Pat Duffy, formerly of Pop Tarts Suck Toasted (RIP), will be covering this year’s event for us! Expect a series of live reviews over the next few days. Here’s his first installment. This year’s Pitchfork Music Festival is loaded from head to toe. Three days, 42 bands, a comedy stage, a record fair, a poster fair and more food vendors than you could hope to plow through in one weekend. It’s gonna be an awesome time, but it also has the potential to be a bit overwhelming for anyone trying to navigate the waters for the first time. With that in mind we’ve created this handy, slutty, Absolute Must list for you to live the next 3 days by! We also compiled a mixtape of all 42 acts to get you in the spirit of one of the best, most affordable fests going these days! Make sure to listen & follow our advice for the optimal experience this weekend!

View the full rundown & grab Pat’s stellar compilation AFTER THE JUMP…

1. Modest Mouse/LCD Soundsystem/Pavement; Festivals usually like to make a big deal out of their well-rounded lineups and the fact that the opening bands are damn good, but most people head to festivals based on the headliners. This year, Pitchfork has outdone themselves with the most solid three headliners possible including a stop by the Pavement reunion tour! The great thing about these three bands is they sort of encapsulate the rise of Pitchfork as much as any three bands could. Think about it – Pavement represents the early days, the dedication to the purity of indie rock that was being played on the radio. They are the holy grail of indie rock bands and they get to close out the festival. Modest Mouse represents the rise of indie into the popular consciousness, a move that was facilitated by Pitchfork and allowed for bands like The Shins, Spoon, Arcade Fire, and more to jump onto the Billboard Charts and tour the world over. And of course there is LCD Soundsystem representing Pitchfork’s modern incarnation, one that puts an onus on new sounds and old sounds alike. Those three bands alone justified the ticket price, but there is so much more to see and do this weekend!

2. CHIRP Record Fair; If you’re a loyal Pitchfork enthusiast there’s a good chance you have a turntable that is your preferred method for listening to new music. Well, take this opportunity to stock up on wax to play on that bad boy because the CHIRP Record Fair is loaded with renowned dealers and tons of vinyl. So much so that you may need to bring an extra bag to carry it all out with you!

3. Hip Hop Galore!; Even in the beginning the Pitchfork Music Fest put a lot of effort into making a lineup that was varied and that couldn’t easily be labeled. This year they have overloaded on hip-hop artists that make the cream of the current crop. Acts like Big Boi, Raekwon, El-P, and more will dominate the various stages over the three days giving us a chance to move our foot a bit amid all the arm folding and head nodding.

4. Flatstock; Every year this traveling poster fest sets up shop at Union Park for the weekend allowing music lovers from all over to see their favorite posters and fill up their walls with artwork relating to their favorite bands. The artists are incredible, the posters are reasonably priced, and if you ask nicely they’ll hold it for you to pick up at the end of the day!

5. Heineken Cool Spots; Weather reports for the weekend are looking okay, with temps just barely scratching the 90s! That means it’ll be pretty comfortable festival wise, but you should still take some time out from crowd surfing to cool off and these spots offer the perfect areas to do so.

6. Chillwave Swan Song; For the last two years the chillwave movement has dominated the indie landscape. It has become one of the dominate genres in a world full of micro-genres and at this point it seems like it’s success is wearing thin. This year’s lineup is loaded with some of these chillwave acts, folks like Neon Indian, Washed Out, and Best Coast, and we’re hoping this is their big curtain call before letting something new take over.

7. Free Shit!; One of the joys of festival going is getting some free stuff for shelling out hundreds of dollars to see a few bands. While I don’t know what will be free I assume there will be some giveaways throughout the day! Keep your eyes open and your hands out and you should wind up going home with some junk to throw away next month!

8. Sleigh Bells; While M.I.A. has spent the last month or so melting down her own career her nascent label, NEET, is riding high thanks to the meteoric rise of Sleigh Bells. And this band deserves all the attention they are getting having made one of the best records of the year thus far! Even better news is they play right before Pavement so it shouldn’t be too tough to worm your way to the front for this set!

9. Food; If we have learned anything from past Pitchfork Fests it’s that festival food doesn’t have to be overpriced garbage you wouldn’t feed to your dog! This year they have a ton of food vendors ready to keep us well fed for reasonable prices all weekend long! On our list of things to try is Robinson’s #1 Ribs, the Whole Foods Market, and Big Bite, but there’s so much more that our bellies should be full for the straight days!

10. See It All!: Of all these great things the one that’s probably most exciting is the lack of time conflicts in the schedule. Sure, there are a couple early on in each day, but once you get passed those there really is no reason you can’t see a little bit of every band playing the festival! It’ll take some effort, and you won’t be able to be upfront for all of them, but you get to try out bands you’ve never heard of and still see everyone you wanted to see coming into the weekend. If that doesn’t make for a great festival we don’t know what does!

11. Music Slut Wrapups!: If for some reason you weren’t able to make it out to Chicago for this year’s fest, fear not! We will have massive recaps on everything we see all weekend long!

MP3s: Pop Tarts For TMS – 2010 Pitchfork Festival Playlist