July 21st, 2008
Every time I inasmuch as mention the word “hipster” on the blog these days, some Mensa Mind has to scrawl some stupid, scurrilous statement about how “maaan, all you do is stereotype hipsters and make egregious generalizations and you, Jeff Weiss, are the worst writer in the history of time. Plus, you’re behind the closing of Indy Mac. What! What! What! What! What!” Granted, it’s flattering that the lion-hearted legion of anonymous commentators believe that I’m really the one behind the sub-prime mortgage crisis, but ultimately, I don’t understand why people can’t just relax, take a deep breath, laugh, snicker, chortle, attempt to play Frogger in traffic.
Because yesterday, I saw him. The hipster Java man. We were standing next to each other at the Dirty Projectors show and it was beautiful. One of those slow motion, “Dreamweaver” moments where time stops and our eyes locked, me and proto-hipster, swooning, smoking, staring at each other back to the dawn of time, or at least when it first became trendy in the city Ur to grow a mustache. I tried to take photos of him but it was impossible, my camera wouldn’t register the image. The neon was too bright. The sunglasses too searing. The skin too translucent.
To replay: the hat a retina-ravaging shade of electric tangerine, covered in black and red Rorschach splotches. A teal tanktop plastered on his pasty frame, undersized cloth blue shorts, the kind they made you wear to gym in the 6th grade, the ones that no matter how hard you tried to sag were still always too short. The shoes were impressive, boots nearly up to the knee, a cross between rainboats and Uggs (Ruggs?). The mandatory mustache. The 16-year old beard. Vampire Weekend sunglasses of a sharp cherry apple color. Part of me wanted to take him home with me. The anthropological possibilities seemed endless. What are his likes? What are his desires? What is the ideal amount of Sparks? And then just like that he left, shuffling away, American Spirit stuck between his lips, no doubt off to make some girl in stripes and leggings a very happy woman.
As Much As Things Change, Some Things Will Always Stay the Same
Think of the Fork Festival as ground-zero for the hipsters of America. While it’s easy to interpret that as a perjorative, it really isn’t. Sure, the sartorial sense of its attendees might be ripe for mild satire, but the festival itself was not, perhaps the most punctual, sober and well-organized of any that I’ve attended. Prices were reasonable, accommodations were generous and by the end, the place earned my respect. Pitchfork might be guilty of cultivating an indier-than-thou aesthetic that ultimately reflects itself in the festival’s status as America’s preeminent hirsute haven, but the festival ran smoothly, they booked a reasonably diverse slate of acts and even if every performance didn’t amaze me, at the very least they were almost unanimously interesting.
Indeed, few acts were as compelling as Sunday’s one-two punch of The Dirty Projectors and King Khan & the Shrines. On record, The Dirty Projectors have hinted at the brilliance they possess live, with their latest Rise Above, shot through with flashes at greatness and a surfeit of ideas that the band didn’t always seem to know how to execute. I caught them about a year ago when they played at the Echoplex but since then, they’ve developed into one of the most innovative and impressive young bands in music today.
Dave Longstreth voice is a jarring underwater wail, that wobbles and flutters like a knuckleball, dipping, diving, impossible to get a bead on. His guitar technique is otherworldly, not the stereotypical guitar hero rawk that you think of when you think “great guitarist,” but more an African-inspired float that weaves in time with that levitating voice. I’d like to get into it more but there’s no time right now, as I only have about twenty minutes left to write before my flight and there’s still a half dozen hours of music I already don’t have time to describe.
As for King Khan, they might’ve turned in my favorite set of the festival. Easily the best performer of the weekend, Khan is a hammy blend of James Brown-blessed showmanship, the sort of eccentric brilliance that can only come from a true lunatic. Taking the stage in a gold Josephine Baker head-wrap, a black cape, too-tight stretch shorts and occasionally a Mexican Luchador mask, Khan is probably the most charismatic performer in “indie” right now. Backed by the Shrines, his nine-piece soul band, the show is one part Godfather of Soul one part Andy Kauffman, one part Blues Brothers, one part West Anderson movie come to life.
