Pavement performs at Pitchfork 2010. View more Pitchfork 2010 photos. (Christopher Smith, RedEye)

Editor's note:

Updated 4:30 p.m. Wednesday with response from Pavement's Scott Kannberg

Updated 1:30 p.m. Tuesday with comments below from Pitchfork promoter Mike Reed.  

Though the Pitchfork Music Festival streamed video of virtually its entire main-stage lineup last weekend, enabling fans to watch the festival as it happened around the world on their computers and cellphones, one notable band was not included: festival-closing headliners Pavement.

Why was Pavement excluded? One band member has a beef with Pitchfork's editorial department. The band’s longtime booking agent, David Viecelli, explained Monday that “one of the band members has some issues with (the Pitchfork e-zine), comments that were made (in past articles) that demeaned that person in the context of Pavement.”

“Some of the things he objected to were bitchy, personal attacks that, if someone had said them about me, I wouldn’t have been happy either,” Viecelli said. “Because of that, he had a problem with the video being streamed not just on the festival Web site, but on the editorial side as well. It was a last-minute thing and I wasn’t able to stop it. I apologized to (festival promoter Mike Reed). I don’t think it hurts Pitchfork – if anything it hurts Pavement because fewer people got to see them. But to me the biggest damage was that the fans couldn’t see it. I wasn’t happy with (the decision), but these things happen.”

Viecelli would not name the band member, but sources familiar with the situation say it was not singer Stephen Malkmus.

Pavement guitarist Scott Kannberg responded Tuesday to Vanity Fair after the magazine's Web site speculated that he was the culprit, responding to negative reviews of his solo work in the Pitchfork e-zine. Kannberg issued the following statement: "Regardless of my thoughts about the Pitchfork e zine, myself and the rest of the band had a great time playing the Pitchfork music festival. The crowd were super enthusiastic and we couldn’t have asked for a better day. We only found out the day of the show about the live webcast and I personally thought that it was not something that Pavement should do. We apologize to the fans for pulling out at the last moment and hope that you’ll come and see us in September. We’d gladly look forward to playing the Pitchfork festival in another 10 years."  

Pitchfork promoter Mike Reed noted Tuesday that other acts have declined to be videotaped, including Broken Social Scene last Friday, the festival's opening day.

"With all of the artists I make the offer to include the ability to stream the show," Reed said. "Some artists take their time responding and some want it taken out right away. The main goal is to have the performance, the webcast is secondary. (Broken Social Scene) said no to the webcast from the start. We did not tape them. 

A number of acts in past festivals, including De La Soul, Cat Power and Sonic Youth, have declined to be videotaped. And last weekend Big Boi and Panda Bear projected their own visuals on the video screens to accompany their sets. 

For the majority of acts, video was streamed live from the festival in Union Park of the two main stages. Performances on the smaller Balance stage were also videotaped, and will be made available on the Pitchfork TV Web site in a week, said video coordinator Johnathan Crawford.

greg@gregkot.com

Sponsored Link: Amazon's Pavement Store

Video produced by Kevin Pang
   
The Pitchfork Music Festival 2010 is in the books. Maybe it was the oppressive heat, but this was not a high-energy festival overall. Beach House singer Victoria Legrand put it best Sunday: "There are a lot of mellow, dark bands playing."

So Sunday's lineup really got a boost when Major Lazer took the stage. DJ's Switch and Diplo are top club draws, but they covered their bases by bringing their own spectacle: Chinese lion dancers, dancers in tutus, dancers parodying pro wrestling moves (including the time-honored ladder leap). Fun suddenly become part of the festival, a trend continued by OutKast's Big Boi. He may be the less cerebral half of the Atlanta hip-hop outfit, but he does know how to throw a party - and Pitchfork needed one as the long weekend wound down. 

As usual, my colleagues Bob Gendron (BG) and Andy Downing (AD) were on the scene alongside yours truly, Greg Kot (GK). Our collective musings on Sunday's action are below. Thanks also to hard-working videographer Kevin Pang, who was everywhere with his camera. 

