A weekend in Chicago (Oak Park for the anal)
I'll attempt to make a good, sensical post, but it's all going to boil down to this: this weekend was one of the best in my life. Great times, great friends, great hospitality, and above all, great music.
We left Troy at about 11 AM Friday morning for Chicago. The weather was nice, temperature alright...yeah yeah. Good drive, real bad traffic around Kalamazoo and at Chicago, which was expected. We made pretty good time. Because the nerd inside my hungered, I kept a running list of every album we listened to, and I feel compelled to share that list with you, diligent reader.
The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely
Destroyer - Thief
Man Man - Six Demon Bag
The New Pornographers - Electric Version
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Creedence Gold
Radiohead - The Bends
The Pipettes - We Are the Pipettes
Secret Machines - Now Here is Nowhere
The Beatles - 1
Wolfmother - Wolfmother
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Livejournal cuts are a bitch, children. Fuck rich text mode...
So we arrived in Oak Park Friday afternoon to Nick, Nate's former roommate's house. It is awesome, as are his parents, and Nick is a good bud. It was fun stuff. We spent the evening visiting Nick's work in Oak Park, then a cramped tour of downtown Chicago, followed by the ordering of a monster of a pizza. We have "Chicago Deep-dish pizza" here at home, but only by name. This thing was huge. It may as well have been laced with chloroform, because the effort alone to attack this thing tired us all out and we were asleep shortly thereafter.
Day one was hot. Very, very hot. Needless to say, everybody in that park was sweaty. It was great. We got into the park, browsed around the merch for the first time of many (more on my loot later). Then the music began.
Note: None of my analyses will be nearly as in-depth as anybody else's you might read, just so you know, I guess.
Hot Machines - I only saw the last couple of songs for their set, and it really wasn't all that great anyway. It was pretty generic. Not much else to see...
Man Man - Just as the band is named. Man. Man. Too much man for one man. I think Nate made this joke in his post, but let's face it: this band proves the point needs to be made at least twice. These guys are crazy awesome, what you'd call an entertaining band. They made noise, harmony, music, everything. They even threw spoons at a bowl. Don't ask, it was too awesome.
The Mountain Goats - My favorite act of the entire show, this duo (trio for some songs) is amazing. From the little I had heard before seeing them, I was very excited to see them. The lead singer was extremely energetic, funny, and, well, good. Singing along to songs I didn’t know the lyrics to was always fun, and this show will stay in my mind forever.
Destroyer - I’m not gonna lie, I’m not a huge Destroyer fan. I’ve listened to a few albums before, and it’s never done it for me. The live show was exactly like listening to them on album. I’m not saying they’re bad by any means, just not really my favorite.
The Futureheads - This was my next favorite act of the night. Think of a barbershop quartet mixed with good ol’ rock and roll, and you get The Futureheads. Rocking out and singing in perfect harmony makes for a good show, especially when they pull the whole “this half sings this melody, the other half this” kind of business. I really enjoyed them, and it’s a shame I couldn’t find their album at the merch section.
That being done, we headed back to Nick’s house for some more leftover monster pizza, some old school Mario, Tetris, and overall good times.
Day two started off similarly, but with better weather, cloud cover early on was very nice. So without further ado…
Tapes ‘N Tapes - These guys rocked. Straight up awesome rock ‘n roll to start off the day. It also helped when the internet manager got up first and said “if bands had cocks, this one’s would be fucking huge! I want you to go home and blog about this band, and post mp3s, ‘cause if you don’t, I’m going to fucking come to your house and kill your dog! And if you don’t have a dog, I’ll hurt the weakest member of your family!” Extremely entertaining.
Danielson - A “family” band. While not as entertaining these guys had some pretty cool things going for them, especially the whole crowd clapping thing. Yeah, I don’t know what much to say about Danielson, they were good?
The National - I loved The National, definitely my favorite band of the second day. The band was very much into the music they played, the lead singer looked like he was about to have a breakdown (hopefully because of how well they were playing). Good old rock and roll again, it was fun stuff.
