Pitchfork (aka "Bitchfork") retrospective
2 Comments Published by Jason on Tuesday at 7/17/2007 01:55:00 AM.
Hello! Jason here.I'm back from a beautiful weekend at pitchfork and my god was it amazing. The people at Pitchfork truly have put together another fine festival for the indie kid public. Hopefully they will continue to offer us poor starving indie kids a wonderful but inexpensive festival experience and not go the way of other festivals *cough*Lollapalooza*cough*
I noticed a few trends and highlights:
First of all, beards seemed to be popular at Pitchfork, and not just some scraggly indie beard (see: Voxtrot) (tons of those) but big fuckoff old testament beards. (apologies to Eddie Izzard) notable examples: Sam Beam of Iron and Wine and Brent Hinds of Mastadon. As a fan and supporter of beards that are not mine, I would like to see more of these great bearded musicians. Some of the members of Californe looked well on their way to the beard critical mass.
Second of all, I beat someone at one of the label tables at chess. I can't remember what label, I'll probably remember when I get an email from them (I signed up for their email list.) The girl wasn't terrible and she played a good game. I was missing The Sea and Cake at the time. I hope nobody finds that to be too big a crime against music.
One thing I'll say I have mixed feelings about is the lack of blood and bone being given up for the festival this year. Last year we had two notable musician injuries. We had one artist on the 3rd stage jump or fall (can't remember which) off the stage and break his arm. We also had Ted Leo getting much too excited and he seemed to have cut his head. We didn't have that kind of masochistic devotion this year. I'm really not sure if that's good or bad yet.
One thing that did return from last year is the announcer. The balding guy...was just a little excitable. He gave some of the corniest intros I have ever heard, which were sometimes very long-winded to boot. He also was infamous for announcing the Mountain Goats as the Billy Goats last year and this year announcing Deerhoof instead of Deerhunter. (Deerhoof did play last year though) Despite being terrible, he is rather amusing and I hope he sticks around despite all of his shortcomings.
Finally, although most bands were good, some great, some just weird as hell (I'm looking at you Deerhunter and Of Montreal) one band stands out in my mind. The New Pornographers played an amazing set getting everyone moving, and giving me an hour of bliss with old and new songs off their forthcoming album which Kate posted about a bit below.
P.S. For all those complete Yoko haters. No, the set was in no way shape or form great. I also think it wasn't appropriate for pitchfork or to be headliner. However, some of the noise rock they did was actually rather good and Thurston Moore gave a brilliant performance.
- Jason
P.S.S. Kate is a Yoko hater.
Labels: festival, Iron and Wine, jason post, New Pornographers, Of Montreal, pitchfork
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Thanks for the review! Did you notice if Brent played this guitar?
http://www.firstact.com/Products/CustomGuitars/Gallery/custom%20guitar_brenthinds_mastadon.aspx?
I do love a good indie beard: http://bunkre.com/blog/?p=20