to the beach and get a nice back sunburn.

Titus Andronicus

Great energy. Sloppy freewheeling rock. I learn more about the Civil War in an hour set than I did in high school. Apparently they said “f*ck” a lot back in the 1800s. Fourscore and seven f*ckin’ years ago, our f*ckfathers brought forth on this f*ckin’ incontinent a YOWL SCREAM GUITAR FEEDBACK trumpet tooooodle YOWL YOWL f*ck f*ck emancipation f*cklamation!

The lead singer shouts out libraries at the end of the set, which makes me happy because I married into the American Library Association. Let's hear it for libraries!

The Guy in the Turquoise Pleather Hightops

I wish I took a picture of this guy, but his awesomeness might have shattered the lens of my camera. His muskels are big, he has a large shoulder tattoo of Michael Jordan (I think) going in for a dunk from the perspective of the ceiling, several other seemingly unrelated tattoos, and those shoes, oh those shoes. These are the kind of shoes that deserve their own talk show.

The Sun

The sun buys a ticket and brings her friends Humidity, Red Face, and Sweaty Ball Syndrome.

How I Offset My Age With an Obscure T-shirt

Some girl recognizes my Enfield Tennis Academy shirt from Infinite Jest. (Second year in a row! Pitchfork is clearly the right demo for literary in-jokes). She asks me “Did you do that on purpose?” “Yes,” I say. “It’s from Wuthering Heights.”

Raekwon

Sound problems apparently delay 'Kwon’s set, but I wouldn’t know as I am devouring a vegan burger and pretzel with beer cheese. The pretzel tastes better than rap. The vegan burger tastes better than crap.

The Merch Booth

If you ever need a stuffed mustache, attend next year’s Pitchfork.

John Spencer Blues Explosion

The only reason I endure this set is to get a good spot for Wolf Parade. From what I can tell it consists of the frontman, John Something, I forget his last name, yelling over and over “Blues Explosion!!” I entertain myself by imagining him saying “Blues Clues Explosion!!” and then leading the whole park of hipsters in a spirited game of patty cake.

Wolf Parade

When I last saw Wolf Parade it was New Years Eve ’06 or so at the Viaduct Theater where they played every song in doubletime and I spent the better part of the set standing in line to pee while douchebags yelled at each other to “piss faster.” Awesome time, really.

Thankfully, they bust out of the gates with Cloud Shadow On the Mountain, transition to The Grey Estates and roll into Dear Sons and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts, essentially rolling backwards through their discography with an energy and confidence I’m not quite expecting.

The sun beats down on my neck, scorches everything in its path, which means these guys are playing right into the sun. And my only regret for the whole damn, beautiful set is that they don’t take advantage of this and rip out You Are a Runner and I Am My Father’s Son, screaming out “Won’t make it through the high noon sun…”

Which we don’t. Halfway through the set we retreat to shadier pastures. As soon as we set up camp, Wolf Parade launches into I’ll Believe in Anything, easily one of my favorite songs EVER. If you haven’t heard it, buy it from iTunes. If you don’t like it, let me know and I will refund your 99 cents via a personalized haiku that is worth at least twice that.

Panda Bear

Hey everybody. Panda Bear is next! His album Person Pitch was #2 on my top albums list from ’07. This is going to be so great. No seriously, I know you don’t like Animal Collective, but wait. This is like Brian Wilson caught in reverb loopy land. Just wait until he plays Comfy in Nautica. Dude. Woo! Panda Bear! Here he comes. Okay get ready!

Okay, okay, no problem, this first part he’s just warming up. He’s building to something, okay? Yeah, I know it’s just a drone moving to another drone. Yeah, sure he’s screaming occasionally, that’s fine. No problem, he’s got a master plan. Just wait.

Just… wait.

No there will be some drum loops soon. I’m pretty sure.

Why are you looking at me like that? Look at the video screen. See there’s some trippy stuff going on. That dude is repeatedly punching a fish, that’s pretty cool, right? And that couple doing it on the roller coaster is from that one exploitation flick. Neat. No, the music will start soon. It will.

