I know, I know…I haven’t been here. I’ll save you the thousand excuses and just go straight into some good Pitchfork Festival coverage to make up for it. Having been a year ago, I’m now familiar with the stage layout and prepared to have a blast, potential rain notwithstanding.
Mission of Burma
I missed the beginning of performance of Vs, which is one of the Mission of Burma albums that I’ve spent less time with, but having seen Mission of Burma before, I knew that I was in for a set full of blisteringly intense rock and roll fury. I got it, and nobody was enjoying that fury more than the guy standing behind me. Personally, I love when I see someone so into the music that they’re reminding the band which song comes next on the lineup. Mission of Burma actually did forget this twice. Their banter was as clever as their lyrics, and they quipped that they knew we’d settle for no less than the Definitive Edition of Vs. and after “Learn How,” drummer Peter Prescott joked that this was the song they used to let him, “sing.” It was, er, sung, very forcefully and along with “Eintstein’s Day” and “That’s How I Escaped My Certain Fate,” provided the highlights for that set.
Sebadoh
Sebadoh distinguished themselves from the other two acts on the stage as being the only one not to endorse Obama. At least they didn’t as long as I was watching them. I left halfway through their performance of Bubble and Scrape to stake out a good performance of Public Enemy. The second band from Massachussetts on the bill, they said that they grew up listening to Mission of Burma and aren’t terribly sure how they ended up playing after them. I can’t say I know either. They’re a good band, legendary even, but they weren’t really doing it for me, Bubble and Scrape isn’t an album I’ve spent any time with, and I wasn’t won over enough by their performance to attempt to do so in the near future. Their overly long pauses and less than witty attempts at banter in between songs didn’t help. Public Enemy’s beat makers The Bomb Squad started testing out their turntables on a different stage and getting very loud shouts of “Bomb Squad, Bomb Squad” before Sebadoh had even finished their set and honestly, I felt bad for them, but I feel like this was the overarching sentiment of the crowd.
Public Enemy
After a warm-up of reggae and dub inspired beats from The Bomb Squad, the first act I’ve witnessed who have actually used so much bass that my nose shook, Public Enemy took the stage. Flava Flav (who actually missed “Bring The Noise” made two promises to the audience over the course of the set. The first was that they wouldn’t half-ass their performance, that they would deliver a show and the second was that they would wear us out. They did both and did it brilliantly. Although he wore the clock around his neck, Flava Flav decided to forego the huge colorful hat and sunglasses for more subdued t-shirt and baseball cap and this was really the first time since all of his VH1 sublebrity fame that I was able to see him again as an artist instead of a punchline. In fact, the one time he brought up his reality TV fame, he got booed. However, this set wasn’t about Flav’s VH1 fame.
It was about something bigger. They proclaimed their messages of peace, righteous anger and hatred of war as Chuck D moved like an evangelist over the crowd. Their fervor grew throughout the set. I was sweating bullets by the end of “Don’t Believe the Hype” and the crowd really hit their stride by “Terminator X,” (who by the way, retired in 1998.) Before they’d finished performing It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Flava Flav was told that they had twenty minutes but that he’d go for another hour and twenty minutes…or at least until they cut the sound. They did in fact, stay on for an additional fifty. After finishing off “Party For Your Right to Fight,” the band did what they apparently do for their non-Don’t Look Back shows…a medley of old stuff and new stuff all pieced together as one. As soon as they started “Welcome to the Terrordome,” the place really went up for grabs and they went through everything from “911 is a Joke” to their first single to the song they performed last year on Jimmy Kimmel for the group’s 20th anniversary. Flav even did some beats on the drums, and their current DJ a few scratches on the turntables. Chuck D was an image of perfect spitfire the entire night and had complete control over us. We’d throw our hands in the air. We’d stick up a middle finger and yell “Fuck the war.” We were all under his command. And I, personally, was so worn out from their set, that I didn’t even bother looking for an afterparty. Stay tuned for more.
Additional posts you may be interested in:
Entries (RSS)
One of these years I need to make it out to at least one of these big music festivals!
Enjoy the rest of the shows!