Hidden Track Staff

Words and Images: Benji Feldheim

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010 Day Three

Set three Civil War era cannons to rapid fire and hold the trigger for an hour.

That would be akin the fury produced by Lightning Bolt on the third and final day of the 2010 Pitchfork Music Festival. The Rhode Island duo of frenetic drummer Brian Chippendale, who also yells into a telephone receiver mic sewn into a mask, and Brian Gibson, whose fingers dance up and down a three-string bass set through a bevy of echo and distortion, create a sound that is primal as a caveman trying to fight off a primordial beast with a bone.

But there’s a lot more thought put into what these two produce. Often performing on the floor surrounded by an undulating crowd ebbing and weaving to their attack, Lightning Bolt crafts each noise-screed carefully. During the band’s last stomp on the Aluminum Stage, Chippendale could be seen trading nods with Gibson about points of entry in the song and stopped at the right time.

• Pitchfork Festival: Day One, Day Two

Once Lighting Bolt ended, it was time to head to the woodsy shaded Balance stage for the rest of Surfer Blood. The Florida quartet’s calmer yet even more carefully sculpted rock held a deep contrast to Lightning Bolt, but Surfer Blood fits a distinct sub-theme of the fest: simple, energetic and melodic rock.

READ ON for more on the final day of the P4K Fest…

Words: JR Hevron

POP Rocks! is an art and music performance series organized by psychedelic artist Jess Pfohl. The next installment of the music and art series takes place this weekend at the Baltimore Hard Rock Café. In addition to an exhibition of collaborative artwork by Jess and photographer Michael Weintrob, attendees can expect performances by Some Cat From Japan, Eric McFadden, Wyllys, Tom Hamilton’s American Babies and a showcase of Baltimore bands.

I talked to Jess about pulling the show together, the future of the POP Rocks! series and painting a Rocks Off! cruise boat in 2011…

J.R. Hevron: You started the POP Rocks! Series last December with a show at Sullivan Hall in New York City with Scott Metzger’s Heroin. How did that come about?

Jess Pfohl: I wish I could take credit for the whole premise of what I’m doing, but it’s inspired by what Andy Warhol had with the Velvet Underground. Andy had an appreciation for the relationships between rock and roll and pop culture and powerful artwork. He wanted to create a marriage between the three and make it into a lifestyle. When I finally decided to show my work, it felt appropriate to do it in the most Andy fashion—and that’s why I asked Scott to put together the band Heroin [which played the music of the Velvet Underground].

JH: What is your artwork like for this installment?

JP: For this exhibit, photographer Michael Weintrob and I teamed up. It’s exciting because he’s such a wonderful photographer. Over the past couple of months, He sent me over 200 images to pick from. I took those images, blew them up, took all of the color out of them, and then painted my day glo on top of the images.

It’s all inspired by Warhol’s screen printing. I think that if Andy were alive today, he would have progressed into high-res printing, enlarging images, layering images and things like that.

READ ON for more of J.R.’s chat with artist Jess Pfohl…

Words and Images: Andrew Bender

All Good Review 2010 – Days 3-4 – No Expectations

Day 3:

Every music festival is different & I try to plan things out and have some idea of what to expect when going to a festival for the first time. However, as much as I might try to make things happen according to plan, or figure out what to expect in advance, festivals are usually best approached with a fair bit of planning & plenty of flexibility. Being able to surrender to the flow & let go of expectations is essential to enjoying 40+ bands in four days.

Missing the morning sets at the Campground Stage by the Brew and Rubblebucket, I took a scenic walk to the festival box office tent to replace my broken plastic wristband. Festival security staff were truly wonderful the whole weekend, and I didn’t hear or see a nitrous tank the whole time. I recently heard that the festival security had caught all of the large distributors going into the festival. I did get a second hand report of one tank in the campground on Sunday afternoon, but it sounded more like a personal tank. If I had to guess, I’d say somebody was selling some of his own personal N2O for a little dough, and not part of a highly organized criminal operation.

• Previously on HT: All Good Festival Pt. 1

I made it out to see my good friends from Ann Arbor, the Macpodz in the first set of the day on the main Dragon Stage. In some ways the ‘podz represent everything that’s good and weird about southeast Michigan. They blend funk, rock, jazz, latin beats with Nick Ayers’ percussion and Ross Huff’s hot trumpet trading licks with Jesse Clayton’s dexterous keyboard work, all kept in time by Griffin Bastian’s tight kit drumming and Brennan Andes’ high energy bass playing. These guys are up-and-comers on the festival circuit, and it was a real treat to see them on the big stage. Even in the heat of the noon sun, the Macpodz had a nice crowd getting down to the first party of the day in the festival bowl.

