Archive for August, 2008

You may or may not be aware that Hustle & Flow star Terrence Howard has an album coming out next Tuesday. If you only know Howard from H&F you might expect it to be a rap record, but if you've read any of the awful, pretentious, self-infatuated interviews he's given--apparently being Terrence Howard is a magical, inspirational experience involving lots of expensive fingernail maintenance--I bet you've already figured out that it's overblown, overproduced, satin-smooth R & B. But even a committed Howardologist would have no way of guessing that it would sound almost exactly like a Flight of the Conchords slo-jam that never delivers its punch line.

Found via the Hater.

Just a quick note to say that Steve Krakow, aka Plastic Crimewave, the man behind the Reader's Secret History of Chicago Music strip, finally has a Web site. (It must be very strange for him to work in a medium where he can't draw and letter everything by hand.) Looks like a few kinks still need to be worked out--the site's brand new--but you should bookmark that sucker. It's only gonna get more interesting with time.

On a related note, Steve's band, renamed the Plastic Crimewave Expanse for the occasion, has just been added to the bill with Roky Erickson & the Explosives at Double Door on Sunday, August 31. The reason for the new handle? A modified lineup. Drummer Lawrence Peters is out of town, so Ben Baker Billington of Druids of Huge will fill in--plus Steve's brother Adam is guesting on sitar.

Colleen Malone is a friend of mine and a friend of Chicago's independent music scene. This spring she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and she doesn't have insurance, so friends across the country have been coming up with ways to raise money to help offset her medical expenses. Tomorrow you have the opportunity to help her out in a way that will benefit you as well, assuming you like rock 'n' roll, Kinsella weirdness, and/or snacks.

From the Friends of Colleen blog, a description of the benefit show going down Saturday night:

The excellent lineup is now complete: SLICK CONDITIONS (a new band featuring Elliot Dicks, Leroy Bach, Ryan Rapsys, and Kurt Niesman), HEAD OF SKULLS! (playing new material from their upcoming full-length) and MAKE BELIEVE (sweaty as ever).

All-ages! Baked goods for sale! Posters by Chicago artist & screenprinter Mat Daly available for purchase!

Doors at 9 pm. $10 suggested donation.

The AV-aerie is located at 2000 W. Fulton St. (third floor)

See you there! 

via the Chicago Independent Radio Project blog

The world just got a little more dangerous for eBay vinyl addicts with the launch of a new site called Ain't Just Soul. Local programmer Kumar McMillan has put together what he calls a "portable record player for the Internet" that scrapes audio from used-vinyl auctions on eBay (in a range of genres from Afrobeat to garage rock) and presents it in a simple but visually appealing fashion, complete with links to the auctions themselves. It took me just four clicks to get from the site's opening page to giving serious thought to bidding on an obscure Michigan garage 45 that's opening at 20 bucks. 

McMillan says it's a work in progress, so input is welcome. He really wants it to work smoothly with the iPhone, which conjures up visions of nightmarish situations involving beers, the encouragement of fellow record geeks, and entire bank accounts converted to vinyl.

There are exactly two things I like about Chicago "deathcore" band Oceano:

1) The way the vocals alternate between death-metal Cookie Monster and shrieky screamo banshee, which reminds me of the golden era of multivocalist punk and hardcore bands like Grade, Nema, and Blatz.

2) The way the set of promo photos that MySpace recently pulled from their page makes it a lot easier to explain to outsiders about the barely sublimated misogyny that's so prevalent in postmillennial emo and emo-derived music. That is, if you can even call photos of a bunch of dudes pretending to murder and butcher a couple of hot Suicide Girl-looking chicks "barely sublimated."

Tonight from 5:30 till 7 PM the Chicago Visitors Center (72 E. Randolph) hosts an opening reception for the photo show "Jazzography: A Portrait of the Chicago Jazz Festival at 30."

Photographers represented include Michael Jackson and Mark PoKempner (both valued Reader contributors of many years) as well as Lauren Deutsch, Scott Pollard, and Javet Kimble. Among the 200 or so photos on display will be images of Max Roach, Count Basie, Gil Evans, Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Hugh Masekela, Dexter Gordon, Oscar Brown, Steve Lacy, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, and the recently departed Johnny Griffin. A related book is in the works, its publication to coincide with the launch of the 30th annual Jazz Fest at the end of the month.

The artist-in-residence at this year's Jazz Fest, reedist Edward Wilkerson Jr., will perform live at the reception, and according to Jackson "the ghost of Barrett Deems's wig [is] scheduled to appear."

Please call 312-744-6512 to RSVP. No word yet on when the exhibit will close.

