Recap: The Hideout Block Party
The beloved West Side bar hosts its 12th annual mini-fest
Monotonix singer Ami Shalev during a rare down moment in his band's set.
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Just in case it isn’t obvious yet—and with temperatures hovering in the upper 70s, low 80s all week, maybe it isn’t—summer is officially over. All the end-of-summer milemarkers have officially passed: the Air & Water Show, Jazz Fest, and now the Hideout Block Party. The annual festival—shortened to a svelte two days this year—closed out the season in typically jocular fashion. Decider offers this report from the ground.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
4:45pm: Sure, the day began at the backbreaking time of 11:30 a.m. with the Plastic Crimewave Vision Celestial Guitarkestra, but by this point in the year, my festival fatigue is acute. Sure, I’d like to see KatJon Band (1:15) and Giant Sand (1:45), but not enough to get here early. Instead, I arrive at 4:30 (ish) to check out legendary avant-garde outfit The Plastic People Of The Universe, more out of historical obligation than anything else. The Czech group originated in Prague’s underground-rock scene in the late ’60s, only to be jailed by the Communist regime in the mid-’70s for “disturbing the peace.” (Their story was immortalized in Tom Stoppard’s 2006 play Rock ’N’ Roll.) So yeah, any performance by the Plastic People is auspicious, obviously—if only I liked the music... The sound is undeniably European, with violin, sax, keyboards, upright bass, and drums playing a mélange of rock and funk with hints of traditional folk. It’s interesting and all, but I don’t think I need to see them again.
5pm: The three members of Monotonix set their gear up on the bleached asphalt parking lot that serves as the Block Party’s festival grounds. Even if they weren’t putting their gear on the ground instead of the stage, these guys would stick out: The three lanky Israelis all have long, curly hair and sort of look like gypsies. “These men are unapologetically hairy,” says my wife. Singer Ami Shalev wears the shortest red warm-up shorts you’ve seen since the beginning of the jogging craze in the late ’70s. I text fellow Decider staffer Genevieve Koski: “We’re gonna see dude in the red shorts’ balls I think.”
5:03pm: The temperature, balmy and in the upper 70s, is apparently too much for our Czech friends in Plastic People, who are wrapping up their set. “Could someone switch the light off?” asks bassist Eva Turnova as she stares into the sun. “Really… it’s unbearable.”
5:15pm: Hideout co-owner Tim Tuten, who’s known for his epic, rambling introductions for bands, brings a fire extinguisher over by Monotonix. Depending on your perspective, that’s an awesome or bad sign. (Awesome, says I.)
5:20pm: Shalev wraps toilet paper around the tops of drummer Ran Shimoni’s cymbals, as Shimoni wraps it around his sticks. Huh? Shalev returns moments later with a bottle of lighter fluid and douses it all. Oh, okay. Everything is lit, and Monotonix begin the process of stealing the festival from every other performer.
5:24pm: Monotonix’s music dwells in the same guitar-drums-vocals territory as outfits like Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but far, far grittier and played with an anarchistic abandon that makes the YYYs look like The Osmonds. Any mystery about why their gear is beat to shit becomes obvious immediately, as the trio climbs, bashes, raises, moves, and generally bounces off of it all. After each song, the drum kit moves, sometimes forward, and later, held in the air while Shimoni plays the snare while sitting atop the kick drum, which is being held by four guys. Shalev sings from atop the crowd, atop Shimoni, atop guitarist Yonatan Gat, and generally runs around. This is like a Gallagher show from the late ’70s: The first few rows will get wet. Instead of watermelon, we’re covered with the sweat from three Israelis. My hands, which held Shalev aloft many times during the set, stink for the rest of the night.
5:45pm: The set is over, but the crowd demands more. Shalev, flattered, tells the crowd, in his charmingly broken English, they’ll be back soon. A guy behind me shouts “MONO-FUCKING-TONIX!”
A small indication of what Monotonix is like live.
5:55pm: Anti-comedian Neil Hamburger is hosting something called a “Drunken Spelling Bee” inside the Hideout. Details are sketchy, but we know that the words are music-related, and there’s drinking involved. The line to get into the Hideout is about 40 people deep, so we quickly give up. The Hideout’s music room isn’t a big space, and who knows how many are in there already?
6:15pm: On the bigger of the two stages at the Block Party, Black Mountain begins playing its psychedelic-leaning indie rock. I overhear it, but am more concerned about finding something to eat.
7:39pm: From a distance, Vieux Farka Toure sounds like the generic world music you’d hear at Starbucks or Whole Foods. I sit at the back of the parking lot, eating a mediocre pulled-pork sandwich, and find the sound pleasant enough. Moving closer to jockey for a spot for Neko Case, Toure improves. “This is a lot less annoying up close,” Genevieve says. She’s right—at least for a while. Then it gets kind of boring again, even with the unexpected cover of U2’s “Bullet The Blue Sky.”
