Pitchfork

Melodica 2008 bills itself as "a different kind of music festival," and that much is true: most music festivals named after one particular instrument actually feature a lot of bands who employ said instrument in their music. But we'll leave the semantics to the cynics and focus instead on the festival lineup, blowing through several venues in Dallas' Expo Park neighborhood today (February 22) and tomorrow.

Highlights include Silver Apples (who, I'm told, still bring it live), Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember in his Spectrum guise, Mike Simonetti (of Troubleman and Italians Do It Better), Yellow Fever, Finally Punk, and dot-matrix doodlers Treewave. Plus the whole thing is entirely DIY, without an iota of corporate sponsorship. So hats off to this Melodica, crazy keyboard-horn or no crazy keyboard-horn.