My Pittsburgh Visit

I spent the last few days in Pittsburgh. Specifically to attend the New American Union Festival. This was sponsored by American Eagle and was curated (is that the right word?) by Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Not sure how he hooked up with them or vice versa, but there you go.

The thing that always strikes me about Pittsburgh is when they undertake construction projects, it's not the local truck filling potholes with hot patch. No, they tend to rip up roads that alter lives. As you can imagine, I used Google Maps, recalling the devil known as Mapquest. Unfortunately, they don't update construction-laden routes, as I soon found out.

Seemingly hitting every interstate in the region (480-271-80-76-79-579-279-My Ass 79-376), I found myself in Downtown Pittsburgh. My hotel was in Oakland (by some colleges and UPMC medical), on Boulevard of the Allies. Which is great, till you find out your road has been closed (demolished, actually), which means follow the detour signs. Well, these signs keep taking me further away, but I'm not noticing any exits to dive off. Hence, I find myself eventually going through the Squirrel Hill Tunnels. Which worked out, because you can yell "Fuck!" out the windows in a tunnel and it sounds excellent. Upon exiting the tunnels, the detour signs finally appear again, which basically takes me back through the tunnels, only the other direction this time. In a much happier mood, I tested how far XM lasts in a tunnel like that. I got about 30% coverage. Eventually, I made it back to Oakland and arrived at my hotel.

The Quality Inn University Center is one of those reliable hotels that dot the landscape. Nothing exquisite, but it had a bed, running water and air conditioning. Of course, my room was right next to the elevator, silly. But, it also had a Panera attached, for that Asiago Roast Beef craving.

But, I learned my lesson with these roads on Saturday, when I visited IKEA. I decided then that I would take old friend Route 60 North back home to I-76. Much easier and less crowded. You do get to go through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, however. XM gets in that one about 75%, so in case of attack, head to Squirrel Hill.

Andy Warhol Museum

On Friday, I was at the Andy Warhol Museum for several hours. This had been on my list for a while, so I finally got there. It cost $15 to attend and their parking lot is $6. On Saturday, attendance cost only 80 cents, because it was Warhol's birthday week. They had cupcakes, too, on that day. But I'm not that cheap and already had it pencilled in for Friday.

And it was well worth it. They had two exhibits. One was by Piet Mondrian. OK, I'm not enough of an art freak to know why this guy is so special. I see an oil of a house. Then a couple of years later, eh, he does another house.

Then I see this:
















Doesn't that look like something we all could do. Oh yes, we may go over a line here or there, but I'm obviously missing something. They tell me it's special, but did he do this when no one else was painting rectangles? I'm not mocking, I'm just curious.

The other exhibitor was Glenn Kaino. Now, this I liked. 21st Century stuff using items like wave machines, sand, mashups of plastic model kits, a bigass wooden boat, and other really cool sculptures. I think they had maybe 10 or 12 of these things. Some were fairly large, and all of them interesting.

The special Warhol exhibition was Wild Raspberries. Warhol did the illustrations for a cookbook that was a mockup of French cooking, that was becoming all the rage back in the late fifties. They had a lot of original art from the book, that included a lot of items in the editorial phase, including page layouts, choice of fonts, sketches, etc. And they had lots of them, too. As I learned throughout my visit, the Museum does a great job of finding things.

Other Warhol exhibits were his Paintings for Children, one of his Time Capsules, and Early Pop. The kids items are self-explanatory. The Time Capsule project is fairly interesting. Warhol had access to tons of pop items as they crossed his desk. I guess people always sent him things for opinions and knew he hoarded stuff. So, he used to keep these boxes by his desk and upon his death, they learned he had 600 of these. The museum is currently opening them and documenting their contents. They will become available for public viewing in 2014, but if you look through the doors of the collection on the second floor, you see people painstakingly archiving their contents. Using the CSI-glove treatment, it appears.

The Early Pop section had the usual celebrity photos, but this was mid-to-late '80s era. My Dad would be proud, as he had several people eating in the photos. I saw Mel Gibson, Mick Jagger, Sting, and even an early Anthony Kiedis from 1985. That was a long time ago and I wondered how their paths crossed at the time.

There was also an exhibit called Silver Clouds. This was an air-conditioned room that had big foil pillows that you could walk amongst and do whatever you like. Stand amidst them, hit 'em up in the air, bash your neighbor, etc. That was fun.

There are also several back issues of Warhol's Interview magazine that you can leaf through. What would the Warhol be, if I didn't see some video? Each day there are rotating exhibits, with longer films shown on the weekends, I believe. They have hours on Friday nights with reduced admission and drinks, too. I was lucky enough to see two episodes (the pilot and Episode 1) of "Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes", a show I had erased from my memory. Strangely, I think it was produced for MTV. To be frank, the production values kinda sucked. These were probably done in the months before he died, so I think there are only a handful of episodes.

