By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times

Lollapalooza wasn't supposed to last 20 years. It was a miracle it survived 20 dates. The tour was a death knell, a tick on a bucket list, the proverbial last hurrah. That first tour, Lollapalooza 1991 — that was meant to nail a particular coffin shut.

"It was the farewell tour for Jane's Addiction," says Perry Farrell, leader of that storied — and now revived — alt-rock band and inadvertent founder of Lollapalooza. "Marc [Geiger, his agent] called me up to discuss what we wanted to do, how we wanted to send ourselves off. He said we could do whatever we wanted. Well, my background was putting on shows and parties in L.A. I would never play the straight clubs, I was always finding the weird loft or setting up in front of a hot dog stand or taking people into the desert. I was used to putting on parties that had extra things. And Marc said 'whatever you want.' So I said, 'All right, I'll call you back.' I wanted to really think about it."

Geiger, now head of music at William Morris Endeavor and still booking the new stationary Lollapalooza, recalls the idea for a roving festival being sparked in London.

After a Jane's Addiction club show, Farrell lost his voice, thus forcing the band to cancel its appearance the next day at Britain's Reading Festival, an annual multi-band music event dating back to the 1970s.

"I went on to the festival the next day and had an amazing time," Geiger says, "and we go back to the hotel, where the band is sitting around pretty depressed, and said, 'Man, you should have seen this. This is what we should try to do with the breakup tour.' Perry said, 'Absolutely,' and we sat in the lobby sketching out the format and making lists of bands. ... This being Jane's Addiction, there was a lot of interesting stuff going on. One day a while later, Perry called me at 1 a.m. and said, 'I've got the name!' He'd heard it on a Three Stooges episode."

Fried from drug abuse and exhausted from touring, by 1991 Jane's Addiction was ready to call it a day. Farrell and guitarist Dave Navarro were at each other's throats. They finished recording "Ritual de lo Habitual" and were able to agree on one last thing: the tour supporting that album would be their last as a band.

Farrell had no reason to think it would repeat itself.

"I wanted a longer lineup, just because I wanted to have a wilder, bigger party," Farrell says. "If it's a farewell, then let's invite some of our musical friends and peers. Nothing was supposed to come of it, you know. I had no intention of doing it again. I mean, the thing was over and William Morris and Marc and these guys are all really enthusiastic and saying, 'We think we can get the Red Hot Chili Peppers for next year!' — and I went, 'Wait, what? Next year?'"

Farrell's musical Frankenstein (created also with help from Jane's manager Ted Gardner and booking agent Don Muller) would become the undead monster stomping through popular music and the summer concert scene for years to come. Lollapalooza lived, died, and in 2005 was born again as an annual, stationary "destination festival" in Chicago's Grant Park. This weekend the event is sold out, meaning 90,000 fans a day over three days will hear 130 bands on eight stages.

Humble beginnings

Lollapalooza — one day and one stage — debuted July 18, 1991, at a dusty, shade-less amphitheatre in Phoenix. For the next month and a half, the tour's nine performers visited 21 cities, including Aug. 3 at the World Music Theatre (formerly the Tweeter Center, currently the First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre) in nearby Tinley Park.

By the end of Lollapalooza that year, Jane's Addiction would be over — but more popular than ever. The rift in the band, however, was clear from that first show.

"The guys in Jane's Addiction got into a fist fight on stage. It was a hell of a way to debut," recalls Andy Cirzan, vice president of Chicago's Jam Productions. Jam would be producing the inaugural Lollapalooza when it reached the Chicago suburbs, so Cirzan had flown to Phoenix to see how it was going down. "The fight continued off stage. There was some definite roundhousing going on. I don't know if anyone landed a punch, but I specifically saw some punches flying as they left the stage."

"Yeah, well, that's why we were leaving," Farrell admits.

The rest of the Lolla lineup that first year: Nine Inch Nails, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Living Colour, Ice T & Body Count, the Butthole Surfers, Rollins Band, the Violent Femmes and Fishbone. (See where the Lolla class of '91 is now.)

Emergency Broadcast Network, a group of video artists, bewildered fans at some of the shows by projecting soundtracked films between sets (basically the kind of electronica videos now all over YouTube). In San Francisco, an all-black heavy metal band, Othello's Revenge, played 1991's only side stage.

(That same Aug. 3, 1991, weekend in Chicago also offered Bonnie Raitt with Chris Isaak at Poplar Creek, the O'Jays at the Arie Crown Theatre, Kelly Willis at Schubas, Dizzy Gillespie at Ravinia, and the South Shore Jazz Festival featuring the Count Basie Orchestra at the South Shore Cultural Center.)

The idea of a multi-band festival wasn't that unusual in 1991. One that moved around the country was.
"The festival scene had been in Europe for a long time, and lot of this was modeled on that idea. But those were all destination festivals. To take this thing a put it on the road, that was unheard of," Cirzan says. "You're not talking about two or three bands and their equipment. Now you're talking about eight or nine bands, stages, vending, kiosks, and moving it all across America."

The more Farrell thought about what he wanted to do, brainstorming after that initial "whatever you want" phone call, the more he wanted to do.

"I was thinking in terms of what else would happen on the grounds. I really wanted an art gallery," Farrell says. "That's the first extracurricular, front-of-house idea I had, to have a traveling art gallery. From there, I started thinking, well, that covers the ground, but what about the sky? So I wanted hot-air balloons. I kept on going. I didn't get resistance on anything except the hot-air balloons. We managed to do it one year, but a balloon only holds two to four people at a time. It wasn't cost effective."

Even the first Lollapalooza provided plenty of extra, non-musical distraction to fill the long hours in the summer sun. In addition to shops full of trinkets and food vendors, numerous organizations were spreading their gospels. Greenpeace had a heavy presence, and informational kiosks abounded for groups such as Rock the Vote, the League of Women Voters, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the National Abortion Rights Action League, Handgun Control Inc. and the Citizenship Education Fund. The Amok Bookstore sold banned books.

Jeffrey Othello, namesake leader of Othello's Revenge, christened Lollapalooza's first side stage. After working his way through college in concert security for legendary Bay Area promoter Bill Graham, Othello's first band was booked at Graham's 1990 festival, A Gathering of the Tribes. A precursor to Lollapalooza, this two-day event — a mini-tour organized by the Cult's Ian Astbury, with the first day outside San Francisco and the second outside Los Angeles — featured a diverse bill that included Soundgarden, the Indigo Girls, Ice T, Queen Latifah, Iggy Pop, Joan Baez and more.

"Our music got resistance from the booking agency for that festival, but you don't say no to Bill Graham," Othello recalls. "He liked our music, so he built a second stage especially for us on this grassy area at stage left. ... We were a big enough hit that we got the call to try the same thing at Lollapalooza that first year."

Lollapalooza '92 included a full-time side stage on all the dates, as well as the addition of the briefly notorious Jim Rose Circus Sideshow.

Diverse but not everything

The first Lollapalooza lineup and several subsequent ones were diverse, which is not necessarily the same as today's smorgasbord, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. In 1991, the industry still filed many of these bands under "college rock."

"The other reason I wanted so many bands to come with us is I felt there was strength in numbers," Farrell says. "This is before the title 'alternative rock.' There was no name for it. It was just this underground phenomenon now getting a presence on radio and showing good numbers on the live circuit. I figured if I just brought my friends and my record collection out there with me, together it would be very powerful."

The booking philosophy of the first Lollapalooza was considerably looser than subsequent tours.
"It was us in a hotel room with the manager and the band, and everybody could pick one band," Geiger says. "It was the non-scientific, choose-your-kickball-team approach. Dave wanted Siouxsie, because he's a Goth. Perky [Jane's drummer Stephen Perkins] loved Rollins. Perry wanted Ice-T. Eric [Avery, former Jane's bassist] wanted the Butthole Surfers. I wanted Nine Inch Nails and the Pixies. I got one. Living Colour was no one's choice; they were exploding at the time, and we thought they made sense."

"It was all hair metal at that time," Farrell says. "We were fighting against that. We were not pop, and rock had become pop. I don't want to pick on people like Styx and Journey, but you understand they would say they're rock bands. To me, they're pop groups. We didn't want to be that."

Farrell and Gieger also say they wanted those early Lollapaloozas to stay manageable. That '91 show seemed like such a big deal — with nine bands. This weekend's hootenanny in Grant Park showcases 130.
"I have to say, that's what was nice — and, I think, most effective — about those early tours. It wasn't about a million bands. It was a marquee slot, and everyone lobbied to be on it. It was a strategy about breaking your band nationwide," Cirzan says. "Today, it's, what, 150 bands? The average consumer — I mean, how could you even digest more than, say, 20 bands in a day? It doesn't seem that helpful to bands, just the promoters."

