3:32 pm — 

This booking was a poor choice on Jay Goldberg Events & Entertainment’s part. The New Pornographers are one of the best rock bands going these days, but a jam band/psychedelic/anything the majority of the festival crowd would be interested in they are not. The audience was, while dedicated, a very small one. Where Girl Talk converted a lot of people through his high-energy show, The New Pornographers did what they do: played their songs, played them well, and left. It didn’t lead to many new converts.

Still, the band was on for most of the set. They opened their set with “All the Things That Go to Make Heaven and Earth” from their latest album, Challengers, and from there they just kept going. Between songs, the band continually goofed around, playing snippets of The Violent Femmes’ “Blister in the Sun,” Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused.”

That was the problem though. For about a third of the show, the band was just not playing the show like it needed to be: big. The songs were played well, but they were unfocused. Lead singer/guitarist Carl Newman would continually flub lyrics or parts, and would laugh it off. He didn’t seem like he was concentrating, and was just goofing off. That’s all well and good, but for that reason, something didn’t click for a while.

The band did pick it up though, and versions of Twin Cinema’s “Sing Me Spanish Techno” and “The Bleeding Heart Show” were played to reach across the three-fourths empty field. They played as if it was full, which was exactly the kick in the pants they had to have if the set wasn’t going to peter out.

The New Pornos closed their set with a cover of ELO’s “Don’t Bring Me Down” and left the stage. They came back for one encore, a very fast, very energetic “Letters from an Occupant,” sang by keyboardist Kathryn Calder. They left the small audience wanting more, but they closed the set 10 minutes early, presumably to allow the audience to get over to the Moonshine Stage to watch moe.’s final set of the night. Good show though.

2:36 am — 

Elsinore is a four piece rock band and Champaign mainstay. With their new material in hand, the band is going to be touring the West Coast for the first time this summer. The band played Summer Camp on Saturday afternoon. Prior to their performance, I was able to talk to lead vocalist/guitarist Ryan Groff, drummer Dave Pride, keyboardist Mark Woolwine, and bassist Chris Eitel.

Eric: I think every artist I have interviewed is one that would not consider themselves part of a jam band. If you are not a jam band and have a different sound than the overall feel of the festival, how do you think you will fit in?

Dave: We’re hoping that people that come to these festivals don’t exclusively listen to jam bands. With the way that Bonnaroo is going, along with all these other summer festivals, people are branching out. I mean, I don’t just listen to indie rock.

Ryan: It seems to be going that way too. That was our hope, and then we got here, we looked around, and definitely the majority is still jam bands, with the same guitar riffs and everything, but then the different bands still have people that are into it. The people like good music, and not just jam band music. We will try to be good music for them.

Eric: I know your first album is a bit rootsier though than the material you have been playing recently. Are you going to try to parlay that towards the audience, since that is more of the direction of the festival?

Chris: Absolutely not.

Ryan: I think the fact that we haven’t seen any acoustic guitars makes me feel like we don’t have to worry about that. We weren’t going to do it anyway, but people here like rock and roll, and all the instrumentation is kind of like what we have. They have a keyboard, guitar, drums and bass and they just play different things on it. We are just going to have the same instrumentation and play straight-up pop-rock.

Eric: What was the mindset behind getting away from the first album’s (Nothing for Design) sound to what it is now?

Chris: It kind of just happened. Ryan started playing electric guitar instead of acoustic, and I added distortion to the bass riffs, and Mark added keyboard and a synthesizer with some new sounds.

Ryan: And Dave plays a real drum set now.

Dave: It made less and less sense to keep Latin percussion setup.

Eric: Did it just kind of happen though? Did it get old?

Ryan: It was really gradual. One of us, at any given show, would say “I really don’t want to play that song anymore” and it was always that really Americana, folky song. Then, as soon as a rocker came out songwriting-wise, we were saying “Man, I really feel that,” so we all were hopping on board. Then all my songs come out that way and all of our part writing comes that way, so everything we were writing, we were feeling. We liked that straight rock tempo here or that distortion there. It just kind of started to happen.

Chris: It went from Ryan and I writing songs and everybody else basically playing whatever part that popped into our head, with Dave playing the straight beat to us really taking a lot of time to arrange the songs individually. Dave stepped up and would say “We need to play it this way right now. If it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we can try something else.”