They had a Brady Bunch beginning with Andy and three guests looking around at the other squares. Lots of fashion world people, visits to a drag club, guests like Sally Kirkland, Debbie Harry, Jerry Hall, John Oates(?), Ric Ocasek. The Ocasek segment absolutely cracked me up. He visits Andy at a new studio, where Warhol seems to be in the early stages of renovation. Maybe, it was perpetually the case, but Ocasek is ever-so-polite throughout. He listens respectfully and compliments Warhol on his plans and how neat it looks. It looked to me like they had just got the keys and were still demolishing what had been there.

IKEA

On Saturday, I went to IKEA. I have now deemed IKEA the "Marc's of Pennsylvania". Well, you can't go in there for just one item. I didn't spend that much money, but certainly had a bagful of items to bring back. I needed some new glassware and a pitcher. Then I ended up with a bunch of small items. So, I helped stimulate the economy.

New American Union Festival

The Venue: This event was held at the SouthSide Works. Imagine, if you will, holding a rock concert in the parking lot of Trader Joe's at Crocker Park. Yep, that was the setup. They fenced in an unused parking lot in the corner of this development.

Apparently, the locals had been bombarded with stories about how terrible the traffic was going to be. No one could figure out if the stated goal of attendance of 10,000 each day would be met. Originally, you had to get two-day tickets. The price was not bad. $50 for adults for both days, students only had to fork over $25. I think that had changed to tickets for either day somewhere along the way. It was almost as if the dates were arranged, bands were booked, and then someone figured out they had no details. Of course, there were no logistical horror stories to be had. Acts went on at the appropriate times, there was plenty of parking and no traffic nightmares.

Allegedly, they were going to present films, have artists showing their wares, etc. I saw no evidence of this. Outside, they had a series of maybe five or six booths, selling Mexican food, gyros, pizza, smoothies, and hot dogs. I got a gyro on the way out on Saturday that was damn good. I think they limited the amount of these stands, so the restaurants in the area could do some business. For instance, Claddagh had a bunch of people both days.

My take on this is that SouthSide Works was probably built with a lot of promises. It's like a Crocker Park or Legacy Village. But, American Eagle has its headquarters there. However, I sense that it may not be meeting the original expectations, so American Eagle thought this might be a good promotion for the place. I mean cheap tickets for the young and there are condos available in the area.

Concessions: OK, everyone got a free water bottle and they had stations you could fill it up. For free, that's a good thing. That may have been it for the good. Well, you also had free outs, so if you wanted to take a break and come back, you could. Back to the provisions. For $7, you had your choice of Genuine Draft or Miller Lite. $9 got you a frozen margarita, I had one Saturday. $12 got you a yard of frozen margarita, then you would have to carry the glass. That was it for booze. Oh, bottled water was $3.50.

Food consisted of pretzels, nachos, Southwestern wraps (I didn't ask), veggie burgers (no regular burgers), and hot dogs. I dunno, I thought the concessions overall sucked.

Thank God, the weather was cool. That asphalt would have been a killer if it was 90 degrees.

The Crowd: First off, the Steelers were playing, so people actually wore football jerseys to the concert. That's a no-no to me. Anyhow, there were Ben jerseys and Franco Harris, Parker, Timmons, Miller, and Ward. Some idiot decided to wear a Randall Cunningham jersey.

And should parents go with their kids to concerts? I mean teenagers. Is that normal now. Let the kids have fun on their own. Wait for them at the Cheesecake Factory.

I'm not sure either night hit any mythical projected attendance numbers. It was decidedly older on Saturday because of Bob Dylan. I'd say maybe 5,000 Friday and 7,000 Saturday, I'm not sure. My annoyance was that Friday, it seemed people were into the music a bit more. Saturday became the social hour, maybe because of the longer schedule. From where I was at, very few people were even into The Raconteurs. After they were done, it was an exodus of many of the younger folks. And then many of the older people were still chatting. Loudly. I hope this isn't a trend. I mean, if you're there, pay attention. If not, give your tickets to someone who may enjoy a show. And the sight of babies at this show was a startler. Yes, infants were there. Hopefully with earplugs.

Kiedis says they'll be back next year. We'll see.

Friday, Day One

Tiny Masters of Today

OK, they are kids (brother and sister), but I'll crack on them anyway. I mean, they ARE opening up a rock festival. They were bad. I'm going to say the worst I've ever seen. As soon as I heard the female voice (she's 12), I thought, oh no, I have to endure this for 30 minutes. I guess her voice is supposed to be campy and I'm still searching for a comparison. The male singer (he's 14) had a Dead Milkmen quality to his vocals, which is fine. I think they were all going to wear Burger King crowns, but it was too windy and they blew off. They actually threw shirts into the crowd, probably as riot prevention. Their finale was House of Pain's "Jump Around". Remember the vocal quality I just described. Now picture your favorite cop show theme. "Ironside", perhaps. Remember the siren? Well, that was the part in "Jump Around" that the girl vocalized over Dead Milkmen guy urging us to "Jump around. Jump around. Jump up. Jump up and get down." while STANDING THERE, NOT MOVING! I quickly went for another beer.