Devendra Banhart - While The National was my favorite band of the day, Devendra Banhart was definitely my favorite show. They were simply the most entertaining. Apart from great hippie-folk (more hippie, less folk) music, they were clearly high, raising the entertainment bar quite a notch. Always great when Devendra says “I know you’re all here to listen to us play, but, you know, we want to hear what you have too. Does anybody have anything they’d like to share with us?” Lo and behold, somebody was obvious talent was called up on stage to share a number with the audience. Must have been the greatest moment of this kid’s life to date.
Spoon - Spoon was pretty sweet, definitely the biggest act everybody was looking forward to. I didn’t dig the music nearly as much as some people, but it was great stuff. I think I was also very tired at the time.
Afterwards, the lot of us, hit up KFC/Taco Bell nearby (haven’t thought of a clever short name yet, I don’t think) to get some food. Then head back, more Mario, more Tetris, more sleep.
Merch! I got a Mountain Goats CD, a Pitchfork t-shirt, a couple of posters for free, and a ton of other free shit. It was great. Posters include The Arcade Fire’s Funeral and Spoon’s Girls Can Tell. Story time!
Spoon’s frontman (the name escapes me right now) was signing crap after his show. So the lot of us, posters and tickets in hand, wanted to take advantage of that. I have a bad habit. When people ask my name, sometimes I reply “it’s Dan,” just like that. Unfortunately, some people interpret that as “Stan,” causing some problems…such as signing posters. So now my poster reads “Stan - Be real - Brett.” It’s my favorite piece of material signed to “Stan” ever.
That’s really all. The ride home was uneventful…except for the music!
The Silver Jews - The Natural Bridge
Ben Folds - Songs for Silverman
The Mountain Goats - The Coroner’s Gambit
Okay - High Road
The Arcade Fire - Live at TT the Bear
Rogue Wave - Out of the Shadows
That about wraps it up. Hope you didn’t skip too much. All in all, it was a fantastic trip, and I’d love to do it again next summer. Have a good one!
-Dan
We left Troy at about 11 AM Friday morning for Chicago. The weather was nice, temperature alright...yeah yeah. Good drive, real bad traffic around Kalamazoo and at Chicago, which was expected. We made pretty good time. Because the nerd inside my hungered, I kept a running list of every album we listened to, and I feel compelled to share that list with you, diligent reader.
The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely
Destroyer - Thief
Man Man - Six Demon Bag
The New Pornographers - Electric Version
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Creedence Gold
Radiohead - The Bends
The Pipettes - We Are the Pipettes
Secret Machines - Now Here is Nowhere
The Beatles - 1
Wolfmother - Wolfmother
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Livejournal cuts are a bitch, children. Fuck rich text mode...
So we arrived in Oak Park Friday afternoon to Nick, Nate's former roommate's house. It is awesome, as are his parents, and Nick is a good bud. It was fun stuff. We spent the evening visiting Nick's work in Oak Park, then a cramped tour of downtown Chicago, followed by the ordering of a monster of a pizza. We have "Chicago Deep-dish pizza" here at home, but only by name. This thing was huge. It may as well have been laced with chloroform, because the effort alone to attack this thing tired us all out and we were asleep shortly thereafter.
Day one was hot. Very, very hot. Needless to say, everybody in that park was sweaty. It was great. We got into the park, browsed around the merch for the first time of many (more on my loot later). Then the music began.
Note: None of my analyses will be nearly as in-depth as anybody else's you might read, just so you know, I guess.
Hot Machines - I only saw the last couple of songs for their set, and it really wasn't all that great anyway. It was pretty generic. Not much else to see...
Man Man - Just as the band is named. Man. Man. Too much man for one man. I think Nate made this joke in his post, but let's face it: this band proves the point needs to be made at least twice. These guys are crazy awesome, what you'd call an entertaining band. They made noise, harmony, music, everything. They even threw spoons at a bowl. Don't ask, it was too awesome.
