Point of Know Return
A weary new-ish dad returns to his Substack to lament the demise of Pitchfork Music Festival.
Earlier this year, my then-pregnant wife and I stumbled upon a theory that involves picking a single song and playing it for your unborn child daily. By blasting a tune for your in-utero baby every 24 hours or so, you can supposedly establish it as a “comfort song” that they’ll respond positively to once they decide to pull the rip (umbilical?) cord and exit the womb.
Deciding to put this bit of gestational pseudo-science to the test, my wife and I didn’t agonize too much over picking a song. We quickly determined that it probably shouldn’t be anything too contemporary (they call ‘em classics for a reason) and that it had to be a track that we’d be able to listen to repeatedly without it becoming so grating that we would rue the day it was put on tape. Some of my earliest musical memories are of Beatles songs that my parents played for me, but there are almost too many of those to choose from (and I played many of them to death during my middle school Beatles phase), so we eventually settled on a mutual favorite song by George Harrison: “My Sweet Lord.”
A little over five months ago, we finally welcomed our son into the world (no doubt coaxed forth by the repeated strains of “really wanna see you / really wanna be with you”) and began occasionally playing Harrison’s hit single to see how he reacted to it. At first, I was convinced that my son didn’t actually recognize the melody that Harrison “unconsciously” cribbed from The Chiffons (I don’t think he absorbed the names of the Hindu deities scattered throughout the lyrics either). He reacted to “My Sweet Lord” in about the same way he does to any other music we play for him — with some cute head bobs, a few infant gurgles, and the occasional heavy eyelids after a late-night feeding.
But lately, I’m more convinced that the whole “comfort song” theory could be the rare fragment of truth in a churning sea of bunk baby science. These days, putting on “My Sweet Lord” usually makes my son stop babbling and elicits some head-turning motions, as if he’s looking for something familiar (though he might just want to stare at the glowing phone screen that’s emitting the song). And when he’s throwing a fit in his car seat, playing this particular George Harrison track helps him start to calm down — often before the chorus hits. I really want to believe (my sweet lord).
Regardless of whether or not my son continues to respond to George Harrison’s soothing melodies, hearing “My Sweet Lord” will always have an added bit of significance for my wife and I, so perhaps the real benefit of all those guitar solos and proclamations of “Hare Krishna” is the memories we made along the way. And someday, this song will come on the stereo and we’ll be able to say to our son, “You probably don’t remember this, but you’ve heard this song at least five hundred times.”
. . .
I’m still feeling out what Attenuator will look like as I enter this new phase of life with fewer hours for typing away in front of my laptop (hanging with baby > blogging). Thanks for taking a moment to read and many further thanks to anyone who has already punched that big orange subscribe button below — there are a few more posts on the way this year, even if they’re a bit more sporadic than usual.
Stick a Fork in it
Just a few months ago, I felt optimistic about the future of Pitchfork Music Festival in spite of an out-of-place headlining act. Certain that it would be around long enough for me to someday bring my son to hear some bands in Union Park, I went so far as to opine:
“I’m pretty sure that Condé Nast has a grasp of the flagship event it has inherited.”
By now, you’ve probably heard that Pitchfork Fest won’t be returning to Chicago in 2025, ending its 19-year run as an annual, locally-produced mainstay of the city’s slate of summer festivals. The statement blames the event’s retreat from Chicago on a “music festival landscape [that] continues to evolve rapidly,” but also goes out of its way to state that “Pitchfork will continue to produce events” — just not ones that take place in Chicago.
I managed to make my way to the unbeknownst-to-me final edition of Pitchfork Fest for about three hours in July, catching early-afternoon sets from Black Duck and ML Buch before hightailing it back home to relieve my wife from solo baby duty. I made note of the looming VIP towers (blocking sight lines in the main field so that two or three people could watch sets from above) and a big pile of old issues of Pitchfork Review being given away to folks in the Pitchfork Plus lounge, but didn’t equate the stratified amenities cash grab and a fire sale of defunct print publications with the event’s impending demise.
While Condé may have grasped the significance of Pitchfork Fest, it’s now clear that the cost of setting up a three-day outdoor fest and paying a Chicago-based production team to run it was simply too great — especially when compared to the Pitchfork-branded festivals in Europe and Mexico, which are essentially multi-venue concert series (I expect that they’ll continue in the Chicago fest’s stead). There’s also the escalating booking fees and competition for the kind of headlining (or even sub-headlining) acts that can help draw a sold-out crowd to Union Park. When bands like Pavement, Dr. Dog, and Waxahatchee show up on the Riot Fest lineup, there’s a pretty good chance that Pitchfork was outbid. You can argue that the Chicago fest was in essence a costly brand marketing activation that solidified Pitchfork’s curatorial bonafides IRL, but to Condé it was ultimately an expendable line on a balance sheet.
If you’re looking to reminisce, I highly recommend reading former Pitchfork staffer Jeremy Gordon’s Substack post, which sums up the event’s significance to internet-addled music lovers alongside a fun list of Union Park memories. I also enjoyed this farewell ode by writer Ethan Ellis, which catalogs the music that he was introduced to via performances at the festival and acknowledges the void its absence leaves in the Midwest.
After 15 years of showing up to catch early-afternoon Green Stage sets, it will be strange not to descend the stairs of the Ashland Green Line station and begin searching for shade in Union Park next summer. I’m confident that something else will eventually fill Pitchfork’s late-July slot (maybe an earlier edition of the Salt Shed’s recent Warm Love Cool Dreams festival or the return of Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusement), but I’m also not sure that it’s financially viable (or responsible) to attempt to replicate the fest. More than anything, it’s depressing that a moderately-sized three-day music festival set in a major city boasting an eclectic, intentionally curated lineup of artists suddenly feels as married to a bygone era as the touring version of Lollapalooza or the muddy fields of Woodstock.
It’s nice to be back on the ‘stack, thanks for taking a few minutes to read. If you know a new-ish parent who is bummed that they’ll never be able to take their kid to Pitchfork Festival, please share this with them!