Here's how it went down Sunday:

12:06 p.m.
Counting down to Day 3 Sunday in what is shaping up to be the strongest day of music at this year's Pitchfork Music Festival. It takes a village to run a music festival, as these numbers from Pitchfork headquarters indicate: 120 people on production crew; 85 people on beer staff; 120 volunteers per shift (there are 2 shifts a day); 30 contractor staff working on the stage; 50 on video production crew; 70 people on security per shift; 16 food vendors with an average of 10 people working with each. (GK) 

12:39 p.m.
Rain is coming down in sheets, sending nearly all of the early arrivers scurrying for cover under the Record Fair tents. While a welcome relief from the heat, the downpour ups the already soupy humidity levels. When the sun returns a few minutes later, the weather is uncomfortable but not anywhere nearly as oppressive as in 2005, Pitchfork's inaugural year and the last time Chicago temperatures cracked the 100 degree mark. (BG)

>>> 5:30 p.m. Update




>>>3:30 p.m. Updates

  

  
 

>>>12:06 p.m. Update

Counting down to Day 3 Sunday in what is shaping up to be the strongest day of music at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival. It takes a village to run a music festival, as these numbers from Pitchfork headquarters indicate: 120 people on production crew; 85 people on beer staff; 120 volunteers per shift (there are two shifts a day); 30 contractor staff working on the stage; 50 on video production crew; 70 people on security per shift; 16 food vendors with an average of 10 people working with each.

greg@gregkot.com

Video produced by Kevin Pang

View pictures from Pitchfork 2010. 

First prize for the day’s most grossly inappropriate outfit goes to Jon Spencer of the Blues Explosion, who wore skin-tight leather pants for his late-afternoon set Saturday at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Union Park, and soaked right through them. Now that’s either complete irrationality or complete dedication to the rock, and this day needed a lot of both to survive it.

Day Two was even hotter than Day One at Pitchfork, and the heat gripped the festival like a noose in the afternoon, perhaps explaining why there were only a handful of truly standout sets. 

Titus Andronicus delivered monster anthems at the height of the midafternoon meltdown. Jon Spencer made it seem like 1995 all over again. And, by gosh, was LCD Soundsystem something else. If this is indeed James Murphy’s last go-round with the band, I will never forget the moment “All My Friends” rolled over me like a big wave illuminated by a crescent moon and a disco ball. 

Thanks to my dedicated colleagues Bob Gendron (BG) and Andy Downing (AD) who contributed to the hour-by-hour account of the day’s events below, along with yours truly, Greg Kot (GK).

1:03 p.m.
"I hear frequencies in the back of my head," proclaims Netherfriends leader Shawn Rosenblatt, whose band's reverb is up so high it seems that his vocals are completely separate from the Chicago group's ramshackle pop. The echoes provide an interesting sonic illusion, a good thing, since Rosenblatt doesn't have anything of importance say. Percussive songs randomly stop and start, and wordless vocal harmonies spring up like a Jack in the Box. At times, the psychedelic choruses resemble the singing of Whoville residents from Dr. Seuss' "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas." Netherfriends score big on the cute factor but lack memorable material. The trio's set doubles as band practice in a basement where anything goes. (BG)

1:10 p.m.
Philadelphia quintet Free Energy has a vintage look — think Stillwater in “Almost Famous” — and an equally vintage, if not-all-that-memorable, sound. It's clear the band members have absorbed plenty of T-Rex and Thin Lizzy, and their youthful enthusiasm fuels mindless dance-rock nuggets like “Bang Pop” and the shimmying “Free Energy.” On the latter, drummer Nick Shuminsky pounds his cowbell so hard that I half-expect Will Ferrell to dance out from the wings in his "Saturday Night Live" “more cowbell” getup. What singer Paul Spranger lacks in natural charisma (his stiff delivery on the strutting “All I Know” keeps the song grounded), he makes up for in genuine excitement. At times it sounds like the ever-grinning Spranger's stage banter has been penned by some combination of Jeff Spicoli and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: “Sweet!”; “That's so cool!”; “This totally rules!” (AD)
 

>>> Saturday 7:30 p.m. Update
 

  

>>> Saturday 6 p.m. Update

 

 
>>> Saturday 4:30 p.m. Update

Video produced by Kevin Pang

View pictures from Pitchfork 2010.

Jack Black, circa “School of Rock,” would’ve appreciated this face-melter. The Pitchfork Music Festival got underway Friday in Union Park with enough heat and humidity to prompt promoters to cut the price of bottled water in half to $1 for the rest of the weekend. Pitchfork, we salute you. And festivalgoers (all 54,000 of you by the end of the three-day festival), make sure to hydrate and apply sunscreen liberally.

As for the music, my overall impression of Day One was that we were off to a slow start, with a few exceptions.

