2008 Woodie Awards
Pitchfork Music Festival 2008
Elaine Labate
Issue date: 8/27/08 Section: Arts & Entertainment
Chicago is pretty far away from New York. The distance seems even farther when you are driving in a Mountaineer with six other people (plus luggage) and your air conditioner starts malfunctioning somewhere in an Ohio cornfield. But if the reason for the trip was to attend Pitchfork Music Festival in July of 2008, and if the six other people in the car were all great friends, then you can be assured the trip was well worth it.
Some people may not be familiar with Pitchfork Music Festival. It is a three day long indie rock festival that takes place in Chicago's Union Park in mid-July. The festival is put on by Pitchfork.com, a website that reviews music and announce upcoming shows.
After our seemingly endless drive, through the great states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (which is much too wide of a state), Ohio, and Indiana, we arrived finally in Illinois on Thursday, the day before the festival would start. Friday's portion of the festival went on only at night, so we spent the day sight-seeing in Chicago, which personally reminds me of a somewhat cleaner New York. Moral of the story - if you are going to go to Chicago for any other reason that Pitchfork Fest, that reason should be Chicago deep dish pizza.
As customary for the Friday night portion of the festival, Pitchfork chooses three artists that they feel are influential and asks the artists to perform a popular album of theirs, from start to finish. This year, the Friday night show consisted of Mission to Burma performing "VS", Sebodah performing "Bubble and Scrape", and Public performing "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back". Because our good friends (and a good band!) Titus Andronicus were performing on Saturday, we were able to get free admission to the festival, as well as VIP passes. Due to this, and the fact that we were so psyched to sight-see in Chicago, we decided to pass on seeing Mission to Burma and Sebodah, and only came for Public Enemy. So around 8:30pm we arrived at the now packed Union Park - I had my VIP pass in hand and high hopes of taking a ridiculous photo with Flava-Flav.
Some people may not be familiar with Pitchfork Music Festival. It is a three day long indie rock festival that takes place in Chicago's Union Park in mid-July. The festival is put on by Pitchfork.com, a website that reviews music and announce upcoming shows.
After our seemingly endless drive, through the great states of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (which is much too wide of a state), Ohio, and Indiana, we arrived finally in Illinois on Thursday, the day before the festival would start. Friday's portion of the festival went on only at night, so we spent the day sight-seeing in Chicago, which personally reminds me of a somewhat cleaner New York. Moral of the story - if you are going to go to Chicago for any other reason that Pitchfork Fest, that reason should be Chicago deep dish pizza.
As customary for the Friday night portion of the festival, Pitchfork chooses three artists that they feel are influential and asks the artists to perform a popular album of theirs, from start to finish. This year, the Friday night show consisted of Mission to Burma performing "VS", Sebodah performing "Bubble and Scrape", and Public performing "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back". Because our good friends (and a good band!) Titus Andronicus were performing on Saturday, we were able to get free admission to the festival, as well as VIP passes. Due to this, and the fact that we were so psyched to sight-see in Chicago, we decided to pass on seeing Mission to Burma and Sebodah, and only came for Public Enemy. So around 8:30pm we arrived at the now packed Union Park - I had my VIP pass in hand and high hopes of taking a ridiculous photo with Flava-Flav.