[ please bang on the keyboard like a monkey ]
Chicago! Gigantic apartment! Pitchfork Music Festival! It's all happened. And despite the muchness and suchness of it all my urge to record has been rather limited, dear reader. Chicago is growing on me, though (and local bands be rockin). There's something good about the city that I can't quite put my finger on. In Houston, or from the hedged-in vantage that is Rice, at least, the city was... spread-too-thin, whispy, empty, that sorta thing. Here though, there's a comfortable closeness, there's busy-ness, there're people, hearts beating, and all that.
Anyway Pitchfork was OK. Ted Leo, Silver Jews, Spoon, and Yo la Tengo showed... nothing spectacular but 'twas nice. I really liked Jens Lekman. The guy can put on a show. We spent a lot of time at the smallest of the three stages where the smallerish, more zany, experimental acts were playing. Most of them were...uh... a little too experimental for me. Yeah. But I did like Glenn Kotche - the drummer for Wilco, playing alone here. It seemed like he could keep these totally different beats going in his head and his arms and legs, four or five at a time. He'd just start going with one hand... maybe record it and loop it. Then start again. Add some bass with a very different beat. Add another hand. Add some bells. Add something else... until he's got this very rich, alive sort of rhythm... that if you weren't looking straight at the guy, you'd swear was being played by three or four people. Quite impressive. |
