Paint the Town Orange

Pitchfork Music Festival Day 2 - July 19th 2008 - Union Park, Chicago, IL

Amidst the rain, mud, quicksand, and ridiculous looking hipsters I was actually able to catch few band yesterday. Most of my day was spent in the CHIRP tent spreading the word about my various projects. I also spent sometime consuming a foot long veggie wrap from Whole Foods, learning about the open-book literacy program, and walking the tent at the poster fair.

First up on my schedule was Caribou. Multi-instrumentalist Dan Snaith completely blew me away by not only signing his beautiful song, but also switching from drums to keyboards to guitar without effort. It was a great set, but I left early to head over to Icy Demons.

Chicago's Icy Demons are a mystery to begin with so anticipating their performance I had no idea what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to the see an upright bass, and watch the band switch from electro -rock to tropical swoon to near free jazz croon. It was strange, but very appealing.

I don't know what it is about live hip-hop that just gets the heart pounding and legs bouncy and arms waving, but London's Dizzee Rascal knows how to move the crowd. Now his Dj in the pink and green headphones is another story. He had what looked like turntables, but as he prepared you could see him put discs in and he carried no vinyl. If you have turntables, you have to have vinyl. He scratched a little, but at one point you could tell that the scratch was actually on the cd and not performed live. He was a little lame to say the least.

After Dizzee I went into the tents, but I did catch a little of Animal Collective closing out the night by performing Panda Bear's "Comfy in Nautica" which was a very cool way to end a very hot an wet day.