READ ON for more from Andrew on All Good…

Words and Images: Benji Feldheim

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010 Day Two

On the second day of Chicago’s own celebration of fringe music, the Pitchfork Music Festival, we found proof that a steady continuity of energetic music is far more important than adding performers that are, you know…different.

Day two’s more oppressive heat than the day before held throughout. And while that only exacerbated a few performers’ middling attempts to hold the audience’s attention, other groups released real energy that carried the crowd until the night.

Walking in during Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was a welcome as hell contrast to the dead silence I met the day before. Raucous, grinding and noisy rock coming from two guitars and a drum kit rolled through the north end of Union Park, as JSBX added heat to the day. Spencer’s Elvis-twinged yells and pensive spoken word crushed into furious distorted chords and bends from the guitars, with pounding drums keeping a heavy heartbeat to the fray.

Take the taste for raw and experimental production of New York’s downtown musicians, and root it in dirty Memphis garage rockabilly and you get the explosion. JSBX is a reminder that music experiments can still just kick ass, especially when the set closed with a huge vamp, colored by Theremin yelps.

• Pitchfork Festival: Day One

READ ON for more on the second day of the Pitchfork Fest…

Words and Images: Benji Feldheim

Pitchfork Music Festival 2010

Day One:

Leave it to a Swedish pop singer to save the first day of the 2010 Pitchfork Music Festival from a numbing heat haze.

Wait, really? Yes. Her name is Robyn, and she can sing and dance globe-wide circles around most other dance-beat laden pop singers. Take some tips here Gaga.

With a scorching sun beating down on about 18,000 folks out of the estimated 54,000 expected to attend Pitchfork this weekend, Robyn put on a powerhouse set of electro dance, high register harmonies and a fiendish sexual energy that woke the crowd up.

“Is it always this hot Chicago?” Robyn said between songs.

With a live band tweaking synth knobs and playing both electric and no-plug drums, Robyn showed the difference between a pop singer who actually writes and enjoys her own music, as opposed to those on a record label leash. Straight ahead beats that suddenly shifted into faster paces, backed by a rolling array of clean synth bleeps and bloops and topped by Robyn’s crystal clear singing and energy made the set a gem.

READ ON for more from Benji on Day One of the P4K Festival…

Words & Images: Andrew Bender

All Good Music Festival – Masontown, West Virginia; July 8-11

Prelude – Wed. 7/7/2010:

On Wednesday, I find myself sitting at work, watching the clock, and counting the minutes until I’m on the road from my home base in Detroit to the mountains of West Virginia. My traveling companion – who also happens to be my wife – and I are driving tonight half way, meeting up with some friends from Michigan who have to work late, and cruising up on Thursday morning for what I hear is the inevitable wait in the car to get in.

I’ve never been to All Good before, and most of what I have to go on I’ve gleaned from prior years’ reviews, and talking to friends and family that have been in years past. As a photographer, I have to look after my gear, but when a close friend of mine who’s been at All Good for the past few year said that it was the only festival he’d been to where you should be concerned about people stealing from unoccupied tents and campsites, I got a little extra sketched out.

I’m definitely of the ‘do unto others . . . ‘ or ‘do what you want as long as it doesn’t mess with others’ school of thought, and it was hard to imagine a scene like that. Festivals are one of my all-time favorite means to cut loose, get loose, dance, drink, party, make new friends, and let it all hang out. Maybe as I get older I get a little more uptight. I’ve always been more responsible than many of my friends – going to a few shows rather than the whole tour, or only going to one or two summer music and camping festivals a year.

READ ON for more from Andrew on All Good 2010…

While the first annual Nateva Festival doesn’t seem to have turned a profit (according to the Sun Journal) and only hit the goal of 15K attendance on Sunday (according to the Boston Globe), those who went up to the Oxford Fairgrounds in Maine over the Fourth of July Weekend were treated to an eclectic mix of music from the jam and indie worlds. Not only did everyone we talked to who went to Nateva report they had a blast, but reviews in the local and Boston-area papers were glowing.

Official festival photographer Nick Fitanides shot most acts at Nateva and upon his return we asked him to pick his 100 best photos to share with our readers. READ ON after the jump for a full gallery…

Now that the first leg of Phish’s Summer Tour has reached its conclusion – and the post-tour haze has worn off – it’s time to look at the recently completed run “by the numbers.” Here’s what we came up with for the latest installment of our ever-popular The Number Line series…