The big winners: Sharon Van Etten, Broken Social Scene’s Chicago-centric set, and aerobics instructor/Euro-pop anti-diva Robyn.

The big outrage: Headliners Modest Mouse didn’t perform their biggest hit, “Float On.” I’m guessing their relationship to that 2003 breakthrough song is similar to what Warren Zevon’s was to “Werewolves of London” or Radiohead’s to “Creep” — it’s a once-popular song the artist who wrote it no longer loves. So are they obligated to play it? Me, I want to see a band play songs it is still emotionally invested in, no matter what the setting. If Modest Mouse is going to go through the motions performing “Float On” (much the way Van Morrison does when he phones in “Brown Eyed Girl”), I’ll pass. What’s your take? Let me know in the comments below.

I’m betting that Saturday is going to be just fine with much-anticipated sets by Gary, Ind., MC Freddie Gibbs, the Smith Westerns, and especially LCD Soundsystem. And Sunday should save the best for last with a murderer’s row of St. Vincent, Pavement, Big Boi, etc.

But let’s get down to the nitty-gritty of Friday. Below you’ll find an hour-by-hour account, with entries from yours truly, Greg Kot (GK), and my ever-enthusiastic colleagues Andy Downing (AD) and Kevin Pang (KP):

3:30 p.m.
Sharon Van Etten could be forgiven for just wanting to run and hide as she takes the stage shielded from the Sun only by a veil of bangs. She is alone except for her electric guitar and she looks tiny amid the vast setting. She glances at the big screen flanking the stage and says, “There’s a bigger version of me over there,” as if she’d like to trade places with her video image. But, wow, what songs. Her butterfly voice floats over — take your pick — hypnotic/repetitive/trancy guitar strumming. She’s not attempting more than a few chords per song. But the effect is mesmerizing. She writes about broken relationships – an old, perhaps hackneyed subject — with switchblade insight. “Don’t you think I know you’re only trying to save yourself/You’re just like everyone else.” In the space of those two lines she moves from empathy to disappointment. Great stuff. The voice is direct, unvarnished, the sound of truth. “First day, first act, oh, my God … I feel like I have something to prove,” she says with disarming frankness. Mission accomplished. (GK)

4:10 p.m.
From a spot near the soundboard, the Tallest Man on Earth appears to stand only about 5-foot-8. Kristian Mattson, the Swedish singer-songwriter who performs under the moniker, openly struggles with both the heat and a bad case of jet lag: “I haven't slept in two days,” he announces from the stage. Not surprisingly, his voice — clear, if somewhat nasal on record — seems to sport three-days growth. There's definitely more than a touch of Dylan in acoustic numbers like “Wild Hunt” and a particularly strong “King of Spain,” which finds the troubadour strumming his acoustic as though he wants to reduce the instrument to kindling. With the sun shining and clear blue skies overhead, it's fitting that so many tunes touch on the natural world; Mattson fills his songs with references to floating bluebirds, sunning lizards and flower-dotted meadows. Heck, even relationships sound more like big game hunts when filtered through Mattson's worldview. “If I don't get you in the morning,” he sings over dancing guitar on “Thousand Ways,” “By the evening I sure will.” (AD)

UPDATED: Friday 6:50 p.m.

Besides sunscreen, the one requirement for the approximately 18,000 fans who attend the Pitchfork Music Festival each day this weekend in Union Park will be a discerning taste in music.

The heat was the story as Pitchfork opened Friday and within three hours of the festival opening, promoters cut the price of water in half to $1 to mitigate the effects.

"We're trying to be pro-active about it," said festival staffer Anders Smith-Lindall, noting that a few fans had already been pulled from the audience with heat exhaustion. Pitchfork had three nurses, three paramedics and two ambulances on site to deal with medical issues.

With few exceptions, most of the 45 bands and artists performing on three stages at the festival were hardly mainstream entertainers. But most had a devoted following, cultivated by the Chicago-based e-zine pitchfork.com. Here was the one place in Chicago, if not the entire Midwest, this weekend where one was most likely to run into someone who knows a Tallest Man on Earth song by heart. In blurring the line between critic and promoter, Pitchfork organizers are now in their fifth year of staging what has become one of the world's key festivals. As in past years, this year's gathering of the independent-music tribes has already sold out, with 54,000 fans expected to attend from 45 states and 11 countries.
 
