Friday Free-Style

I’m about to head to Myrtle Beach for the night to catch The Mars Volta. Tickets for that show are still available so I would recommend quiting your day job and catching it. If you can’t do that, the 13 Day Mission, Beatrix Kiddo, Miles From Pangea show 11:11 teahouse is going to be the hottness. If you are completely broke, here’s a free show:

Lollapalooza is announcing its line-up on Monday, but the Chicago Sun-Times has leaked a bunch of it. The following bands have been confirmed:

Radiohead
Nine Inch Nails
Rage Against The Machine
Wilco
Grizzly Bear
Battles
The Raconteurs
Kanye West
Gnarls Barkley
The Black Keys
Broken Social Scene
G. Love And The Special Sauce
Blues Traveler
Mates Of State
Bloc Party
Cat Power
Stephen Malkmus
Girl Talk
Kid Sister
Office
The Cool Kids
The Go! Team
Jamie Lidell

That is serious line-up. This is going to be a big event. I think I’m gonna have to hit this one up. You may have noticed Grizzly Bear up there, and word on the street is that they are opening for some of Radiohead’s dates. In other Chicago festival news, Pitchfork Fest has added some acts and the line-up is looking much better. As it stands:

Friday, July 18:

Pitchfork Music Festival and All Tomorrow’s Parties
present “Don’t Look Back” Public Enemy performing
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back

* Mission of Burma performing Vs. *
+ one more to be announced

Saturday, July 19:

Animal Collective * Jarvis Cocker * !!! Vampire Weekend Dizzee Rascal Fleet Foxes No Age * Jay Reatard * * King Khan & His Shrines * Atlas Sound * The Ruby Suns * * A Hawk and a Hacksaw * * Occidental Brothers Dance Band International *
+ many more!

Sunday, July 20:

* Dinosaur Jr. * Spiritualized M. Ward * Ghostface and Raekwon * * The Apples in Stereo * Boris * Dirty Projectors * * Cut Copy * Extra Golden El Guincho * Fuck Buttons *
+ many more!

Keep in mind the ticket price is $65 for a weekend pass, which is a great bargain compared to the skyrocketing festival ticket prices from everyone else. Another festival announcement made some noise this week too: Baltimore’s Virgin Mobile Fest. They announced their headliners:

Foo Fighters
Jack Johnson
Kanye West
Nine Inch Nails
Stone Temple Pilots

There’s two things to note here. 1. The Stone Temple Pilots are indeed back and on the reunion bandwagon. They have announced that they have exactly 65 North American days scheduled right now. Talk about cashing in. Oh yeah, Scott Weiland is in a tiff with his other band, Velvet Revolver. 2. Why the hell is Jack Johnson headlining all these festivals? I mean seriously, this douche must be stopped. Jack Johnson is like a Dave Matthews who can’t play more than three chords. The dude sucks.

Atlanta’s Nophest 4 & 20 festival going down in a couple weeks has added more to its line-up and schedule and you can check it out at their website. Ohmpark is sponsoring the event, so expect epicness.

I had been rumour-mongering this forever, but Pitchfork has confirmed that Bradford Cox (Deerhunter/Atlas Sound) worked on The Wild Things soundtrack with Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeahs). They have also reported that Deerhunter is recording their new album, Microcastle, as a 4-piece, and Colin Mee is officially no longer part of the band.

R.E.M., Modest Mouse, The National tickets go on sale tomorrow.

Click here to read the entire post…

The Humpday Catch-Up

Ok, time for the best of about 3 weeks of music news I have been slacking on. Let’s begin with festivals, since that’s all we’ve covered lately.

Lollapalooza has yet to release the official line-up, but the rumours have it looking like potentially the best fest of the summer. Here is what the good folks at the Lolla message board have complete with a source for each rumour:

MAJOR MEDIA AND BAND CONFIRMATIONS
Dierks Bentley (http://www.gainesville.com/article/20080214/NEWS/802130312/1006/NEWS)
Bloc Party (http://www.pollstar.com/tour/searchall.pl?Content=V-BILCHGP&By=Venue&PSKey=Y&StartSearch.x=10&StartSearch.y=10)
Does it Offend You, Yeah? (http://www.virtualfestivals.com/latest/interviews/4408)
John Butler Trio (http://www.smh.com.au/news/stay-in-touch/unlikely-recruit-for-delta-force/2008/03/06/1204779965382.html)
Radioheadhttp://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/turn_it_up/2008/03/radiohead-nine.html)
Nine Inch Nailshttp://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/turn_it_up/2008/03/radiohead-nine.html)
Yeasayer (http://blogs.suntimes.com/derogatis/2008/03/sxsw_dispatch_2_on_parties_pan.html)
Rage Against the Machine (http://blogs.suntimes.com/derogatis/2008/03/rage_and_wilco_to_play_at_loll.html)
Wilco ( ( (http://blogs.suntimes.com/derogatis/2008/03/rage_and_wilco_to_play_at_loll.html)

