GANGSTER'S PARADISE

I was out at the Pitchfork Music Festival here in Chicago this weekend. Unfortunately for me, I hate outdoor festivals. Yes, I'm a loud and proud advocate of experiencing as much good, live music as you can cram into your schedule, and if you live in a place like Chicago the problem is more finding the time to see everything and still be sober enough to get to work the next morning, rather than not having enough to do- a much worse situation, and one which plagued the area I grew up in back when I was lean and mean (Fortunately that situation has been changing as of late- check out what they have going on in the Quad Cities over at Daytrotter )

But my musical tastes are strangely both specific and varied. That doesn't normally jibe very well with the outdoor music festival spirit- y'know, the spirit of not really giving a shit about what bands are playing and being greatly more interested in paying $75 for a ticket to sit in a crowded, sweaty field and get baked with your friends. Usually that means the promoters will squash as many big name acts on the bill as possible, leaving lesser known acts to shiver in the corner where, if they're booked at all, they play for a collection of couples making out, a sleepy hobo and a stray dog on some annex stage.

And these festivals are usually during the summer- the juicy armpit, drenched in flop sweat season. Call me crazy, but the idea of shelling out big bucks (well.. for me anyway) to inject myself into a claustrophobically crowded field, where the ground has usually been tilled to the consistency of thick, lumpy chum, getting stoned strangers' back sweat pressed into me from four or more sides is not terribly pleasant. Add to that shelling out $7 for a nice hot cup of Budweiser or a wholesome steaming turkey leg, and you have an experience not terribly unlike hell. I believe Dante spoke of the armpit sweat, $9 turkey leg hell-level.

The good news for me this time 'round was two fold. Firstly, Pitchfork is generally a good festival. Every year, it manages to strike a balance between great and varied bands with a median level of popularity, and a good number of bands I could give a flying shit about. Perhaps only Bonnaroo is better at this, but since it was started by hippies, is frequented by hippies (despite the recent appearance by such staunch anti-hippies as Charlie Louvin, Ornette Coleman, Steve Earle, and High on Fire)and is in Kentucky, I will leave that for someone else to experience.

Secondly, I was invited to work at a booth with some friends in the record tent, which meant I was paid to see those friends, along with a bunch of folks I hadn't talked to in awhile and generally nerd out about music with people. Not so bad. Plus, should you find yourself at the Pitchfork festival next year, the CHIRP Record Fair tent is a wonderful shade and fan (the kind that blow air on people, not the other kind) filled oasis in the middle of the churning, sweaty bodies that flood the main field.

I didn't see much music. Not because there wasn't much to see (actually, there were only about 5 things I was psyched about) but more because it was ungodly hot all weekend and... y'know, fuck it. I didn't pay to be there. There are a few bands I'm kind of sorry I missed, but the good thing about living in the third largest tour market in North America is that those will be forced to come back.

I did see an amazing performance from the Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar, a Serbian brass band that brought some serious and authentic Eastern European marching band funk to the proceedings (while it was raining, no less) and 2 separate performances from the mighty and incredible King Khan & The Shrines. Good God were they fun to watch. I'd wanted to see them for a long time- I've seen the King Khan & BBQ Show, and while, it's always a good show, the Shrines have something else entirely going on. It's part Screamin' Jay Hawkins, part James Brown and His Famous Flames, with a hearty dab of modern raunchy sensibility slathered on top. Why they signed to Vice, I'll never know (yeah, yeah, the 'Do's & Don't's' are sometimes funny..aaand sometimes incredibly ignorant.)

So it was a good weekend overall, even if it's Tuesday and I'm still a total space cadet from the weekend. All I can say is, I was out of my house for the better part of three days doing something halfway cool and reasonably interesting, and all I had to spend money on was records. Not too shabby for an outdoor music festival.

Apparently if you're shielded from the sun, have something to do when the bands you don't care about seeing are playing, are paid, and provided with free tickets, free beer, and free food, an outdoor festival can be a fun and enriching experience.

Ha ha. You had to pay.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE LUNATICS GONE?