Khan’s entire intent is to get people moving and somehow, he managed to get the formerly sedentary swarm dancing. Several people even crowd-surfed, which might seem like normal festival-behavior but not here at Hip-stock. Hell, I even saw someone’s grandmother shaking it as though it were a daguerreotype picture. It was pure bedlam. I can’t really recommend a group more. There really is nothing out there like King Khan & The Shrines. By the end of the set, I felt myself wanting to read King Khan’s biography and thinking that like that old Biggie line, this group crushes all so-called willies, thugs and rapper-dons. Or at least Mission of Burma.
Fuck. I’m out of time. There is a flight to catch. This is going to have to be brief. Spoon and Health are going to get screwed here and rest assured, both were very good. There’s only a few seconds left to even mention, the “so obviously it’s a highlight, it almost can’t be a highlight set” that Ghostface and Raekwon turned in.
I’ve seen solo Starks maybe a half dozen times over the years and this was my favorite. As always, Ghost played a mix between surprisingly deep cuts you wouldn’t expect them to play (”Fish”. “Rainy Dayz” “Whip You With a Strap,) and the standard-bearers (”Shimmy Shimmy Ya,” “Cream,” “Triumph”) but having Raekwon there proved the difference. They hewed strongly to the Only Built 4 Cuban Linx material, the sound was great and both men seemed determined to turn in an indelible performance despite having just touched down in the Chi after a nine-hour flight from Europe. Unfortunately, they didn’t play “One” or really anything off Supreme Clientele, but hey, as Mick Jagger so aptly opined, “you can’t always get what you want.” Besides, all I really want right now is a smooth flight home and for Southwest to not to lose my luggage again. Tallyho.
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July 20th, 2008
Sometimes, on your own, you arrive at the realization that “hey, it isn’t so bad. I’m attending a music festival for free in a very beautiful city and even though I’m trying hard not to gawk at the mustachio’d sailer-hatted hipster either in the merchant marines or an aspiring killer clown, things is alright.” But at other times, nothing can palliate you, outside of the right street pharmacist, one who will sell you $100 worth of that sweet chiba in an apartment a few blocks from Union Park, while bumping M83’s “Graveyard Girl.” Yesterday was one of those days. And in conjunction with my new found ray of light (no Madonna), the murky, muggy rain that had been washing down on the streets of the Chi lifted, just in time for me to miss the last 10 minutes of Caribou’s set.
Things were different yesterday. The publicists who I had so lustily condemned the day prior were able to fall for my cheap ruse about there obviously being some sort of mistake in my not getting VIP passes. Or was there? Maybe it was wise for them to throw me the VIP tags, after all, as the saying goes, hell hath no fury like a jaded, spoiled reporter not being able to smoke blunts the size of burritos and eat burritos the size of blunts. Plus, free beer and free Sparks–and while Sparks might taste like “perfumed asshole” as one of my colleagues so eloquently put it, it not only give you wings, it convinces you to climb to the top of the nearest building and play Daedelus. (Who should’ve been at this festival now that I think about it).
Besides, the energy was different on Saturday. Long gone was Friday’s indier-than-thou crowd lured in by unremembered nostalgia for Mission of Burma, Sebadoh and PE. In their stead were a bunch of teens and people in their early 20s, drawn by the promise of Vampire Weekend’s dulcet pop and The Hold Steady’s sincere sing-a-longs. It was the proverbial “next generation,” and anybody lambasting Vampire Weekend for their depictions of an idle, spoiled rich class might be well served to note their fanbase, full of MTV sunglasses and girls with purses bought at Saks 5th Avenue, and understand that hating them for singing about Louis Vuitton and Reggaeton is like hating a chicken for laying eggs.