It will. I will it to. I will Panda Bear to not make me look like such an ass for talking him up. Here I am willing. I’m willing. Oh forget it.

I’m going to get some beer.

LCD Soundsystem

James Murphy washes the bad taste of Panda Bear off my brain immediately with Us V Them. I am pleased with his disco ball. I am pleased that he is quite possibly older than me. I am pleased with All My Friends. I am pleased to leave early to beat the mad crush of people all trying to board the same damn bus at the same time.

I’ll catch the whole set on your next tour, LCD! Wait, what? You’re breaking up? I… but… Aw fuck it, I’m catching the bus.

The Bus

Lainie and I have a spirited debate over whether or not jean jams and jorts are synonymous. I propose that all jean jams are jorts, but not all jorts are jean jams. She proclaims that jean jams are not jorts. They are too specific, too close to the knee. We wind up having a terrible fight and I haven’t spoken to her since.

Lainie, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry we fought about jorts.

Stay tuned for Sunday’s Pitchfork review by special guest columnist, Mazlin!

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.

Read 'em and weep

As far as fiction goes I tend to fall on either end of the spectrum: utter butter pop novels or insanely ungainly tomes. Neither side tends to trigger my blues. I'm either turning the pages too fast or too busy looking up the word enfilade to get sucker punched by some subtextual dark cloud. But the following works linger somewhere in the middle, accessible enough to pull you in, dark enough to push you back.

5. The Information by Martin Amis – A superbly funny and smart story about a bleak and unhappy protagonist who loses at life. The night after I finished this, I leapt out of my bed, convinced that a gigantic black spider had dropped from the ceiling onto my stomach.

4. The Raw Shark Texts by Stephen Hall – Crammed with wordplay, including a shark built out of letters that floats through the pages, this book is like Memento starring Will Shortz. Just thinking about it makes me dizzy. What a wonderful construct. But somehow, some way, it pushed me into a deep little hole of alienation.

3. And Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris – An entertaining read. A familiar setting. A moving experience. But the final sentence, which has nothing to do with plot and everything to do with how one has internalized the book, hit me in the gut with a sledgehammer.

2. The Boy Detective Fails by Joe Meno – A very quick read, thank God, as the entire time I felt like killing myself.

1. Oblivion by David Foster Wallace – An absolutely brilliant collection, stuffed with so much sadness above and below the text that I felt genuinely depressed for about a month after putting it down. To this day, I still refuse to read the final story, The Suffering Channel, about a man who shits out works of art, as I’m worried it will complete some horrible circuit in my brain.

Top 10 songs of '09

Better late than someone else's opinion.

10. Good Ol’ Fashion Nightmare – Matt and Kim

9. Velvet – The Big Pink

8. Crystallised – The XX

7. You Are the Blood – Sufjan Stevens

6. Lisztomania – Phoenix

5. It Gets Your Body Movin' – Suckers

4. Home – Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes

3. Sleepyhead – Passion Pit

2. Summertime Clothes – Animal Collective

1. Snookered - Dan Deacon

You kids get back on my lawn

It's been months upon months since my last post. An auspicious one. On a bacon-flavored substance.

Anyway, I know you've been huddled in a corner unable to leave your house without my valuable opinion to guide your view on life.

So I'm trying it again. But in a more sporadic fashion. Can't keep a blistering blog pace at the same time I'm writing spec screenplays that are sure to sell for ones of dollars.

So you'll take what I give you. And then you'll ask for more. And you might just get it. Might.

Welcome back me.

The ultimate bacon flavored spread

The portmanteau has infected food marketing for so long, it has become the food itself.

Soon there will be nothing left on our nation's shelves but Grapple juice and Mozzaroni.

Portmanteauing the line

Yep. Apparently all food marketers are now REQUIRED to use the portmanteau in their copy. It's built into the creative brief under "executional mandatories."

Incidentally, Mad Props to Mad Men for showing us that the portmanteau was crap creative even back in the '60s. "Bacardilicious." "Bacardilightful."Don Draper would've shit a brick if they gave him that crap.