8:15pm: A drunk guy behind me discusses Toure: “People from the desert, they can talk about nutsacks. That’s the way it is!” Um, okay.
8:23pm: Neko Case opens with “The Tigers Have Spoken,” from her 2005 live album of the same name. As often happens with the first song of a set, the mix is totally off: Case’s voice is buried, and the tom drum is inexplicably loud. If there’s any rule in the sound-man world, it should be this: Neko Case’s voice should never, ever be buried in the mix. Apparently it’s a problem onstage too, as Case keeps motioning to the stage soundman to make her vocals louder. This will be a problem all night.
8:25pm: “I’m gonna pull up my pants, and we’re gonna play a brand-new song,” Case announces. “I’m totally jinxing myself, because it’s not done yet.” After this song, she’ll play the title track from her upcoming Middle Cyclone, due out next spring. “Oh it’s scary—it’s very scary,” says Case, clearly anxious about debuting new material, especially when she can’t hear herself. Later she calls an audible before a song, deciding to play “I Wish I Was The Moon” (from 2002’s Blacklisted) instead of something else. The mix is still off; this time, it’s the pedal steel that’s winning the volume war. When Jon Rauhouse is manning it, that’s not a bad thing, but again, nothing should be louder than Case, ever.
8:56pm: Backing up Case, as always, is Kelly Hogan, a fixture in the Chicago alt-country scene until a recent move to Wisconsin. “Would it insult y’all if I said you looked beautiful, like a field of soybeans full of fireflies?” The fireflies are people’s cell phones, apparently. “Sorry, I moved to Wisconsin,” she adds by way of explanation.
9:10pm: Another new song from Middle Cyclone, this time a cover of Harry Nilsson’s “Alimony.”
9:30pm: Case closes her encore and the night with “That Teenage Feeling,” one of the many tracks from 2006’s fantastic Fox Confessor Brings The Flood she played tonight. Middle Cyclone won’t arrive soon enough.
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21
4:35pm: Yup, it’s late in the afternoon to arrive, especially when it means missing sets by Tim Fite and The Uglysuit. But I have it from the good people at Touch & Go Records (home of The Uglysuit) that they’ll be back next month. Tim Fite? Did I mention the festival fatigue already?
4:41pm: “We are Mucca Pazza, a marching band,” declares one of the guys from the “astounding circus punk marching band.” “We’re nerds, N-E-R-D-S. We recognize some of you from the lunch table all those years ago.” The band continues its typically joyous, raucous set of marching-band music. At long last, band nerds from back in the day can be cool.
4:54pm: Frontman Jim McHugh of Dark Meat sees kindred spirits in Mucca Pazza. After all, his band also has trombone, tuba, flute/piccolo, clarinet, and trumpet. “I’d like to invite any and all members of Mucca Pazza to play with us at any time. All the songs are in A and E, so it doesn’t matter anyway.” Dark Meat already has a dozen people onstage—where would anyone else fit?
5:03pm: The tuba players whips out a leaf blower full of confetti. The mood is light, though Dark Meat’s loose, kitchen-sink mix of Southern rock and psychehdelia wears out its welcome over time.
5:10pm: On the neighboring smaller stage, Robbie Fulks sets up for what will be the day’s highlight: An entire set devoted to the 25th anniversary of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. He wears a long-sleeve green shirt that says in giant white letters “GREEN SHIRTS ARE FOR PIMPS.”
5:15pm: McHugh prefaces the next song by announcing, “This is a song about being in the motherfucking desert hallucinating in a field with a bunch of women without skin or eyes.” This all makes sense if you’ve looked at the track list for the band’s 2006 album, Universal Indians, which includes songs like “Assholes For Eyes,” “Well Fuck You Then,” “Angel Of Meth,” and “There Is A Retard On Acid Holding A Hammer To Your Brain.”
5:53pm: Robbie Fulks begins his Thriller extravaganza quietly: He sits at a microphone and plays a quiet little song called “Goin’ Back To Indiana.” The setting, apparently, is a train. His drummer appears on stage, acting like a passenger who attempts to strike up a conversation with Fulks. He describes Gary, Ind. (Michael Jackson’s hometown) as “kinda smoggy, like the inside of Nat King Cole’s lung.”
5:57pm: Ever the showman, Fulks rips off his suit to reveal some weird costume of a long-sleeve white shirt with footprints sewn on it. His band appears from behind some stage decorations, and they rip into a Jackson Five-esque number. A few minutes later, the band shifts into a cover of “Rockin’ Robin,” during which Fulks serves four little boys liquid from a bottle with a picture of Jesus on it. Jesus Juice!
