Halloween Funk [WLUW]

fats waller - beale street blues
Residents - Excerpt from Third reich n roll
Residents - boots
Frank Zappa - My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama

The Contortions - I Can't Stand Myself
james brown - hell
Quantic featuring Spanky Wilson - Don't Joke With a Hungry Man
The Coasters - Charlie Brown

The Coasters - Yakety Yak
Screamin Lord Sutch - Jack the ripper
Screamin Jay - Little Demon
Bobby Pickett - Monster Mash

Fats Domino - I'm gonna be a wheel someday
Anton Lavey - Satan Takes a Holiday
the love exchange - swallow the sun
smiley lewis - I hear you knocking
THe clovers - Devil or angel

Dinah Washington - I don't hurt any more
Owusu & Hannibal - Monster
Funkadelic - Miss Lucifer's Love


Gnarls Barkley - The Boogie Monster
Axiom Funk - Hideous Mutant Freekz
The Mighty Hannibal - Big Chief Hug Um and Liss Um

Fishbone - Ugly
Quincy Jones - Hikky Burr
The Coasters - Young Blood

Ernie K-Doe - Mother-In-Law
Nina Simone - I Put a Spell on You
Lee Dorsey - Workin In a Coal Mine

JD & the Evil's Dynamite Band - Haaa-Sheesh and Just Some More Haaa-Sheesh
JJ Barnes - Our Love is in the Pocket
Lee Fields & the Explorers - I'm the Man

Rose Batiste - Hit and Run

[Every Monday night, Two Slaps Radio plays the best and most unconventional funk and soul in Chicago, with all of its roots and derivatives including acid jazz, doo-wop, brass band, girl groups and electro. Two Slaps radio can be heard live from 2-4am on WLUW 88.7fm and www.wluw.org]

Are they really named after that building on Halsted?

[I'm having a total writing slump, I apologize for the wonky wording of this. It was written on two different days about two different shows and probably shouldn't have been combined]

"Alright, fifteen more minutes of this and then we go away."

The song that is playing, and that has been playing, is a looped polka constructed from one (or perhaps many) unrecognizable songs from children's television, with creepy, warped laughter layered over it.

Hteeth is on stage. I can't tell if Hteeth is one or two guys, because there is one guy fiddling with electronics and another crouched behind an amplifier. The guy who isn't hiding jumps off the stage and into the crowd, most of whom stand with awkward stares, some of whom nod their heads, and tells me:

"In Abu-Ghraib, they make men wear hoods over their faces."

"Uh huh." I'm waiting for the joke, expecting it to be horrible (like some tacky, offensive thing intended to shock me).

"They make them wear hoods so they can't see, and stick them in these storage containers, like 4 by 6 feet, or smaller, and play Barney songs over and over for upwards of ten hours at a time, just to fuck with them."

I'm pleasantly surprised. They're giving us a taste of torture.

When he walks away I go to the bar. A friend of mine is over there with someone who is freaking out. They're both high. The song has been playing for ten minutes now. It's working.

The Select Media Fest was put together by the people who run the Lumpen zine and the the Terry Plumming record/cd-r label, and they're a confrontational bunch. Last year's festival was centered mostly around Bridgeport, which they dubbed the Community of the Future. Although they played the fest as a celebration of Bridgeport, the neighborhood where a lot of them lived and worked, they aren't (and weren't) really that naive. Bridgeport was (and is) a very insular, mostly white, mostly blue collar neighborhood on Chicago's South Side and while some Lumpens, like founder Ed Marzewski, had lived there a long time, most were just moving in, many of them from Wicker Park. For anyone unfamiliar with Wicker Park, here's a brief synopsis: artists move into working class neighborhood, yuppies follow, artists get priced out and have to find new digs in another working class neighborhood. Although it wasn't their intention, the flight of Lumpen cholos was seen by many residents as a sign that what happened in Wicker Park would happen in Bridgeport and that "Community of the Future" was seen as a comment that the neighborhood's past didn't matter to these new people, as if this place was unenlightened and they were going to make it special.