The Skittles-colored Web 2.0 chaos that normally greets you at Muxtape.com has been replaced by the notice "Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA." Given the RIAA's attitude toward people who do anything with their music besides listen to it alone in a locked room with the curtains drawn, it's no surprise they have a problem with Muxtape--I'm surprised it took them this long to make trouble, actually. And given the RIAA's preferred means of "sorting things out," it's hard to be optimistic about Muxtape's future.

How can a poor man stand such times and live? Music will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no music. But music journalism, like all journalism--at least the kind you can still read by candlelight if you don't make your electric bill--can't finance itself with dedication, and lots of print outlets are hurting bad. No Depression, the venerable alt-country/Americana zine, published its final bimonthly issue this past spring. But the magazine's Web site continues to post news and commentary, and plans for twice-yearly "bookazines" (in collaboration with the University of Texas Press) have been brewing for a while.

If you go to the new main page of the Web site, you'll see that the No Depression folks have their hands out, hoping that interested parties will help sponsor their new venture--a radically revamped online-only magazine. To quote from the press release: 

"NoDepression.com, which will be edited by the magazine’'s founding co-editor Peter Blackstock, will include regular blogs by many of the magazine’'s most frequent contributors, including Blackstock and fellow founding co-editor Grant Alden. The new site will also include record reviews and live reviews, features on emerging artists, news updates, the current website’'s popular upcoming-releases list, reader-participant discussion forums ­ and, perhaps most significantly, a vast and cross-referenced archive featuring almost all the content from No Depression magazine’'s 75 issues published from 1995 to 2008.

"In preparation for the September relaunch, the website is promoting the No Depression Founders Circle, a way for fans and supporters of the magazine to assist with its continued presence on the internet. In addition, those who sign up for the website’'s mailing list at NoDepression.com will be eligible to win an Epiphone DR-100 Vintage Sunburst acoustic guitar which has been provided by Epiphone."

My position when it comes to great zines is usually "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." But clearly some fixing is needed when so many great publications are broke.

A couple of years ago Jessica Hopper called me up and insisted--actually more like demanded--that I accompany her to a screening of the 1981 cult film Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains at Landmark's Century Centre. I still owe her for that.

Directed by Lou Adler--the man responsible for, among other things, Carole King's Tapestry, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Cisco Adler--The Fabulous Stains stars not only a teenage Diane Lane and Laura Dern but two Sex Pistols, one member of the Clash, and Black Randy. It's the story of three untrained girls who form a band, get super famous, and inspire teenage girls to throw off the societal rules that tell them what they can and can't do. It is, needless to say, something of a unique film, and despite its B-movie production values a really good one too.

The Fabulous Stains also inspired some real-life girls to say "fuck the patriarchy" and pick up guitars. The film was a big deal with riot grrrls, and it's hard to listen to the Fabulous Stains and not be reminded of some of Bikini Kill's raw-ass early stuff:

Ladies and Gentlemen the Fabulous Stains has never had an official video release--I blame the Man--but next month Rhino is coming through for the riot grrrls, punk trainspotters, and Laura-Dern-in-a-skintight-bodysuit aficionados of the world by putting the movie out on DVD.

Tonight James Murphy and Pat Mahoney--front man and drummer of LCD Soundsystem, respectively--will be bringing their Special Disco Version party to Smart Bar. (My Critic's Choice is here.) At the forefront of an international underground disco revival, SDV is a celebration of the grittier, stranger, and infinitely less cheesy flip side to glossy pap like "The Hustle." I interviewed Mahoney (pictured, left) while he waited to catch his flight to Chicago.

Hey Pat. What's going on?

Just having a little breakfast in the lounge at the airport.

Tell me, you and James seem to be on a mission to rehabilitate disco's reputation.

I guess you could say that.

Disco seems to be a dirty word to a lot of people, but I think that the reason for that is they've only been exposed to "YMCA" and other terrible stuff like that.

Well, we're having a fuel crisis again. I guess it's time to come back.

Tell me about the type of stuff that you guys are spinning. To someone who's unfamiliar with the finer points of disco, what makes the stuff you guys are spinning different from what they might associate with the genre?

Instead of Studio 54 it's more Paradise Garage, so it's kind of grittier and definitely blacker and gayer than maybe what people are used to. And I think that's part of what people are frightened of, because that was an undercurrent of the Studio 54 thing, but this isn't as glossy or utterly frivolous. There is an escapist element to it that at the time was certainly appropriate, considering the state of the economy, and maybe that goes for today. Maybe that's why it's coming back.

A lot of that underground stuff, maybe it was just the time or the lack of . . . well, the Internet, but a lot of that stuff never left New York and the other big cities where there were underground disco scenes, and a lot of people now don't even realize that there was an underground disco scene.

