Dan Deacon and a friend read the latest issue of Sentimentalist in between sets at Pitchfork Music Festival at Union Park in Chicago; Photos: Gavin Paul
Kids were po-going in unison, joyously sweating over Deacon’s 8’ x 10’ kickstand table. A speakerbox became a platform for uninhibited hotsteppers, their names chanted by the crowd for encouragement. The power, it had to be (very ironically) cut just before the bass burst of one of his hits – “Silence Like The Wind” – because of the energy busting about.
I wonder how Dan explained that this wasn’t a bomb to airport security?
Same with sample master-masher Girl Talk. The fire marshal shut the operation down because of the crowd surfing, the climbing of trees, on a strip of a third stage no wider than the length of a one way street. Meanwhile, R&B laptop warrior, Jamie Lidell, and Brooklyn math rockers, Battles, actually had enough space, in the main fields of Union Park, for the release of Uzi guitars and synths. Dancing, dancing everywhere…in place, with heads, shoulders, kicks, fist pumps. There was even a giggly child, shimmying about his father’s feet, guided by the weight of airport, ground control strength headphones.
Klaxons! WILL PLAY!
And then there were the Klaxons. Festival staff got their shit together at this point, so there would be no shutting down of anything. Deacon and Girl Talk, they scorched people’s troubles, but these new rave Britons went so far as to throw down salt to make sure those worries never came back. It was gear-trashing punk. It was hugging security guards. It was elbow and arm flailing. It was a drone of chucked mike silenced by the roar of a thousand bouncing and clapping fans.
Pitchfork brought the rock, and the dance followed.
Tags: Dan Deacon, Klaxons, Mastadon, Pitchfork Music Festival 2007, Yoko Ono