Pygmalion is a just a really weird deal. Once you get past the name, you take a look at its schedule and the list of a bunch of bands (and a football game?) you’ve never heard before playing at a bunch of places you didn’t think had stages. It starts on a Wednesday and offers such shows as a school-affiliated accapella performance at a barbeque joint during breakfast hours. Or small-eyed-Stanton playing to a herd of flatbread grazing blue-collar workers on their lunch breaks just across the street. Or Iron and Wine at Krannert Center.

So what’s the big idea?

In my eyes, Pygmalion seems to work a lot more like a showcase than a festival. When I think of festivals, I think of the outdoors, sweaty bodies, sustainability groups, lots of hair and tie-dye shirts. Pygmalion, though, is sitting in a concert hall, a restaurant, a record store or a bar between classes and well into the night listening to short half hour sets of bands you’ve never heard before. It’s the perfect chance to meet new bands and quickly and efficiently write them off or invite them to play at your next house party.

Maybe more importantly, and this may only be in my best interest as a kid working for a community magazine and playing in a local rock group, but Pygmalion also serves as a showcase of the CU scene itself.

If you’re like buzz and wrestle with the PR of Pygmalion annually for passes or whatnot, you’ve hopefully caught on to the unabashed pride of CU the event is built on. Pygmalion is just one of the many attempts to put the CU music scene back on the map like those “glory days” that everyone likes to ruminate over.

And you’ve heard about all this before, but it does work. With the help of Pygmalion and the many other festivals like it around town, CU has become part of the circuit for a big handful of regular out-of-towners. Groups like Cameron McGill, Gentleman Auction House and recently Pet Lions, because of events like this, can be welcomed on stage in CU as often as they are back home. And whether it means anything to you doesn’t matter but it does make the streets a little louder and the town a little more interesting to cover here at buzz magazine.