Ryan: We had played our songs simply. We started the songs, and stuck to them. I think that once we started realizing we were fixing and approving songs, we realized we needed to write new songs, because we were trying to make old songs better, when all we need to do is write new ones. Like Chris is saying, we started to write songs together. Chris would have an idea or I would have an idea, and that’s especially with the song that’s on the single we’re putting out in a few weeks called “The General.” Chris had the words, and I had the chord structure, and we changed the feel and added things and this riff came out, and all of a sudden we all got it. We all saw it with this one song. We said “Yes, that’s it. That’s exactly how it happens.”

Mark: That’s been every song since; that’s how we write them. Ryan comes with the riff and with a vocal melody. Then we sit down and hammer it out until it’s in the shape that we want to play it.

Eric: Is it easier to do it that way?

Ryan: It’s great, it’s so rewarding.

Mark: It makes you feel good when you finish it. Everybody will agree that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

Ryan: I’d say eight of the 10 songs on the new record have come out that way too, which is good. The two oldest ones were the last of the old group, but all the other ones we feel good about. We’re not sick of any of them, so it really, really helps to keep us going and be excited about the new record.

Eric: At this point, where you are as a band, you may be playing shows where people aren’t coming to see Elsinore. They may be coming to see the headliner. How does the band deal with that when you are playing a show?

Chris: We just do what we do, and if you hit five people, that’s five people that you got that wouldn’t have been there to see you before. We’ve gotten a lot of fans that way, with people that didn’t have any idea who we were before bought a t-shirt and a CD at the end of the show.

Ryan: That’s the mindset that we have to have because of the more extended touring that we are doing. Now that we’re getting out of Illinois, we’re doing the whole Midwest. Then we will be doing the whole West Coast this summer. Now we have to be in that mindset all the time. We have to play exactly how we should so that people know who this band is, and they can say “I really like it. I hope they come back.”

Chris: Nobody starts out with a group of fans.

Eric: When is the new record coming out?

Ryan: We’re trying really hard to not pick a date so we don’t have to finish things. I just got married, so we took a couple weeks off, and I’m trying to finish the lyrics to some of the songs, and there are still some string parts and horn parts we want to put on there, so we want to have time to do it and not worry. We never set a date, we just kind of said “It would be nice to have this in six months,” and then we said “It would be nice to have this in nine months.” It’ll probably be a year now. We started last October officially.

Chris: The single is coming out pretty soon though.

Eric: Has it been a frustrating experience?

Chris: At times. It’s hard to do it, with the work schedules. We all have different jobs, so it’s finding a chunk of three or four days that we can just go spend all that time in the studio, it can be really difficult.

Ryan: Some parts are frustrating, like when you can’t play your part exactly how it should be. If one of us can’t do what we need to do, the other three get kind of frustrated and get pissed off because they have to wait so much, and the one doing it gets pissed off because they can’t get it. It happened to all of us.

Eric: Who have you guys seen so far that you have enjoyed?

All: Flaming Lips.

Dave: Girl Talk was good.

Ryan: For me it was the Flaming Lips that made the whole weekend worth it. We could not like any of the other bands and we would still think about the Flaming Lips last night. So we’re just hoping to get blown away by The Roots tonight.

Chris: I’m looking forward to seeing Blind Melon I used to be a fan before their singer died, so I’m interested to see what they do with this new guy.

Eric: Finally, what have you guys been listening to lately?

Chris: I’ve been listening to The National and Okkervil River pretty much nonstop for the last month.

Mark: Spoon.

Ryan: The new Radiohead.

Dave: Bon Iver. Sigur Rós. I had never really listened to them before and I just got their CD Takk…

 

11:36 am — 

Girl Talk had energy enough to get everyone dancing, including Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. All photos are mine except for the second and the fifth, again by Mr. Eric Heisig. Can you believe its his first time with a digital SLR?

11:34 am — 

We had some time to kill before we were going to photograph Girl Talk, so while my interview with Gregg Gillis took longer than expected (again, not a bad thing, and that story is forthcoming), Face went and photographed Sound Tribe Sector 9 on the Moonshine Stage. I had never seen them before, and I got there about 20 minutes into their set (after braving the mud and overall soggy trail). I didn’t get to see much, but what I saw was impressive. This is a good jam band, and what they were doing is very interesting. For those of your not familiar with STS9, they are a jam band with electronica influences, and it works quite well. I’ll have to check these guys out later (yes, I am admitting ignorance), but the way today has worked, we haven’t been able to see many full sets.

