Photo: Josh Cox
Happy Bastille Day, ladies and gentlemen. First out of the gates, The Twilight Sad. This band is the living embodiment of that Elliott Smith song, ‘Bottle Up & Explode.’ Take heart, you won’t be hearing The Twilight Sad on Grey’s Anatomy anytime soon. In one song, they single-handedly obviate the very existence of Snow Patrol. When the catharsis hits, the pupils of singer James Graham roll back behind his eyelids so all that’s visible is the whites. And when this happens, anything’s possible. Telekinesis. Pyromania. Levitation. Salvation. Without even knowing it, The Twilight Sad have raised the bar to a Sergei Bubka altitude. All who follow today shall fall short, that is, until the arrival of the seven o’clock hour. At the Balance stage. Until then, revel in the memory of The Twilight Sad.
Over at the Aluminum stage, Califone nurse our hangovers with their gentle brass excursions. Ping-pong back to the Connector stage where Austin pop fiends Voxtrot are providing agreeable accompaniment to a Saturday in the park. Bassist may very well be on loan from Deerfield’s The Redwalls – the McCartney guitar does not go unnoticed. And, imagine that, Voxtrot use Vox amps.
When three o’clock hits, two of the more soporific acts of the day take the stage. On the Aluminum Stage, Grizzly Bear unleash the reeds and the trilling, the woodwind infusion, the flute and clairnet. Over at the Biz 3 tent, the gentle slide guitar of Beach House sets a tone of eastern seaboard summers, skipping stones on the waves, Manchester-by-the-Sea….
Open your eyes, fool. That ain’t the Biz 3 tent. That’s the Balance stage. Damn the march of progress. The Wild West atmosphere of last year has vanished. Brazilians, booze, and booty-shaking – eradicated. In its place, a genuine stage with authentic security. And, worst of all, guard rails. Don’t lose hope just yet. There is melee to come.
Bypassing Battles for Fujiya & Miyagi. If you don’t know their name, they repeat it, ad infinitum, in song. That doesn’t stop the hack to my left in the photo pit from scrawling the phonetic spelling of the band name in her notepad: Fooojeeeyah…Meeyahgeee. And right beside that, she’s written, “track one” and next to “track one” she has drawn a line, a blank line, upon which she will write the title of track one when, at last, she deduces just exactly what track one is.
This is comprehensive journalism.
She could’ve just written the following: Fujiya & Miyagi = Hot Chip V2.0
Iron & Wine are playing the Aluminum stage but let’s just stick around here for Professor Murder. He’s got to be good. He’s got the same synthesizer as we do (Roland SH-32). Wait, there it is again. In duplicate. And, hold the phone, is that the selfsame sampler (Roland SP-303)? Take a seat and stay awhile. Turns out the good professor’s got some adjunct faculty on board – I count three others in addition to the guy bashing the cymbal at the front of the stage. Would stay longer but metalheads Mastodon are getting much buzz.
Six o’clock now and the park is packed. Cut a huge long arc of a swathe around the teeming horde to get to the side of the Connector stage. Yeah, that’s Mastodon alright. They’ve got a big banner at the back of the stage. Photographers are trying to cram two ear plugs inside each canal. Gigwise opts for hearing loss. On the subject of deafness, a scraggily young man in a Def Leppard T-shirt gets his pint of Jack Daniels confiscated by security. “Drink it!” he tells the guard. The guard shakes his head, takes a seat, wipes the sweat off his brow. The pint stays hidden in the dust of the ground.
Mastodon. Yeah. They’re loud.
Is Clipse on yet?
Okay, this is the last of the mainstage sardine feeling for me. Pre-Clipse, a guy comes into the photo pit with a cardboard box full of keychain flashlights. They are white. They read ONOCHORD CHICAGO, y.o. 2007. He passes the box to the kids at the front. The kids at the front pass the box to the kids in the back. The kids in the back pelt the photo pit with Yoko’s keychain flashlight, dozens of these trinkets, showering down like cylindrical white hailstones. The forecast called for thundershowers. It didn’t call for Yokoshowers.
Like the GZA last night, Clipse inject a much-needed boost to the energy level. As we depart the photo pit for the Balance Stage, they ease right into that classic from Baby – altogether now, “brrrrrrrr (bird call, not declaration of coldness)…What Happened to That Boy?” AKA The Unofficial Theme Song of Gigwise Chicago. Were it not for the madness about to happen, we’d have stuck around for 'Grindin’.”
