Olds at the Pitchfork Music Festival

Hey guess what I'm back at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, just like 5 years ago! I can't imagine I'll be back 5 years from now. I mean, I'm no stranger to bring the oldest person at a show but 5 years from now the kids will be asking "Whose grandfather is that?" instead of "Whose young-looking attractive uncle is that?"

All day yesterday it looked like it might rain. It finally started around 3:30. At first we were watching Ex Hex (good, better than I thought) in the rain and then they suddenly left the stage and HOLY MOTHER OF GOD an epochal, end of days feeling downpour started and a man with a British accent came on the PA and said the festival was closed. At this point it was raining so hard it was like breathing water. To someone who lives in California like me the whole thing was confusing and frightening. What is this? Why is this happening to me? Does this usually last for 20 minutes or 6 hours? Is there a FEMA Evacuation Center I should go to?

We went to a bar instead. It was only a few blocks from the festival but oddly empty. They reopened the festival about 30 minutes later. 

Here's who we saw. Bully (sorta pictured above) were keeping the riot grrrl torch lit lo these many years later and were great. 

Protomartyr is some kind of post rock art punk thing I don't understand so it was kinda lost on me. 

Parquet Courts were great. True story, last night we saw the guitar player outside our hotel and my friend Tom said "Hey great set man!" and he looked taken aback because he probably doesn't get recognized a ton but the girl he was with said "That's so cool!" so I'm glad someone is enjoying low grade celebrity. 

It started to get really, really crowded around 6 which is bad for me because I hate crowds of people and also crowds and people. It was crowded while we watched the New Pornographers, who were good and also AC Newman said he wished Pitchfork gave out more "zero point five ratings" which seemed unnecessarily snarky but that's ok. 

[CORRECTION: Apparently what he said was "Sometimes I have a quarrel with Pitchfork. Sometimes I wish they gave us 0.5 more."  Ok then.]

We just hung around where we were while Future Islands played on another stage. They are really not very good and also I'm not even sure why they were here because as I understand it Pitchfork is more oriented towards alternative music whatever that means these days and not stuff that might be playing in a Dodge dealership in Racine. 

Then was Sleater-Kinney. You can tell they were starting when girls with pink hair and lots of tattoos started pushing by you. I've always thought they were dramatically overrated but maybe it's just that they're very good at what they do and I just don't like their songs at all. Anyway we left.