Here is a quick guide on how to NOT do a music festival, based on my experience at the Pitchfork Music Festival last Saturday. The first misstep came with my choice of transportation up to Chicago for the festival.
I took the 7:30 am Amtrak train departing Bloomington that was supposed to arrive in Chicago at 10. The train left right on time, but about a half hour later we came to a complete stop. Apparently it was so hot outside that the sensors that alert the conductor if another train is coming were on the fritz. Also at this point, the air in my compartment (and my compartment only) went out.
It was already approaching 90 degrees outside and we were at a complete standstill with no air flowing. We eventually started moving but only at 20 mph instead of the usual 110 because our game plan was to go that speed and blare the horn to alert oncoming trains. This does me and the other people on my part of the train no good because we are all sweating and doing anything we could do to cool off.
It got so bad that the conductor finally just announced that everything in the bar was now free, so I got a lukewarm Sierra Mist out of the deal… After a series of stops as well as the whole train losing air for the last 45 minutes of the trip, our train limped into Chicago at 11:45.
Since the gates of the festival opened at 12, my roommate from school, Andy, and I caught a taxi to the site of the concert. After grabbing some food, Andy and I made a game plan for the day. Since the headliner, Future Islands, is one of Andy’s favorite bands, we decided to wait at their stage until they came on at 7:30. From here, however, our troubles continued.
The first band that came on the stage, Protomartyr, was good but the heat had become unbearable at that point. Unfortunately, I come from a long line of pale-skinned people that have a bad track record of being severely burned when exposed to sunlight of any kind. I essentially was applying sunscreen after every song and was using my change of clothes as a sun blocker. However, that trend did not continue.
By the time the next band, Ex Hex, came on, clouds began to come over our heads. It started to rain pretty hard but there was nothing we could do about it but stand there and get completely soaked. The rain set the concert back by about 10 minutes but the show must go on. Ex Hex came on for 3 songs before there was a festival-wide announcement that, for the time being, Pitchfork was cancelled. People were really confused and upset but soon they understood as it started to pour. Not just rain hard. Like the hardest rain I have ever been in kind of rain.
After hiding out under a tent for about 10 minutes, the rain stopped and we were able to get the same front row seats at the stage that Future Islands was playing at. Just one more band was set to perform before the headliners took the stage. That band was Parquet Courts, a punk group that many people were waiting to see. Of course, as soon as they started to play, huge mosh pits broke out in the crowd.
For those of you who don’t know, rain + mosh pits = mud and lots of it. The whole area was one big mud bath and the crowd was happily playing along. Security members were pulling crowd surfers covered in mud over my shoulder the entire show and I was pitted against the rail due to the mosh pits.
To say the least, I was not having a great experience at this festival so far. Luckily, Future Islands came to the rescue. Samuel T. Herring and company delivered one of the best performances I have ever seen from a band. They did everything they could to make the concert worth all of the trouble that I have been through. And they did.
My day was like the 1995 film Waterworld: it was horrible until the very end. Just kidding. Waterworld was a complete piece of shit.
-Riley, the intern