I think that's definitely part of how we've been discovering it is how available everything is now and the fact that, you know, as things have been getting dug up and more people are discovering them, little re-edit labels have been starting out. The process of it being unearthed--all this great underground music--has been going on for a while and I think now it's getting more widespread attention, but we've been digging through this stuff for years now and getting really excited about it and playing it more and more and now it's pretty much all we're doing.

Well, you know, Chicago was the site of the Disco Demolition, which was kind of a low point. A lot of people in retrospect are figuring out a lot of the motivation, a lot of the sublimated racism and homophobia that contributed to antidisco feelings, and the Disco Demolition was kind of a nadir of that sentiment. You think you'll be able to rehabilitate Chicago's reputation while you're here?

Well, Chicago has such a great reputation due to house music, and the spirit of it never really died despite what happened at some media event. I don't think Chicago itself needs to be rehabilitated, but I think that it's great that you can play great music in a place that in a very public way did something destructive.

It is highly recommended that you clear some time Wednesday night to attend the annual Rock for Kids Music Mixer at Smart Bar, where you can bid on mix CDs made by a ton of local musicians, DJs, writers (including me), industry folks, and whatever term you'd use for what Cynthia Plaster Caster is. Music education in a lot of Chicago schools is so incredibly screwed that an organization that's partially funded by selling mix CDs offers many kids their only chance to learn an instrument. So by heading down there and bidding on a disc you can do a little good and walk away with some swag to boot.

The action runs from 7 till 11 PM. There's a $5 suggested donation (which is why it says "free" on the Metro calendar), and messiah impersonator and man-about-town DJ LA Jesus will be on hand to rock the party. 

In the meantime, there's a bunch of stuff autographed by the likes of the Walkmen, Vampire Weekend, Mission of Burma, and other big-name indie rockers at Rock for Kids' eBay store.

(For the record, my contribution is a double disc with cover art by Headache City's David R. Head Jr. and like the best jams ever.)

The very lengthy list of contributors is here (over to the left!), but a few highlights include Sanford Parker, Bundy K. Brown, Alla, Sybris, Jon Langford, Bloodshot Records, Yakuza, the 1900s, Office, Headache City, and Johnny Marr.

1) Do not get the new Wire record. Even if Wire is your favorite band. Especially if Wire is your favorite band. Don't even get it off BitTorrent or something. It may look like a Wire record and it may have an artsy title like a Wire record, but it sounds like (God help me) a second-rate Ned's Atomic Dustbin ripoff. 

2) If you're in the mood for minimalist, yelpy, alienated-sounding punk, instead of trying out the new Wire record (see above) maybe give the Girls a spin. I just finished their upcoming album, Yes No Yes No Yes No, and then started it again from the top. Dirtnap has a teaser track, "Transfer Station," available as a free MP3 download.

File under "cool but more interesting conceptually than it is to actually listen to"*: Adidas' Sportive commercial with a soundtrack assembled completely from the sounds of people doing sporty things.

Props for the elegant and intuitive visual representation of EQ sweeps.

*An attribute that could be more succinctly termed "Matmos-y."

(via Copyranter/AnimalNY)

On hearing of the untimely passing of Isaac Hayes, who died today at 65, some in the blogosphere admit that they think first of Shaft and South Park's Chef and Scientology.

I think of this song first. There were a few years in the mid-90s that I had "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" on pretty much infinite replay. It's from Hayes's 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul. Don't know what it was about it that hurt me so good. Maybe it was the sex. Or the piano.

As an avowed Girl Talk hater I generally don't even like hearing people say nice things about Girl Talk, but I will concede that it's cool that Rep. Mike Doyle (D-PA) is willing to take a stand defending Greg Gillis's right to sample other musicians' works for his shallow, novelty-dependent mashup thingers. Mostly just because I'm glad there's at least one person in elected office who knows what fair use is and thinks that it's an important thing to keep around.

Interesting point by Doyle on why Girl Talk hasn't had his ass sued by every single major label ever: "Case law gets built as cases are brought to court, and I think that more case law is going to fall on his side as this becomes more mainstream."

At 3 PM on Saturday, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Janis Ian will be at the Borders in Oak Brook to sign and discuss Society's Child: My Autobiography and the new compilation CD The Best of Janis Ian: The Autobiography Collection. The event is free.

Ian became a star on the strength of her 1975 single "At Seventeen" but later withdrew from the music business to study ballet and acting. She returned with a new album in '93 and continues to record and tour; she plays the Old Town School on Friday night at 8 PM. Tickets are $25, $23 for Old Town School members, $21 for seniors and kids.

Have you seen the totally insane video for Radiohead's "House of Cards" that they shot with lasers instead of cameras?

