What I Did at Summer Camp, Week 2

But first, obligatory post-Pitchfork gloating: Owen Pallett played almost exclusively new songs during his set and joined Beirut for the last two of their set. And Matt Berninger finished his set hanging off the front stage barricade being held by the back of his suit jacket by security. So I got everything I wanted and a tasty vegan ice cream cone.

Week 2 of Rock Camp was all about pulling our four fledgling bands out of the flight simulator and into the metaphorical cockpit, mid-flight and losing altitude. Most bands only experience a momentary loss of cabin pressure before righting themselves; others had more noticeable nosedives before going into the studio. Two of their songs had enough staying power that I still catch myself and other staff humming the choruses absent-mindedly. The metal song has apparently been passed down as legend to this week's batch of new students; several of them know the name and characteristics of that song's demi-god/monster protagonist. (E.g.: "Maghmor is an arsonist.") We attempted to orchestrate a last-minute camp singalong to Modest Mouse's "Float On" at the end of their camp show. It's probably best that most kids have trouble tapping into that particular sea shanty/beer hall/crazy-shouting aesthetic.

We're halfway through Week 3 with a (mostly) new batch of students. We're taking them to Reggie's in the Big Black Rock Bus on Friday. Quote of the week so far:

J (age 10): What if the song was about, like, rock angels... from heaven?
E (also age 10): Or no, what if it was called dark angel? And it was about when you know something's wrong but it feels right?
J: Uhhhhm. Uhh....
E: You know, like when you're with someone -- like in a relationship -- and you know it's not meant to be?
J: ....Uhh....yeah.

Deep shit for 10 year olds, yo. Deep shit.

You Should Be Listening to Music This Weekend

I'll have a wrap-up of Rock Camp Week 2 early next week, with a report on Session 1's final show tomorrow afternoon. For now, you must suffer through my extremely biased but un-self-righteous suggestions for how to spend your weekend listening to live music, because if you're not, what are you doing??? Get the hell out of our city.

Saturday | Pitchfork.
I'm only going on Saturday -- which I'm regretting now, because I'm realizing the cost of a one-day pass might be worth it for the Flaming Lips alone. Still, Saturday's schedule fulfills many of my summer-festival-going wet dreams, which almost makes up for Lollapalooza's lineup putting me to sleep for months. Here's where you can stalk me:

Early afternoon - I'll be hitting up the silkscreen poster fair. There are a bunch of show poster artists that don't make it out to other indie craft festivals around town, and those artists tend to bring a different aesthetic than the local imitators of the Jay Ryan/Bird Machine School of Show Posters. (Ryan's posters are still my favorite, though.)

4:15 - Final Fantasy - I know there's another full-length coming out of Owen Pallett at some point, and some of those songs have to be in set rotation at this point. He hasn't played in Chicago since Fall 2007 at Schubas, so anything that isn't on last year's EPs will be new to me.

5:15 - Yeasayer - I really didn't know anything about them until I realized the shoutey world-beat song I kept hearing on KEXP was them. Shoutey and world-beat go together like Owen Pallett and Zack Condon.

7:25 - Beirut - Speaking of Zack Condon, I'm crossing my fingers that FF and Beirut do something together at Pitchfork. The tracks they've done together end up sounding like a purposeful collaboration instead of a token guest vocal or schtick. It's not out of the realm of possibility.

8:40 - The National
I really don't get tired of seeing this band. Their last album, Boxer, is a quiet, moody rocker, which I love, but I love even more when the band reworks them into their louder incarnations. ("Squalor Victoria" being one of the most extreme examples.)

10:00 - After-Parties at Schubas and Bottom Lounge
I'm missing Plants and Animals and Cymbals Eat Guitars (respectively) at the festival itself, so I'm tempted to squeeze one more Pitchfork-related act into the day. Schubas is only $6 with a festival wristband, but Bottom Lounge is literally a 60 second walk from Union Park. Hmm.

Sunday | Boys vs. Girls
The House Theater regularly writes and mounts new rock musicals during its regular season; Boys vs. Girls is part of next year's season but is getting its first run at Northwestern this month. Andrew Bird's old buddy, Kevin O'Donnell, is the House's main composer. There's definitely some overlap in their writing styles. My expectation is that I will be rocked harder than Spring Awakening but not as hard as Hedwig, but I could be underestimating them.

The Dodos at Pitchfork

[Housekeeping: If you're in Chicago on Saturday, Canasta plays Schuba's for free as in zero dollars.]