"The cool part came later," says Debbie Cohen, an English teacher at Glenbrook South High School. She attended Lollapalooza '91 at the World. "After seeing the bands you'd never heard of and then, after they became huge, you were able to say, 'Wow, I saw that show!' ... It was a whole day of music, and that seemed very cool, but it wasn't so much that it was too much, like today. Plus, at 15 years old, Tinley Park seemed very far away and exotic."

Cohen tagged along with her older brother, who was there "because Jane's Addiction was his favorite band in the whole world." They had tickets on the lawn; she remembers the day being slightly rainy. For Jane's Addiction, they managed to squeeze against the barrier between the lawn and the pavilion, and Cohen was hoisted onto "the shoulders of this 6-foot-4 dreadlocked boy named Todd, so I had the best seat in the house."

Her current students were astonished to learn Lollapalooza had a history.

"They were so excited this year, and I'd never heard of most of the bands. I said, 'You know, I was at the first one.' They looked at me like I was an alien," Cohen says. "I named some of the bands. 'Who's that?!' they said. ... They were totally flabbergasted."

Stephanie Katsaros, a Chicago sustainability consultant now who was 16 at Lollapalooza '91 at the World, got her view by standing on the pavilion armrests, "headbanging and fist-pumping to 'Head Like a Hole' during NIN."

Her experience at the first Lollapalooza was so satisfying and eye-opening, Katsaros says she's been to every one except 2008. The music was great, she says, but the crowd was amazing.

"The scope of the people — it was almost like the high school cafeteria, with punks on one side and preps on the other, had been mixed up," she says. "This mélange of people and ideas. It was the first time I'd seen that kind of movement. ... It started in the parking lot. People had cooler and food and drinks at their cars, just hanging out. It was definitely not a Grateful Dead parking lot scene. I remember black T-shirts and piercings and Mohawks. All these people kind of finding each other. ... We didn't know there was an us!"

Chicagopalooza

Within a few years, the organizers of Lollapalooza began to realize that the scene was as important, if not moreso, than the music. They thought they'd try an experiment — in Chicago.

"They called us up in '95 and said, 'We want you ready to go on sale next week,'" Cirzan says. "I said, 'Well, you've got to tell me who's on the show.' They said, 'Ah, we're not going to announce the artists yet. We just want to see what we've got, and you're the test market.' I'll be damned if we didn't sell out 28,000 tickets with no lineup."

This is now the routine: Lollapalooza passes go on sale, and often sell out, sometimes weeks before a single artist is announced. That this now occurs in Chicago is because of that 1995 venture.

"When I thought about where we would put this as a destination festival, I never forgot that," Farrell says. "Chicago and I have had a love affair for a long time."

That same year, '95, Geiger told the Sun-Times, in response to a question about the festival's scaling back of shows that year: "I think in 2010, people are going to look back and see that we did what we had to in 1995 to ensure that Lollapalooza would still be around. ... It would be nice to be involved with something that lasts that long, given that the trends of the business go so fast."

Just as Lollapalooza came back from the dead, Jane's Addiction also lived, died, lived again and died again, but has reunited once more and is back this week with the first single — perhaps aptly titled "Irresistible Force" — from a new album, "The Great Escape," their first in eight years due in late September.

Oddly, given the perfect timing, Jane's Addiction is not performing at this year's Lollapalooza. As I speak with Perry, he's packing for another gig early this week — in Australia.

"We're going down to do one show at Splendour in the Grass. It's a destination festival!" he says. "We played Lollapalooza there a few years ago. We've got a great lineup this year, they don't need us. Maybe next year. I mean, it looks like this will go on forever, right?"

 
 
 

By Thomas Conner
© Chicago Sun-Times
 
I checked out Sleater-Kinney one night in 2000 in New York City. As they took the stage at the Bowery Balloom and plugged in, some yokel in the balcony shouted, "I hope you're better than you were at Irving Plaza!" The crowd ooh'd, then booed. A challenge had been made, a gauntlet thrown. The next two hours were one sweaty, thousand-watt rebuttal.

There weren't many fair-weather fans of Sleater-Kinney. During their late-'90s, turn-of-the-century reign as the country's most intense and credible female alt-rockers (always with that gender qualifier, if not the dreaded "riot grrrl" tag), their emotionally raw performances and feminist convictions inspired fierce devotion among fans. Even Time magazine called them "America's best rock band." But by 2006, utterly spent, the trio announced an "indefinite hiatus" and hasn't regrouped since.

But late last year two-thirds of Sleater-Kinney, singer-guitarist Carrie Brownstein (now a co-star of cable sketch comedy show "Porlandia") and drummer Janet Weiss (also still half of the long-running indie-pop duo Quasi), reappeared in an emerging new band, Wild Flag, with ex-Helium guitarist Mary Timony and keyboardist Rebecca Cole (ex-Minders). You could say they're a supergroup — but the Fugazi comparisons are closer than those of the Traveling Wilburys.

In March, Wild Flag made its debut at the annual South by Southwest music showcase, playing a rousing, irresistible set. The music was chunky, strong and urgent, but also lighter, bouncier, full of Cole's kitschy keys and layer upon layer of sunny ooh's and ahh's. Their energy positively crackled — and they have successfully captured that on the band's self-titled debut album, due Sept. 13.

It's as if another gauntlet was thrown, and this new quartet feels they have even more to prove. We spoke last week with Weiss about that and more ...

Q: I absolutely love the record. It's a blast.
Janet Weiss: Oh good. We haven't talked to too many people who've heard it. Hopefully it's different and surprising in some ways.

Q: It is surprising. Were you going for the element of surprise?
JW: Any time I make a record or walk onto a stage, I'm hoping to surprise people. It's getting harder to do, though. There's so much information about a record and a band before you even hear the music or see the show, as in YouTube or an online presence, that gives a lot away instead of intriguing people. I think surprise is one of our greatest weapons, and I think we wield it well here.

Q: What's first surprising is the level of energy, absolutely bristling from the songs. You recorded the whole thing live, right?
JW: Yeah, there are only maybe three or four overdubs, besides the vocals. It's a real energy record. We're all four looking at each other while we're playing. The intricate moments that feel vibrant are actually us playing together, really finding out who we are as a band, and focusing on that instead of fancy production. We're not making an epic, 18-song double record. It wasn't about that. This is like shaking your hand, "How are you? Nice to meet you!" We're still finding out who we are. We're not sure.

Q: Where is all the excitement coming from?
JW: We just really want this to go off. Carrie hadn't been in a band for a few years, so she was probably dying to get back up there and play. Mary had been teaching guitar but not playing. Rebecca went back to school. The three of them especially were chomping at the bit to express themselves in that way again. I've never lost that. It's what I do in my life.

Q: Tell me how Wild Flag got started.
JW: Carrie asked me to help her with a soundtrack she was doing for a documentary. I'd known Rebecca and played with her for years, always thought she was awesome. We got her to play on it, as well. The three of us recorded, wrote some ditties, some instrumental incidental music. Spending the days in the practice space just reminded me of our connection, how prolific Carrie and I can be when we sit down to write. It went really well. It was a very organic unfolding. It wasn't, "Oh, we're gonna make this new band and take over the world!" Mary and Carrie create this dynamic that I really love in music with this tension and contrast. It's a little like Sleater-Kinney, but there's more bravado here, more pushing and pulling.
And I've never seen two women playing guitar solos at the same time. [Laughs] I've never seen that! Have you? I've been watching music my whole life, and that's something I've never seen!

Q: Why does that confound you? Why, in 2011, is that such a funny, shocking thing to realize?
JW: I'm just surprised. I just sat down and thought about it. Have I seen this? I haven't. And without going off into a conversation about women in rock, because I don't do that — I don't discuss "women in rock" because I don't "men in rock" — I just thought: I've seen two guys play solos together. I'm just saying.

Q: The chemistry you're describing, part of that is already well established between you and Carrie — and it seems pretty intense. Why is that?
JW: We do have this intensity. It's a language, an ability to be open with each other. There's an easiness there.

Q: And what does that mean specifically for the music?
JW: It means we get to important ideas very fast. It means we already feel like we're getting somewhere in this band. It's a language for working through how to unfold a song.

Q: Does that turn into music that's otherwise more intense than the usual pop fare?
JW: Well, we definitely feel music has gotten a little soft in the last few years. We've missed seeing truly cathartic, emotional, visceral performances. We miss seeing people letting go, daring you to let go.

Q: Sleater-Kinney always maintained a similarly intense relationship with its fans. What contributed to that?
JW: We totally exposed ourselves on records, and [our music] was a desperation to share our experiences, to create — it was our desire, our need to have the experience between us be meaningful and intense and revealing, every time.

