* It’s a point I’ve made numerous times throughout the weekend, and a point worth repeating. This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival had some serious talent issues, namely there was too much pop early in the day. Look at that dude in the picture. Does that dude look like he wants to sit back and relax to Sharon van Etten, The Tallest Man on Earth, Beach House, Girls, or Cass McCombs? No, that dude wants to rock out.
* Weed was everywhere at this year’s festival. One couldn’t walk through the crowd without noticing the pungent scent of marijuana. Imagine if you were new to America. You would think weed was legal. It was as if one beverage ticket got you water, five got you a beer, and ten got you a joint.
* There were also a lot of people on crutches. This may or may not be related to my last point.
* Several variations of the classic “I Heart” t-shirt were spotted throughout over the course of the festival. There was an “I Heart Release Dates,” “I Heart Boxed Wine,” “I Heart Bob,” I Heart Taiwan,” and “I Heart Single Moms.” Yet, my favorite tee of the weekend was a variation of the classic three wolves one moon shirt which replaced the three wolves with three cats playing keyboards.
* If I had a dollar for every Ween t-shirt I spotted on Sunday and $10 for every Ween tattoo, I would have had like $20.
* Big Boi’s late evening set consisted of 90% Outkast jams, and while it was sweet to hear jams like “Bombs Over Baghdad,” “Ms. Jackson,” and “So Fresh and So Clean,” over a big soundsystem, there was also something very wrong about it. It was like watching Dave Grohl do a set of Nirvana songs, or Dan Auerbach on solo tour doing a set of Black Keys songs. Half the act was missing.
* After watching the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on Saturday, I mentioned how other artists could learn a thing or two about performing by noting how the Blues Explosion lived, looked, and sweated the blues. I doubt Major Lazer read my post, but they certainly owned their sound on late Sunday afternoon. Diplo was impeccable in his selection, banging reggae, dancehall, techy, urban sounds, old school house, bootie jams, and Ace of Base. Yes, he even put on a bit of “All That She Wants.” His hype man, meanwhile, was something else — Purple pants and suspenders, blonde mohawk and so much f*ckin’ energy. He was joined by a couple of those big Chinese Dragon puppets, two dancers in skimpy, military inspired outfits, and two ballerinas. Let me tell you, those bootie jams got those booties moving and thousands of white girls had the funkiest day of their lives.
* Those same white girls weren’t so funky during Pavement.