The first band I caught was Fleet Foxes, who pretty much owe 80 percent of their fanbase to a whopping 9.0 rave that the Fork gave them earlier this year. I’ve been resistant towards the Fleet Foxes bandwagon. Not because I dislike them per se. Watching Robin Pecknold and co. sing their America meets My Morning Jacket hymnals, you can’t help but note how pretty the songs sound. But for a website this focused on originality and progressive sonic ideas, it was a little strange to think that these are their new poster boys. Earlier this year, I asked Jim James how he felt about bands like Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses essentially stealing the blueprint from At Dawn and The Tennessee Fire. Wisely, he dodged the question, claiming he’d heard them and didn’t really have any thoughts on the matter. Good for him for being tactful enough to side-step any controversy. However, were it be me, I’d be halfway towards re-enacting the “Shark N–Z” sketch from Only Built For Cuban Linx, where Ghostface and Raekwon indict copy-cat rappers. Bottom line, Fleet Foxes sound identical to My Morning Jacket. They do what they do well and their songs are winsome, affable and at times very poignnant, but I’m not nowhere near ready to pronounce them the next best thing.
The same can’t be said for the Hold Steady. I know a lot of people hate their music and it’s not hard to see why. At times, they’re almost painfully sincere and occasionally they can veer dangerously close to parody, but on any given Friday night, this band be in any top 5 of bands that I’dwant to see. In the festival environment, their guitar rock is damn-near explosive, their songs rollicking, boozy and often brilliant. Perhaps the most joyful performer in all music, every show Craig Finn summons the sort of joy and catharthis that often provides the foundation for great rock n’ roll. They’re the sort of band that can make cliches come to life. You “lose yourself in the music.” You become “one with the audience.” Or more aptly, as they put it, ”Party Pit,” it’s the sort of music that makes you want to walk around and drink some more.
So I listened, liquored up good, heading to the C stage, way out in a no-mans-land corner of the park to see No Age thrash and twist and somehow prove what a lot of people thought was impossible: that it is possible to re-invent the punk song. Were New Found Glory, NoFx and all those other hacky mall-punk bands to have seen No Age in person, I can imagine them being reduced to tears, struck with the realization that they’re frauds and that with just a drummer and a guitarist Dean Spunt and Randy Randall could cauterize their flesh and bleach their bones. Real vicious, powerful Punk music that justified the acclaim and hype and left me feeling guilty for having never dragged myself out to the Smell once. Thankfully, they’ve outgrown their first home and are ready for prime-time, local boys made good. God willing, in due time they’ll have strung Pete Wentz up by his assymetrical haircut, stolen Ashlee Simpson, forced Panic at the Disco! into a full-on panic and saved an entire generation of 14-year olds from being emo. All in a day’s work.
But speaking of a day’s work, like the White Rabbit, I’m late for a very important date. Besides, I need to get my Lewis Carroll on, as there are herbal refreshments to be rolled and there are Times New Vikings to be seen. To say nothing of Spoon or King Khan or best of all, Ghost and Rae performing together. Hopefully, they will play “One” from Supreme Clientele, if only so Ghost can offer the question, “How Many Blunts We Smoke.” To which the crowd can only respond, “One…at a Time.”
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July 19th, 2008
A Pitchfork seems like the appropriate emblem. After all, it’s been a hellish last two days, culminating with this moment right now, my friends already having set off for the festival at the absurdly early crack of noon, abandoning me to pump Fela on my iPod in a Chicago Barnes and Noble, spitting venom on a stifling, rainy summer afternoon. There isn’t much time either. The great minds at Barnes & Noble have apparently yet to discover the wonders of the power outlet and my lemon of a Dell laptop is already on the verge of crashing. But duty calls, so while my crabby carcass should be creeping Union Park-bound to catch recent Best New Music’d Titus Andonicus, I’ve got my own airing of grievances to compose. Bear with me.
First off, fuck Southwest Airlines for losing my bags, forcing me to endure 36 hours of a swampy Chicago summer in the same rank clothes, sweating, stinking and swearing. Fuck Pitchfork for reneging on their promise of a VIP pass, instead offering some utterly worthless press medallion that only allows access to some wretched corner to sit hunch-backed on folding chairs, pecking away on a laptop with the rest of the poor press schlubs. While simultaneously, the party I came with lamped luxuriously in the VIP, scarfing burritos the size of skulls and guzzling quarts after quart of beer.