Q: Was any part of the creation of Wild Flag linked to a desire to return to that Sleater-Kinney intensity?
JW: Not in the way of, "Let's relive this thing that existed." This was a brand-new discovery on its own. There are very few situations you get in and think, "This is really exciting, this has some real possibilities!"

Q: Will this lead toward or away from a Sleater-Kinney reunion?
JW: Sleater-Kinney was so in the moment — every show was a big deal — and that relationship with the fans was so intense and meaningful, to do it again as a reunion would feel so much less to me, less than what it was. I would never want to touch that. ... Why go on tour if we'd be less than we were? We value what we stood for. It's bigger than us.

Wild Flag will return in the fall as part of a proper tour. They're scheduled Oct. 9 at the Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western. Tickets: $15, (773) 276-3600, emptybottle.com.
 
WILD FLAG
with Mickey and Radar Eyes
• 10:30 p.m. July 22
• Subterranean, 2011 W. North
• Sold out
WILD FLAG
• 9 p.m. July 23
• Wicker Park Fest, Milwaukee and North avenues
• Tickets: $5 requested donation at festival entrance, wickerparkfestchicago.com

This post contains my complete running coverage of this annual festival ...
© Chicago Sun-Times

Q&A with Hodgy Beats from MellowHype, Odd Future
By Thomas Conner on July 12, 2011 1:00 PM
 
Hodgy Beats and Left Brain, members of hotly debated rap group Odd Future — appearing Sunday afternoon at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago's Union Park — also work together under the name MellowHype. The duo's self-released 2010 album "Blackendwhite" was reissued this week by Fat Possum Records with extra tracks, and a new album, "Numbers," is expected later this year.

We caught up with Hodgy Beats last week following Odd Future's performance at the T in the Park festival in Scotland, the last of a string of dates for the group across Europe. When we weren't rehashing the controversy about the group's violent lyrics, there was other stuff to talk about ...

Q: How have the shows been in Europe this month?
Hodgy Beats: Europe is pretty wild, yo. The festival shows have been very, very intense. The crowds are really in love with Odd Future. Musically, people out here are more into it.

Q: How did you and Left Brain meet?
HB: We've known each other, sh—, probably since the second semester of 10th grade. So, 2007-ish.

Q: What clicked between you?
HB: I was just waiting for someone else to come along to make music with.

Q: You work together as MellowHype; within Odd Future, do you also work as a unit?
HB: We work together and with other people. He makes a lot of beats. Left Brain drops a beat and it's, there you go.

Q: With up to 10 people onstage at Odd Future gigs, how do you keep it from getting too confusing?
HB: Before shows we remind each other, hey, everybody's excited and into it and everybody wants to be on stage, but let's try to keep it minimal. It's three people max at all times. That doesn't work out all the time.

Q: What should we expect at this show?
HB: A bunch of niggers rocking the f—- out.

Q: Will there be some MellowHype shows in the future?
HB: Actually, there will be. When "Numbers" comes out, we'll do our own tours.

Q: How will they differ from the whole group's shows?
HB: It'll be more personal, more hands-on. We'll actually pull a different crowd.

Q: Why do you think that?
HB: We're just different, dude. We're just different.

Q: Is there going to be an Odd Future album?
HB: Definitely.

(Someone in the background then shouted "No, tell him no, Hodgy!" and laughed.)

Q: Who's that?
HB: That's my counselor.

Q: How was it lying in a coffin full of snakes for the "64" video?
HB: It was crazy. Actually, it was cool. I never thought I'd be doing something like that.

Q: That video has some dark imagery. How much of that is your idea and how much is the vision of the director (Matt Alonzo)?
HB: It's all my decision. It just looks cool. It's not dark to me.

Q: You and Left Brain are cranking out a lot of music. What inspires you to be so creative and so fast?
HB: It's just what we do. It's a living. We're getting paid for it now, not that it matters. But music is our passion and our joy. We enjoy doing it, that's why we make a lot of it.

Q: "Not that it matters"? You could take or leave the money?
HB: I'd still be doing it, trying to get where I am, with or without someone's money.

Q: You have plans for a solo album, too?
HB: Yeah, called "Damien." There's no set date or any stress on it.
 
 
Odd Future's strange present: Local advocates seek to balance lyrics of rape, violence, homophobia
By Thomas Conner on July 12, 2011 1:30 PM
 
I'm not a f—-in' role model
I'm a 19-year-old f—-ing emotional roller coaster with pipe dreams
These motherf—-ers think I'm supposed to live up to something?
— Tyler the Creator in "Goblin"

They've been called "the future of the music business" for their freewheeling, Internet-based approach to recording and distribution. They've also been called "inexcusable," "reprehensible" and "dangerous" for lyrics that are frequently violent, misogynist, anti-gay and anti-police. They're called OFWGKTA (Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All), and they're a large, young hip-hop collective that's become one of the most divisive topics in music.

Odd Future, scheduled to perform July 17 at the annual Pitchfork Music Festival, has turned heads with some of the freshest sounds in hip-hop, heard mostly in tracks given away free online and on myriad solo projects by the group's members. (Odd Future, a sprawling bunch with 10 regular members, like a baby Wu-Tang Clan, performs together live but has only assembled tracks for two mixtapes.) Their songs are wildly aggressive and boundlessly creative, the wordplay crazy-clever and surprisingly sharp.

But it's those rhymes — peppered as they are with rape, kidnapping, murder and torture fantasies, blasphemy, homophobia, you name it — that's fixated the press and helped elevate this cult rap collective to the level of a Billboard magazine cover in March and last month's in-depth New Yorker feature, and it's the casual, matter-of-fact delivery of them that makes parents and activists apoplectic.

Some examples:

— "Kill people, burn sh—, f—- school / Odd Future here to steer you to what the f—-'s cool / F—- rules, skate life, rape, write, repeat twice" ("Pidgeons")

— In the song "Splatter," Odd Future's biggest breakout star Tyler the Creator boasts of having sex with "your teen daughter ... always against her will" followed by the same with "this grandmother named Jill."

— In "French" a business plan is hatched that, for some reason, includes a sexual act with the Virgin Mary.
Hodgy Beats, at 20 he and Tyler are the oldest of the mostly teenage group, spoke to the Sun-Times last week from a tour stop in London. As he and other members have maintained, Odd Future's lyrics, he said, are preposterous artistic expressions rather than reportage or incitement to action.

"Nothing is really serious," the laconic rapper said. "It's just like all the things in our music. It's in the atmosphere, it's in the world, and it's in our lyrics. ... I think it's funny that people flip out about sh— like that."

For some, it's not enough to write off songs that mention rape and murder to being humorous or simply "not serious." Several Chicago advocates for gay and women's rights in recent weeks promised to protest before the group's afternoon performance at Chicago's Union Park. But the festival announced Thursday that local organizations, including Between Friends and Rape Victim Advocates, will have "an onsite presence at the festival" in the form of an informational booth in the park.

"When we didn't have a booth at the festival, we were going to stand at the entrance to the Pitchfork festival and hand out 6,000 fans that have messages on them — one side lists resources for women who might be involved in domestic violence or a violent relationship, the other side a message about violence against women," says Kathy Doherty, executive director of Between Friends, a 25-year-old domestic violence agency. "Now we have a booth and can still give out the fans as well as information there. ... It's not a protest, it's an awareness-raising event."

Odd Future certainly isn't the first music act to terrify the predominately white media with tales of violence and gore, nor will they be the last. The once-hot controversies of N.W.A., Ice-T, 2 Live Crew, even Eminem are now so distant in pop cultural memory as to seem quaint. These Odd Future kids count the social pathologies of the Geto Boys (late-'80s pioneers of a subgenre called "horrorcore") among their inspirations, as well as shock-rock groups from Black Sabbath to Slipknot.

"When I was 15, my tape collection consisted of Geto Boys, N.W.A., 2 Live Crew," Mike Reed, a local music promoter and musician who co-owns the Pitchfork festival and oversees its booking, wrote in an e-mail to the Sun-Times. "At the time I thought it to be fun. I'm 37 now and have the maturity to see how silly it is/was. I'm not really offended by Odd Future, but can see why people are.

"I think the factor that they are so young is also very shocking for most white media members. Not sure how much this is an issue in more African-American music press."

In May, a writer for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, another organization denouncing the group, said youth is no excuse: "Tyler has said in interviews that he is not homophobic, yet his Twitter feed and rhymes are rampant with anti-gay slurs and references. His defense that 'people take things too seriously' or that he's 'just a kid' is inexcusable."

