Pitchfork: Pygmalion Festival to Kick Off This Month

Pygmalion Festival to Kick Off This Month

The people of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois unleashed REO Speedwagon upon the world in the early 1970s, and they've been making up for it ever since. Braid, Hum, Poster Children, and the Didjits are but a few Chambana bands that have vaulted the city into the same indie rock league as Chapel Hill, Athens, and Olympia-- college towns with musical influence in absolute disproportion to their size. Cue daydreams of a record-geek Rose Bowl: you paint the K Records logo on your face, I'll recruit four shirtless friends and paint our chests to spell M-E-R-G-E, and we'll meet in the parking lot for microbrew and vegetarian tailgating.

Well...maybe not. But if the organizers of the first annual Pygmalion Music Festival have anything to say about it, the prairie duopolis will henceforth boast its own mini-SXSW. From Wednesday, September 28 through Saturday, October 1, six different Champaign-Urbana venues will host a whole mess of bands, from locals like Headlights and the Beauty Shop to out-of-town guests such as Maserati, the M's, Chin Up Chin Up, the Appleseed Cast, and Troubled Hubble. The hottest session in the whole schedule has to be the early show on Friday at the Canopy, with Mates of State, Ida, and Saturday Looks Good To Me kicking off at 7:30 p.m. for a mere $10. But if you want to make a weekend of it, a $25 wristband will admit you to any show that can squeeze you in (unless for some reason you want to see Umphrey's McGee, a bunch of jamband putzes who are such consummate pros that they insist you pay for their show separately-- maybe they need the extra cash to buy a new band name). A portion of your Pygmalion ticket scratch will wind up in the hands of the Red Cross, for the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. You can find the whole tangled web of times, dates, venues, bands, prices, age restrictions, and firearms regulations at the official Pygmalion website.