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• Editor's Note

Luckily, I didn’t make it up north to Pitchfork Music Festival last weekend. I heard the bands were terrible, it rained and stormed all weekend and none of the porta potties worked. None of this true, of course, I’m just trying to make myself feel better as this will be the first summer in a while where I haven’t been to a single concert (think of all the money I’m saving, right?).

So I’m dealing with my withdrawal by getting tickets for the Grizzly Bear (who played Pitchfork this year) gig at the Metro in two months, but I don’t know if that will do the trick. It’s not just the performances I missed at the music festival; these gatherings breed their own culture.

With what seemed like half of U of I making it up to Union Park to get rolled on by Wayne Coyne, and the rest poised for Lollapalooza in a couple weeks, music festivals may be the most successful thing to happen to the industry since boy bands. Just over the last decade, hundreds of music festivals have become an annual tradition for the masses, creating a strange culture of lineup announcements, pocket guides and screen prints lining bedroom walls.

And the system seems to work. The bands like to play the festivals, the corporations like to decorate them with ads, food vendors make a killing and the concertgoers are willing to pay for the whole bundle.

Of course, CU’s own Pygmalion Music Festival just recently wrapped up its lineup and is ready to infest the town with music in mid September. With a healthy mix of local and nationally touring acts, what sets Pygmalion apart from the rest around Illinois is that it’s a lot more personable. CU may not have the large parks and stages, but it has small coffee shops and local businesses that are just as eager to support the arts and listen to some good live music. And that’s part of the charm.

Keep an eye out for Pygmalion precoverage and make sure to check out what buzz thought of Pitchfork last weekend on page nine of this week’s issue.