I spent a relatively infinitesimal amount of time at the Pitchfork Festival over the weekend, but I scored a free ticket to Sunday and can't say no to free live music. In retrospect, I feel silly for not spending the $35 on an entire day of music, considering how much money a single day at Lollapalooza is costing me next month (over twice as much), in addition to the normal street prices most of the food, merch, and beer vendors were charging. If it seems odd to fixate on the cost of the festival and its wares, it's not -- Pitchfork is, after all, the current flagship of the indie/hipster armada. (In the words of my favorite T-shirt from yesterday, "I listen to bands that don't even exist yet.") And if there's one thing that indie/hipster culture gets lampooned for, it's championing a non-corporate, do-it-yourself ethos that is, in reality, bourgeois and unaffordable (to put it lightly). Compared to a more mainstream street festival like the Taste of Chicago, it's admirable for the festival to resist the temptation to price gouge.

The folks I really went to see were the Dodos, a guitar and drum duo that had added another percussionist to their lineup for their Pitchfork set. As someone who plays either by himself or with five other people, I'm always curious to see how to achieve that full band, six-person sound with only two or three people. It's a challenge to the musicians to use every part of their body and brain, and in a weird way it appeals to the cheapskate in me who wants to fit an entire band into a Subaru hatchback. The Dodos' full-time drummer achieves a lot of this by being a polyrhythmic machine; the second percussionist was relegated to instruments that added timbre and texture (like a garbage can) but not a core beat. The guitarist had a tambourine strapped to his foot and a loop pedal at his disposal for layered vocals and, at one point, a full three-note chord built from looping a trombone on itself.

While you won't get the visual acrobatics from just listening to their album, it's still different enough from most other drum-plus-one offerings to warrant a listen: www.myspace.com/thedodos.

Monday Night Festival of Links

By "festival," I mean, I have two today.

The Onion's AV Club has a short and sweet explanation of those songs you hear in cheap comedy films and TV commercials that take a familiar melody and alter one or two key notes to avoid all that nasty copyright/licensing business. Note: the AV Club doesn't identify any specific instances where this marketing, er, strategy, got called out by the imitated artist, but I do, and hot damn, I get to mention Owen Pallett/Final Fantasy again. Pitchfork covers the offense in question here.

The second link is brilliant news for you fans of the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode: Neil Patrick Harris is starring in Whedon's next musical project. Paste has coverage. How cool is that?

Not To Fuel the Hype Machine, But...

...It's been impossible in my music reading this week to not notice the giant billboard that is the Internet Hype directed at Vampire Weekend.

Now, this is going to get a little snarky (no, not me!), so I just want to say I have no opinion on whether or not these guys are musically deserving of this attention because, frankly, I hate that whole Franz Ferdinand/Strokes brand of bright, bouncy indie pop, and that's OK. (I don't trust people who sound happy all the time.) My interest in them, rather, is totally from a business perspective (i.e. music promotion), because they've earned a lot of press with only a three-track demo to their name before their album debuted this week.

I've been trying to figure out how overnight internet sensations, like Vampire Weekend and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah before them, earn their free advertising vis a vis Pitchfork and the rest of the music media giants. Media critics on the blogosphere have already established, at length, that there are a lot of music blogs that just post whatever free MP3s indie record labels send them. Fair enough, but it takes a lot more than some free MP3s to crawl to the top of the New Band Pile. Let's look at the stages of the hype-life-cycle that Vampire Weekend is riding out.

Recruit a Sound Engineer Who Works for Pitchfork
Honestly, they'll have to listen to your CD a lot, and then they probably go play video games at the Pitchfork office. (See the Pitchfork review, 2nd paragraph.)

Gain Critical Praise
This stage will also be helpful, again, if you know someone at Pitchfork from college (different link, 1st paragraph), who maybe plays video games with your sound engineer. Who said Ivy League schools were only good for getting into a country club!

Don't Ignore the Kids at MTV
Hey, just because Pitchfork likes you, doesn't mean you're too cool for them. [OK but seriously, I'm a little impressed that MTV is trying to increase their hipster cred.]

Withstand Popularity-Induced Backlash
Just when you thought the Village Voice was beginning to like you, the Village Voice doesn't like you.

Turn Blogosphere's Attention Away from Your Band and Towards the Media
The only way we can keep media gorillas like Pitchfork on their toes is to weigh them against the gold standard of the New York Times. (Although this post did make a much-needed comparison to Sting, it's more of a media crit piece, I think.)

Turn Blogosphere's Attention Away from the Media and Back On Itself
Now that I've become completely self-referential, I think I can retire this device.

==
Addendum 1/31: My friend Nate made me listen to another track from Vampire Weekend's album ("M79"), and I have to say, I found it completely different from the tracks up on YouTube and MySpace that they're using to promote the new album. Their "Western classical" influences are front-and-center in this one, and I do heart the chamber rock. But I guess chamber rock doesn't sell albums...yet.