The Mountain Goats - My favorite act of the entire show, this duo (trio for some songs) is amazing. From the little I had heard before seeing them, I was very excited to see them. The lead singer was extremely energetic, funny, and, well, good. Singing along to songs I didn’t know the lyrics to was always fun, and this show will stay in my mind forever.
Destroyer - I’m not gonna lie, I’m not a huge Destroyer fan. I’ve listened to a few albums before, and it’s never done it for me. The live show was exactly like listening to them on album. I’m not saying they’re bad by any means, just not really my favorite.
The Futureheads - This was my next favorite act of the night. Think of a barbershop quartet mixed with good ol’ rock and roll, and you get The Futureheads. Rocking out and singing in perfect harmony makes for a good show, especially when they pull the whole “this half sings this melody, the other half this” kind of business. I really enjoyed them, and it’s a shame I couldn’t find their album at the merch section.
That being done, we headed back to Nick’s house for some more leftover monster pizza, some old school Mario, Tetris, and overall good times.
Day two started off similarly, but with better weather, cloud cover early on was very nice. So without further ado…
Tapes ‘N Tapes - These guys rocked. Straight up awesome rock ‘n roll to start off the day. It also helped when the internet manager got up first and said “if bands had cocks, this one’s would be fucking huge! I want you to go home and blog about this band, and post mp3s, ‘cause if you don’t, I’m going to fucking come to your house and kill your dog! And if you don’t have a dog, I’ll hurt the weakest member of your family!” Extremely entertaining.
Danielson - A “family” band. While not as entertaining these guys had some pretty cool things going for them, especially the whole crowd clapping thing. Yeah, I don’t know what much to say about Danielson, they were good?
The National - I loved The National, definitely my favorite band of the second day. The band was very much into the music they played, the lead singer looked like he was about to have a breakdown (hopefully because of how well they were playing). Good old rock and roll again, it was fun stuff.
Devendra Banhart - While The National was my favorite band of the day, Devendra Banhart was definitely my favorite show. They were simply the most entertaining. Apart from great hippie-folk (more hippie, less folk) music, they were clearly high, raising the entertainment bar quite a notch. Always great when Devendra says “I know you’re all here to listen to us play, but, you know, we want to hear what you have too. Does anybody have anything they’d like to share with us?” Lo and behold, somebody was obvious talent was called up on stage to share a number with the audience. Must have been the greatest moment of this kid’s life to date.
Spoon - Spoon was pretty sweet, definitely the biggest act everybody was looking forward to. I didn’t dig the music nearly as much as some people, but it was great stuff. I think I was also very tired at the time.
Afterwards, the lot of us, hit up KFC/Taco Bell nearby (haven’t thought of a clever short name yet, I don’t think) to get some food. Then head back, more Mario, more Tetris, more sleep.
Merch! I got a Mountain Goats CD, a Pitchfork t-shirt, a couple of posters for free, and a ton of other free shit. It was great. Posters include The Arcade Fire’s Funeral and Spoon’s Girls Can Tell. Story time!
Spoon’s frontman (the name escapes me right now) was signing crap after his show. So the lot of us, posters and tickets in hand, wanted to take advantage of that. I have a bad habit. When people ask my name, sometimes I reply “it’s Dan,” just like that. Unfortunately, some people interpret that as “Stan,” causing some problems…such as signing posters. So now my poster reads “Stan - Be real - Brett.” It’s my favorite piece of material signed to “Stan” ever.
That’s really all. The ride home was uneventful…except for the music!
The Silver Jews - The Natural Bridge
Ben Folds - Songs for Silverman
The Mountain Goats - The Coroner’s Gambit
Okay - High Road
The Arcade Fire - Live at TT the Bear
Rogue Wave - Out of the Shadows
That about wraps it up. Hope you didn’t skip too much. All in all, it was a fantastic trip, and I’d love to do it again next summer. Have a good one!
-Dan