NASA

I'm not sure what I saw with these guys, but I liked it. It made me laugh. Yeah, there's probably people who do this better, but I don't frequent their appearances. OK, this is two guys in orange NASA jumpsuits doing mashups on their Apples. Well, I'm not sure that'll hold for 30 minutes. So, they bring out two female dancers in halters and hot pants. Several minutes later, two other "astronauts" show up with water guns and they do break dancing. Finally, a monster appears. To me, it looked like a guy in a Sasquatch suit with a lizard head. More dancing ensues.

Samples, amongst many others, that I recall:

"Song 2"/Blur
"Push It"/Salt-N-Pepa
"Smells Like Teen Spirit"/Nirvana
"Magic Man"/Heart
"Rapture"/Blondie
"It's Tricky"/Run DMC
"Another Brick in the Wall"/Pink Floyd
"War Pigs"/Black Sabbath
"Baba O'Riley"/The Who
"Riders on the Storm"/The Doors
"Seven Nation Army"/The White Stripes
"Hey, Ladies"/Beastie Boys

The Black Keys

OK, now we are finally at a rock show. Akron's own, The Black Keys, were unbelievable. Nice backdrop logo of a Goodyear-looking tire with "Black Keys Akron, Ohio" on it. Kiedis says afterward, "Black Keys, if you're listening, that was insane!". He also said, "That was like watching Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock!" Oh, well. Anyhow, it's not difficult to see why Jack White has named them one of his favorite bands, because it's the duo, one drummer, one guitarist factor. Sort of a Larry and Darryl approach, without the other brother. They kicked ass for 45 minutes. Lots of bluesy type guitar work, but these dudes were great. No question, they were the highlight of the two days. Adding them to the must-see-again list.

The Roots

If you had asked me before this event, I would have said, "I'm not familiar with their work." I tried. Oh, how I tried. They are from Philadelphia and their sound is hip-hop vocals over some soul, maybe a bit of Earth, Wind and Fire and even big band arrangements.

My beef was the vocal style never seemed to change in the part of the performance I saw, regardless of the music. Some of the younger folks seemed into it, but I just didn't get it. After hearing them, I didn't think they should headline. I gave up on them after 50 minutes to grab some chow.

Saturday, Day Two

The Duke Spirit

Duke sucks, didn't see them.

Black Mountain

Didn't think I'd arrive this early, but I did. Again, they did nothing for me. They played for 30 minutes.

Gnarls Barkley

Probably the surprise of the festival. Although, I think the lead singer may need medical attention one of these days. Cee-Lo seemed to get tired real quick and sat for a bit. He and Danger Mouse had the Century 21 sportcoats on. Backup band had the sweater vest and bowtie thing going on. Even with Cee-Lo nearly dying, they put on a high-energy show. My beef and it's trifling, it's too much of asking us how we're doin, are we a party place, etc. It's just a way for a cheap pop from the crowd that irritates me. They are better than that.

But they were fine, both vocally and musically. "Crazy", "Gone Daddy Gone", "Neighbors" all good. They played 45 minutes and they were good.

Spoon

I like Spoon. I think they continue to get more and more airplay. I think "Don't You Evah" was one of the catchiest tunes of the year (hey, it's on their MySpace page). Loved "The Underdog" single. This band is really good live, as well. Horn section sounds good on the songs they were utilized. They mentioned this was the third time they had been to Pittsburgh in about a year. That reminds me, I think Southside Johnny is coming soon. I thought he lived here for a while. Back to Spoon, they also did a Stones cover of "Rocks Off".

They also did 45 minutes and I liked it very much.

The Raconteurs

I'm bullish on Jack White, but it would have been really good if they could have played longer than 60 minutes. Again, just a blistering set from these guys. Guitar work was out of control awesome. As I said, I'm not sure what the crowd was looking for. It appeared that many were drifting off during the guitar solos. I thought maybe Jack might have stayed around for a duet with "Bobby D" as he called him. Nope, didn't happen.

Bob Dylan

As usual, Dylan stands behind the keyboards and it gets increasingly difficult to hear him. Especially with all of the chatter. Overall, a pretty decent effort, but his Cleveland show last year was much better. Thought the band was much tighter that night. He's still in that Western swing mode and if you think he's gonna crank out your favorite hits, buy the records, it ain't happening.

He did "Summer Days", probably his most recent tune I like the best. "Rainy Day Women" was not done the old way, I tell you. And some more of his New Orleans stuff he has kept in the set a while.

Bobby D's ever-changing setlist:

"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"
"It Ain't Me, Babe"
"The Levee's Gonna Break"
"Spirit On The Water"
"High Water"
"Tangled Up In Blue"
"Honest With Me"
"Beyond The Horizon"
"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)"
"Nettie Moore"
"Summer Days"
"Ballad Of A Thin Man"

Encore:

"Like A Rolling Stone"

Here's how I would rate who I saw:

The Black Keys
The Raconteurs
Spoon
Gnarls Barkley
Bob Dylan
NASA
The Roots
Black Mountain
Tiny Masters of Today

All in all, a good effort for Year One of the Festival. They claim video will be up on Tuesday. All the setlists should be available at that time. My suggestion is if you take a look at anyone, watch The Black Keys.