THE REST
Flogging Molly (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=199838)
Black Lips (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=206530)
Nicole Atkins & the Sea (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=205239)
Gogol Bordello (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=207845)
Bang Camaro (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=210111)
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/fb.aspx?m=220797)
Miley Cyrus (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=230481)
CSS (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=230377)
Gnarls Barkley (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=230256)
Rhymefest f/ Mucca Pazza (http://lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=179933)
MGMT (http://lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=194476)
Jimmy Eat World (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=230158)
CRS (http://www.lollapalooza.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=229774)

Pitchfork Fest released their initial line-up:

Friday, July 18:

Pitchfork Music Festival and All Tomorrow’s Parties present “Don’t Look Back” Public Enemy performing It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
+ more, to be announced

Saturday, July 19:

Animal Collective
!!!
Vampire Weekend
Dizzee Rascal
No Age
Atlas Sound
Fleet Foxes
+ many more!

Sunday, July 20:

Spiritualized
M. Ward
Boris
Extra Golden
El Guincho
+ many more!

Not a bad start, but I don’t think it comes close to how great their line-up was last year yet, so hopefully they will have some hot additions soon.

Atlanta’s Luigi is going into some sort of long hiatus/maybe break-up after their March 28th show at The Earl.

The Tabernacle got thrashed by the tornadoes, but they won’t have a full damage assessment until Friday.

Click here to read the entire post…

2008 Festivals Preview

After the end of the year best of lists are done for and the holidays are over, it’s the season for rampant speculation about who is playing what festival. The fun rumors this year include Metallica and Led Zeppelin at Bonnaroo and My Bloody Valentine at Coachella. Here at Ohmpark, we heart festivals and will be keeping you informed on all of these developments. Here are the fests I’m looking forward to:

Click here to read the entire post…

Pitchfork Music Festival: Day 3/Wrap-Up

The final day started with Deerhunter and I was interested to see what they would do on what was probably one of the biggest crowds they’ve played to. They brought their A game and Bradford Cox shined on stage. They even got some of Grizzly Bear to jam with them at the end. There’s something special about seeing two of the best young bands today teaming up like this and gives me even more optimism about the state of music today. We watched The Ponys from far away and they sounded good with the exception of the entire PA system going down for half of it. Seriously, Pitchfork Fest’s sound system seemed to get even worse as the days went on and I’ve never seen anything like that at a music festival. Next up we watched Menomena put on a really good show. They seemed especially loose and maybe over excited or something but that seemed to work favourably for their sound. This is another band that if you haven’t got into yet, i strongly urge you to check them out. The next band I went to see was The Sea And Cake. It was hard for me to believe how bad it was considering how much I like this band. In their defense, the sound system did seem to be especially terrible for their set, but I do not like the direction this band has gone in. The show and the new album both seem like their missing the magic this band used to conjure up. I caught a little bit of Stephen Malkmus playing a solo set. It was good but it’s just not exactly my thing. The best show of the day for me was Of Montreal. This band combines art with fun like no other. They did a few new songs, Kevin Barnes wore a few outfits, they even played a little football on stage. I waited a really long time to see Klaxons next. They were good but the weak sound system on the third stage made it seem more underwhelming than it should have. We ended the night watching De La Soul do a solid performance.

Overall, the fest was fairly interesting and a good experience. They must do something about the sound system because it was way too amateur for a festival of this size. I know the ticket prices were low, but if I have to pay another ten or twenty bucks to get to listen to more than the band’s monitors for half the shows, it might be a good idea. The actual line-up mostly delivered on the hype, but I think Pitchfork could do a little better job scheduling. The venue was nice but if they want this event to get any bigger they’re going to need to relocate. I will say that the security was extremely light and well behaved, and I am always a big fan of that. Overall, Pitchfork Fest gets a thumbs up from me but need to improve some things for next year.

