Location: Quennect 4
Show: 20 kHz Open Mic
Cost: $3 or a donation of canned food
Drinks: BYO
Things I missed to be there: Dance party at Big Chicks
Reason I went: Nasty cut on my foot
Quennect Four has done a lot since the last time I was there. They've erected a stage and movable walls, and filled the basement with revolution-themed art, including a stenciled Gil Scott Heron and a ten foot mural of solidarity that recalls images of Zapatistas and that last scene in V for Vendetta. They haven't put on a lot of shows and parties since the one I was spinning at that got busted, but twice a month, the space opens up to 20 Khz, an open mic put on by Chicago's Appollo Project.
The Appollo Project have been around for a couple years and put on some dope shows on the not-too far North and not-too far South sides of the city, usually imcorporating, DJs, bands, hip hop, and live painting. When I got to Quennect, some cats were playing pool upstairs, where Lord Tyger was spinning calypso, oldies amd soul records. Downstairs, Army of Juan were playing their usual mix of rap, rock, and reggae. If I'm in the right mood, AOJ sounds exciting in all the ways that a band utilizing those three elements could sound (think Ozomatli). If I'm in the wrong mood, they can sound as boring and uninspired as a lot of bands that use those three elements can sometimes sound (think Ozomatli).
I don't want to lump the whole crowd into a single scene, like all open mics, a wide variety of people showed up, but I think that I can use any combination of the following three words to describe about ninety percent of the people there: Socialist, Hispanic, and Tagger. I don't mean to attach any negative connotation to these words, mind you, jst to describe the type of show. I figure this is important because the word open mic can conjure up any number of images that, while appealing to some, are sure to horrify ohers, say lesbian folk, left behind beat poets who not only didn't die young but still haven't died old, Def Poetry-style slam, or drum circles. While there was supposed to be a drum circle at the end of the night, I didn't stay around long enough to find out. I did catch a few open mic standards, including the girl rapping about how her boyfriend doesn't write her rhymes or design her tags for her (which is, apparently, what some people must think) and the goofy guy who sang a "lounge" version of "Baby Got Back" (c'mon people, you don't have to dif that far to see that Sir Mix-A-Lot had dozens of hilarious songs). One thing I'd never seen at an open mic before was a full hardcore band. They were high school students and they drove most of the crowd upstairs to smoke, but they were good, and it was pretty cool to see an open mic with room for multiple bands (full bands!) to play, especially loud, crashing, hardcore bands.
I cut my teeth reading at these kind of places. It provides a good balance. Places like Gallery 37, Young Chicago Authors, 826Chi, and Afterschool Matters provide Chicago students with places to hone their skills and receive criticism from writers who can step up with their own shit, but those places use traditional discipline, a strict hierarchy, and selective censorship (usually, in the form of "don't let our funders see when you write about real shit), joints like this provide the young'uns with a place where they get treated as equals by their drinking-age peers, where no one will bat an eye if they're doing the shit they do anyway, and as long as they respect the house rules, they get treated with that same respect. There are rarely more than two or three places like that at any given time, and even by those standards, this was a particularly good one.
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