"Turn off the fucking lights. Turn off the fucking lights and turn this way. Turn off if you want us to play the way we're suppose to play and be seen."

There was another very confrontational part of the fest at Reversible Eye, and it wasn't the rail against the houselights by one of the members of Columbia, MO's Warhammer 48k. It was "The Freak is The rock show", a musical sitcom by Drew Zigler. It was performancre art squared, as if Paper Rad raped The PRDF and they were trying to scare people into having fun. There were googly eyes and glitter explosions, teleconferences with monsters, and the live birth of multiple spraypainted Daylo babies, all being filmed in front of a hipster crowd for the Youtube generation. It was massive, bleeding off the stage in every direction. The door was blocked with no way out, and if you didn't like it, you still had to deal.

Overall, though, this year's festival was a lot more low-key than last years (perhaps because of the massive undertaking of this year's Version Festival, put on by the same people). It was also a lot less neighborhood-centric with shows in West Town, Bridgeport, Ukranian Village, Wicker Park and whatever neighborhood South Union Arts is located in. But where Version is a festival of art, Select is a festival of media, and most media festivals aren't confrontational at all. There are movies and maybe bands and people sit or stand and watch. Select created an answer to this by having video shot live and bands playing in nontraditional ways in nontraditional parts of regular concert venues.

Tonight's free show at the Empty Bottle ended the festival and served as a release party the new Terry Plumming double-comp Bacon is the Inside Outside World. This show was full of scumbag noise groups, from the garage dreck of David Diarreah to the fuck-the-place up theatre of America's Meth Problem. It also featured the danceable experimentation of Waterbabies, weirdo hip hop by Brenmar Someday, and the always above par Insect Deli. Hteeth tossed out some serviceable but not-new noise and Assdroids played but I missed them.

Peep the album, it's one lp, one cd-r and a lot of art/propaganda/propagandart by familiar Terry Plumming artists, including Al Burian, John Polacheck, Elisa, Party Steve, Carpet of Sexy and all of tonight's bands.


Here's a video of Warhammer 48k, where they rip shit. At the Reversible Eye show, they sounded more like sludgy grunge music, like a darker version of Alice in Chains. Maybe someone really should have extinguished that un-turnoffable light.

Two Slaps Radio [WLUW]

Arvo's Set:

TV On The Radio - Mr. Grieves
Kaada - Burden
The Flamingos - I only have eyes for you

The Persuaders - Thin Line Between Love and Hate
Solomon Burke - Just Out of Reach (of my two open arms)
Chantels - Maybe
Patti Labelle and the Blue Belles - Somewhere over the rainbow

Diane Ray - Please Don't Talk To The LifeGuard
Bernadette Castro - GEt Rid of Him
Roy Montrell - (Everytime I hear that mellow saxophone)
Nappy Brown - Don't be angry
Joe Turner - Shake Rattle and Roll

Screaming Lord Sutch - Jack THe Ripper
Anton LaVey - Satan Takes a Holiday
Warren Zevon - Excitable Boy
White Zombie - I'm Your Boogie Man

Lena Horne - Nobody Knows The Trouble I've Seen
The Incredibles - There's Nothing Else to Say
FOETUS - Wash

Lab Rat set:

The Dometown Gang - Rock In
Speedometer - Soul Safari
The Sweets - Satisfy My Baby

Dudley Perkins - Funky Dudley !!
Gene Harris & the Three Sounds - The Look of Slim
The Roots - Boom!

