My Friday at Pitchfork

Originally published at Kickin’ the new Kuh-nowledge. You can comment here or there.

I’ll do this in three installments.  This first one is for Friday.

I was late meeting Gus, but we finally got together.  Gus had flown in from LA where he was attending the E3 conference.  We made our way to Longwell Hall, the B&B in Oak Park.  Dropped our stuff off and then we went exploring.

What did we find…  why we found a movie theater playing The Dark Knight.  SCORE!  We bought some tickets for $5.50 each (gotta love matinee pricing) and watched the best Joker/Two-Face movie ever made.  Now I just need to go check out Hellboy.  I think I’ll go see it tonight.

We still had some time to kill so we did some shopping (foldable camp chairs are essential for a good festival experience) before heading off to Union Park for Pitchfork.  And off we go…

For those of you that don’t know.  Friday night only had three acts.  Each one was to perform one of their albums front to back all the way through.

Mission To Burma:  I was actually really impressed by how good these guys were.  I’m sure I’ve heard a song of their’s at some point, but I honestly don’t know.  What I do know is they rocked it out and left me wondering why I hadn’t ever really listened to them before.  Good stuff… must go find and listen more.

Sebadoh:  Now here’s a band that has some interesting guys that have made some cool music.  Unfortunately, they blew.  Their performance was understated and boring.  According to my buddy Jerome, he couldn’t get past the fact that all their instruments were out of tune.

Public Enemy:  Kicked All Available Ass…  and when another ass showed up to talk smack, they kicked it too!  It’s possible that Public Enemy benefited from lowered expectations on my part, but I don’t think so.  I’ve seen a lot of rap shows and these guys were energetic, funny, educational and just plain awesome.  Not only did they perform the entire album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, but then they extended their set and performed a long medley of all of their other stuff.  One sorta sad, sorta funny part was when at the end… Flavor Flav didn’t want to leave the stage.  He just kept talking on the mic…  and finally people just started leaving while he continued talking.  Oh yeah…  and people booed Flav when he mentioned his TV show…  and no… the irony was not lost on me when they did their song “Channel Zero”.

I’m fairly certain that when the show was over, Gus and I headed home.  We got a bite to eat at Bar Louie in Oak Park.  Food was good, but sleep was better.

–sam