Location: Mr. City
Cost: $5
Things I missed to be there: Tom Morello and a bunch of political hiphop acts and antiwar war veterans at UIC, Telefon Tel Aviv at the new Rawk! space, karaoke kegger at the SAB loft, musical haunted house on Division
The Friday before Halloween.
Last year, I was going to take my bike out for my first Critical Mass and then hit up Mister City for a show with the Coughs and Lozenge. My girlfriend and I were fighting, my bike got stolen and I drank to much at the show (which was itself pretty awesome). I went to two more parties that night, and ended my night writing an overly dramatic suicide note.
This year I was able to improve a bit. I kept my bike and had my first Mass and made it to Mister City unscathed.
It was a a benefit and release party for Chicago's new free paper,The Skeleton News, which intends to run biweekly soon. It's a decent paper, with contributions by Liam Warfield (who used to do the War Against the Idiots zine as Liam Idiot), Al Burian (Burn Collector), Grant reynolds and the Hairy Nipples Comics Collective. I was surprised to see a sports section and a crossword puzzle, even if a lot of the clues were snarky gibberish.
[an exquisite corpse by the Hairy Nipples Comics Crew]
The first act was Josephine Foster. Her most recent album, A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing, is a collection of songs based on 19th century German compositions by the likes of Goethe andShubert. It's at times sexy and haunting, the type of album that's best listened to alone with the volume turned up way high. The music wasn't as powerful live as it was on cd. Everything was more -and usually this isn't a bad thing- organic. Her voice was sounded more raw an the music took on a softer edge,like very un-freaky freak folk.
Next up, from the back of the basement, was Bird Names. Good stuff, mostly (if not all) instrumental but I was too engrossed in champagne and conversation to pay attention.
Lovely Little Girls played third. The last time I saw them, the band included a choir of girls that acted out one of Gregory Jacobsen's grim faerie tales with spaghetti and meat sauce dripping down their faces as they sang in English and Polish. Only one of them was present today and no one could find her until Gregory led the band and the audience in a chant of "Where is our little Po-lish girl?" while the band played a kind of doom jazz. I couldn't tell that it was something going wrong and not part of the show until she ran upto the stage, looking a bit irritated. The show was riddled with technical problems that I couldn't actually tell until someone apologized for them (of course that might have been the booze). The band played a fairly danceable set, the show happened at eye level, so any theatrics that didn't happen in the middle of the crowd were lost. I highly recommend seeing the band. The cast rotates around Gregory, but it's a slow rotation, so although the sets never seem to be the same, the sound is very familiar.
[The Lovely Little Girls at Mister City]
Last up was the Coughs, who may or may not be breaking up at the end of their current tour. By this time I was two bottles of champagne deep, and I only remember brief bits and pieces of this set. I was one of the only people dancing, and I think I pulled a number of folks down onto the ground as I collided into them. Sorry.
I made an ass of myself but I didn't want myself dead. Even if I did skin the hell out of my leg, get in a screaming fight with my girlfriend, and go totally aggro weaving my bike through assholes in Wicker to get home, it was a much better year than the last.
Lovely Little Girls somewhere else
No comments:
Post a Comment