Hodgy Beats, born Gerard Damien Long (not in Chicago, as many online rumors suggest) and raised in New Jersey, answered our questions (more Q&A here) in few words and fragments, clearly young, inexperienced and more comfortable slinging rhymes than speaking to the media. "It's hard being interviewed," he muttered. "I don't like being asked a lot of questions." Reacting to the flurry of attention the group has received, he said, "The media is stupid. Niggers should ignore it." He paused, perhaps considering the context of his statement, and added, "I'm honestly not mad at the media. They help sell records, I guess."

He chalked up the gross-out element of the songs to boyish competition and bravado in the recording studio. "Sometimes it's us seeing who comes up with the sickest sh—, the most disgusting thing they can throw in," he said.

Hodgy Beats and another Odd Future member, Left Brain, also work together under the name MellowHype. The duo's self-released 2010 album "Blackendwhite" will be reissued July 12 by Fat Possum Records with extra tracks, and a new album, "Numbers," is expected later this year.

Asked what's the coolest musical sound the duo created for "Numbers," Hodgy Beats said, "A bitch moaning. We got some sounds like a bunch of whores just moaning. It's the most perfect sound you could use. It's crazy. Imagine bobbing your head to bitches moaning. That's what 'Numbers' sounds like."

Near the end of our conversation, Hodgy Beats attempted to explain Odd Future's lyrics in the context of street slang and evolving language. "There's gays running around and sh—, but when you call someone a faggot people think you're talking about a gay person," he said. When I asked for clarification as to how else he might define and employ the word "faggot," the phone went dead. We either lost the overseas connection or he hung up.

Odd Future has one female member, Syd Tha Kid, a lesbian who also seems baffled by any controversy around the group's lyrics. "People just choose to be offended by stuff," she told Billboard. "If they are, then that sucks and I'm sorry, but they don't have to keep listening. Words are words. They don't act out what they say, they just say it."

In an MTV interview, Syd tha Kid recalled a confrontation with her father, who said that her involvement in Odd Future was "slapping a lot of other females in the face." She replied, "That's what I do. I slap bitches, Dad."

The group's members have not made news for any actual violent acts. Tyler the Creator, a k a Tyler Okonma, was arrested in May in Los Angeles on a charge disturbing the peace, then quickly released. Frank Ocean, the group's R&B crooner and most likely crossover star, ranted online in April about being arrested in L.A. for unspecified charges.

Odd Future concert tickets have sold well in recent months as their live shows remain popular. (Though last weekend, the group's set at Scotland's T in the Park festival ended approximately 20 minutes early when fans began throwing bottles at them.) In March, Billboard reported that the group's actual record sales have been "modest," though Tyler the Creator's second solo album, "Goblin," debuted at No. 5 on the magazine's albums chart in mid-May based on first-week sales of 45,000.

Doherty at Between Friends says she simply wants her group's message to have the chance to compete with Odd Future's at the festival. "We certainly believe in free speech, and with that in mind Odd Future has the right to sing and use the lyrics they do. But the rest of us in Chicago have the right to balance that point of view with powerful messages of our own about violence again women," she says.

"We work with kids in schools who often get caught up in lyrics but don't think about what they say. So when we talk about that, then they begin to realize that other people using derogatory language — calling women and girls 'bitches' and language against gays and lesbians — can be presented as fun and not serious, but it really has a domino effect ... and doesn't send the right message about how we like to see people talk about each other."

Further reading:
• NPR: "Why You Should Listen to the Rap Group Odd Future, Even Though It's Hard"
• Village Voice: "On Odd Future, Rape and Murder, and Why We Sometimes Like the Things That Repel Us"
• New Yorker: long-read about Odd Future and the whereabouts of Earl Sweatshirt and their follow-up
• Complex: More on the mystery of Earl Sweatshirt here and here
• Irish Times: Last week's Tyler the Creator interview
• Pitchfork: Hodgy Beats interview from June

PITCHFORK MUSIC FESTIVAL
• 3-10 p.m. July 15, noon-10 p.m. July 16-17
• Union Park, 1501 W. Randolph
• Three-day passes are sold out. Individual tickets for July 17 are sold out, but remain for July 15 and 16: $45, (866) 777-8932, pitchforkmusicfestival.com.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival opens: Gatekeeper, EMA, early-bird fans
By Thomas Conner on July 15, 2011 5:52 PM
 
Oh, is this the way they say the future's meant to feel,
Or just 20,000 people standing in a field?
— Jarvis Cocker

The first band scheduled to play the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival was, of course, Gatekeeper. The electronic duo kicked off just after, of course, the gates opened at 3 p.m. sharp for this seventh annual indie-rock-and-more event at Union Park in Chicago's West Loop.

Nearly 50 bands will perform on three stages here in Union Park during the next three days, and more than 50,000 fans are expected to attend. Tickets (surprisingly) remain for tonight's acts and Saturday's bill. Sunday is sold out.

The first kids through the gate Friday afternoon began sprinting toward the main stage. The park was virtually empty; why in such a hurry? "If I didn't get a spot up close for Animal Collective, then the night would be a complete disaster," said Jimmy Chang, 17, from his blanket near the lip of the Green Stage. "I am NOT MOVING!"

P4k2011's first sounds were very yin and yang. As Gatekeeper's light, blissful tunes fluttered over the trees, EMA (Erika M. Anderson) squinted into the hazy afternoon sun and began grinding out some dark, menacing music. Supported by a guitarist, her little sister on drums and Leif Shackelford on violin and keyboards, Anderson, 28, took her sweet time building up some twisting, twisted alt-rock. Flipping her bleached bangs in and out of her eyes, Anderson seemed to struggle to restrain herself — at one point joking about "breaking things" but keeping a cool head as she lead her band through these slow, brooding songs.

"I wish that every time he touched me he left a mark," she snarled in "Marked," a song that began with Shackelford strumming his violin like a ukulele. Elsewhere, Shackelford sawed at that poor thing like John Cale on his Velvet Underground cello. The band frequently collapsed into VU-like noise breaks, on the foreboding "Butterfly Knife" and again (with two violins now!) on "Breakfast," but without the drone. Anderson gurgles and groans like a Patti Smith hopeful, but she's got more panache. "I did not bring the whiskey on stage," she said. "I don't know why."
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: James Blake interview and set
By Thomas Conner on July 15, 2011 8:00 PM | No Comments | No TrackBacks

We caught just a few minutes to sit down with soft-spoken London dubstep musician James Blake before his performance this evening at the Pitchfork Music Festival:

MY VIDEO INTERVIEW

Fey young Londoner James Blake not only proved himself, following his curious debut album released in February, he proved to be the night's most transcendent performance.

Influenced by American R&B — and vocally often a dead ringer for Aaron Neville — the 22-year-old Blake made cold beats and fragmented samples come alive Friday evening on the festival's smallest stage under the trees. Seemingly shy behind his keyboard, Blake played and set both graceful and grandiose, reaching surprising heights often with just two or three ingredients.

In the interview before the show, I asked Blake if he felt confident as a singer. His firm affirmative belies the amount of heavy, thickening effects he heaps on his vocals, which alternately slunk around his melody soulfully or swelled above the clipped dubstep beats laid down by both a programmer and a tenacious live drummer. Dub is not a genre that warms easily, but Blake's spectral approach — transmitting his vocals from the ether, often introducing songs with churchy organ and haunting the arrangements with ghostly piano — brings spirit to it and even results in some very human moments. "CMYK" builds on a cheerful, eager rhythm, humming snyths and two R&B samples fractured beyond recognition (they're rhythmic elements, they're not supposed to be understood) — plus another very effect-drenched vocal howl from Blake — and eventually bursts into a jubilant, hopping dancefloor rhythm that had the packed crowd under the tress really jumping. Surprising and superb.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: tUnE-yArDs, Animal Collective
By Thomas Conner on July 16, 2011 12:00 AM
 
The intrepid Merrill Garbus, the central figure of tUnE-yArDs, won for best soundcheck of the day. Portents of what was to come, Garbus called out various wails and "day-oh's" into the microphone, which then looped back through the speakers in endless arrays to make a choir of one. The crowd gathered at the small Blue Stage cheered wildly, and the show hadn't even begun yet.

Garbus' proper set leapt to life with "Party Can (Do You Want to Live?)" on the strength of those looped vocals, a lynchpin of the tUnE-yArDs' engaging, exciting set. Singing, re-singing and playing her own abbreviated drum kit, Garbus, her face streaked with colorful war paint, wailed and cooed and hollered through a set bristling with punkish spirit — at least in the defiant creativity of the electronically enhanced arrangements, amended here and there by two saxophone players — and bracing composition, from the "wah-ooh-wah" vocal round and bleating jazz climax of "Gangsta" to the occasional instances of barking and guitar scraping.