Pitchfork Music Festival: Day 2

We arrived just in time for Califone, who was running a little late. They played 4 or 5 songs and they were pretty good. They had a horn section with them which was cool, but it seemed a little underwhelming. We went in close for Grizzly Bear and listened to Voxtrot from afar. I have to say that I don’t really like Voxtrot that much, I think they are over-hyped by the internets. Grizzly Bear, on the other hand, lives up to all the hype. Despite Chris Taylor having some issues with his ridiculously complex equipment setup, they put on the day’s best show. If you have not listened to Yellow House yet, do it now fool! I tried to catch the end of Beach House but only caught the last 30 seconds of “Master Of None”. By far this was the worst schedule conflict of the fest, especially for the bands themselves as Grizzly Bear and Beach House are both fans of each other. Next up we went to see Battles. They were very impressive. The former Helmet drummer John Stanier was rock solid and had a cymbal up really high so he had to reach up to hit it. It was gimmicky but really cool. The rest of the band used lots of looping computer programs to put together their songs piece by piece.

We skipped Iron And Wine to check out the festival grounds, which were expanded from Friday’s setup. They had a huge poster shopping area with almost 50 tents each selling handbills. After that we checked out Atlanta’s Mastodon. Their typical badass performance had a mixed reception from the pitchfork kids. Most of the people farther away were complaining and those that stayed up close were rocking out. There was even a mosh pit. Because it was so crazy up front for Mastodon, I was able to get front row and center for Cat Power afterwards on the stage as most of the other Chan Marshall fans weren’t so much into the Mastodon scene. It pays to like all kinds of music. I listened to Clipse from the front of the other stage and they were what I expected, decent for a live hip-hop show but nothing to get excited about. Cat Power came on with the Dirty Delta Blues Band. In this performance, Cat Power would not touch a guitar or piano. Instead, she would be leaning over the crowd singing songs from The Greatest, covers, and songs I didn’t recognize. I am not a big fan of the nu-Cat Power that is sober, doesn’t freakout, and does country/blues music and this was farther in that direction than the three times I saw her last year. It was still great to see her, especially as close as we were, but i don’t think I’m going to see her again live until she either starts playing old stuff again or does some new stuff that is not so conservative and, well, ordinary. We wanted to check out Girl Talk but the tiny staging area was packed out beyond belief and the sound system over there was not powerful enough to hear farther back. If I had one complaint about Pitchfork Fest so far it was the sound system problems, of which there were many, and the sound checks drowning out quiet parts of bands performing on the adjacent stages. We skipped Yoko Ono and went into the city to drink into oblivion. Here’s some pics from the day:

Pitchfork Music Festival: Day 1

We got to the park about a half an hour before the gates opened and found a pretty long line. The gates didn’t end up opening until about 5:30pm, but as soon as they did, you could see kids going through the gate and then running as fast as they could to go get a close spot. The security checkpoint at the entrance was very slack and the entire line probably got through the gate in 1o minutes. We decided to setup close at the stage for GZA and Sonic Youth, and got a really good spot. I did a little exploring and was very impressed with the music shop area and the $1 beverages. We listened to Slint do Spiderland from far away and it was hard to hear most of it, but what I could hear sounded good (We also listened to them sound check a lot of it while waiting outside in line). Shortly afterwards, The GZA and his entourage took the stage we were at and did what i believe was most of Liquid Swords. Unfortunately, none of the real Wu-Tang members showed up as The Genius explained he was skipping a Wu-Tang Clan show in Amsterdam to be here, but Cappadonna and the other guys with him i didn’t recognize did a good job backing him up.

After that it was time for Sonic Youth to do Daydream Nation. As soon as the show began, the crowd went nuts, and not necessarily in a good way. There were so many people pushing and trying to get up front and it was so tightly packed that the entire show would be a battle of endurance and will to survive. I don’t know if it had to do with the amount of young kids, or the low priced tickets allowed too many scrubs in, or maybe just the ultra-hipster pitchfork crowd, but it was pretty annoying to me (I’ve decided to coin a new term for these douche bags with no concert etiquette; Hipsters going through puberty I will now refer to as “Pubesters”). On the flip side though, that was the best Sonic Youth show I have ever seen. They did Daydream Nation so well, and added to and improved almost every song, all I could keep thinking was, there is no other band in the world that could play an album they wrote almost 20 years before and make it so amazing to listen to and seem so relevant. They jammed out parts of each song and every single one blew my mind. After doing the album, they came out with Mark Ibold of Pavement and played three songs from Rather Ripped as the encore. Listening to “Incinerate”, “Reena”, and “Jams Run Free” in the context of just listening to Daydream Nation pretty much solidified in my mind that Sonic Youth is probably the greatest band to exist in the history of electric guitar music on every level with the exception of maybe The Beatles. I know that may seem a little too much to say, but there is no band ever that has been able to exist 25 years without breaking up, and been able to write some of the best albums and put on some of the best shows of the time that far into their career. These guys are just pure musicians that have never let anything keep them from making the best music of several generations and Pitchfork and most of the acts there would probably never even exist without them. We finished the night off drinking pitchers of Ohmpark’s favourite beer, Fat Tire, and it would be a perfect end to an amazing day in the Windy City.

