Monday, July 25, 2011
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Pitchfork serenades Chicago Annual A2 Arts Fair
ByJOSHUA BAYER
Daily Arts Writer
Not many music festivals can
tout that their three-day passes
sold out within 24 hours of the ini-
tial sales date. But of 2011, Pitchfork
Music Festival can. In the realm of
indie hipster fandom, Pitchfork is
incontestably the "it" music festi-
val.
Just look at the lineup - no other
US festival of comparable notori-
ety would ever have the audacity
to flaunt Animal Collective, Fleet
Foxes and TV On The Radio as its
three premier headliners. While
Pitchfork's marquee bands may
possess tremendous clout in terms
of critical acclaim and devout cult
followings, they lack the power-
house mass appeal of, say, Eminem,
Foo Fighters, Coldplay and Muse
(the chief headliners of this year's
Lollapalooza, also held in Chicago).
But according to Mike Reed,
director of Pitchfork Music Fes-
tival, the event's palpable "small-
ness"is anythingbutacompromise.
In fact, the festival was originally
" slated as a juice-up incarnation of
the sorts of homely summer street
festivals that are immensely popu-
lar in Chicago.
"You have these street festivals,
there's a bunch of them all over the
place," Reed said in an interview
with The Michigan Daily. "But
they're just basically a beer bash,
more or less. There's a stage and
there's people selling crap. Most of
(the festivals) would have, like, bad
cover bands or maybe a blues band,
you know, maybe a tribute band ...
and my thought was, 'wouldn't it be
great if you had something like this
but it was actually good music?"'
Little did Reed know, the festival
would blow up into somewhat of an
enigma - the most monolithically
mod festival in America, despite
its relative lack of star power, real
estate and financial resources.
"Once you get compared to some
of those larger festivals ... they
actually are four or five times larg-
er than you, with that much more
means on every level," Reed said.
"We put up the event in three days
and tear it down in ten hours. We
don't have weeks to build it outside
in Manchester, Tennessee."
While there's an undeniable
charm to the dirt-caked, shower-
less experience that the hardcore
campout festivals promise, Pitch-
fork offers a far more comfortable
withstands the heat
COURTESY OF PITCHFORK
Pitchfork 2011 had three headliners, including Animal Collective, yictured ahove.
alternative.
"Usually, I'm not a huge fan of
festivals," said Johan Duncanson,
frontman and guitarist of Pitch-
fork 2011 band The Radio Dept., in
a Skype interview from Sweden. "I
used to go to a lot of festivals whenI
was a kid, and I always came home
like extremely dirty and hung over.
And I've heard that this festival is
cleaner."
Pitchfork's heavily discount-
ed price tag is a selling point as
well: It's $110 for a weekend pass,
which is favorably compared to an
upper limit of $249.50 or $215.00
for Bonnaroo and Lollapalooza,
respectively.
"If you wanted tosee TV On The
Radio, it might cost you 30 bucks,
with an opener," Reed said. "(At
Pitchfork), you get to see TV On
The Radio with like 10 openers.
And it's 45 bucks."
Moreover, Pitchfork's scaled-
down size allows for optimal
absorption of its artists' sets. Rath-
er than pitting five star-studded
stages against each other all at
once, the festival features two main
stages directly next to each other
(when a show on one stage stops,
another show begins almost imme-
diately on the opposite stage), with
a third stage thrown in for some
variety.
"At a lot of (festivals), you pay for
things that you would never even
have a chance to see," Reed said.
"And here, you get to see 70 percent
of what you're paying for."
If one truly wants to, he or she
can catch a significant portion of
literally every single set at the fes-
tival. Reed describes Pitchfork as
a "boutique" - a triumphant dis-
play of the hottest up-and-coming
bands on the underground music
circuit. Rather than focusing on
booking more established indie
acts, Pitchfork's primary intent is
to "break" bands with unrecog-
nized talent.
"We were the only festival (Fleet
Foxes) played back in 2007," Reed
said. "I mean,theywere completely
unknown ... that fall they were on
Saturday Night Live."
John Famiglietti, member of2011
Pitchfork band HEALTH, offers a
first-hand account: "When we got
asked to play Pitchfork (in 2009),
we came fromtotal DIY. Like, right
before that we were touring fuck-
ing basements in America and liv-
ing rooms and stuff."
Inextricably linked with the
online music publication of the
same name, Pitchfork Music Festi-
val represents the upper echelon of
the industry's underdogs.