At 7 p.m., Girl Talk took the stage. Face and I got in the photo pit for the first few songs, and watched most of it outside from there. I have listened to Girl Talk’s third album, Night Ripper, and I had loved it. The show was taken to the next level live though. The setup is simple, just Gregg Gillis and a table full of laptops and a microphone. Still, he didn’t stop dancing the entire time, and as the show progressed, more and more people got on stage and danced with him

Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips was visible through parts of the set, and you could see the Lips lent him some confetti and streamers to make it that much more enjoyable.

Then there is the music. This is mash-ups in the best way. Take a beat from Kanye West, a melody by Rick Springfield and a bass line from Parliament (note: that’s not what really happened, but hopefully you get the gist of it) and you have a Girl Talk segment. I had never seen him before, and his stuff works just as well live as on record, if not better.

Gillis himself was able to give off a lot of energy from his physical performance as well as his beats, which is the best thing any DJ (excuse me, producer with samples) can do. It was an impressive set, and may have been the best thing I saw so far that day.

P.S. This is added later, but both Face and I saw a very pregnant woman standing by the loud speakers during Girl Talk’s set. I pray for that baby, and let’s hope the little one won’t come out deaf, dumb and blind or with any mental disabilities. Moral of the story, if you are pregnant, don’t stand directly in front of the speakers.

11:33 am — 

Okay, I will spill the beans: I have a story I plan to write about my experience with Gregg Gillis/Girl Talk. I will save that for until I get back and have more time. It involves Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips. I may be hyping it up a lot, but still, I want to write it. For now, here is the interview:

Eric: How do you, as a DJ, approach a festival such as this?

Gregg: For me, my background, with the earliest music I made, was very experimental, and no one would even classify it as me DJing, it’s more like it’s production using samples, because the material is so far-removed and transformed from the original sources. All of my early days of playing were still at performance-style venues. I’ve never played at dance clubs. I’ve always opened for a band or for a rap group or whatever. For me, it’s like playing for a festival is very natural. I’m used to people staring at me, it’s the format I’m used to.

With normal club shows, I really like to interact with everyone, and get people onstage. It gets pretty crazy, and it becomes impossible to be concerned about everyone at a festival. You just can’t do it; you would get swallowed up in the concept. For me, playing a festival is almost like an underhand pitch, an easy performance. I’m always ready to go, 100 percent at every show. At a club, I can feel it can go really bad or really good. With a festival, it’s like I’m going to be going, and people are going to be with me or they don’t. You can’t be as concerned. For me, it’s very relaxing compared to a normal show.

Eric: Would the interaction be considered part of the show though?

Gregg: Yeah, hugely. I feel like it’s like that with any band. A band like the Flaming Lips does an excellent job of playing at the grand scale, where you don’t need that level of interaction because you put on such an extravagant show. That’s amazing, but you see most normal bands that don’t have such a visual show, and any time you see them at a club there’s a level of interactivity, and it’s very approachable and very exciting, and you can’t really replicate that at a festival. It’s kind of grander than that. It loses that to some degree, but there is where you can’t be close to everyone, but there are so many people there, there is a greater energy that can help overcome that sometimes, so it has a potential.

I had never played festivals until last summer, and I thought it was going to be really shitty, because the smaller the show, the better for me, so I can be as crazy as I can get, but I experience festival shows where everyone was just together. It’s not that everyone was being crammed into a small space, but more like its how massive can this get. It’s a whole different thing for me.

Eric: Can you still feed off the audience and do something you wouldn’t necessarily do?

Gregg: Yeah, to a degree. I usually allow people to get onstage just because I like to break it down as much as possible. But in all honestly, the club shows are so chaotic that the level of mistakes on my end are higher. Not that they’d be that audible, but I may not be able to go through the material in the exact way I’d want it. With playing a festival, I have so much room physically, and I’m not being bumped into and it’s not so chaotic, and I almost always overall play a better set. I feel like people wouldn’t know the difference between the two.

Eric: Do you have a preference though?

Gregg: Ideally I’d play a small club. I enjoy this, but I think the real magic is in a small venue. This is very fun to me though, on a very physical level because people are so crowding at a normal show, and then here it is physically very easy to play. It’s relaxing. It’s like I go through training all year long to do a couple of these shows, and then it’s a lot easier for me.

Eric: Is it better musically?

Gregg: It depends. It can be massive. I feel like a lot of bands sound better than electronic performers on a grander scale, but it can sound really cool depending on how it’s done up. Some of the stuff at Coachella, like the place set up specifically set up for electronic music sounds amazing, so it all depends on how it’s set up.

Eric: Take me through the process of when you’re mixing on stage.