Each song found dissonance and harmony tugging at war, never finding an easy truce but always a workable and tuneful solution. By "Powa," another track from this year's "W H O K I L L" album, Garbus was singing more naturally — and soulfully — her powerful pipes stretching out a bit as more than mere fodder for the sequencers. The tech never diluted the songs, the songs never lost their spirit of celebration and joy. "You're a wonderful sight to see out there," she said, catching her breath. "You're a massive bundle of love." Back at ya, m'dear.

Animal Collective closed out the night, making a God-awful racket of their unfocused, rambling electronic jams. On a stage full of flashing lights and papery backdrops, the individual members of the band — longtime friends and collaborators Avey Tare (David Porter), Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), Deakin (Josh Dibb) and Geologist (Brian Weitz) — were lost as they cranked out a lot of music fans hadn't yet heard, since the band's last album was 2009's "Merriweather Post Pavilion" and they've since been working on film scores and other projects.

Industrial clanking, monotonous rhythms and lengthy, noodling transitions between songs made for a noisy, messy performance. Only a few moments came close to gelling — a frenetic calypso waltz early in the show with wild static noises sliding up and down the scale, and an easygoing "A Long Time Ago" — but most of the music was scattered. I know the Guggenheim has bestowed some overvalued art-rock cred on them, but while their drifting, shiftless sounds may constitute art it doesn't constitute a good time.

"Were you here for Panda Bear last year?" asked the woman next to me. Alas, yes I was. She joined me in rolling eyes. "My friend and I were rolling on the ground in the fetal position begging God to make it stop." Lather, rinse, repeat.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: Battles interview and set
By Thomas Conner on July 16, 2011 12:11 AM
 
A chat with the members of Battles (about two of the three's Chicago days) shortly after their Friday evening show:

MY VIDEO INTERVIEW

Somewhere between the knob twiddlers and the hardcore rockers is Battles, a New York trio (down from a quartet) whose members are not averse to describing their music as "math rock." Their cacophony was established so quickly and loudly that it interfered with the sometimes more delicate music of tUnE-yArDs clear across the park.

Mixing loops and ferocious live drumming from former Helmet basher John Stanier, Battles ably re-crated the tunes from their new and acclaimed "Gloss Drop"; that album employed various vocalists, none of whom were on stage Friday evening, though a few showed up on video screens. Sometimes the crushing beats reverberated across the park like the live/looped signal sent by the aliens in "Contact," with former Chicago guitarists Ian Williams and Dave Konopka working sometimes together, sometimes at cross-purposes on, under and around them.

There were moments the music was both punishing and pretty, a strange but exciting experience.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: Guided by Voices and Neko Case
By Thomas Conner on July 16, 2011 12:14 AM
 
Stubbornly prolific band Guided by Voices returned to Chicago for the fest, still going with its reunited "classic" '93-'96 lineup last seen here at the Riviera Theatre last October (the band's "final" show was New Year's Eve 2004 at Chicago's Metro). But the longer this rascally band trundles on, the more fun they get. Lead singer Robert Pollard is growing into his natural curmudgeoness, and Friday evening's set was 45 minutes of pure kicky, catchy rock.

Pollard took the stage with a confident "1, 2, 3, kick it!" and opened with "Echos Myron," joined by Neko Case singing harmony and shaking a tambourine. Clutching a tequila bottle ("He's probably pretty hammered," one fan noted mid-set) and dangling a cigarette, Pollard and his jittery leg led the band — with the rip-roaring twin-guitar attack of Tobin Sprout and Charles Mitchell — careening through an oldies but very good set. It was the kind of rock and roll that actually sounds bettered by the off-key, absurdist warblings and occasional feedback from the PA. Not much was going to slow these guys down.

Alt-country queen Case seemed in a relaxed, cozy mood Friday night, playing a set of mostly ballads and slow belters. You know, the stuff that best showcases That Voice — songs like "The Pharaohs" with its long, patient phrases about being "your blue, blue baby," or her tiger empathy in "People Got a Lot of Nerve." With accordion, banjo and frequent brushes on the drums, Case commanded a steady set and reminded Chicagoans how much we miss her being a resident.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: Cold Cave on a hot day
By Thomas Conner on July 16, 2011 4:42 PM
 
One thing I never thought I'd get at a Cold Cave show: a sunburn.

There was the New York darkwave trio, all pale and wrapped in black leather (pleather?), defiant in the fierce Saturday afternoon sun early on day two of the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival. I would have welcomed an environmental catastrophe that would've blacked out the sun and plunged these moody bastards into the dark where they belong, but the contrast emboldened their presentation.

At heart, Cold Wave takes mid-'80s synth pop (New Order, OMD) and moves it forward — just beyond the reach of nostalgia. Their most successful tactic for doing so: scratching it up, getting it dirty, just around the edges. Nearly every song started with a wall of harsh sound — a piercing electronic whine, blaring white noise, glitchy static — from which would suddenly spring bouncy, flouncy keyboards, courtesy Dominick Fernow (Prurient from Madison, Wis.), and pounding beats. Before launching into "I've Seen the Future and It's No Place for Me," singer Wesley Eisold simply hissed into the microphone at length, satisfying a compulsion to begin every song with amelodic clatter of some sort. Like Cold Cave's album, "Cherish the Light Years," it was noise vs. melody, brashness vs. shyness, a singer using the word "outside" a lot when he probably didn't intend it so literally today.

Eisold hangs on the microphone and pouts (very Ian McCulloch), blurts out in his tuneless baritone (very Peter Murphy), sometimes pulling the neck of his T-shirt off his shoulder to show off his ink; during "Confetti," he pointed to a large "23" on his left shoulder. Meanwhile, Fernow could barely contain himself behind his decks, occasionally breaking free during a loop to dance about the stage with the most inspiring and embarrassing moves.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: No Age, Off!
By Thomas Conner on July 16, 2011 6:11 PM
 
Los Angeles drum-and-guitar duo No Age bashed out punkish songs on Saturday's Red Stage in a set that just got more chaotic as it went. Drummer Dean Spunt is also the duo's singer, and watching him flail at his kit and still try to keep his mouth on the mike is entertainment alone. Meanwhile, guitarist Randy Randall ping-ponged back and forth on the stage, nearly toppling over during oldie "Neck Escaper."

Throughout the No Age set, water — and water bottles (empty, the ones I saw, thank goodness) — flew everywhere, in impressive fountains shooting straight up from the crowd or in thrown spray. Later, at the Blue Stage, Keith Morris of the punk band Off! advised his similarly inclined crowd: "Don't throw stuff around! That's not cool. DRINK the water. Stay hydrated."

After an opening homily — in which Morris warned, in the understatement of the day, "We're gonna bring a different flavor to the party today" — Morris and his band, a supergroup offshoot of the Circle Jerks, bashed out a ferocious set of hardcore and speed metal. Rare was the song that passed the two-minute mark, propelled down the fast lane by riffy guitarist Dimitri Coats (Burning Brides) and bassist Steven Shane McDonald (Redd Kross). The particular flavor added by Morris was his occasional off-the-cuff homilies ("F—- people" from a guy who actually seems so nice ...) and unearthly caterwauling.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: Dismemberment Plan, Twin Shadow
By Thomas Conner on July 16, 2011 8:17 PM
 
I'm not sure I've ever seen Travis Morrison this giddy.

Always a self-satisfied performer — and a wicked-nerdy dancer — Morrison's shows at the helm of the still-reunited Dismemberment Plan are never stiff, but Saturday he seemed exceptionally loose and free-spirited. We last saw D-Plan in February at the Metro; the band ceased activity in 2003 but reunited late last year to tour in support of a classy vinyl reissue of their 1999 masterpiece "Emergency & I." The tour finished, this was the only remaining show on the band's books. It's last? Again?

Maybe that's why Morrison was riding high even as he squinted into the late-day sun. The band certainly sounded crisp — throughout this tour they've been sharper than ever, with bassist Eric Axelson and drummer Joe Easley strutting as one of rock's sharpest rhythm sections — and dished out more wordy, jerky faves, still heavy on the "Emergency & I" tracks. In the outdoor summer heat, they hilariously started into their most anthemic song, "The Ice of Boston," a tale of cold New Year's Eve loneliness that in concert traditionally finds Morrison inviting fans to join him on stage during the song. "No, you can't come up on stage," Morrison said Saturday, noting the impossibility of crowd access to the festival stage, "and, frankly, I'm relieved. I don't need the microphone in the teeth, as usual."

