To begin, a corny — but, in a roundabout way, thought-provoking — joke I heard while attending this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival:
Q: “How many hipsters does it take to screw in a lightbulb?”
A: “It’s a pretty obscure number. You’ve probably never heard of it.”

This joke was met with groans and blank stares, plus one “shut up.” But I’m not including it because it’s funny. Rather, it helps clarify why I was a little apprehensive about this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival.

Fact: The bulk of Pitchfork’s audience was comprised of late-teens and twenty-somethings in various stages of hipsterdom. I saw enough plaid and flannel shirts to wallpaper the Sistine Chapel — hipsters as far as thy eye could see.

In effect, the Pitchfork Festival, housed in Chicago's Union Park, was a giant confluence of people who — as the joke reminds us — pride themselves on obscurity and smug eccentricity. I had thought that at some point during the festival, a lot of these people would take a look around and realize they resembled practically everyone else around them. They would become aware that they weren’t as unconventional as they once thought.

And herein lies the seeming paradox that had bothered me in the days preceding the festival. How can Pitchfork cater to its audience if it inherently contradicts everything they stand for?

Fortunately, there was no evidence of an identity-crisis pandemic in Union Park. In fact, the paradox I’d been contemplating beforehand dissolved as soon as I entered the festival grounds Friday evening.

To be sure, the crowd at Pitchfork had to be one of the most reasonable, polite and generally caring crowds ever assembled in the name of music. My feet were stepped on, my back elbowed and my ribs gored. But not once did the offending person fail to apologize. A guy with a Tortoise shirt on didn’t scoff when a girl behind him asked who Tortoise was, even though the band was playing at the time. When Pharoahe Monch commanded everyone in the audience — despite its overwhelming whiteness — to put their right fists up à la a Black Power salute, they did, dammit. And without irony, even.

What I’m saying is that at Pitchfork, the music came first. And while I’m sure a majority of the outfits worn by attendees were meticulously prearranged, it was clear that once the bands started playing, image became mostly a distant concern.

With the Pitchfork paradox debunked and my apprehension thoroughly squelched by early Friday evening, I had time to focus on more important things, like my band-seeing strategy. I decided, save for a few rogue amblings, to camp out at a particular stage, securing a front-row spot but also missing some bands I wanted to see at other stages.

In retrospect, I think I made the right decision. I rarely ate, drank or went to the bathroom, but there’s really nothing that compares to consistently being a few yards away from your favorite bands. Plus, I felt a sort of pride when I looked back from my privileged position and saw thousands of faces vying for a closer look.

Built to Spill was very impressive, showing off its 17-plus years of experience, and Doug Martsch’s guitar work on “Conventional Wisdom” might have been the deftest display of musicianship of the festival.

John Hughes pop revivalists The Pains of Being Pure at Heart were charming and cute, but despite issuing a stellar debut earlier this year, their live show suffered from a lack of dynamics and panache.

But I was floored by Brooklyn’s Yeasayer. Looking back, I count the sun peaking out from the ever-looming clouds during their song “Sunrise” as one of the festival’s highlights.

The National was the headliner Saturday night, and it may have had one of the best overall sets of the weekend. The sound was full and layered, and vocalist Matt Berninger gave the crowd everything he had, even marching into the audience during the manic “Mr.