Sharon Van Etten (above) kicked off the weekend Friday under an unforgiving sun in an unforgiving midafternoon slot with little more than an electric guitar. But her hypnotic strumming and lacerating lyrics about trainwreck relationships hit the mark. Though modest in presentation, her set exemplified what this festival does best: give just-below-the-radar artists their first high-profile platform. If Van Etten becomes the indie-folk star some critics predict she will become, Pitchfork will be her coming-out party.

Fans react after a set by Mastodon at  Pitchfork in 2007. (Tribune photo by Nuccio DiNuzzo)

What: Pitchfork Music Festival

Where: Union Park, 1501 W. Randolph St.
When: 3:30 p.m. Friday, 1 p.m. Saturday and Sunday
What: 45 bands/artists, three stages, hosted by e-zine pitchfork.com
Info: Pitchforkmusicfestival.com
Tickets: Ticketweb.com ($40/day; sold out).

A = Aluminum Stage; B = Balance Stage; C = Connector Stage

XXXX = Must-see sets

Friday:

8:30 p.m., Modest Mouse (A): After three years, guitar great Johnny Marr is out of the band -- we could’ve predicted that, right? The follow-up to the 2007 album, “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank,” is overdue, so maybe we’ll hear some new Isaac Brock tunes.

8 p.m., Eugene Mirman (B): He’s a star in the comedy world with albums, late-night talk-show gigs and a book to his credit, plus recurring roles on “Adult Swim” and “Flight of the Conchords.”

XXXX 7:20 p.m., Broken Social Scene (C): Remember when “Canadian rock” was a punch line?  This collective helped put Toronto on the indie-rock map a decade ago, and now they’re back with more sing-alongs on “Forgiveness Rock Record.”

7:15 p.m., Michael Showalter (B): A member of the New York University faculty, he also was a sketch-comedy star on MTV for three years.

6:30 p.m., Wyatt Cenac (B): His comedy-writing credits include “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “King of the Hill.”

XXXX 6:25 p.m., Robyn (A): Swedish pop singer with melodies as sweet as ABBA’s but with even more indie cred.

5:45 p.m., Hannibal Burress (B): “Saturday Night Live” writer is originally from Chicago.

XXXX 5:30 p.m., Liars (C): Art-rock trio has five albums, including the recent “Sisterworld,” that connect spiritually with pre-punk rabble-rousers Suicide.

XXXX 4:35 p.m., El-P (A): A founding member of the pioneering hip-hop group Company Flow, Jamie Meline has gone on to become a leading-edge producer and MC with his (recently shuttered) Definitive Jux label.

4 p.m., Tallest Man on Earth (C): Otherwise known as Swedish folkie Kristian Matsson.

3:30 p.m., Sharon Van Etten (B): The Brooklyn-via-Tennessee singer-songwriter  last year released her debut, “Because I Was in Love.”

Neon Indian at 2010 SXSW in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo)

With the addition of OutKast’s Big Boi, Wolf Parade, Surfer Blood, Neon Indian and several more acts Friday, the Pitchfork Music Festival rounded out the July 16-18 lineup that will play in Union Park.

Here’s how it looks:

July 16: Modest Mouse, Broken Social Scene, Robyn, Liars, El-P, the Tallest Man on Earth, Sharon Van Etten.

July 17: LCD Soundsystem, Panda Bear, Wolf Parade, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Raekwon, Titus Andronicus, WHY?, Delorean, Real Estate, Bear In Heaven, Free Energy, the Smith Westerns, Dam-Funk, Kurt Vile, Freddie Gibbs, jj, Netherfriends,

July 18: Pavement, Big Boi, Major Lazer, St. Vincent, Lightning Bolt, Beach House, Girls, Sleigh Bells, Neon Indian, Cass McCombs, Here We Go Magic, Surfer Blood, Local Natives, Washed Out, Best Coast, Cave, Alla.

Three-day passes for the festival have sold out, but single-day tickets ($40) are still available at www.pitchforkmusicfestival.com.

greg@gregkot.com

Related: 2010 Lollapalooza lineup announced

The Pitchfork Music Festival added a reunited Broken Social Scene, El-P, Panda Bear, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Girls to its July 16-18 lineup on Friday.

Tickets ($40) are on sale at www.pitchforkmusicfestival.com. Three-day passes have sold out. More additions to the lineup will be announced later.

Here’s the 2010 Pitchfork Festival Lineup so far: