Like last year’s edition, the first day of the 3-day long Pitchfork Music Festival was done in coordination with All Tomorrow’s Parties’ Don’t Look Back series in which the artists play a classic album in its entirety. The first band on the lineup was MISSION OF BURMA. Having seen them twice in the last month, one would figure that seeing them yet another time would get a little stale. This, however, would be wrong. At last month’s shows at Bowery Ballroom and the First Unitarian Church, they played their Signals, Calls and Marches EP in its entirety along with other selected songs from that period like both sides of the incredible “Academy Fight Song” single. For this show, however, this would be my first time seeing them perform their landmark debut Lp Vs. And what a show it was. We got there a bit late, so we missed the first song or two, but before they played Vs, we got to here other tracks from the same period like “OK/No Way” and the incredible “Forget”. And then it was time for the main event. Like the recorded version, Vs was simply pulverizing. Even though I’d seen them perform most, if not all, of these songs over the past few years, it was still great to see one of my favorite post-punk albums being performed in its entirety. No individual song stood out, yet somehow that was appropriate as there were no missteps. Vs is definitely an album that’s best listened to in its entirety and Mission of Burma once again proved that point. I should also note that they were incredibly loud. Even though it was outside, I still put in my earplugs for their set! Pitchfork definitely did a better job with the sound this year than they had in the past and Burma’s set sounded great.
Now it was time for the main event. When I found out back in March that the headliner for this evening would be PUBLIC ENEMY performing their landmark second album It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, my jaw nearly dropped. It’s one of my favorite albums of all-time. When I first heard, I was 15 and largely unfamiliar with rap and hip-hop. It just completely blew me away as it was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. The main question on my mind was whether Public Enemy would be able to recreate it in its entirety a good 20 years after its 1988 release. The answer, fortunately, was a resounding yes! I had reason to worry that it might be otherwise, though. The one prior time that I saw them, I was greatly disappointed. It was in the summer of 1998, right after their title track for the SPIKE LEE movie He Got Game became a hit and briefly thrust them into the spotlight again after years in the musical wilderness. The circumstances were unfortunate, however. Yes, they headlined the Smokin’ Grooves tour, but unfortunately the most teenage audience didn’t come to see them and left during their set as they’d already seen BUSTA RHYMES and WYCLEF JEAN, the real headliners. It was also in a faceless, large ampitheatre. Thankfully 10 years later it was a completely different story. First off, it was much more of their crowd. When they first came out, part of Public Enemy’s mission (which they fulfilled better than anyone before or since) was to succeed RUN-DMC in terms of proving that a rap group could not only function as a rock band, but consequently be more powerful than just about any other group on earth and thus attract not only hip-hop fans, but those who rarely listen to it and whose orientation is more towards rock. And thus it’s fitting that 20 years after its release, they were headlining the first day of a festival mostly devoted to indie-rock. I don’t know how the younger folks reacted, but those of us in our 30s and older who remember them from back in the day where ecstatic and rapping along with every word up in the front! My oh my what a show it was. After a too-lengthy DJ set by their production team THE BOMB SQUAD, CHUCK D, TERMINATOR X, The S1W’s and the rest of the crew came out and performed “Bring the Noise” after the requisite “Countdown to Armageddon” intro. It sounded great and again, I was ecstatic, but where was FLAVOR FLAV. I noticed that his parts were taped and that he wasn’t there. Thankfully he emerged right before they were set to perform “Don’t Believe the Hype”. I didn’t mind, though, as his unpredictability (more on this later) added a nice, spontaneous touch to a show where because of its format you knew what was coming.
The highlights were many as they ripped through classics like “She Watch Channel Zero?!,” “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos,” “Rebel Without a Pause” and “Night of the Living Baseheads”, all culminating in the incredible Chuck/Flavor vocal duet “Party for Your Right to Fight”. Of course, because of Flavor Flav’s unpredictability, there were delays as he took time to plug his new reality show (he was booed and then proceeded to chide the audience) and after begging, spit out a verse of “Can’t Do Nuttin’ for Ya Man” (from 1990’s equally as incredible Fear of a Black Planet). Thankfully, even though we were really tired by that point, their set ran much later than anticipated and thus we got some great encores, too. Starting with “Welcome to the Terrordome”, we got to hear parts of their first single “Public Enemy #1” as well as other hits like “Shut ‘Em Down,” “Can’t Truss It” (both from Apocalypse ‘91: The Enemy Strikes Black) and for the grand finale, a great version of the 1989 single “Fight the Power” (perhaps their greatest moment).