Gregg: I don’t use songs; it’s all just sampled elements. I do the arrangements beforehand and I have freedom to jump around, but I know what I want to play together, but it’s just a matter of executing it. Live there’ll be a loop for a high hat rhythm and maybe a kick drum and a melody and a vocal. At any time, there are probably three to 10 loops going, and it’s me mixing and mashing and flowing. The main thing is the vocals and the music but there are always these kinds of subtle elements and transitions that are always going.

Sometimes at the club show it’s so hectic I’ll forget I’ve been playing the same handclap for the last 10 minutes, whereas at the festival it’s easier for me to pay attention. I write the songs before hand and try to get through them. I don’t want it to be an exercise in improvisation or anything like that. I want to play these arrangements I came up with. Even at that, most of it goes into putting it together and then actually performing it isn’t necessarily difficult if you spent the time to memorize it and be familiar with what you’re doing.

Eric: How many samples do you think you have on your computer?

Gregg: I don’t know, I checked recently, but I really can’t remember. It’s funny, because there is a cutoff point. I’ll do stuff in my house, and some amount of that, maybe a quarter of that, will make it to my live show…actually more like an eighth of the samples will make it to the live show, and maybe a quarter of that makes it onto an album. I sample a lot more stuff that never sees the light of day. It’s endless. For example, whenever I sample a piano melody, I cut up half of it, chop it, so even if there’s one part you are hearing, there are probably about 10 other variations of that on the computer. I really couldn’t say how many individual loops I have though off the top of my head.

Eric: Do you consider yourself making an album when you are onstage?

Gregg: No, it’s a lot looser, pretty free-form. A lot of that stuff goes onto the album, a lot of the core ideas, but I’m open to experimenting. If I play something tonight, and maybe something that’s off-key but I like the way it sounds, and if I’d want to see how people would react to it, I’ll do it. If it fails, or if I don’t like the way it sounds, I don’t have to do it again. There’s not as much pressure, but with the album I labor over every individual second. I’m more open to experimentation, I change my set up every weekend or so with the live shows. Just little bits, like a minute each weekend, if that. Then, if you change a minute each weekend and you play every single weekend, after three months you have a new ten minute segment of your set. And I never really play over an hour, because I like to keep it like a band, so if you change a minute each week it amounts to significant stuff over time.

Eric: Would you even consider yourself a DJ then? Because, a DJ would be playing in a club for three or four hours…

Gregg: I’ve never considered myself a DJ; I’ve always considered it producing with samples. Most of my people I look up to as contemporaries or people I have been influenced by are people who work with samples that aren’t necessarily referred to as “DJ’s.” People like John Oswald in the 60s and newer guys like Kid 606 who was my main influence getting into this stuff. These guys who all work with samples were all considered producers, with electronic shows. Right now, it’s at the most successful point and using the most blatant samples.

I’ve been at this for eight years, so it’s gone through transitions from there. I feel like I’m using the same exact applications I used to use whenever I started, but back then no one called it DJing. They used to say that this guy is performing his music, and it happens to be sample-based on a computer. And along with that, I can’t just play a song. The goal on the albums is to make music that’s mine. I want people to come to my shows and request Girl Talk songs as opposed to “play Justin Timberlake.” That’s the goal; I want to make my own musical identity out of component parts that have already existed before.

Eric: Do you consider yourself jamming onstage then?

Gregg: Yeah, definitely to a degree. As far as the structure of it, that is completely applicable. I have a structure that I want to get through, and there are a bunch of variables. I can go a bunch of different paths with it, but the general structure remains there. I have songs I work around, but how I work with it changes every night. Occasionally I will be very busy for a couple weeks and play the same material, but if you listen to every show, it will be different. I think that’s definitely relatable to a lot of the bands playing here, or how I imagine I play.

Eric: It kind of makes it less strange to see you on the bill when you say you change it up every night.

Gregg: Yeah, I think I’m still strange on this bill, but I’m really into it. I’m happy they included me; I like to be an outcast if possible. I’d hate to come to a festival where there are 80 guys playing laptops and doing remixes. I can’t even justify why they have me here though, I don’t know why.

Eric: is there an element of punk to what you do?

Gregg: I think so. I never really got into it hard. I mean, I like The Ramones as music but I never got into having a Mohawk or leather patches or anything. But, when I was in high school I got really into noise and completely abrasive avant-garde stuff. The reason I got into that was that it was the most “fuck everything,” and to me that was punk. These guys aren’t just playing their guitars shitty, they’re not playing guitars; they’re smashing them. This is as raw as you can get, you don’t even need any musical training at all. Artists like Merzbow from Japan and Cocky SP, a band from the Midwest. My favorite right now is Wolf Eyes, which is a popular one these days.

