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.