Monday, July 31, 2006

Rock

3:30 AM. Somewhere near Bronson, MI. Or was it Sturgis? They all run together anyway.

Are those birds singing already, or are my ears chirping?

There were two main causes for this confusion:




As I lay myself down on the couch at the Beat in the sweltering nighttime heat I felt like my hearing was gone for good. It was still loud, invading my thoughts, felt like metal cockroaches or ants or some sort of insect had crawled into my ears and walked around on the drums with spikes instead of insect legs and punctured tiny holes in them.

It didn't hurt per se, it was just distracting.

I was actually sort of enjoying it. It isn't every day that something blasts you so hard that you have to spend the entire 24 hours processing it just to appreciate what you just heard or saw.

***********

Two extensive reviews on the Pitchfork Festival: Day One; Day Two. I would write my own, but these guys seem to have seen more than I did.

I will, however, give you a list of what I liked and did not like as much from the bands that I did see (no order other than the broad classifications they are under):

awesome:
-Mission of Burma (pictured at top)
-The Futureheads
-Ted Leo (pictured at bottom)
-Yo La Tengo
-Jens Lekman

good:
-Os Muntantes
-Tapes n Tapes

alright:
-Destroyer
-Mountain Goats
-The Walkmen
-Silver Jews
-Art Brut

not that great (or just really fucking bad, I can't decide):
-Devandra Bandhart
-Liars

6 comments:

luke said...

Man, so what did devendra do to deserve this? Naomi said he sucked too.

JHitts said...

He just played crappily, that's all. Nothing against him really. But he does get bonus points for coming on drunk during the Os Muntantes and singing backup with a bottle of wiskey in hand.

Anonymous said...

I just felt like he was completely self-absorbed. I expected him to be a total weirdo, and that was fine, but his set was entirely about that and hardly about his music. It's okay to be a rockstar and play that role, but to think you actually ARE that role, well... few people are, and, sorry Devendra, you're not.

Econ said...

hey jack, that chicagoist piece used the word “environs” about five paragraphs down.

Econ said...

also see the chicagoist photo sets: day one, day two.

JHitts said...

Yeah, I saw both of those but I thought that the reviews would be better to post in my entry.