- Now this may not be too much of a revelation, but let me just put it out there that the people of Chicago have a tendency on occasion to be a complete disgrace. Give them a food festival and they show up by the millions to stuff their faces for nine days straight. Give them a blues festival, and you'd think, based on the turnout, that blues wasn't the most God-awful shit invented. But give them a house festival and all of a sudden they can't be bothered. The organizers of ‘Move! The Chicago International House Music Festival’ expected something like 17,000 people to pass through the gates over the course of the July 22-23 weekend; about 2,000 actually made it out to the beachfront pavilion for the show.
Those who did were not to be disappointed – at least not by the DJs. Granted, Derrick Carter seemed to be phoning it in to a certain extent on the main stage when I arrived Saturday afternoon, but you can't really blame him considering the amount of unoccupied standing space (to say nothing of all-but-empty stands) that he was facing the entire time (And it is certainly not as if the tunes he dropped weren''t bumping.) A lot of the people at that point in the day were congregating around the VIP tent and ''Homegrown'' stage to hear Maurice Joshua lay it down. I joined them for a bit, taking a nice spot in the shade of the tent. I had to get out of there, though, when a remix of Kanye's ‘The New Workout Plan’ hit the decks.
As evening arrived, an hour or so of rain helped thin the already pitiful ranks, but the crowd that remained seemed only to show that much more enthusiasm for Danny Tenaglia. Tenaglia, who was celebrating his 90th birthday, proved still to be a showman: watching the man onstage, you’d have thought he was playing for a capacity crowd. Indeed, he proceeded to rock the pavilion with a steady barrage of beats that put the sound system to full use. Unfortunately, the set quickly deteriorated to little more than a continuous drum loop, with Tenaglia dropping that old “Miss Thing, there is no guestlist tonight” sample over the records countless times. Eventually, it became too much to bear.
Speaking of guestlists, an interesting bit of information, coming from Steve “Silk” Hurley and quoted by Greg Kot in the Chicago Tribune, that some “legendary” DJs declined to go to the festival because, indeed, they were not on the guest list. Apparently they “felt excluded,” so they refrained from helping to promote the event. I would suggest that Mr. Hurley tell these acquaintances of his that, in the future, they can buy tickets – they’re for sale and available to everyone, not excluding legendary DJs.
Hurley, meanwhile, opened up Sunday on the Homegrown stage with some smooth house and kept it rolling nicely all afternoon (though he seemed to experience a couple of very minor bumps along the way thanks to Final Scratch). The crowd around the VIP tent enjoyed themselves almost as much as those at the main stage watching South Africa’s Glen Lewis throw down his first ever set on American shores. Lewis took it easy as the crowd trickled in, delivering the smoothest, deepest sunshine-tinged tunes and creating a perfect beachside vibe. The highlight of the weekend, Lewis is a definite must-see if he comes to a venue near you.
It was during Lewis’s set that I noticed the presence of a guy who looked exactly like Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, in the audience. Sure, that likeness is one thing, but he was also with a woman who looked exactly like Cook’s wife, Zoe Ball. I couldn’t bring myself (even with my press pass in full view) to ask the guy if he was, in fact, Fatboy Slim, and I have no way of confirming whether or not Fatboy Slim was even supposed to be on this side of the ocean at the time. However, I’m all but certain that it was Fatboy Slim. And he was really getting down.
After Glen Lewis, the stage was given over to Hollywood stylist Phillip Bloch and drag queen Lady Bunny. I’m not sure what either of these people has to do with house, unless it was indeed the intention of festival organizers to present "house" and "gay" as synonymous (which might actually be the case, since the festival did mark the closing of the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago), but I must say that the two did a nice job of getting the crowd going in anticipation of Frankie Knuckles.
I was hoping for Knuckles to start with his (and Eric Kupper’s) ‘The Whistle Song Revisited.’ As it happened, I was not disappointed. The crowd didn’t seem too disappointed either. In the 4:30 afternoon glow, with the lake just behind us and the city spread out ahead, it was quite the perfect moment. The only thing that might have improved it would have been another few thousand people. And, of course, that’s really the only complaint that can be made about the festival as a whole.
It should be noted that the beats coming from the pavilion could be heard for about a mile in every direction. There were plenty of people listening to the music on the beach, and when I left during Frankie Knuckles’ set, there was a large group barbecuing in the grass right outside the gates. (They were stealing house!) Which is to say, just because the bodies weren't in the pavilion doesn't mean that the heads weren't in the tunes. Of course it would have been much better if the bodies had been in the pavilion, and that's the challenge for next time (and I certainly hope that there is a next time). I doubt that many more people would have shown up even if the event had been promoted by those nobodies that Hurley was talking about. People knew about the festival but for some reason they just decided not to come. That's not a problem that can't be solved for next year.
This review was also published on www.bustachill.com