Ray Charles - The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane
Beastie Boys - Egg Man
The 5,6,7,8s - Green Onions (Booker T & the M.G.s cover)

Ike & Tina Turner - Louie Louie
The Megatons - Shimmy Shimmy Walk, Part 1
The Detroit Land Apples - I Need Help

Handsome Boy Modeling School - Magnetizing
Hank Ballard - From the Love Side
The Fury's - I'm Satisfied

[Every Monday night, Two Slaps Radio plays the best and most unconventional funk and soul in Chicago, with all of its roots and derivatives including acid jazz, doo-wop, brass band, girl groups and electro. Two Slaps radio can be heard live from 2-4am on WLUW 88.7fm and www.wluw.org]

Chicago Horror Party [WZRD]

James Polk & the Brothers - Just Plain Funk
The "Great" Deltas - Just Plain Funk
Larry Ellis & the Black Hammer - Funky Thing
Lady Sovereign - It's All Your Fault
Swell Maps - H.S. Art

Cut Chemist feat. Hymnal -
The Mabuses - Life in a Life Boat
Black Neon - Ode to Immer Wieder
The Mojo Men - Sit Down, I Think I Love You
Amon Duul - Dr. Jeckyll !

What thefuck happened during this set???
Henry Rollins - [some spoken word piece. had to cut. said cocksucker too many times]
Pop Art - Ancient Art [had to cut. worst song I've ever heard]
The Elastic Spastic Band - Side Womb [had to cut. too much of everything]
Babes In Toyland - Swamp Pussy/he's my thing
Benny Goodman - After You've Gone
Daniel Johnston - I Killed the Monster

Nurse With Wound - Nil by Mouth
Alien Sex Fiend - bun-Ho!/Everybody'sDream/Radiant City
Jawbox - Bullet Park
Dissent - Superman
Downfall- LongWay To Go
DeadSilence - Hope
Cringer - Pay to Play
Bazooka Joe - Phoenix
Libido Boyz - Mr. Greenthumb
Hey Ear (phoenetic pronunciation of Hebrew) - Factory Carnivore
ID Under - Picasso's Three Musicians

Kieren Hebden and Steve Reid - Drop theRhythms, HoldDown the Machines

Giant Metal Insects - White Boy Weezin'
Negazione -Fall Apart/Get Away/It's Hard

John Polachek - Two Will Be With Me
Hoggle - Escaping Oxygen
Insect Deli - Xmasforever febvmar
Roesingape - Sitwell's Ashtray Rent Pain
Mothguts - Jamaican HorrorShow!


[Chec it out, David Firth, the cat behind the flash cartoon Salad Fingers, did a stop-motion animation Nurse With Wound video]

Deals Gone Bad, Done Dirt Cheap

Show: Deals Gone Bad
Location: Cobra Lounge
Price: Nada
Things I missed to see it: Cartune Xpress at Green Lantern, In One Ear at the Heartland
Reason I went: I was coming from the southside and it was the southernmost thing I knew of

One of the problems with writing is that it's far easier to pan things than it is to make an interesting case as to why one thing or another is worth your time or money. Tonight I'm drunk and there's nothing I'd like to do more than slag a band I used to appreciate, but that's not why I started this blog. Still, I can't do the positive without the negative so I'm gonna start with two ways I could have written a pussy column, followed by three things that made it worthwhile.

The glass is half empty:
1. They won't say it now, but when the Cobra Lounge was still working out their licenses, they describerd themselves as an "Upscale Rock Bar" which is nothing more than an oxymoron. I don't care how many punk-damaged DJs they have playing Mission of Burma and Youth Brigade tributes every night, there's a velvet curtain outside the door and that's not very punk rock.

2. A few years back, my friend Ben's band shared a practice space with Deals Gone Bad. It was an unassuming factory spot in East Rogers Park, and many a night was spent there consuming whiskey and late-night tacos. It was a center of debauchery, to be sure, but it was also a stepping stone for the band. They shared a space with Deals Gone Bad, a real band. Deals Gone Bad had appeared on all of the Jump Up! compilations and by the time we actually saw them, we had their set pretty well mnemorized. Then all of a sudden, things had changed. Deals Gone Bad weren't at the head of a reggae skapunk revval, they were just a bunch of old white men who couldn't adapt, and when I saw them tonight, they didn't sound like a band with strong roots in British and American soul music, they sounded like a Blues Brothers cover band.