Sure, the footage of Britney Spears losing her mind in public has been televised throughout the world until it has lost all meaning. But for the most part, it strikes me that famous people nowadays are pretty damn boring. I don't trust any of these pasty, suburban-fed dewey-eyed folk to lead us, the willing public, down a two-lane highway of bizarre murder and drunken, opium laced insanity. Amy Winehouse aside, when's the last time an up-and-coming young starlet has drunk a bottle of Draino while blown out of her mind on coke, only to scale the side of the posh hotel she's staying in, wearing a makeshift cape, screaming that she will drop bombs on the crowd of enamored fans below? And when is John Mayer going to behead his aunt with a James Taylor "Sweet Baby James" LP and, high on PCP, shirtless, and soaked in blood, try evading the police in the nearest golf cart, blasting a 12-gauge shotgun in the air and laughing hysterically?

Cases like Britney Spears are a depressing, "Gee Whiz" sort of crazy, which is not fun in the least. It's the kind that evokes pity, makes you wonder what went wrong, and contains not an ounce of awe or fist pumping excitement. I'm talking full-blown, balls-in-the-wind-satan-be-damned shenanegans.

Take Jerry Lee Lewis, who shot out the floor of the hotel room above him with a shotgun while drunk. DRUNK! That's regular people drugs!

Or the brazen ballsiness of Lee Marvin or Yul Brenner- Yul Brenner who had the forethought to make an anti smoking PSA BEFORE HE EVEN DIED! AND HE'S SMOKING WHILE HE'S DOING IT! That's exciting crazy.

Or what about Klaus Kinski? If that guy just walked to the corner Citgo station to buy a grape soda he probably did something unstable

Now don't get me wrong- in recent memory we've been privy to perhaps the most famous case of public insanity, the OJ Simpson murders, not to mention Mike Tyson's various forays into pushing people down the stairs and facial tattooing, the continual downward spiral that is Michael Jackson, or...uh.. Gary Busey.

But where are all the young up-and-coming crack pots of the future? I find it hard to imagine one of the kids from My Chemical Romance just sauntering up to a cop and peeing on his shoes while humming "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The general malaise and non-chalance baked into the up-and-coming generation leaves us with a celebrity base that is about as interesting as room-temperature bath water (not to mention much of the general population.)

Maybe it's reality TV. Sure, it's blamed for just about every vacant, emotionless span of loud nothingness that now passes for entertainment, but think about it- nightly on hundreds of different channels there are every day weirdos and psychopaths skwabling about who forgot to put the cap on the toothpaste being broadcast into our homes, but pardon me if I see that as a bit of a cop out. Every day crazy isn't interesting. It's annoying. It's what I'm faced with every time I board a city bus.

But famous crazy is special. And famous crackpots of years gone by knew how to be famous. OJ Simpson proved that if you're famous enough, you can indeed get away with murder.

I say, use that fame: Do whatever the hell you want because, God dammit- you're famous! You play on TV! Go ahead and take a dump right in the middle of that posh crowded restaurant! Pick up that old lady's lap dog and chuck it into the river while screaming at the top of your lungs and wearing only uncomfortably tight briefs and a top hat covered in feathers!You're FAMOUS! But you won't necessarily be famous forever unless you make it happen- put it to work for you; make sure you're famous FOREVER! It's worth posting bail, and you'll be buried in job offers once you get out of your holding cell anyway.

C'mon- your public is waiting...

GENTRIFUCKATION IS A BITCH.


Chicago was fine.

OK- maybe not all of it was totally, 100% fine. But nearly all of the native Chicagoans I've befriended since moving here seem to concur- Chicago was a more fun and interesting place before the real estate investors proceeded to piss all over everything and shit out a low-quality $250,000 per unit condo complexes every other building on every other block.

To me, it feels like a horror movie- fleeing and uprooting your life every few years to escape the encroachment of yuppie spawn bringing their bland, tasteless way of life to your doorstep.

That cool old man bar that's been unchanged and owned by the same family since the '40's? The one with the fantastic juke box? How about a nice cutting-edge-of-hip wine bar instead? Ooh! Or a vodka lounge!

