By: Ben
Johnson
 |
| Photo courtesy the internet |
My plan for this past Saturday was to go to a
dental appointment at 10:00am, which involved getting fitted for a couple of
crowns, and then go from there to the Pitchfork Music Festival. It was a stupid
plan. But that was my plan.
I’d never been to the Pitchfork Music Festival
before, despite living in Chicago for that event’s now 10 year run. I never
wanted to go, especially. I don’t like crowds or heat or standing around for
hours on end looking at people who are just playing guitars or drums or
singing. I’m a grump that way, I guess. I’d like to not be, but you don’t
always get to choose everything about yourself.
I didn’t really want to go on Saturday either,
but there was like this situation with a person I was dating, who was going to
be in town for Pitchfork, and who is more fun than I am, and this person said “don’t
be a stupid grump, this is a fun thing for fun people to enjoy, get over
yourself. I will be there and we will have fun.” So I bought a one day ticket for
Saturday, and then shortly thereafter I started not really dating this person
anymore. I’m pretty new to dating. Apparently this is something that happens in
it.
Anyhow, this is how my day went:
Dentist’s
office, 10:00am-12:00pm
I should have flossed more diligently in my 20’s.
It’s really not all that big of an inconvenience. You can do it on like the
couch or in bed or something. If you don’t, you’ll end up with a mouth full of
goop that tastes like spackle-flavored chewing gum, laying back in a dentist’s
chair watching Jeff Corwin talk about turtle rescues. Jeff Corwin has put on
weight.
Is that tooth dust I’m breathing? I think I’m
breathing my own tooth dust. Whatever.
Pitchfork
Music Festival, 12:30pm-???
Oh, it turns out I am way early for this. There
are not many people here yet, and no music acts have started playing yet, and so
far it’s not bad. I visited the various tents with people and things in them.
My friend Jac was in the book tent. My buddies from Permanent records were in
the record tent. There was a free things area where you could interact with
youth-targeted brands, who would give you free things and ask you to hashtag
anything whatever them and add them on Snapchat. Snapchat is for dick pics. I
have been dating THAT long. I don’t want to see a yogurt company’s dick.
Jimmy Whispers played. I saw him. He played. He
was flailing around in the crowd and singing badly about raping your mother,
which I did not mind so much as it was just too bright out to listen to. I
decided to stop seeing him, and walked back to the record tent to look at more
records. A couple of people from the Drag City table informed me that they had
plans in the works to reissue old Flying Saucer Attack records sometime in the
next year. This news made me happy.
Protomartyr played, and I went to go watch and
ran into my friends Matty and Mary, who are great. I was not familiar at all with
Protomartyr, and I liked them. They seemed utterly miserable to be playing
outdoors in the heat of summer. Their front man was openly disdainful, wearing
a black suit coat and sunglasses and saying things like “alright, we’ll get
through this together” in between songs. I liked him. But I didn’t make it all
the way through their set because it was too hot, so I went and stood under
some trees, then went and sat on a couch in the free yogurt tent for like 30
minutes.
Then a bunch of other shit happened. My face
regained enough feeling for me to get some food, so I got some food. I went
back to the record tent, and a friend gave me some Excedrin for the somewhat
painful sensation my face was now capable of feeling. Then it rained, and I got
rained on. Some people were taking shelter from the rain inside of
port-o-potties. That seemed stupid to me.
The rain cleared up, and the Excedrin kicked
in, which is basically low grade speed, and I started just walking around from
thing to thing, not really liking being anywhere, checking the festival
schedule a bunch of times just to see if there were any musical acts on it that
I actually was very excited about seeing, kind of in the same way you stare at
an empty fridge for too long when you’re hungry. It was starting to get more
crowded. I vacillated between wanting to get closer to the front to see
whatever musical act was on a stage, and then wanting to get the hell out of
there. I had no plan. I was quantum. Panicked.
At one point I bought a vegetarian cheesesteak
and the person who gave it to me wanted to make sure it didn’t get tarp drip on
it, and I leaned my head into the cheesesteak tent and said “just put it under
my face, I’ll protect it with my head.” And then ducked out of there with a
cheesesteak very close to my face, and ate it hungrily under a tree. That was
kind of a fun interaction, I guess.
Then I ended up close to a stage where some hip
hop dude who I’d never heard of was about to start doing music, and the voice
of a British woman came on the loud speaker and said “due to forces beyond our
control, the Pitchfork Music Festival will be closing in 20 minutes…”
Immediately after which I was on my way to the nearest gate to escape.
Immediately after THAT, the sky opened up and dumped several cubic feet of rain
down on everybody. There were a lot of squealing, sad, wet white people running
around. I was not squealing or sad or running. I was a happy wet man, and I was
walking home.
Leaving the
Pitchfork Music Festival, 3:45ish
That person who I was kind of dating but then
kind of not dating called me while I was walking back to my car, and my phone
was too wet for me to swipe the “answer this phone call” option. That’s a funny
thing that phones do sometimes, is just become total useless due to your hands
being a little wet. I was eventually able to fix the situation due to some
napkins I had in my pocket on the suggestion of the cheesesteak person, who
said “keep some napkins in your pocket so you can use them on your glasses.”
That cheesesteak person was a smart, helpful, kind person.
It turned out the Festival was due to open back
up in not much time, and then do all of the Festival-like things it was
originally intended to do, and that I'd be more than welcome to go back to it and hang out and be at it and prove to the world and myself that I am not a grump, that I am in fact fun as defined by being a person who goes to a thing like this and hangs out with people. But I was soaked, for one, and also as I was growing
increasingly frantic and desperate for relief in the few moments leading up to
the storm, it was hard not to see this deluge as a message from God. “I hereby
release thee, my son.” And the decision to just go home felt like the best decision I’d
made in a very long time.
I hopped in my car, which I had parked pretty
far away, and took Ashland north, did an end-around some heavy traffic by
turning right on Cortland, then left on Elston, then up to Damen, right on
Diversey, left on Paulina, right on School, then left on Ashland again which by
then was manageably thinned out, and during this deft maneuvering, which I had
the ability and the knowledge to pull off, I decided to listen to Black Vinyl
Shoes, which is an album I like by the band Shoes, very loud. It turns out this
was also music. And I was sitting down while listening to it and enjoying it,
and paying nothing for the privilege other than whatever gas money I burned
through while deftly piloting a 2000 Volkswagen Shitbox through the backroads
of Chicago’s North Side.
I stopped at the corner store and bought some
ice cream for myself, and then plopped down on the couch and watched movies for
the rest of the day, and it was the best. It was better than a thousand
festivals all lined up in a row. I cannot hesitate to recommend going home from
the Pitchfork Music Festival for no better reason than to just not be there
anymore. It’s the best event of the summer. If that makes me a grump, well, too
bad. I get to decide what kind of life makes me happy.
That's my review of Pitchfork Music Festival. It is, in a way, less relaxing and enjoyable than dental work, and it is by far not as good as not it. To me.
