Torches of Liberty?

Pitchfork media has a review of the Lincoln Memorial Concert (blah!) and the Big Shoulders Ball (yay!) at the Black Cat in D.C., celebrating the Obama inauguration.

Organized by Chicago venue the Hideout and the Interchange Festival to benefit the Future of Music Coalition, the ball highlighted Windy City acts, many of whom had bused halfway across the country to celebrate the son of the city. Like Obama himself, most of the acts weren't born in Chicago, but made homes there. Freakwater and Eleventh Dream Day hail from Kentucky, Jon Langford from Wales and Sally Timms from Leeds, Leo from New York and D.C. Ostensibly the show was concocted to celebrate the diversity and activity of the Chicago scene and, by extension, of American popular music. The line-up covered all bases: the indie-friendly folk of Judson Claiborne, the re-imagined honkytonk of Freakwater, the acoustic blues of David "Honeyboy" Edwards, the beery bar-band rock of the Waco Brothers, the frictive guitar rock of Eleventh Dream Day, and however you classify Andrew Bird. There was jazz, dance, punk, even a bit of hip-hop courtesy of charismatic Icy Demons frontman Griffin Rodriguez.

"We're a protest band," Jon Langford claimed during the Waco Brothers' rip-roaring set. "Normally we protest against the government. This is a difficult time for us." This point needed to be made: With the decisive election and intense popularity of the proudly liberal Obama, the old punks suddenly have nothing to rail against. So the mood at the Big Shoulders Ball was strangely and sincerely patriotic. In addition to an enormous stencil of Obama, the stage was festooned with star-spangled banners that were neither ironic nor disdainful.

. . .

When Eleventh Dream Day took the stage just after midnight, barely half the original crowd remained. Their loss: "Bagdad's Last Ride" and "Satellite" lost none of their jitteriness, thanks as much to Bean's thunderous drumming as to Rick Rizzo's pained vocals. They were soon joined by Timms and Langford for a few Three Johns and Mekons numbers, which sounded impossibly jubilant and, yes, a little hopeful. During their final song, Langford and Dean Schlabowske tried to tear down the red-white-and-blue banners above the stage. Any other night, that might have appeared deeply symbolic, but that night, they were just having a ball.

Some nice photos too.