The glass still has beer in it:

1. One of the dudes in the band looks like Brian Posehn.

2. Skinheads. Chicago used to be crawling with them. Northside factions, Southside factions, racist skins, anti-racist skins, trad skins, throwback skins, Chicago Mafia Skins. Cafes used to be full of young girls with chelsea cuts that I could fall in love with. Now I only see them at shows.

And I don't see them at most shows. I see them at reunion shows. I see them when the Subhumans come to town. I see them at old Chicago shows. I see them at Southside shows. Not like Pilsen or Bridgeport but reeeeal Southside shows where Blue Island bands like Fear City are playing. A lot of the throwback boys have a thing for soul music, and there's not a lot of game in town for soul that isn't totally mod so these guys flock to Deals Gone Bad who at least put an effort into throwing soul in with the ska. Maybe there are other reasons. I don't know, because I've never been a skinhead, but it's still nice to see the boys around.

3. Burning Angel Girls. Back before there was a huge market for punk rock pornography, I had to download homemade photos like this (which I still have leftover from a set of topless skinheads I got off a high school dial-up connection):


identity protected because she probably didn't receive money to have this circulated online her whole life

Now I can go to a place like Burning Angel and watch girls like these...



...take it up the ass in mid-res downloadable video to the full contentment of my heart. And there are hundreds of them. Thousands even. Acording to Myspace and Friendster and Suicidegirls and Supercult and whatever the fuck webjag phenomena is gonna come next, the whole country is full of them...but where are they? Where are all of these beautiful women when they aren't getting tattoos or doing porn or roller derby?

I rarely see them at shows, or the supermarket, or on public transit. There were some at art school but not enough to account for all of them...

They're here, at the Upscale Rock Bars, where they can be sweet-talked by rawk-by-night day traders over PBRs and Cosmos, and the show tonight was full of them. It's enough to make me want to get a real job.


Verdict: The show was alright. The crowd was fun. The beers were bought for me by friends. The band wasn't particularly great, but they were never groundbreaking to begin with. As usual though, I'm probably wrong, because the crowd loved their asses off on that show.

Two Slaps Radio

Lab Rat Set:

Owusu & Hannibal - Lonnie's Secret
Masonic Wonders - I Call Him
Spanky Wilson & the Quantic Soul Orchestra - Don't Joke With a Hungry Man

Medeski, Martin, Scofield & Wood - Little Walter Rides Again
Charly Antolini's Power Dozen - Nofrete's Headache
Dudley Perkins - Wassup World

Lee 'Scratch' Perry - Perry's Ballad
Ronnie Whitehead - Out of Breath
Beck - Dark Star

The Coup - We Are the Ones
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Genuine
Holger Hiller - Macome (Yoruba BPM)

The Miracles - Mickey's Monkey
Ernie K-Doe - Mother-In-Law
TV on the Radio - I Was a Lover

Fuckhead Set:

Kaada - Care
Ray Charles - Mary Ann
Don Covay and the Goodtimers - Mercy Mercy
Lena Horne - It's a Rainy Day

Booker T and the MG's - something from the best of
Booker T and the MG's - Green Onions
Booker t and the mg's - From the Best of CD

Screaming Lord Sutch - Jack the Ripper
Insatiable - Munsters Cues
D. Roeser - Sombody's Watching me
White Zombie - I'm your boogie man

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - Heart Attack and Vine
PIG - Never For Fun
FOETUS - SLog

[Every Monday night, Two Slaps Radio plays the best and most unconventional funk and soul in Chicago, with all of its roots and derivatives including acid jazz, doo-wop, brass band, girl groups and electro. Two Slaps radio can be heard live from 2-4am on WLUW 88.7fm and www.wluw.org]

headcold at the old [WZRD]

Warhammer 48k- ???
Scissor Girls - M. Poison
Lady Sovereign - Ch Ching (Spank Rock Remix)
A. I. Z. - Good Morning, Good Death


Lady Sovereign - Drunk on Radiation
Senor Coconut - Behind the Mask
Heiner Goebbels and Alfred Harth - Blitze Uber Moskau
Crippled Insectual - Crippled Prom Night 1982
The Dub Funk Association - Sufferer Dub

The Weird Weeds - Salt Shaker
Freundshaft - ???
Beans - You're Dead, Let'sDisco
The Box - Limpopo
Relaxcitement - George Washington

Toyah - Ieya
Banisteriopsis - MaybeSomething More

Gert Wilden & Orchestra- Music from sexy German films (1968 - 1972)

Dosh - The Everybody Cheer Up Song
The Ex - Scrub that Scum
The Bastard Trio - The Burrowing Oak Demon
Naked Raygun - Rat Patrol
Just-Ice - ColdGettin Dumb

The Boredoms - Soul Discharge Medley

IT'S ALL-VINYL OCTOBER AT WZRD!

Screeching Weasel - I'm Not In Love
Shonen Knife - Cycling Is Fun
Diamanda Galas - WildWomen with Knives

Lydia Lunch - Stinkfist
MDC - Millions of Dead Cops
The Mummies - Skinny Minnie
Chumbawumba - pop star kidnap/sometimes plunder

Daevid Allen with New York Gong - Much Too Old !
Sun City Girls - Cad Walleder
S.P.U.D. - Jesus Extreme
Distorted Pony - Hod
The Buzzcocks - Hollow Inside

Stephen Brown/Peter Principle/Nicolas Klau - Venus in Furs
Frank Zappa - Jewish Princess
The Stooges - 1969

Dissidenten - Nalini Kanti
John Lurie - SixtiesAvant-Garde
Ray Charles - What'd I Say

Laibach - Macbeth
Onairlibrary! - Faultered Ego !
Edith Piaf - T'es L'Homme Qu'il MeFaut
Sugarhill Gang - Rapper'sDelight

NUSRAT FATEH ALI KHAN - KEHNA GHALAT TO CHUUPANA SAHI SAHI

Rectangle Punk

Tonight was a night of solid, no-frills punk and hardcore at The Mutiny. Nothing went wrong, except for the fact that all the half-pitchers had disappeared by the time the first band had set up.

It's always good to see Southkore bands play in Logan Square, where the only regular locations to play are the Mutiny and La Casa Maldita. You get to see a lot of the Northside faces who rarely get a chance to venture to shows South of the Albion House, and a lot of Southside faces that you rarely see North of 18th Street. If only the joint was all ages, it'd be like another Fireside. Sigh.

I liked Belligerent Outburst, except for any time anyone other than the singer sang, which was probably bad on purpose. "Die From the Colonel" was probably the best song I've heard about franchise fast food since MDC's "Corporate Deathburger" (which itself ranks just above the Descendent's "Der Wienershnitzel", which loses points for being a West Coast thing, but gains points for its placement in Pump Up the Volume).

"I wrote this song fifteen years ago!"
"So what."
"I was eleven."
"I was ten."
"I was eight."

Making punks feel old, or at least guilty for their nostalgia, is always fun.

Condenada and No Slogan played consistently great sets. I left before Eske.


Belligerent Outburst at The Mutiny


[currently listening to "Cheerleaders Vs. Drill Team" by Totally Michael]

Eyes Back

I haven't written about shows in a while, which is a shame because I've been to about fifty since the last time I've written, and the majority were under five dollars, all ages and phenomenal. There have even been some amazing festivals. Some of the ones that I can remember are Radioinactive, Minotaur, Vyle and the Walkie Talkies at Schubas; Diplo and Os Mutantes at Pitchfork Fest; Roky Erikson, the Boredoms, and Lady Sovereign at Intonation; Bastard Sons of the Apocalypse, Tropietzo, Outraged and a Los Crudos reunion at the Black Hole arcade for Southkore Fest; No Slogan and Sunday Morning Einstein at the Albion House; my favorite Klezmer band Yid Vicious at Summer Dance; Amadou and Marian at Milennium Park, Nora Keyes and Madame P at Reversible Eye; Doug Travis and Pal at the Darkroom; Lovely Little Girls at the Empty Bottle, Crucial Conflict at a blockparty; The Coup and Youngblood Brass Band at another block party; Paperrad and Waterbabies at Red-i; He Not In all over the place; same thing for Right-Eye Rita, Rotten Milk, Insect Deli and Carpet of Sexy; Bear Attack and Abrade might have been the bands I saw at a squat that didn't last very long afterwards; TK Raptor, Velcro Lewis and Mister Fuckhead at the Tastee Freeze; Soft Serve, the Machinist, and Satan 2000 at the Peter Jones Gallery; Charlie Newman with ZootSuitBeatnick and Malcolm Palmer at Subterranean; a few shows at the dearly departed Beach House, and George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic at Africa Fest in Washington Square Park.

Some notables: 2 Per Cent Majesty who played with Black Bear Combo at the Beauty Shop; the former being an amazing violin and guitar postfolk duo and the latter being one of my favorite, ever evolving Chicago brass punk ensembles. Shanghai Triad, who played at the Toc Toc Cafe in Montreal, is a (sometimes) duo that plays Chinese pop music from the 1920s. William Sides Atari Party is getting better and better. I saw him open for Mad Happy at Hotti Biscotti, which was an electro rap group from Florida comprised of a couple of Burning Man dropouts who sang positive lyrics over electro beats. Woah Nelly was the bar band when I got to the Gladstone Hotel to do a show in Toronto, and they were one of the best country acts I've ever seen. I fell hard for the singer when she took out an accordion and even harder when she sang a knockout version of "We'll Meet Again" (y'know, that that song from Dr. Strangelove. And then there were two amazing synth groups at the Mauled By Tigers show I saw at Ronny's bar. Screamin Cyn-Cyn & the Pons and Totally Michael were two of the best acts I've seen all year. Also Ratty Scurvics Singularity one man band at the Cabaret of the Nameless in an appropriately un-titled warehouse on the South Side, where his organ music provided a backdrop for Eric Bang!'s circus disgusting and amazing acts.

It's a shame that when I was going to three or four shows a week I couldn't drag myself to the keyboard to write about them, and now that my last month has been consumed by my search for employment, I can only write about shows I've been a part of.



This was part of Mister Fuckhead's monthly series at Bar Vertigo. He Not In have one too. It's a shame that Bar Vertigo is so lame otherwise. Anyway, Ruby and I did DJ sets between bands as Radio Dysentary.

The first act was Ami Gloria, who's been doing experimental music in Chicago for years. Recently her sets have gotten more traditional. Her work today consisted of her on keyboard and guitar, doing lo-fi ambient music. It sounded like a garage version of Orbital, which felt good, since I've been craving the song "Halcyon (On and On) lately, but getting disappointed every time I hear it.

Then came Zombie Mike (known to many as Mike the Midget). I've never seen Mike do anything other than play the drums in punk bands like the Dirtbikes. As Zombie Mike he covers himself with green paint and plays quirky country songs on his guitar. Mosquito Bandito took country in a different direction as a one-man rockabilly band, singing, playing guitar, playing drums, and occasionally playing the drums with his guitar. His voice was a little off-key, and too fresh for the twang he was making, but I'm sure that with a some more miles behind him, he'll grow into his caterwaul. Both acts were great live but I'm skeptical as to how they would sound recorded. Actually, you can check out Mosquito on his website but you'll have to wait a little longer for Zombie Mike.