Dan Deacon hasn’t even started yet and already you can tell that you are in store for a performance that borders on, nay, surpasses, eclipses, as it were, the legendary. As we arrive, he and a friend are lugging the table that holds his equipment – cords, samplers, pedals, and other assorted boxes of magic – down from the lofty pedestal perch of the stage, into the thick of the crowd. He doesn’t have to do anything now. He’s already my hero. That’s when he asks for the secret weapon. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he proclaims to a roadie, “I have a banana attached to an iPod…could you bring that down for me, please?”
Holy smokes. A coronation is in order. Pitchfork King 2007 – Dan Deacon. Where’s Spank Rock to pass the crown? What’s that? This guy’s from Baltimore, too? Damn.
Guess what song gets soundchecked on the banana-iPod?
“Who Let the Dogs Out?”
Emcee Tim Tuten instructs everyone to take a few steps back.
Dan interrupts him.
“No,” he says, “actually, they’re alright where they’re at.”
Roar of approval.
“THUUUUHHHHH…SEARRRRSSSZZZZZ….TOWWWWW….WERRRRRR…ISSSSZZZZ….UHHHHHHHH…..PEEEERRRRR……UHHHHHH…….MIHHHHHHHD.”
The Sears Tower is a Pyramid. Altogether now. Stretch each syllable. Dan Deacon is a one man Polyphonic Spree. He could start a cult in Waco if he wanted. Or anywhere else for that matter. For a good twenty minutes, there is crowdsurfing and lunacy as far as the eye can see. An undiluted glorious bedlam.
Of course it gets shut down early by the fire department.
In the aftermath, a bewildered Tim Tuten takes the mic. “Okay, we’re gonna take a twenty minute break, let everything cool down here…” Lines have blurred. Barriers have dissolved. Storm the Bastille. Dan Deacon destroyed the fourth wall between performer and audience, and now, the demarcation point between backstage and everywhere else been rendered moot. Look, over there. Grizzly Bear Ed is grilling Bradford (Deerhunter) Cox on the maelstrom of controversy that has surrounded his blogs of late.
“What’re you gonna do about it?” asks Grizzly Bear Ed.
Bradford nods. “I’m gonna blog about it.”
Later, Bradford elaborates on the content of one such blog.
“He posted a photo of his poop,” he says, nodding at his guitarist. Furthermore, there were allegedly sordid images of Bradford administering fellatio. “But Ryan Schrieber (Pitchfork founder) deleted them, the dick. Where is he? I’d like to punch him in the head.”
“There he is,” says Grizzly Bear Ed.
Bradford marches off, arms flailing. Together, we reenact the pivotal scene in The Local Stigmatic, with Bradford doing the kicking and yours truly doing the Al Pacino soliloquizing (shit, that’s really a word?). Then we grab a foamy 312 IPA and reminisce about the Cox Family Reunion way back when in West Branch, yeah, the place with the great big smiley face water tower and the syrup that tastes like sun tan lotion…
Girl Talk, man, you got a lot to live up to.
Over by the foamy beer dispenser, there’s a girl with a welt on her ankle. Casualty of Deacon. “At least it’s my blood,” she says, “and not someone else’s.” The Jack Black-looking guy in the Interview black longsleeve is marking the hands of those around him with orange highlighter. Hey, how ‘bout us?
“That depends,” he says, “will you get on stage and do some real bad dancing?”
“Sure. Of course. Dance like a maniac. The Tyrades and all that.”
“Okay.”
However, in the wake of Dan Deacon, there are rules in place for this bit of anarchy. From the top of the stairs, we receive our instructions. “Okay, everybody, we’re only gonna allow ten of you onstage at a time. That’s right. Ten. And no liquids on stage.” Damn. We’ll have to holster our tiny green water gun. First sortie up, next wave follows. Beach House is getting down. Bradford’s riding piggyback on a Grizzly Bear. Girl Talk slows T.I.’s “What You Know” to Hal-in-2001-death-throes tempo and somehow it works. We’re at the bottom of the stairs now, creeping closer. Girl Talk topless – top of the stairs. Any minute now, and we’re in. “Sorry,” says the bearded gatekeeper. “No more people allowed.” Massive groan of disgust on the steps below. But hey, I ain’t mad at ya.
What’s Yoko up to?
Who cares?
