WHY WON'T YOU RECOGNIZE HOW PSYCHEDELIC I AM AND LOVE ME?

School's out, what did you expect?

I wasn't going to go to any shows Monday night. Sure, Austin up-and-comers YellowFever were playing. And recent Des Noise live favorite Coyote Slingshot. And young locals the Seed of Something. Plus, there was a late show featuring recent Pitchfork "Rising" honorees Candy Claws, whose glo-fi primer "Catamaran" I positively reviewed, like, nine months ago. But Mrs. Des Noise and I had just made the six-hour drive back from Chicago after what felt like the biggest Pitchfork Music Festival yet, only a couple of weeks after spending Fourth of July Weekend on our feet for the 80/35 Music Festival here in Des Moines. Yeah, I wanted to see those bands. But not Monday night. Not like Japandroids a year ago. We just wanted to go home and crash. Does that mean I'm getting too old for this?

I CAN GO ANYWHERE

I think I can/ I know I can/ And if at first you don't succeed...

A fun night with decent if unexceptional out-of-town hip-hop Sunday at the Mews. I came for local rappers Gadema and Young Tripp, whose MySpace pages have intrigued me with their sweeping Southern-gothic beats and relentless grit, making me hope I'll eventually find something here like what Diplo dug up on his Hunts Vegas comp of Alabama rappers a while back. I got there around 9, which as it turned out meant I missed both of those guys-- bummer, but I'll catch 'em next time. The visitors on the bill brought the kind of relatively standard-fare backpacker rap that probably wouldn't bowl me over on record, but made for interesting viewing, at least. Musab, joined by his sister (in an eye-catching red dress) and a Weird Al-looking DJ (on a laptop), was unremittingly pleasant, grinning bigger than any twee indie-popper on songs featuring canny samples from Pitchfork/Jay-Z faves Grizzly Bear as well as the old PBS children's TV show "Reading Rainbow"; while the lyrics were fairly prosaic, it was easy to get caught up in the enthusiastic vibe, and I wouldn't even complain if they cut out the one or two weed/alcohol references and got a big break through Disney or whatever. Headliner Abstract Rude's beats were dustier and more classically hip-hop, with an affable, red-gloved hype man providing a lot of the entertainment; still, as the DJ played Michael Jackson and Prince songs to follow the set, I had to wonder why anyone who loves those bona fide stars would settle for hooks like "Life goes on," "Life's not like a TV show" (TV is baaad, kids-- but the shows mentioned suggest this MC hasn't watched any since the mid-1990s), or "Y'all should dance" (unlike with Musab, whose deep voice came through loud and clear, most of Abstract's impassioned verses were indecipherable to these ears, except for occasional forced-rhyme fragments like "To the top we soar"). Whatever, as I noted last year, I'm a guy who got bored at a Company Flow reunion, so this particular strain of independent hip-hop just often isn't my thing, I guess.

Gotta grind nonstop 'cause ain't no one recession-proof.

AND WHEN YOU BELIEVE THEY CALL IT ROCK AND ROLL

Photo by Mrs. Des Noise, on a vintage mid-2000s phone.

This was early Sunday, before most people (or the rain)

had shown up.

An announced 34,000 attended Des Moines' third annual 80/35 Music Festival over two days this July 4 weekend. That's nothing like the 120,000 who reportedly showed up to the five days of Denmark's Roskilde Festival. But that's still something for an indie, hip-hop, and jam-oriented festival in central Iowa, an area where even some of the festival's most veteran acts acknowledged they'd never played before. And it's particularly remarkable if you spend even a couple minutes suffering through the comments on 80/35-related newspaper coverage or the festival's own Facebook page, in which neighbors of the people I've found so friendly and welcoming over this past year make Brooklyn Vegan commenters look like Rhodes Scholar Eagle Scout Good Samaritans. Music fans who wanted to go to Sioux City for the time-tested sounds of Santana and Spearhead had that option, and that's cool; 80/35 is about something different, about pushing things forward, and by that measure (full disclosure: I volunteered a few ideas on the booking committee, so please feel free to take my observations as skeptically as you'd like) I thought it was an unqualified success. If we want Des Moines to compete as a world-class city for creative young professionals, we need more events like this.

You could divide 2010's festival experience pretty seamlessly between the two days. Between T-shirts soaked with sweat and T-shirts soaked from torrential downpours. Between sets where I was able to take notes and snap photographs and sets where I was keeping my phone in a plastic bag while my supposedly "water-resistant" watch stopped due to the rainfall. My friend Chuck aka Chet aka Chef aka Check lives in an apartment overlooking the festival grounds, so that was our home base, and also home to at least one 32 oz. incident of bros icing bros. Music took place on three stages, one paid and two free, with one of the free stages devoted to electronic and hip-hop artists. The rest of the acts broke down pretty cleanly between the critically acclaimed indie-geek bands and jam/roots/reggae bands. The atmosphere was appropriately relaxed and positive most of the time, with enough security to ensure people's safety but never so much that it felt oppressive. Water was freely availabe from faucets hooked up to fire hydrants, with free water bottles provided-- a great touch. It was clear at times that many people in the audience were unfamiliar with the bands performing, but there was still plenty of spontaneous clapping along. Heck, it almost made me think of Roskilde. Maybe we can get there someday, but for now 80/35 was a fantastic experience in and of itself.

 A ribbon in the sky for our love.

A few personal highlights after the jump: