Five Albums That Changed My Life

By Drew Adamek

I am obsessed with music. Not as an intellectual pursuit but as a lifestyle choice. Music is central to who I am. It shapes my attitudes, offers me comfort, bonds me with friends and provides an emotional blueprint for my life.
Without music, I would have been lost a long time ago.
I started exploring music as soon as I was old enough to get a paper route and could afford to buy cassettes at Kmart. Right away, music gave me things I didn’t have: a place I fit in; a place where other people understood me and saw the world the same way that I did. Music also provided an escape hatch – a Walkman on full blast shut out the rest of the world completely.
What follows are the most influential albums of my life. I don’t mean the records that remind me of a specific place or time or person but albums that really shaped me into who I am today.

Posted on July 27, 2010

Pitchfork vs. Tom Petty, Sting and Lilith Fair

By Steve Rhodes

Some music industry heavyweights were in town the same weekend as the Pitchfork Festival. For my money, you didn’t miss much. Compare and contrast.
1. He’s gonna stand his ground. Against what, I have no idea . . .

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Posted on July 26, 2010

Final Postcards From Pitchfork

By Steve Rhodes

Last in a series.
Reading through the coverage of Pitchfork was inspiring. This is what it’s all about folks.
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1. “In the case of Beach House, the nocturnal emissions suffered none in the sun, their swooning set of Teen Dream quickly reminding the park that said LP should be a lot higher on people’s year-end lists,” amrit writes for Stereogum.

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Posted on July 22, 2010

Even More Postcards From Pitchfork

By Steve Rhodes

Our week-long review of the reviews and video highlights continues.
1. Wolf Parade had a killer set, Kyle Ryan wrote in Spin. “The band delivered one propulsive anthem after another,” Jim DeRogatis concurred.

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Posted on July 22, 2010

Postcards From Pitchfork

By Steve Rhodes

As much as I hate crowds and people talking over the music and didn’t have the time or beer money for it, I found trolling through YouTube for videos from Pitchfork to be pretty inspiring. Especially in contrast to utterly ignorant comments from people about how nobody makes music like they used to anymore. Haven’t we been hearing that all our lives, all evidence to the contrary?
(Jeff Johnson in the Sun-Times reviewing Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival: “Maybe it’s just the collective imagination of the 27,000-plus brainwashed boomers who went down to the Crossroads on Saturday, but it sure seems that the music of 40 years ago is ever more vibrant than today’s lame pop music. It’s unlikely that fans in 2050 will look back on 2010 the way today’s fiftysomethings revere the sounds of the 1970s.”
(I’ll save the multiple levels that that is so wrong on for a later date.)
“In the year of the super-sized Lollapalooza, the fifth Pitchfork Music Festival continued to make its case as the best music festival not only in Chicago, but the nation,” the Onion’s A.V. Club writes. “The event’s forward-thinking lineup went lighter on the nostalgia acts this year by dumping the ‘Don’t Look Back’ night, where bands play seminal albums in their entirety, and featuring a bevy of buzzing acts, such as Sleigh Bells, Free Energy, Titus Andronicus, Major Lazer, Local Natives, Surfer Blood, Beach House, and numerous others . . .
“For a festival of its size and stature, Pitchfork remains completely manageable and enjoyable, the best of its kind.”
Veteran Chicago-based rock critic Jim DeRogatis, now blogging at Vocalo, saw it quite differently. He called the festival Yawnfork.
In turn, some bloggers ganged up on him.
I’m in no position to judge, but simply here to bring you the video, along with some commentary from various reviewers.