After a troubled and delayed sound check — a frequent occurrence all day today on the Blue Stage — Twin Shadow finally got under way, playing its lush, moody 1980s-inspired pop.

George Lewis Jr., the Domincan-born, Florida-raised, motorcycle-loving enigma leading this group, is a born crooner and plays guitar as if he learned it directly from Hall & Oates records. The '80s shtick laid on pretty heavily, though, and sometimes — unlike the records — leaned more toward hotel-lounge Spandau Ballet than anything justifying the band's acclaim thus far. Lewis announced that the band's fifth song, the title track to the new album, "Forget," would be their last, so perhaps the sound check delay robbed them of the momentum of a full set.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: DJ Shadow, Fleet Foxes
By Thomas Conner on July 16, 2011 11:02 PM
 

It's pretty funny watching a field full of people all staring at the same thing — nothing.

DJ Shadow, the highly influential mixmaster Josh Davis, performed his turntable set from inside a large white globe. On the Red Stage on Saturday evening sat the globe, with various psychedelic projections hitting its surface (not the full array he's given to other crowds in the dark, however), and inside — allegedly, at first — was Davis, knitting together his breakbeats and samples. The crowd cheered, and stared at the white globe. On a video screen to the east, cameras within the sphere showed Davis hard at work spinning his tables, toggling switches, cradling headphones to one ear and syncing up the next sound, beat or piece of music.

His mixes are exciting, no doubt — the thumping bass must have vibrated windows in Lakeview — pushing funk, rock, slow jams, jazz, ambient music, whatever works through the stacks. But the gimmick was a strange gambit in a penultimate slot before nearly 20,000 people. Midway through the show, the back hemisphere of the globe spins around, revealing an opening and showing Davis to the crowd for the rest of the set. (A good thing, too, otherwise you couldn't help but wonder if Davis wasn't lying on a beach in Brazil, sending just the globe, a reel-to-reel of the music and that synced video out on tour.) The fourth DJ Shadow record in 15 years, "The Less You Know, the Better," will be out this fall, and here's hoping we next see him indoors and in the dark.

The transition from DJ Shadow's club atmosphere to the sweet, earthy folk of Saturday night headliner Fleet Foxes was a radical shift, emblematic of the catholic tastes of Pitchfork fans ...

Fleet Foxes leader Robin Pecknold joked early in his band's set about playing the Pitchfork festival three years ago, saying it was "super fun" and they followed rapper Dizzee Rascal, who handed off the set by saying, "F—- that folk sh—!" Pecknold chuckled, then straightened up. "I hope he'll be making a return appearance, too," he said.

The fact that Fleet Foxes not only returned to Pitchfork this year but held down the Saturday night headliner slot — mightily successfully — says much about how they've come along as a band. When they played here in 2008, they were still linked musically and lyrically to the "Blue Ridge Mountains," but the follow-up — the dense and tightly woven "Helplessness Blues" — is more worldly, with a greater diversity (and proficiency) of instruments. That mass of music, as opposed to just a set of pretty harmonies, made for a rich and rewarding set that employed mostly acoustic instruments for repeated crescendos and thundering.

Those trademark harmonies were a lynchpin to the show, of course, but now the band frames them within each song — using them to open a song ("Drops in the River") or to spotlight a heartfelt moment in the middle (the breathtaking pause in "Bedouin Dress"). But even the signature vocal rounds of "White Winter Hymnal" gave away the band's newfound confidence as players — of acoustic guitars, mandolins, upright bass, some organ — as well as singers; the song on Saturday stepped out with a stride not heard before, a new eagerness to strum harder and chug faster and get where it was going — which was, of course, a similarly urgent "Ragged Wood." In "The Protector," they again started softly, carefully, with their traditional and subtly churchy singing, but by the time Pecknold sang, "You run with the devil," they'd clearly abandoned their hymnal for the excitement of that ragged wood. Hallelujah.
 
 
Want more Pitchfork fest? Fly to Paris this fall
By Thomas Conner on July 17, 2011 7:00 AM
 
Lollapalooza expanded internationally this year, launching Lollapalooza Chile in April. Now Chicago's own Pitchfork Music Festival has announced it's also going abroad.

Pichfork Music Festival Paris will premiere Oct. 28 and 29 in that city's Parc de la Villette. The lineup thus far includes Bon Iver — who not only plays Oct. 29 but also selects the other bands on the bill — as well as Wild Beasts, Cut Copy, Kathleen Edwards and more.

Tickets are 79.90 Euros (roughly $115), available via digitick.com.

Pitchfork has previously collaborated on performances at Britain's All Tomorrow's Parties festival and the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, Spain.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: The heat is on
By Thomas Conner on July 17, 2011 8:00 AM
 
Beginning Sunday, a mass of hot air arrives in Chicago — and we don't mean all the pundits debating the worth of Odd Future.

It's going to be hot, hot, hot — the start of possibly the biggest heat wave here since 2006. The National Weather Service calls the impending heat "massive."

The forecast highs on Sunday are in the mid- to low-90s, but with humidity the heat index will make it feel near or over 100 degrees.

The heat will be around all week, but right now we care about Sunday in Union Park (and other festivals around town).

At the Pitchfork Music Festival ...
— There is at least one CTA cooling bus on the grounds, parked at the end of Flatstock, and if needed, there will be an additional cooling bus at Ashland and Washington.
— The first 6,000 attendees through the gate each day will get a free bottle of water.
— On Saturday, the festival hooked up some free water fountains, the better for you to keep your water bottle filled. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate.

Another rock writer and festival veteran taught me a nifty trick for these things: a wet washcloth in a Ziploc bag. Add a little cool water here and there, wring it out, wipe your face, neck, arms. Or, as one of the Pitchfork publicists was doing Saturday, simply wear it on your head.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: Odd Future
By Thomas Conner on July 17, 2011 2:42 PM
 
For controversial rap group Odd Future, Sunday afternoon at the 2011 Pitchfork Music Festival began with a little damage control.

Less than an hour before taking the stage in Chicago's Union Park, members of the group delivered boxes of cupcakes to the anti-violence organizations on site — the same organizations manning booths and handing out paper fans containing domestic violence resource information specifically to counter what they saw as dangerous expressions of hate, violence and homophobia in Odd Future's music.

"They took some of the fans, too," said Amanda Wapiennik with Family Shelter Service. "One of them said, 'See we're nice.' I said, 'We never said you weren't.' ... That's exactly the kind of dialogue and exchange we're looking for."

It was nice while it lasted.

Odd Future's set, at the height of Sunday's swelter, was rife with the usual foul language and appalling exhortations to violence and misogyny — lots of "smack you, bitch," "f—- the police," "f—-in' ho," happy tales of "punches to the stomach" and advice to "shoot that f—-in' nigga, aim for the head," and I lost count of the number of times someone shouted "f—-in' bitch!" — even while they gave lip service to opposing voices. Group leader and breakout solo star Tyler the Creator, his left leg in a cast for a broken foot, said, "A big shout out to the domestic violence groups out here." This came as the echo of the latest "f—-in' bitch!" died away and right before the next song, "I Got a Gun (You Better Run)."

Shock tactics simply are in the young group's DNA and their 15-song set was thick with the confrontation that's caused such a fuss all year around their mostly free online recordings and raucous live shows. Problem is, the shock and awe is all they brought. Odd Future knows how to engage a crowd with nasty talk, stage diving (even Tyler, in his cast) and the mystical bond between crowd and performer created by the middle finger, but musically the 45-minute set was a very average hip-hop show. (Big Boi, on this same stage and nearly same slot last year, brought so much more.)

Members Left Brain and Hodgy Beats opened the show, dishing up a song from their reissued MellowHype album "Blackendwhite." DJ Syd Tha Kid provided most of the beats and musical backing, thin as it usually was; Odd Future's recordings sound much more inventive. At times, five members were prancing back and forth at the lip of the stage or diving over it. The whole thing was like watching a "Chinese fire drill," but the often monotonous beats and hate speech was more like listening to Oi! (a punk subgenre) without guitars.

In the end, though, Odd Future wanted us to know, as they repeated over and over, that they don't care what you, me or anyone thinks of them. Before launching into "Pidgeons," with its refrain of "Kill people, burn sh—, f—- school," Tyler dedicated "this beautiful song to everyone who don't like me, every protestor ... everyone writing a faggot-ass review of this show." There was extra, unprintable advice for the latter, even though reviews like this one and other articles about the group's controversy are likely the chief reason Odd Future has seen a spike in sales. Even Hodgy Beats, a member of Odd Future and half of MellowHype, in our interview last week, admitted: "I'm honestly not mad at the media. They help sell records, I guess."

