Intonation.

Last weekend was nutso. Friday night in particular was strange - involving many, many things I just can't mention here because the fistful can't handle the heat, but I will say that the evening ended with me kicking five germans and a brit out of my apartment at 6 AM. Where did they come from?

Saturday and Sunday I spent jumping between the office and the Intonation festival, Pitchfork's pretentious indie rock extravaganza. Incredibly, the festival was extremely well run, never had any issues, managed to stay perfectly on schedule, and by alternating between two stages, managed to have bands play back-to-back-to-back with no set-up delays. That was amazing. I went with James on Saturday (the british guy) and it was blazing hot outside. Let me tell you, I've seen a lot of large groups of disinterested, skinny indie rock kids wearing huge sunglasses, vintage t-shirts, and artsy, greasy hairdos, but this was like the Indie National Convention. Lots of messenger bags with pins. Lots of old pants that fit funny. Lots of ugly, ugly people. This is my musical world. It was really hot both days, so it was actually nice that everyone was in such constant apathetic repose. At the typical concert, you get all dirty, people keep pushing you, and you always almost fall or get injured, especially with so many people. But these kids could barely be bothered to tap their feet to a song. Though there was the occasional weirdo who was rocking out to the music, and invariably that guy dances so weird that everyone around feels uncomfortable. Case in point, this gay guy and his friends who's favorite move was to make both hands into pistols (with the barrel doubled up with both the index finger AND middle finger) and pointing every now and then on beat while making up the scrunched musical orgy face. Everyone was doing the wide-eyed "uhhh does anyone else see this guy?" face behind him. James and I wandered around most of day 1 since he wasn't too into the bands. We checked out the booths, stood in line for 30 minutes to get a large pizza, 1 corndog, and 1 pulled pork sandwich (that was WAY too much food but it seemed like a good idea at the time). I didn't see every performance that day, but I saw the ones I wanted to see - A.C. Newman, Broken Social Scene, The Go Team!, Magnolia Electric Co. - and also incidentally took in Four Tet. Four Tet was terrible - I like laptop glitch just as much as the next guy (which, come to think of it, probably isn't much according to most of the guys I'm around all day), but this was pretty much just some guy standing over a laptop making noises that sounded like a broken arcade game. Only it didn't sound as cool as it seems that would. The best performances of the day were definitely A.C. Newman and Broken Social Scene, two bands that sound just unbelievable live. Broken Social Scene had about ten more people in the band than I thought playing tons of instruments and usually about 6 guitars at once. For those who don't know, that's a lot of guitars. A.C. Newman played all his great songs, which is to be expected since he only has one album, and he had about two people who played random things like harpsichords and recorders and a girl bass player who was great, so basically it was a solid performance. Speaking of the recorder, tons of bands use it; I haven't seen that many recorders played in a two day period since like second grade. Oh yes, and Magnolia Electric Co. played "Simple Again" which was great though Jason Molina did that lame things singers do where they change the melody and cadence of the words just because they are performing live. I hate that. The Go Team! were not as good as I thought they'd be because I didn't realize that (1) they were overly peppy british people, (2) the lead singer is actually rapping on most of the songs (on the album it sounded like cheerleaders cheering usually), but they had two drum sets and every member of the band plays every instrument. And one of the drummers is a Japanese girl who sang this cute song. I fell in love momentarily.

I skipped performances by Death from Above 1979 and Tortoise because I was still tired from the night before. I caught about five minutes of Prefuse 73, which was pretty cool live.

Sunday I got to Union Park (the venue which is west of the Loop, Chicago's highrise district) late so I missed Thunderbirds are Now!, Dungen, Xiu Xiu, Out Hud, Hold Steady, Andrew Bird, and Deerhoof. Most of those I would have only wanted to see out of curiosity, but I was generally disappointed to miss Out Hud and Deerhoof. I did, however, see The Wrens, Les Savy Fav, and The Decemberists, and they more than made up for it. The Wrens were incredible, and their performance was improved by the fact that they are like in their late 30s or early 40s (and thus look like an Eagles reunion tour or like guys from my office starting a band or something) and were incredibly excited to be there. The bass player was most excited, indicated by the fact that he decided to smash the fins off his bass during the FIRST song, rendering him incapable of playing bass for two songs while they scrambled around finding him a new bass. He probably should have waited a bit longer than song ONE to started smashing equipment. He then turned to the audience and started speaking in ridiculous absolutes, confessing that "this is probably going to be the greatest day of our lives" and commending the other bands for being "very different, but also absolutely amazing and incredible in every way". But his energy was really a plus for the show. They closed perfectly with "She Sends Kisses" which is one of my favorite songs. They really do sound almost perfect live both vocally and instrumentally and its too bad they aren't bigger.

Les Savy Fav was next, and though I was never a fan before, I am now. Their lead singer is a fat bald guy with a huge red beard. He was wearing a tight red tshirt and little red shorts. He was playing with a roll of foil, a bubble machine, and sponges the whole time. He yelled out, "Hey Ladies, make some noise if you like fatties with money!" He took off everything but his underwear and started washing himself on stage. He poured a beer down his pants. He kept muttering things into his microphone. He came down into the crowd and asked everyone in the crowd to sit down, and actually got them to do it. We're talking around 8,000 people here. In other words: great show.

The Decemberists closed out the weekend, and while I'm not a huge, huge fan of theirs, I like their music, and as might be expected of them they were immaculate live. Colin Meloy's voice really does just sound like that, and yes they somehow managed to sing lyrics that use the words "peripet" and "petticoat" before they were through with 3 songs. I left early so I wouldn't have to ride a crowded train home.

All in all, Intonation was almost too hipster for its own good. Really, some of the kids there were so indie they seemed like spoofs of themselves. And I've never seen a more diverse set of incredibly pretentious bands that nobody has ever heard of unless they spend all their time posing with brooding faces and dropping obscure band names like "Neutral Milk Hotel", "Royksopp", and "!!!". I'm not even sure how to pronounce that last one. I think it's chik chik chik. Who knows. It was really weird when people would ask where I was going and ask who was playing. Because I would say "uhh probably no one you've heard of", and when they'd invariably ask me to say anyways, it was true - they hadn't heard of a SINGLE band playing. But you know, I have heard of these bands and I actually care about a few of them, so at least it was still a good time - and at about $11/day you couldn't beat the price.

Okay, sleep->work->repeat. Later.

Fixed it tron. Fuck you.