The first big Chicago music festival of the summer kicks off tonight, so look for me to be running around Union Park like a crazy man with my camera over the next three days. Make sure you read my previews of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday so you're in the right places at the right times! I also enjoy the always inevitable run ins with other music writers and publicists that usually go something like, "Oh, so THAT'S what you look like? Huh." (NOTE: Not all of us writers look like giant dorks, some of us are actually functioning members of society, y'know. Barely.)Are you going?
And now a word on some of the rockwrite I've been reading the past few days. Look, I'm not above a bit of musically referential name dropping as a shortcut in lieu of an actual description in my own reviews, or a touch of verbal flim-flam that I have mistaken for proof of my literal dexterity, but when I write I at least try to give some sense of what the band sounds like in language that would appeal to someone unfamiliar with the group. Isn't part of the whole point of writing about music supposed to be an effort to turn people on and excite them about stuff they probably wouldn't have encountered on their own? I've been reading a few Pitchfork Music Festival previews by other publications and no wonder the average person makes so much fun of hipsters ... if the convoluted rockwrite perpetrated by most of these "critics" was my only interaction with so-called indie music I'd probably avoid the hell out of it as well!
The irony is that on the actual festival site, the previews written by Pitchfork staffers -- whom sometimes fall under critical fire for their own obtuseness from time to time -- are clear, succinct and really well written in language any casual music fan could understand.
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