But of all the hot air, the most absurd thing the group shouted during that song may have been this: "I'm radical! I'm f—-in' radical!" There's really nothing radical about their potty mouths and juvenile gross-out humor. If anything, it's old.

If Odd Future's doing anything noteworthy, it's forcing another occasional re-evaluation of language. I've seen much high-minded discussion of how Odd Future is determined to soften if not break down the sharpness of certain language and how they cleverly define their particular audience with prescient knowledge of who will get the joke and who won't. I think this ascribes way too much forethought to teenage kids who are cranking out hip-hop with incredible speed and spontaneity, but that doesn't mean they're not achieving a result. If there's anything academic in Odd Future, it's the simple fact that they're a bellwether to a generation that's absorbed some slightly different cultural standards, mainly from video games (which sell nearly four times as much as music) — many of them violent and all of them, thanks to a recent Supreme Court decision, freely available to all ages — that does not necessarily see the same gravity in words or depictions of rape, murder and violence.

At the end of my chat with Hodgy Beats he said, "There's gays running around and sh—, but when you call someone a faggot people think you're talking about a gay person." It could be simply a matter for the linguists. Faggot used to mean a bundle of sticks, a meatball, and in today's slang it's still a common pejorative for a gay man. But what does it mean to the youth of Odd Future? By the time I asked for clarification as to how else he might define and employ the word "faggot," he'd hung up.
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: Yuck, How to Dress Well, Kurt Vile
By Thomas Conner on July 17, 2011 10:48 PM
 
London quartet Yuck has been one of the biggest hypes this year — the lines to see each of several showcases last spring at SXSW were long and futile — and while they couldn't hope to live up to it, their '90s Shoegaze Fanclub shtick is growing on me.

Curly-haired Daniel Blumberg plays guitar and sings with a permanent crick in his neck, often stooped as he grinds out Lush swells on guitar. His longtime mate and fellow guitarist Max Bloom fills whatever spaces Blumberg doesn't — he added a great slide solo to "Suicide Policeman" — and the parts make for a pleasant whole. They were more laid back Sunday, swinging between the riffy fun of "The Wall" and a few songs so easygoing and with melodies so loping I half expected Jackson Browne to join them. In March I said "it should make for a harmless summer '90s revival," and voila.

How to Dress Well, aka Tom Krell, was the latest casualty Sunday afternoon of sound check delays at the Blue Stage. Leading the group as singer only, just a drummer/keyboardist and a string section (complete with conductor), Krell didn't quite gel. HTDW's music has lit up blogs based on its ephemeral nature, the ghostly ways he weaves his R&B-inflected vocals underneath subtle samples and gossamer synth sounds. At Pitchfork, the soft strings and simplistic drums weren't enough to support Krell's ambitious, quivering falsetto. His so-far signature tune "Ready for the World" came on too strong, and "Decisions" didn't make enough. "We're still working out the kinks," Krell said midway through.

Philadelphia singer-songwriter Kurt Vile — he of the shaggy long hair, like almost everyone in the band — returned to Pitchfork with a bigger, bolder sound. Vile was at this festival last year, when he was still getting the Nick Drake comparisons. Sunday's set, full of muscled guitar and songs about trains, strove for Springsteen, complete with a sax solo on "Freak Train."
 
 
Pitchfork Music Festival: Cut Copy, TV on the Radio, Deerhunter
By Thomas Conner on July 17, 2011 11:21 PM
 
Cut Copy was the hit of the Pitchfork Music Festival's third night, delivering a set of its '80s-inspired dance-rock that had Union Park jammed and jumping.

They're just four clean-cut Australian blokes in nice shirts. But in the middle of "Saturdays," just as the sun was fading out a broiling afternoon, Dan Whitford called out a simple arena-rock, crowd-juicing trick — "On the count of three, I want you to go crazy! One, two, three, go!" — and craziness ensued. It is a beautiful, beautiful thing to watch a crowd of nearly 18,000 people jumping and waving hands in time, freaking the frack out, throwing inflatable things around and spraying water, with wide eyes and smiles from ear to ear.

The crowd was putty in Whitford's hand, a dynamic performer who makes up in audience engagement what he lacks in his pinched voice. Whitford commands the stage with a kind of authority that produces results; when he sings about something "in the sky" and points toward it, you look up.

Cut Copy is not a complicated band — this is basic pop with disco grooves and lyrics about reaching for the stars, holding onto your dream and trying to get you on the phone — and the crowd was full of fans, people who knew when to "ooh," when to "yeah!" and who cheered the songs they recognized just from the first synthesizer note. The band pulled from its whole catalog, including tracks from the latest album, "Zonoscope," and the new single "Blink and You'll Miss a Revolution" (a song from 2010, though it gained some note during the Arab Spring, so now it's a new single out July 25, packaged alongside a remix by fellow Pitchfork performer Toro Y Moi). When they started "Lights and Music," a propulsive tune with dissonant synths and the bassline from the Pretenders' "Mystery Achievement," the park went crazy without being told. Even Whitford was taken aback by the crowd's enthusiasm, blurting a "Wow!" when the song ceased.

As acts compete to fill the void left by LCD Soundsystem, the Oprah of indie dance-rock, Cut Copy might have a chance for a breakthrough.

Before Cut Copy was Deerhunter, Atlanta's wall of noise rock band. Deerhunter recently covered a band that gets to its root influences, fellow Georgians Pylon, and their Sunday set was an irresistible and daring mix of the same dance rhythms and guitar drone. The quartet opened with several minutes of guitar wash and cymbals before collapsing into "Desire Lines," a song of tightly controlled jangle, an evolving rhythm and several showcases for guitar scrapes within guitarscapes — towering leader Bradford Cox ringing one chord for what seemed like days, while guitarist Lockett Pundt worked up and down scales. Reverb drenched the instruments and the vocals, so eventually everything was ringing, ringing, ringing. The band let layers of sound pile up, and often left them there — buzzing on for several minutes, while the rhythm section kept it afloat, until the tension was almost too much. "Little Kids" crumbled into waves of feedback. "Nothing Ever Happened" snaked through its verses before stretching itself to the breaking point. Occasionally they dabbled in barroom stomps and slow, Red House Painters narcotics, but mostly it was walls and walls of sound.

After Cut Copy was Brooklyn's revived funky bunch, TV on the Radio. The band released the acclaimed "Nine Types of Light" on April 12, eight days before bassist Gerard Smith died of lung cancer. Sunday night they were just as eclectic as ever, mixing up Southern boogie, post-punk, electronica, blues and balladry, sometimes in the same song. Their headlining set seemed extra funky, at least at first, tripping explosives in "New Cannonball Blues" before going slow jam for a few tunes. "The Wrong Way," however, was a hot soul stomp utilizing the competitive vocals of both Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone to conjure the revelatory dream the song's poetry describes. Such a swampy mix of music: they're indie-rock's Little Feat.
 

Pitchfork and Odd Future: At least we talked about it
By Thomas Conner on July 20, 2011 4:32 PM
 
One of the first things you learn to do in journalism school is rewrite press releases, but when they come along as eloquently written as this one that arrived today — from Between Friends, the Chicago domestic violence preventative organization that was one among several advocacy groups at the Pitchfork Music Festival last weekend trying to counter the frequently hateful message in the lyrics of rap group Odd Future and their Sunday performance — I say run the thing verbatim.

It's a fine coda to an odd moment in a great festival ...

CREATING THE DIALOGUE FOR A SAFE FUTURE NOT AN ODD FUTURE

CHICAGO (7/20/11) — The odd choice of Pitchfork Music Festival organizers to include Odd Future, known for their misogynistic lyrics, provided the perfect platform for creating a dialogue that was heard around the world about violence against women and the LGBTQ community. Colleen Norton, Prevention & Education Manager at Between Friends, where we focus on building a community free from violence against women, enlisted the help of several other organizations - Rape Victim Advocates, the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, Center on Halsted, Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation and others, and created a successful campaign to raise awareness about how such violence is often glorified, minimized or ignored.

This campaign generated a huge response from the local, national and international community. One woman wrote: "I'm from Australia and I've been very concerned about Odd Future's lyrics and performances. Even if they're meant to be 'ironic or protesting in some way against all the toxic rubbish in the media, I absolutely oppose their approach...so I just wanted to send a message of support to you for your awareness-raising campaign at Pitchfork. If I was in Chicago that day I would definitely join you!" Back in Chicago, as we ran out of the 7,000 fans passed out to concertgoers. A young woman, who took one, came back after reading it and told us, "It really means a lot. Thank you for being here." More telling are the numbers of concertgoers that came to us after Odd Future's performance, voicing their discomfort with the lyrics and asking for the fans we used to decorate our booth!