6:10pm: It’s hard really to describe the spectacle Fulks has created. Here’s a quick run-down: Nora O’Connor singing “Ben” to a purple rat puppet; Fulks’ son Preston singing a sweetly off-key rendition of “She’s Out Of My Life” solo; Fulks doing a spoken-word version of the verse to “Billie Jean”; a group of little boys crossing the stage holding masks of Liza Minnelli, Elizabeth Taylor, and Diana Ross; O’Connor dangling a baby wearing headphones over the stage; a woman with a cardboard camera on her head stalking Fulks; a cardboard prop car with Princess Diana in it wrecking, then Diana’s mask ascending into heaven with a long white gown attached…and this is before a couple dozen volunteer zombies come out to dance to “Thriller.”
6:50pm: The zombies come out as Fulks and company—now joined by Rhymefest—perform an ambitious rendition of “Thriller.” The segueway from Fulks and company to ’fest is pretty seamless and almost perfectly executed. Fulks is a man who loves spectacle, and he’s once again pulled it off. Rhymefest won’t be so lucky.
6:53pm: Let’s be honest: The Hideout Block Party is not Rhymefest’s crowd. Sure, it’s overwhelmingly white, but that’s not really the issue. It skews older, age-wise (low- to mid-30s is probably the average), and toward people who like roots-rock and indie rock. That’s not to say the crowd isn’t receptive to ’fest, but it’s probably fair to say most don’t own a copy of his great 2006 album, Blue Collar. As he introduces himself and prefaces the Michael Jackson-inspired tracks he did for his digital album, Man In The Mirror, ’fest looks a little out of sorts. It’s just him as his DJ on stage, but he’s working it.
7:10pm: Rhymefest flubs the lines to two consecutive songs, stopping the second to do his a cappella rap about death. As much of a fan as I am, and as receptive as the crowd seemed to be, ’fest is rusty. It only gets worse when he tries to perform “Brand New,” the first single from Blue Collar. It’s a song he performed with Kanye West, so Rhymefest’s DJ plays the normal track, with both Kanye and ’fest’s voices, and Rhymefest raps over his voice. He blows another line from it, then walks over to confer with his DJ. Meanwhile, the song plays on, like someone left their iPod on, and the crowd looks confused. Rhymefest disappears from the stage. His DJ tries to pump up the crowd by asking it to chant “Brand new!”, but he’s not really selling it, and no one’s really buying it. Then he abruptly announces that’s it, and turns everything off. Now everyone’s really confused.
7:16pm: Near the front of the stage, there’s a verbal altercation between a guy in a blue Polo shirt and a few fans. They blame him for Rhymefest’s departure, alleging that the guy was yelling insults at ’fest throughout his heartfelt a cappella song. Some security people come over, as do a couple camera men who are taping the whole Block Party. Noticing my note-taking, a couple approaches me to say that the guy wasn’t yelling insults, but encouragement. “He was really feeling what Rhymefest was doing, so he was yelling stuff like ‘Fuck yeah!’” one of them says, which others heard as “fuck you!” The guy is the only one around dressed like a hip-hop fan (to generalize), so maybe he was unfairly blamed. Even if he was heckling Rhymefest, that wouldn’t explain his the Chicago rapper’s subpar performance. And I find it hard to believe that ’fest couldn’t handle one lone heckler. Looks like we’ve got a case to solve, gang! Everyone to the Mystery Machine!
7:34pm: The Hideout Block Party had me at “Neko Case,” but she’s also playing with The New Pornographers tonight! My heart skipped a beat when that was announced, especially because I’ve never seen her with the New Pornos. They’re always a good bet, with or without her, but I’m psyched that I’ll get to hear her do “Mass Romantic,” “Challengers,” and the hey-la’s at the end of “The Bleeding Heart Show” (all of which she does). The group opens in a subdued manner with “My Rights Versus Yours,” and the mix, predictably, is off: The guitars are buried, the drums are loud, and the whole things sounds messy and not cohesive. It basically stays that way the whole night.
7:38pm: “I don’t think there’s ever been a gig we played in Chicago that didn’t end at the Hideout at 4 a.m.,” says frontman Carl Newman between songs. “They serve alcohol there!”
8:40pm: Have you always wondered how Electric Light Orchestra’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” would sound in the hands of The New Pornographers? Wonder no more! And with that, their set ends. Ratatat and a DJ set from Hercules And Love Affair are to come, but nothing’s going to top the end of “The Bleeding Heart Show,” which always gives me goose bumps. See you next year, Hideout Block Party.