It’s a lot more acceptable now to show up at a rock club and do remixes of pop music. Everything has crossed over, it’s okay to be into Madonna or Justin Timberlake these days and be in underground music. But when I started in 2000, when I was playing shows, it really wasn’t like that. I would go around and open for a band and play in a bar, and go up and do Hall & Oates remixes, everyone thinks you are treading. It was like us versus them, the pop underground.

Eric: So being postmodern wasn’t cool?

Gregg: Yeah, and that to me was punk. You guys are up there rehashing ideas from the past, and you aren’t doing anything progressive. In my mind, I am the one challenging the way we are thinking here a little bit. Maybe not that much, but more so than you guys playing your guitars and sounding like the Pixies again. I was very punky in the early days, and I think I have that in some of my roots that I am very open to fucking with the crowd. I try to make this as accessible and digestible as possible, but I am open to pushing the boundaries if it’s not going the way I want it to go.

Eric: So you would be okay with that?

Gregg: I’ve been there a lot. Especially in the early days, there were a lot of crazy shows. I’ve been kicked off stage multiple times. The band I was in in high school was all about pissing off people and seeing how far we can push them, and I think when I started Girl Talk, it was specifically about doing the opposite, saying, “Okay, how far can we please the crowd?” That was more significant as an underground thing, like if you are playing a basement show and 10 people show up, it’s crazier to see how over the top we can make this show. That’s more of the roots of it, and that’s where I’m at now. I’m still like that, and I still want to make stuff that people enjoy. I don’t want to be pretentious and a dickhead, but I still have the roots of, if a show gets shut down prematurely, or everyone hates it, I am completely open to that at least.

Eric: When is the new album coming out?

Gregg: It will be done within two weeks. It will be online then too in two weeks, on Illegal Art. Then, in a couple months, it will be physical, but the moment I finish it, I’m getting it mastered and then it will be available online.

Eric: Sticking around, what are you excited to see this weekend?

Gregg: I’m pumped for the Flaming Lips, who I haven’t seen since eighth grade. It was amazing then, and it was very different from what they are doing now.

I am also very excited to see some of these jam bands who I have never heard that many of before. I always feel like if you don’t necessarily like something on the surface it’s probably because you don’t get it. I don’t believe in good taste versus bad taste or critical acclaim overriding anything. I think that’s all bullshit. I’m not saying any of these bands are or aren’t critically acclaimed, but I’m saying that I’m not that familiar with these bands. I know they’re huge and popular and have their fan bases, so I want to dive in and understand as much as I can and what’s going down and how I can get into this.

Eric: What’s on your iPod lately?

Gregg: My parents got me an iPod for Christmas, but I don’t use it. They put all my dad’s music on it, and I got into that, but this week I bought five new CDs this week, which is big for me, since I don’t buy that many CDs in a week. I’ve always liked The Beatles, but I’ve never actually owned any of their stuff. They are like my favorite band I’ve never dived into, so I bought the 1 album because I was in a Wal-Mart at 2 a.m. and decided I really wanted to hear all these songs. I bought the 8-Ball and MJG greatest hits album, which was amazing. I bought the new Stephen Malkmus album (Real Emotional Trash), just because I may be in a video for an upcoming song off of it, and I heard the song. I was just in a house and they were just filming the video in Portland, and I love the song, so I bought the album but I haven’t heard it yet, but I’m excited to check that out. I also got the new Mariah Carey CD (E=MC2), which I think is amazing. I think she’s respected, but people take her for granted right now, but I think she’s going to be one of the legendary artists of our time. She just tied Elvis for her number of number one hits, she’s making history, and it’s an impeccable career. Also, I got a Sam Cooke album I’ve never heard before that I’ve been getting into. I like Sam Cooke a lot.

12:24 pm — 

So Headlights’ performance was canceled. The stage manager told me that since it was raining sideways onto the stage, there was no way for them to perform. Oh well.

Instead of shooting Headlights, I found these people and took some photos. They played in the mud while it was raining, instead of hiding in their tents like many other people. -Aaron Facemire

We are currently sitting in my car to escape the rain/the festival/steal wireless. We are going to head back soon, so hopefully this will let up. I have an interview with Michael Ivins of the Flaming Lips coming up, as well as Girl Talk and a member of the Chicago Afrobeat Project. That is all today! Stay tuned…