Saturday 24/06/06 Day 1 @ Intonation Music Festival, Union Park, Chicago

The Sears Tower looms ominous over Union Park.  News of the plot to blow it up still resonates fresh in our heads; the story was leaked just one day earlier.  How can we cope with the devastating inevitable destruction of our skyline?

By drinking a whole lot of Sparks.

What’s Sparks?  Says the website, “Sparks, is a ready-to-drink that contains 6.0% alcohol by volume with the addition of active ingredients caffeine, taurine and natural herbs guarana…”  Six percent?  Bah.  They got a new one now.  Sparks Plus.  Mosey up to the booth and say, “Gimme the black one.”  The black one’s seven percent.  There’s also a Sparks Light now, but you don’t care about that.  Now chug it down.  What do you think?  Battery acid, right?  Well, look at the tin, dimwit.  See the plus and the minus?  C’mon, like you really wanted to shell out an extra dollar for a 312 beer that’ll only put you to sleep.  Three more of these Sparks things and you’re gonna be going all Chris Martin on us, crooning, “I saw sparks” from that first Coldplay album.  And when’d that thing come out, 2000?  Sparks isn’t even close to being six years old.  Chris Martin, you really are a visionary.

Vice is the sponsor of this festival and, over on the Virtue stage, their latest signings, Favourite Sons, are mic-checking to Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” in a desperate and misguided bid for instantaneous credibility.  Gnarls Barkley?  Dude, they’re like, so last month.  Let’s get closer.  Try out our laminate in the photo pit.  Success.

If Charlie Brown and the Aphex Twin had a baby, he’d look something like the singer in Favourite Sons.  Wonder why Vice signed them; they sound just like The Strokes.  Hey, is there a New Rock Revolution revival going on and nobody told me?  It’s 2001 all over again, gang.  ‘Hang on Girl’ does have a winning guitar line, so it’s not all bad.  

Now, if you’re gonna be a lesbian in a rock and roll band, you’d better be hot.  And if you’re not hot, well, you’d better have some kickin tunes.  Sometimes, even that’s not enough.  Just look at T.A.T.U.  Erase Errata, you fail on both fronts.  Miserably.

90 Day Men, let me tell you about 90 Day Men and how they kept me out of jail.  It’s New Year’s Eve, 2002.  Gigwise is at Chicago’s Empty Bottle, waiting for Har Mar Superstar to get his fat ass on stage before midnight hits.  Well, he’s taking a long time, too long, to soundcheck his iPod.  Impatience boils over into rage.  Gigwise starts throwing ice cubes at Har Mar.  Har Mar, like any good combatant, fights back.  He wields his microphone at our head with lethal precision, knocking us on our noggin with a Happy New Year.  That’s not enough, though.  He orders our presence removed from the vicinity.  And who comes along to whisk us away to safety but Robert Lowe, lynchpin of the Empty Bottle, and singer in 90 Day Men.  Benevolent bouncer Rob doesn’t even throw us out of the place, he just tells us to stay in the room with the pool tables, which we do, watching the show from the doorway, gnashing our teeth when the porky in the Y-fronts does his roll-around-on-stage-like-pig-in-slop routine.

Back to today.  Devin the Dude.  Best in show.  Don’t know what they’re doing in Houston to keep producing R&B juggernauts like this guy and Beyonce, but whatever it is, keep it up.  You’re a making Texas less a festering hellhole and that’s a good thing.  “Doobie Ashtray” and “Anythang” are flat-out brilliant, but the whole thing gets transcendent when Devin pulls his abridged cover of James Taylor’s “Handyman” (???!?!?!?) from out of ****ing nowhere.  And how about this guy’s banter?  “Don’t revoke your ‘old school’ cards, y’all, those things are gonna come back in fashion someday.”

Sorry, Jose Gonzalez, but you’re putting us to sleep.  Who scheduled this guy after Devin the Dude?  We stay for half a song before it’s back to the Sparks vendor.  Now they’re giving away these tiny light-up keychains.  Some of them even work.

Chromeo, here we go.  Or do we?  Sluggish start.  They say they got a kick drum problem.  Kick drum problem?  C’mon, you’re Chromeo.  Push a button or something.  Do it all on playback.  The kick drum’s not the half of it.  The slap bass on “Needy Girl” is as inaudible as Beck’s guitar was during “E-Pro” last weekend at Bonnaroo.  Unforgivable.  Fortunately, the whole set is salvaged by two things:  the purple Nike hightops Dave-1 is wearing and Chromeo’s cover of “Your Love” by The Outfield, last belted out by Gigwise at a Romanian wedding in Chicago this past winter.