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.