The major difference between this type of 3D-plotting setup and a traditional optical setup is that while a camera basically just absorbs the light coming into it, the lasers digitize a whole bunch of information that can be visually represented in any medium the data will fit. The band's made that data public, and one of their fans--presumably one with a glut of free time and an inhuman level of patience--has undertaken the insane task of converting part of it to Lego.

Between this and issuing the isolated "stem" tracks to "Nude" for a remix concert, Radiohead is leading the pack of bands turning themselves into public open-source projects. If only some other band would take them on, so I can write geeky technical blog posts without the word "Radiohead" in them.

The "hard mod" collective the Organisation, formed to push back against what it calls the "Austin Powers-isation" of mod (please note the British spelling), hosts its first weekender, A Harder Way of Life, beginning Thursday night at 9 PM with a free event at the Globe Pub that features a Circuits reunion (celebrating the northwest-side club that was vital to the scene in the 80s and 90s) and multiple DJs spinning soul, early R & B, ska, and reggae.

The party moves to Phyllis' Musical Inn (1800 W. Division) on Friday with more DJs, including Philthy Phil of New York oi band the Templars, and live acts the Irving Parkas and the Stone Lightning Band ($5).

Beginning Saturday morning at 9 AM the Bottom Lounge hosts a Moto Show and Jumble Sale, where you can swap parts for scooters, cycles, and cars, buy vintage clothes and vinyl, or get a haircut or tattoo; admission is free. That night DJs including the East of Edens Soul Express and live bands the Deccas (no, not the UK one) and JC Brooks & the Uptown Sound play the club's Volcano Room ($10).

Capping the weekend is a Sunday brunch at Uptown's Holiday Club, 4000 N. Sheridan.

Image from nualabugeye's Flickr stream.

I'm fairly certain that the casting call for VH1's Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels doesn't involve Bret Michaels actually rolling into town on a bus to steal our city's (trashiest) women, but in this crazy mixed-up world of ours, who knows? If the idea of spending quality time on a bus with Bret Michaels appeals to you, be at the Mansion tomorrow at 11:30 PM. Or get to the center of things and go see a therapist.

(Disclaimer: I actually love Poison and was once moved to tears at a Poison concert by the potent blend of "Every Rose Has Its Thorn," half a fifth of Jim Beam, and getting punched in the back of the head by an angry hillbilly.)

As you've probably noticed if you watch the MP Shows listings pages, South Union Arts has packed it in, at least for now--the last show of the season was Saturday. It's apparently just as impractical to keep a church cool in the middle of summer as it is to keep it warm in the middle of winter. 

The folks at MP plan to reopen the venue when the weather gets more manageable in September, but they're also looking for a new space that would allow them to quit South Union Arts for good.

Just in case you thought Tim Kinsella had a lock on the title of Most Audience-Alienating Kinsella, here's a report from a recent Owen show in Seattle from the Stranger's Line Out blog:

People yell out songs for him to play, and they are of course ignored. "These guys came from Utah and asked me to play like six songs, and I'm not going to play any of them," he shrugs. Someone yells out, "Fade to Black!" That sparks his attention. At the end of his set, Kinsella announces, "Okay, now I'm going to play every riff I know from 'Fade to Black.'" He knows most of the 7 minute Metallica epic, and goes from riff to riff for about three minutes, adding the occasional guitar solo with his mouth. When he's done with that he announces, "Now I'm going to play all the other Metallica riffs I know," and proceeds to toss out random sections of different songs. The crowd starts to get restless. Someone yells something at him, he responds, "Fuck you dude, I'm playing Metallica." After several minutes he walks off stage saying, "You don't want to hear this? These are the highest selling riffs of all time! I'll save them for an audience who cares." There is scattered applause. Outside I hear a girl tell her friends, "That was the shittiest performance I've ever seen, and I'm from Montana."

The Girls Rock! Chicago camp, now in its third summer, gives girls ages 9 through 16 a week to form a band and write a song (and in some cases learn their instruments). Every year the organization has thrown a send-off party for departing campers--an afternoon concert where all the bands get to take the stage at a proper rock club and play their songs. Back in 2006 it was at Schubas, but this year, like last year, it'll be at Metro. (It's a hell of a first gig, if you ask me--I've been playing in bands in Chicago for 12 years and would probably still get the jitters on that stage.)

The show's Saturday at 3:30 PM (doors at 3) and should wrap up by 5:30. It's all-ages, natch. The six-dollar cover benefits the Girls Rock! Chicago camp, of course, and all 17 camper bands will play. None of this year's girls have quite matched the strangest band name to come out of the 2007 camp--that'd be Contagious Love (of Chicken and Potatoes)--but you will get to hear Toe Jam Football, Day Beard Knife, and my personal favorite, Time's Up, Tuna.