"We never got to do the festi-
vals in our day," said Eric Axel-
son, bassist of recently reunited
Dismemberment Plan, a Pitchfork
2011 band that was somewhat of a
cult sensation in the late '90s. "We
never got to play, like, the Lollas or
the ACLs."
The Pitchfork afternoons were
fairly chilled-out displays of sonic
iconoclasts peppered in with some
particularly memorable sets (tUnE-
YarDs and Kurt Vile took the cake
this year), but the evenings were
absolutely breathtaking. Animal
Collective's set design alone, fea-
turing an onslaught of orange-
and-white paper bats and a giant,
monitor-laden face fashioned from
kaleidoscopic shards of glass, was a
cause for unbridled jubilation.
"I think Pitchfork is associated
with a certain kind of cool factor,"
said Dimitri Coats, guitarist of 2011
Pitchfork band OFF!. "And I think
people that are going to the festi-
val are probably expecting to be
exposed to somewhat of a cutting
edge."
By ANNA SADOVSKAYA
Daily Arts Writer
As the weather catapulted from
mildly irritating to catastrophi-
cally hot, the annual Ann Arbor
Art Fair rolled into town, bring-
ing with it a motley crew of indi-
viduals. The only warning the
sleepy and sweaty city had was
the array of tents that sprung up
where busy intersections had
been just moments before.
Wednesday morning, while
locals were busy re-routing their
commutes to work and curs-
ing the unavoidable road blocks,
flocks of people gathered on the
now-tented streets. With deter-
mination and a fierce eagerness,
people began to walk the streets
in search of good sales, fun knick-
knacks or simply because it had
become a tradition.
"We've been coming to the Art
Fair for years," said Kelly Farrell,
mother of four and resident of
South Bend, Ind. "I never know
what I'm looking for until I find
it. I think that's the beauty of the
fair. There's really something for
everyone."
The Art Fair boasts more than
1,100 artists and hundreds of thou-
sands of visitors walk the streets
of Ann Arbor, peeking into booths
and shying away from direct sun-
light. As Farrell noted, it's the ver-
satility of the Art Fair's products
that peaks the interest of many.
"It's like Christmas in July!"
said Monica Farrell, one of the
children with Kelly.
"I'm here with four kids. And
my sister, she has three," Farrell
said. "That's a lot of work, and
in this sun ... it's difficult, but we
don't miss it. I told the kids, 'you'll
just have to get all your whining
out of the way. We've got a long
day ahead of us."'
Farrell was not the only one
confronting the heat. Many
guests, feeling the weight of the
humidity, ushered into local food
joints and air-conditioned stores
in search of solace from the sun.
"The amount of people is awe-
some." said Anya Parampil, Ann
Arbor resident and Orchid Lane
employee hired for the Art Fair
rush. "It's really energetic and
lively everywhere. Even though
it's really hot outside, people still
feel like they can come in to local
stores and shop there. It's nice."
Businesses benefit greatly from
the annual open-air art extrava-
ganza. Hotels, restaurants, park-
ing lots and commercial stores
are all intertwined with the four
day mega-fair, profiting from the
large amounts of people that come
through Ann Arbor.
"We get a lot of people coming
in, being amazed at everything we
have," Parampil said. "It's good
for business, especially since Ann
Arbor is essentially dead in the
summer. It's been really fun get-
ting to know some people from
out of Michigan too. It's like a
little cultural experience!"
Over 1,100
artists took to
the streets.
Whether people were inter-
ested in paintings, fine jewelry,
specialty corks for wine bottles
or signing a petition for a nudist
beach, they could find it at the art
fair. Crowds meandered happily
from booth to booth, appreciating
the art, sunshine and the simple
pleasure of each other's company.
Of course, not everyone was
left as satisfied as the fair-goers.
Locals seemed less than thrilled
at the change of pace in town.
"I'm taking a summer class so
this interferes with my parking. I
have to wake up 30 minutes earli-
er!" said Jacob Williams, LSA stu-
dent and enthusiast of all things
not art fair. "It's inconvenient."
Along with time constraints,
Williams felt disappointed with
the circumstances. He added sar-
castically: "I'm really glad it's this
hot. It makes it so much better."
Although flecked with mild
inconveniences for the locals, the
Art Fair has long been one of the
greatest anticipations in the sum-
mer months, and this year it did not
disappoint. Saturday night ended
with a mass of happy, sun burnt
people examining their purchases
and eagerly awaiting next year's
fair.