That little greasy spoon on the corner that serves up a mediocre breakfast for $4, but for another $2 will follow that up with the best cherry pie you've ever tasted? How about a stuffy, trendy "dining experience" with a chic one-word name like "Eat" "Dine" or "Taste?" The chef is to die for!

Neighborhood butcher shop where you can pick up a nice pork shoulder? Record store that can help you track down obscure Charlie Feathers German LP pressings from the early 1980's? Fuck it- dog spa.

Y'know.. Chicago has always been a city that prides itself on its neighborhoods- a city where from one block to the next it's like walking through Epcot Center- little eclaves of ethnic flourish, where walking down the same street you could buy a hand-tailored suit in an hour, home made pierogi's, and jazz records from the 1950's.

It's not like that anymore.

Just go to Germantown. Lousy with Germans, right? Liederhosen, gnomes, sausage and the whole bit? Sorry, pal. You'll have to go to Munich. It used to be that way, just a few years ago even. And sure, there's a few solid hold outs- the Chicago Brauhaus isn't going anywhere anytime soon- but it now rubs its 60+ year old shoulders with trendy salons, a hippie food cafe, and an overpriced kids clothing store. Not to mention Coldstone's, Starbucks, Jamba Juice, and all the other chain-level earmarks of yuppiedom. We can't go without our smoothies, now, can we? And sausage is so high in fat anyway.

It's much the same story elsewhere in the city. I moved into my neighborhood four years ago, fleeing the pure unadulterated hell that was once the Lakeview neighborhood. This neighborhood's full of quiet, tree-lined streets, there's a 50 year old bowling alley down the street, a chinese restaurant that's been in the same place since the 1930's (stop by Orange Garden if you're up Irving Park way...) and many other such amenities for an indoors person such as myself. And while the neighborhood isn't totally uninhabitable yet (I'd give it another 5 years at least), it is becoming more and more intolerable on a daily basis. It's just not quite far enough away from the snot-nosed yuppie offspring date-rapist mecca that is Wrigleyville. Slowly, their virus is spreading it's baby blue net over this once docile neighborhood. And with two brand new condo complexes going up on Irving, I'd say we're all roundly fucked.

If you have money, fine. Spend it. But please- for the sake of the rest of us who DON'T have much in the way of expendible income, do something interesting with it, and don't merely use it to open more businesses that are readily available in other neighborhoods that you've bent over a chair and forced yourself upon (see the aforementioned Lakeview, Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, the Gold Coast, Bucktown...hell- the whole damn fucking city...)

Why is it that the people that make the money and dictate what goes where are all rolling goose eggs in the creativity department? They're all driving Lexus', Mercedes', BMW's and the like, perfectly comfortable with paying $15 cover to a bar on Friday that doesn't charge a cover on Wednesday, laying out $12 per drink for their five drink minimum so they can hit on/breed with other vacant know-nothings, spreading both the yuppie plague, and genital warts as they go.

I think it's advertising. Somehow, the dullards have taken over- creativity is stifled, and all we are left with is E! Entertainment News, Dane Cook, and Panic at the Disco.

The dipshits of the world buy into the pap- "Say, if we only advertise NBC owned movies and brands during our shows, and also work them into the plots of those shows, we'll sell 18.5% more pairs of slacks at Banana Republic! Do we own stock in Mercedes-Benz? Get the American Idol kids piled into one of those for a PSA stat!" Paris Hilton takes her worthless, shitty dog to a dog spa, so God damnit, so should everybody else. And who wants to go buy an unworthy Graco swinging chair at Toys R Us like a normal person? Your baby should get a hand-crafted swinging chair fashioned out of less worthy children from icky undeveloped countries at "Play: A Baby Boutique Adventure" for 25X more money. Who cares if he outgrows it in a year? He'll only be a baby once, and it should be a magical experience (though, not by having him out actually experiencing things for himself- he might get hurt, and you have Yoga to get to!) Just throw it on "The Card..." The world works on credit, darling.

Don't buy into it. Shop locally at the places you want to keep around. Otherwise, friends- the dipshits win. And the dipshits hate our freedom.