Friday Free-Style

We start today with a video of The Smashing Pumpkins comeback show:

I never covered the Pitchfork Fest additions of Mastodon, Junior Boys, Voxtrot, Cadence Weapon, Brightblack Morning Light, The Field, Cool Kids, and William Parker Quartet. Now with the combination of a night with legendary artists performing some of the best albums ever written and two days of the people making the very best albums of the last 2 years, I think musically this is by far the best festival of the year. On top of that, it is only 50 bucks for three days so it is also the greatest bargain of the year. I often have my quips with Pitchfork’s opinions but they sure nailed this line-up. Here it is in case you forgot:

Friday, July 13:

Sonic Youth perform Daydream Nation
GZA/Genius performs Liquid Swords
Slint perform Spiderland

Saturday, July 14:

Yoko Ono
Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues (w/ members of Dirty Three, the Delta 72, and Blues Explosion)
Clipse
Mastodon
Iron and Wine
Battles
Grizzly Bear
Voxtrot
Califone
The Twilight Sad
Girl Talk
Dan Deacon
Oxford Collapse
Professor Murder
Fujiya & Miyagi
Beach House
William Parker Quartet
Ken Vandermark’s Powerhouse Sound

Sunday, July 15:

De La Soul
The New Pornographers
Of Montreal
Stephen Malkmus
Jamie Lidell
The Sea and Cake
Junior Boys
Menomena
The Ponys
Deerhunter
Klaxons
The Field
Cadence Weapon
The Cool Kids
Craig Taborn’s Junk Magic
Nomo
Brightblack Morning Light
Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Lightbox Orchestra

Anybody you don’t recognize on that list, you should look into immediately. More info on Pitchfork Fest here. We will be there and you should too.

The hometown fest that is still the most fun of the decade, Bonnaroo, has announced its cinema tent schedule.

The New Pornographers have a new track floating around the internets: My Rights Versus Yours

Ween releases a new EP, The Friends EP, on June 8th.

…And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead are looking for a drummer to sub-in for their European tour.

Creative Loafing did a cover story on Atlanta blogs this week and profiled our friends over at Cable And Tweed. Props for repping the B’s in da A.

It’s been a busy week for me and I don’t have that much news for you, so I’ll hit you with a bunch of vids:

Here’s a Cat Power on Jolls Holland:

Here’s a Califone video:

Here’s an Iron And Wine video:

Ween live:

Here’s the new Voxtrot video:

Here’s Arcade Fire covering a Clinic song:

And I leave you with a De La Soul video that will get you through your day:

Albums I Love: Liquid Swords

Yesterday Pitchfork announced that in addition to Sonic Youth perfroming Daydream Nation at Pitchfork Fest, Slint will be doing their Spiderland and the GZA will be doing Liquid Swords. I’m a Big Wu-tang Clan fan and this is an amazing hip-hop album. The entire clan shows up for this, like most of the ’90s solo Wu-Tang stuff, and I’m curious as to how many of the clan will be backing “The Genius” for this special show. If you’re not familiar with this record, it is a must have so check it out:

Cold World:

I Gotcha Back:

You need to get to Chicago in July:

Friday, July 13:

Sonic Youth perform Daydream Nation
GZA/Genius performs Liquid Swords
Slint perform Spiderland

Saturday, July 14:

Cat Power and Dirty Delta Blues (w/members of Dirty Three, the Delta 72 & JSBX)
Clipse
Iron and Wine
Girl Talk
Grizzly Bear
Battles
Fujiya & Miyagi
Oxford Collapse
Dan Deacon
Beach House
Professor Murder
Ken Vandermark’s Powerhouse Sound

Sunday, July 15:

New Pornographers
Stephen Malkmus
De La Soul
Of Montreal
Jamie Lidell
Menomena
Klaxons
The Ponys
Deerhunter
Craig Taborn’s Junk Magic

Tickets are on sale now at Ticketweb. Three-day passes cost $50, Friday night costs $15, Saturday and Sunday individual passes cost $25, and a Saturday/Sunday pass costs $35.

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