Fuck the indie caveman clone that tripped me yesterday when I decided to abandon Sebadoh’s snooze-worthy set to play hoops on a court inside the park. Right now, there are massive gashes on both of my hands that no amount of drugs can palliate. Congrats, Nas fans, looks like you’ve got your wish.
Meanwhile, while I’m the topic, fuck the lack of drugs at this place. To paraphrase Mr. Hand, what’s wrong with you people, why are you not on dope? Forget the lack of shrooms or acid or ex. There’s no need for that, not here, as with the exception of maybe Caribou, the line-up is about as un-friendly to psychedelics as you’ll find at any extant American music festival. But y’know, this being a music festival, you’d think weed would be plentiful–instead, in the course of yesterday’s empirical research, the place was as dry as a Mormon camping trip in Death Valley.
Instead, it’s Sparks and snark, malevolent vibes and awkward gestures, a bespectacled snarl of people, standing stiff with slanting haircuts, the apotheosis of whatever indie still means in the year 2008. I don’t know who my people are, but I know this ain’t it. Give me a drugged-up hippie floating around in the ether of his mind, passed out on the grass at Bonnaroo, spewing gibberish about unicorns, rather than a bunch of glazed-eyed goggled geeks who’d rather gripe about the merits of The Unicorns vs Islands.
Granted, my time in La-la land has probably left me a bit jaded but I’ve never seen this many ungainly looking people in my life. Yesterday alone, I saw 16 people who seemed to be cultivating the law professor turned rock star look of Craig Finn and another dozen or so, rocking the balding barbarian look of Les Savvy Fav front-man Tim Harrington who looks suspiciously like a guy my college friends used to only refer to as “the gnome.” Glasses seem to be the ideal fashion accessory. So much to the point that were you to not know any better, you’d assume that at some point between the second Nixon administration and Glasnost, the Soviets succeeded in implementing a vast conspiracy to collectively mar the eyesight of America’s youth.
What Man, You Don’t Like Mission of Burma?….Conformist….
The music. Right. The music. Ok. So yesterday was the Don’t Look Back: All Tomorrow’s Parties segment of the festival featuring Sebadoh playing Bubble Vs. Scrape, Mission of Burma playing Vs. and Public Enemy playing It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. As for the first two, I suppose I could try to write something, but I know next to nothing about both of those bands and judging from what I saw of their performances, I don’t care to find out much more. The highlight, and really the only thing that salvaged yesterday’s experience was Public Enemy, who proved that 20 years after that seminal album they can still bring the noise and possibly the funk (No Savion Glover).
They were all there. Chuck D. Public Enemy. The SW1 dancers (I know this isn’t their name but I’m feeling a little bit better know and am in the mood to make In Living Color references). Professor Griff wasn’t there though, I assume Nasir has kept him as his own personal political guru. They ran through the album and more, Chuck’s voice, booming like a bazooka, Flav, clock dangling, imploring the crowd that “no matter how much TV I’m on, I’ll still Public Enemy this is my first love.” Most impressive was the fact that instead of mailing it in, doing the perfunctory It Takes a Millions and heading off to their hotels, the group didn’t want to leave the stage, running through pretty much all the hits of their discography, from “911 is a Joke,” to the He Got Game theme song to their most recent single whose name currently eludes me. It was a great set and served to again reiterate what everyone already knows: that Public Enemy are one of the finest groups in hip-hop history.
I ‘d like to write more but unfortunately, there’s no time. Caribou’s on in less than an hour and I’m sure to miss it. Meanwhile, my laptop is about to crash and the Fela’s starting to repeat itself and so am I. These are not ideal writing conditions. Besides, I have to badger the press people into handing me over a VIP pass so I can gorge myself on the free burritos and beer. This is serious business. Godspeed. Or something.
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