30,000 – Capacity of Largest Venue (HersheyPark Stadium)
8,466 – Number of Days between Fuck Your Face Performances
6,500 – Capacity of Smallest Venue (nTelos Pavilion)
1,413 – Number of shows since last Fuck Your Face
587 – Shows Since The Last Letter To Jimmy Page
180 – Different Songs Played
95 – Onetimers
92 – Number of Songs Played in 2009 not played yet in 2010 (A Song I Heard The Ocean Sing, Access Me, Albuquerque, All Down The Line, All of These Dreams, Anything But Me, Auld Lang Syne, Avenu Malkenu, Beauty of a Broken Heart, Bike, Bittersweet Motel, Blue Moon, Bobby Jean, Cars Trucks Buses, Casino Boogie, Catapult, Cool it Down, Corrina, Crimes of the Mind, Demand, Dixie Cannonball, Dog Faced Boy, Driver, Frankie Says, Freebird, Glide, Glory Days, Golden Age, Gone, Grind, Guelah Papyrus, Ha Ha Ha, Hello My Baby, Highway to Hell, How High the Moon, HYHU, I Been Around, I Just Want To See His Face, I Kissed A Girl, Icculus, If I Could, Invisible, Lengthwise, Let It Loose, Let Me Lie, Lifeboy, Love You, Meat, Middle Of The Road, Mist, Mound, Mustang Sally, My Mind’s Got a Mind of its Own, Nellie Kane, NO2, Oh! Sweet Nuthin’, Old Home Place, On Your Way Down, Paul and Silas, Peaches en Regalia, Pebbles and Marbles, Psycho Killer, Rip This Joint, Rocks Off, Rocky Top, Scent of a Mule, Scents and Subtle Sounds, Secret Smile, Shake Your Hips, She Thinks I Still Care, Sleep, Soul Shakedown Party, Soul Survivor, Stop Breaking Down, Sweet Black Angel, Sweet Virginia, Talk, The Curtain With, The Man Who Stepped Into Yesterday, Tomorrow’s Song, Torn and Frayed, Trainsong, Tumbling Dice, Turd On The Run, Two Versions of Me, Ventilator Blues, Waves, Weigh, What’s the Use, When The Cactus Is In Bloom, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Windy City)

• Hidden Track Summer Tour Leg One Wrap Ups: Just The Facts, Survey Results, From A-Z

45 – The number of times somebody says Dr. Gabel in that song
27 – Days Until The Greek
24 – Songs Played in 2010 but not in 2009 (Alumni Blues, Dr. Gabel, Cold Water, Free Man in Paris, Fuck Your Face, Halfway to the Moon, Have Mercy, I Am The Walrus, Idea, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Instant Karma, Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Killing in the Name, Letter to Jimmy Page, Light Up or Leave Me Alone, Lit O Bit, Look Out Cleveland, Mellow Mood, Saw it Again, Show Of Life, Summer of ’89, The Rover, Time Loves a Hero, Walfredo)

READ ON for more Phish Summer Tour stat geekery…

Our pal Parker Harrington – aka @TMWSIY – put together a wide-ranging survey about Phish Summer Tour 2010 and received nearly 1,000 responses. Parker has kindly permitted us to share the results with our readers…

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and voting! Tried to reach out to a varied cross-section of the fan base through Twitter, YEMBlog, PT, PhishPosters, What.CD, and many other message boards and fan groups. This should be a pretty good snap shot of what the fans think.

Killing in the Name takes this one hands down. Was this partly due to the ‘recency’ effect or getting sandwiched in an epic Harpua? The Rover and I am the Walrus, of course, made strong showings as well. My pick would be Free Man in Paris. While I didn’t really know it before, I loved it. Poor little Lit ‘O Bit with only seven votes. Likewise, note the lukewarm reaction to Waits’ Cold Water. It will be interesting to see which, if any of these, make a return visit in the future.

READ ON for the rest of the results from the Summer Tour survey…

Ween @ Aragon Ballrom, June 25

Words and Images: Allison Taich

On June 25, 2010 Chicago fans of the brown gathered around the city’s Aragon Ballroom to witness the triumphant return of Ween to the Windy City. It had been three long years since the eclectic-rockers had performed in the area, and it was clear they had been missed.

Over the course of two-and-a-half hours the proprietors of brown lavished fans with songs spanning their 20+ year career.

At nine o’clock sharp the guys of Ween casually strolled onstage and tuned up their instruments. The audience cheered wildly in anticipation as lead singer Gene Ween offered a brief hello. Soon after, the band set into the evening with the solemn sea tale She Wanted to Leave. Between the disenchanted lyrics of love and loss, and an eerie blue glow cast upon the stage, it felt that Ween began with the end.

As the set progressed the band journeyed onward and pumped out gem after gem from their vast catalog of original songs. Naturally, Ween showcased their trademark ability to consistently transition between a variety of musical genres and personas. Together the quintet traveled to the edges of space with the sedative Zoloft, delivered the callused fist pumping honky tonk Piss Up a Rope and even embraced the virtuous smooth jazz jam Your Party. The sleek presence of Your Party was enhanced by keyboardist Glenn McClelland’s handiwork. With each lyrical break McClelland’s fingers fluttered across the keys adding a lustrous finish to an already suave melody.

READ ON for more of Allison’s thoughts and photos from Ween…