so, where was i ? oh yes, getting over the fact that 20 minute funk jams by a band from nyc playing a free gig in a big park in chicago could end up being the highlight of my time here. <\/p>\n
if only i knew then what i know now.<\/p>\n
following this revelation on thursday, friday was all about a very different american experience : ice hockey + sports bar.<\/p>\n
turns out that one of the cities teams, the blackhawks, are doing rather well, and have made it through to the final of a fancy big cup called stanley (or is it actually stanleys cup and he hands it over every year, i’m not too sure). <\/p>\n
now for some reason, a final is not a one match situation. instead this involves several matches played over several days, so when they lost the match on friday, little did i know that this sport was going to become the source of so much madness in the following week. <\/p>\n
musically speaking though, friday was a wash out other than the realisation just how big bump-n-grind autotuned to f*ck r-n-b crap is here. <\/p>\n
oh the (t-)pain.<\/p>\n
thankfully this all meant on the saturday i had the all clear to head for the division street festival. checking the grid map that lay on the coffee table, i thought a nice 30 minute walk, followed by a couple of local bands would be a rather lovely way to kill time.<\/p>\n
so, i started walking.<\/p>\n
one hour and 20 minutes later and i’m still walking and no sight, nor sound of any such festivities.<\/p>\n
then out of the barren flat lands came the oasis that was the festival grounds.<\/p>\n
with all manner of left field arty stalls, cool bars, car wash lots being taken over by a soundsystem to play more of that bump-n-grind autotunedto f*ck junk, and a mass of stoners, goths, emos, and bikers, i suddenly felt like i stumbled into the chicago equivalent of camden town.<\/p>\n
with 2 stages set up at either end of the 10 block zone i chanced my luck and hung in there for the appearance by pelican<\/strong> given that i had a memory of the band getting some love from the always reliable team over at the quietus.<\/p>\n after a few too many wet downpours, the band are allowed on stage by some annoying ‘comedian’ and start up with their take on atmospheric epic instrumental metal monsters. i can’t say anything more than it was a big sound from 4 fairly normal looking blokes. one point of interest that provided unintentional laughs is that one of the guitarists, a skinny waif of a lad, throws the biggest rock shapes this side of a bon jovi<\/strong> gig. <\/p>\n i jokingly turned to my neighbour in the aural assault experience and said : <\/p>\n ‘he’s only showing off cos his mum\/mom is in the audience’<\/p>\n no word of a lie, 10 minutes later, 4 silver surfers beaming from ear to ear with parental pride wearing stain free, pristine pelican<\/strong> t-shirts walk past.<\/p>\n oh how we smiled and bonded on that.<\/p>\n despite the ireallylovemusic<\/u> archive not really being a vital source for atmospheric epic instrumental metal monsters, i cant deny their noise had quite an appeal. of particular note was during certain sludgey sections, when out of downbeat mood would be an unexpected clean guitar line providing a melodic rise from the darkness, and their final atmospheric epic instrumental monster almost had a funky groove. <\/p>\n i stress the word, almost.<\/p>\n so, following another downpour, the next source of entertainment were to be the net phenomenon the hood internet<\/strong>. research told me that the hip hop\/mashup collective are one of the hottest set ups on the wire, and who am i to contest such a claim.<\/p>\n all i can say is their blends of electro grooves and hip hop vocals went down a storm. <\/p>\n the crowd was vibrant, and totally up for their brand of partying. personally, while it was perfectly enjoyable hearing cut ups of lcd soundsystem<\/strong>, basement jaxx<\/strong>, justice<\/strong> mashed up with hip hop vocals, the music was nothing more than a well crafted mixtape, the likes of which flood the wire.<\/p>\n still a cracking way to spend a few hours, but due to the distance from my homebase, i decided to not trek back on sunday (and with headliners being a dfa affiliated yacht<\/strong>, was not an easy decision to make).<\/p>\n instead, i spent sunday experiencing noise pollution from the chicago gospel festival<\/u> that was going on in the park. <\/p>\n by sunset i thought i’d go watch the proceedings given that back in my normal world, such an event is not going to be of the same magnitude. and how right i was.<\/p>\n i was greeted by the sight of 1000s of rapturous, god loving people welcoming the festivals closer, fred hammond<\/strong> with a fervour that you’d never get at your standard indie concert (well, apart from a snow patrol<\/strong> fan convention of course). fred then set into his back catalogue with a variety of happy piano funk, a little aor rock, and a lot of love. vocally he was dripping quality, and with backing from a huge joyous choir doing the happy clappy dance the overall impact could not help but be very impressive. <\/p>\n a fitting way to end the weekend.<\/p>\n hallelujah.<\/p>\n on monday the plan was simple : finish work, back to the room to get changed into more suitable attire, and then across the road i head to catch local band hollows<\/strong>, and she & him<\/strong> on monday night back over in the park.<\/p>\n as i said that was the plan.<\/p>\n all went perfectly well until i crossed the road, whereupon i was met by tens of thousands of chicagos young beautiful people.<\/p>\n masses and masses of them. <\/p>\n all over the bloody place. picnic rugs, wine bottles, sushi, and i hadn’t even got to the actual field. surely this lot can’t be all here for she & him <\/strong>? i know little about them other than the girl (‘she’) has been in a couple of movies, and the man (‘him’), has made music under another guise, m.ward. <\/p>\n oh one other thing i do know, they are perfect fodder for radio 2s dreary o’leary<\/u> saturday afternoon slot (and was i alone in hearing him try and interview them a few months ago, when even dreary said after he played back the pre-recorded interview, said it was like having a tooth extraction). <\/p>\n who could have ever guessed a band so twee that they make belle and sebastian<\/strong> look like slipknot<\/strong> with a dose of road rage, could pull in so many people ? <\/p>\n with my head reeling from such madness, i held firm on a spot of accessible concrete and watched and listened to the age old festival ritual: <\/p>\n ‘i can’t get a network connection .. oh yes i can .. hello john, where are you ? on a red picnic rug on the gra!hello john ? john ?’ <\/p>\n yet, despite the obvious excess of human form, people still fought through the throng with their sun chairs (not all which were of the folding form) in hope that somehow magically a spot of grass would appear as they approached. <\/p>\n it was fascinating, yet baffling at the same time.<\/p>\n i stood and listened (visible confirmation of the bands presence on the stage was not possible) to the clearly stunned hollows<\/strong> do their b52s<\/strong> vs 60s tacky horror organ riffs monochromatic thing for 40 or so minutes. whether they will ever get to play an audience quite that large again, only time will tell, but i wouldn’t put money on it.<\/p>\n once the girls (and their one bloke in tow) had finished, i came to the conclusion i had had enough and headed out of the park back to the sanity of my room.<\/p>\n next up <\/strong>: she wants revenge\/the psychedelic furs @ the metro<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" so, where was i ? oh yes, getting over the fact that 20 minute funk jams by a band from nyc playing a free gig in a big park in chicago could end up being the highlight of my time here. if only i knew then what i know now. following this revelation on thursday, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ireallylovemusic.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}