Others completely missed the objective of the campaign by questioning the "lack of protest". Maybe we are watching too much reality TV to understand the art of generating real conversations that lead to a shared understanding? Media regarding Odd Future being booked at Pitchfork was indeed a catalyst for us to seek a presence at the festival. However, picketing Odd Future's performance would have been shortsighted and distracting from our real goals. Instead, our fans were in the hands of 7,000 supporters waving the message: Cool it! Don't be a fan of violence.

So what did we accomplish? We mobilized others to: 1) Think critically about how violence against women and the LGBTQ community is portrayed in their community through music, art, and the media,
2) Talk about ways to end such violence, and 3) Seek help from the resources provided. The conversation spread quickly with every online article, blog, picture, and comment posted engaging everyone in the dialogue both locally and around the world!

Between Friends and our partners thank the thousands of you who supported this campaign and helped us achieve our goals! Now we encourage you to continue the dialogue - wherever that takes you! Hear more online at our Facebook page - http://www.facebook.com/BetweenFriendsChicago.

About Between Friends
Between Friends is a 501(c) (3) non-profit organization dedicated to breaking the cycles of domestic violence throughout Chicagoland. Between Friends offers domestic violence survivors resources and support to help them rebuild their lives and move into safer and healthier situations. In addition, Between Friends addresses domestic violence as a community issue and offers extensive education and training programs for groups throughout the Chicago area to help prevent domestic violence before it begins. For more information visit www.betweenfriendschicago.org.
 
 

BY THOMAS CONNER
© Chicago Sun-Times
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The May 26 arrest of accused war criminal Ratko Mladic, after 16 years on the run, brought back memories for Bill Carter — none of them cheerful.
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"Pure evil," Carter said, describing the infamous Serbian general now on trial, accused of genocide during the Yugoslav Wars. "It's a big deal for him to finally be captured. He killed a lot of people I knew."
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For nearly four years, 1992-96, the longest siege of a modern capital. Serbian forces blockaded and bombed the capital city of Bosnia & Herzegovina, while nearly every day snipers fired at citizens. More than 10,000 were killed, many more wounded. Carter, an American writer and filmmaker, was living in Sarajevo at the outbreak of the war.
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He related his experience in an acclaimed documentary, "Miss Sarajevo," and a book, Fools Rush In: A True Story of Love, War and Redemption. But while there, Carter tried to tell the world what was happening to Sarajevo. He knew we wouldn't necessarily listen to him, but he bluffed his way into a meeting with someone we were listening to, U2's singer, Bono — a desperate gamble that connected one of the world's biggest rock bands to one of the world's greatest humanitarian crises.
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Within days, U2 was broadcasting live video of Sarajevo's plight during its 1993 "ZooTV" concerts in sold-out arenas throughout Europe. Bono then not only produced Carter's film, he wrote a song for it, "Miss Sarajevo," recorded with famed tenor Luciano Pavarotti — which U2 is now performing on tour for only the second time in North America, with footage from Carter's film.
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On a couple of occasions, and as recently as a 2009 interview, Bono has cited "Miss Sarajevo" as his favorite U2 song. A few reviews of the current leg of the band's 360 Tour claim the song is a high point of the evening. But it's rooted in a low point of Carter's life.

• • •
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Carter arrived in Sarajevo in 1993, part of the Serious Road Trip, a humanitarian organization delivering food to desperate Sarajevans. He himself learned what it's like to be hungry and addled by a war zone.
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"I had a stash of chocolate baby food that I lived on for months," Carter recalled. "I lost 30 pounds, some hair and a tooth. The people in Sarajevo, you know, after years of constant bombings, snipers — they were completely stressed. Adrenaline is a very powerful drug in the body, and when shells are constantly going off around you, you get a high dose. You do that every day for years, and you had kids there who were 18 with gray hair."
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Carter's film (which opens as he's dodging sniper bullets) depicts the constant terror as well as how Sarajevans coped with it, muddling through daily life and resorting to surrealism and defiant, dark humor. It culminates in the Miss Sarajevo pageant, which featured contestants in bathing suits posing for a photo and holding a banner that read, "Don't let them kill us."
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Carter, like most Sarajevans, felt the world was ignoring the city's plight. (As U2 guitarist The Edge said in an August 1993 radio interview, "At that time, Sarajevo was not really on Page One of any of the international newspapers. It was like Page Seven, and you really had to go looking for it.") He sought a way to get the world's attention.
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While working on film footage one summer day in '93 at the Sarajevo television station, a rare day with electricity, he saw U2 on TV being interviewed, describing their futuristic new tour.
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"The answer from one of the band members," Carter writes in Fools Rush In, "was something like, 'A great deal of what's behind this tour is the idea of addressing the idea of a united Europe.' What Europe were they speaking of? Europe was ignoring their geographical ass down here in Bosnia."
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U2's tour was coming to nearby Verona, Italy, in a few weeks. So Carter borrowed some letterhead from the president of Sarajevo TV and faxed the band an interview request, as if he actually worked for the network. He expected nothing, but weeks later a return fax came. Bono would love to chat before the show.
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• • •

Carter escaped Sarajevo in a cargo plane to Verona, where he sat down with Bono for 20 minutes. The backstage interview footage is included on the DVD of his "Miss Sarajevo" film. "We don't seem to learn from history," Carter says.

"That's the subject of a lot of our songs," says Bono.
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Hours later, Carter was in a villa with the band, teaching them the intricacies of the Serbian-Bosnian conflict and the human toll being exacted. With several days before the next U2 concert, Bono was ready to jump in the car with Carter and go to Sarajevo, see for himself, maybe play an impromptu gig. Carter dissuaded him — any large gathering of people in Sarajevo was an easy target for Serb missile batteries.
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But the band wanted to do something, and a relationship was established that resulted in an idea.
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"I think it worked because I didn't ask anything for me," Carter said. "I told Bono, 'Don't give me money. That's not gonna do s---. We have to reach peoples consciousness. That's our only hope, or were just spinning our wheels.' That appeals to U2.  So I was like, the biggest band in the world wants to come to Sarajevo, what do I do? What if we could take Sarajevo to them instead? What if we could link to their concerts by satellite and just tell people what was going on?"
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On July 17, 1993, that's what happened. In an experiment fraught with challenges technical (Sarajevo's electricity was unreliable), logistical (for Carter to get to the TV station in Sarajevo meant darting through Snipers Alley) and faithful ("I was just some crazy f---ing longhair kid who they met one night and was slightly nuts, probably — what if I went on the first broadcast and pulled my pants down?" he mused), Carter and two friends stood in front of a camera in Sarajevo and appeared on a giant screen at U2's concert in Bologna.
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They talked about the refugees under attack, the need for water and food, and Carter told a story about a friend hit by a grenade. For 10 concerts over the next month, the last one in London's Wembley Stadium to 100,000 people, they did the same thing  broadcasting the news from Sarajevo in the middle of a U2 concert.
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"Artistically, it was awkward," The Edge later confessed. "We knew it was a risk in the sense that putting something that potent and that shocking in the middle of a rock and roll show, which is ultimately about having a good time and seeing a band play a few songs, could completely scuttle the show. On some nights, it almost did. But what we also, I suppose, hoped to achieve from it was maybe to generate a little bit more media coverage of what was going on there. And, of course, now events have overtaken us and Sarajevo is right on the front page again."
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• • •

After the war, U2 made it to Sarajevo, at last, playing a concert in 1997 attended by members of the various factions who'd been shooting at each other a few years earlier. Bono called the concert "one of the toughest and one of the sweetest nights of my life." Carter thinks it was the most important concert they ever played, that and Belfast.

The whole experience was certainly important for Carter. If it hadn't happened, if he hadn't gotten in front of Bono, it would have been bad: "That summer of '93 was the worst. The war and the heat and there was no water. I was watching people die. It would have ended badly for me."
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Now the song "Miss Sara­jevo" reappears on U2s tour, which in April became the most successful tour of all time. Ticket sales for the 2009-11 jaunt are expected to surpass $700 million, besting the previous record held by the Rolling Stones' Bigger Bang Tour, 2005-07, which grossed $554 million. (Tuesday's show, rescheduled from its original date of July 6, 2010, was one of several postponed last year after Bono suffered a back injury.) The performance now features footage from Carter's film, which he was able to finish in U2's Dublin studios.
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"I'm not sure why they chose the song now," Carter said. "They pick songs extremely carefully. It's a unique song in their repertoire. It doesn't sound like anything else they do. But it also has some resonance again. With the footage, people are asking questions again. What is that about? Whatever happened in Bosnia? If they ask, they get answers, and they learn, and maybe it helps in some weird way for something like this never to happen again."