Date: 6/30/07 Location: Chicago Cultural Center Bands: Super 8 Bit Brothers, Nullsleep, Bit Shifter, and visuals MF Chicago Cost: FREE! Drinks: Flasked? Things I missed to be there: Happy Salmon at Permaent Records Reason for going: I was told we would be able to hear videogame music and play videogames
"This song is about the three best things in the world: Girls, time travel, and super string theory."
Rocking out on a hotwired Gameboy, New York's Nullsleep can't help but to look like a petulant, hyperactive kid at an airport.
This is the opening salvo of a four-part series of videogame themed shows sponsored by Art of Play Chicago, which brings the Ohm Multimedia Series to the Cultural Center and aims to transform the tourism center across the street into an indoor playground with a revolving set of toys ranging from board games to videogames to model planes, trains, and automobiles. The Cultural Center may seem like an odd place for this but you can tell that the audience, a weird assemblage of nerds, ravers, programmers, circuit bending noise musicians, and tweaker high school kids in Mindless Self Indulgence t-shirts, are all happy to be inside and well-hidden away from the sun on this hot Saturday afternoon.
"If you can, I'd like to see you buy some shirts or cds, because I'm back in school and, well, books on time travel are really expensive. Also, I've got one smll t-shirt left, so if anyone wants it, you've all got half an hour to shrink down and buy it."
Date: 6/30/07 Location: Intercourse Bands: Mister Fuckhead and Friends, Dan Layne, Eavil, Spunky Toofers, Neues Musiker-Kollektiv, Sir Vixx and more Price: $8 suggested Drinks: BYO / $1 cans of crap Things I missed to be there: El Zocalo Urbano 2 Year Anniversary with Maintenance Crew, Ultratumbados, Eske, Condenada, Scheme, Jam One and more; Underground Existence with Gabe Polomo and Matt Main; Pearls Mahone & the One Eyed Jacks at the Mutiny; Lord of the Yum Yum and Oh My God at Schubas Reason I went: Wasn't sure how late the Urbano Jam was going, wanted to do both, started late
"Does anyone like videogames?"
An awkward cheer rises up from the crowd, emotionless, like a person trying to be encouraging without dropping their posture, multiplied until it's a crowd. There were some real cool motherfuckers at the show tonight, but there was some family too.
"Good, cause that's all I write songs about."
Neues Musiker-Kollektiv, better known as Mike Perkins (or that dude from Far Rad), runs back and forth into the crowd like the "Near/Far" song from Sesame Street, if it were set in Blade Runner. Dan Layne is filming everything, feeding it into his computer, and projecting it out as some soret of wonky digital kaleidoscope. As Mike resets one of the machines in the corner, he asks us if we'd rather hear a song about the videogame Paperboy, or the movie Total Recall.
Mike Perkins as Benny: I got four kids to feed Mike Perkins as Arnold Schwarzenegger: So what happened to number five? Mike Perkins as Benny: Aw, shit, man! You got me. I ain't even married. Now put your fuckin' hands in the air! [electronic breakdown] Audience Member 1: What the fuck? Audience member 2: I have no fuckin idea. Mike Perkins as Arnold Schwarzenegger: Get in the fucking helicopter now!
Hoggle comes up next. Goofy clothes. Grotesque rubber mask. Writhing around on the floor. In a room full of people who've seen the way Hoggle acts at parties, no one knows he's performing until he starts rapping and climbing a man he wil later introduce to us as George W.
Later, as Spunky Toofers is crawling around on his hands and knees, looping from one broken toy to the next, I hear Hoggle and George W share this heartwarming exchange.
George W: I've known this motherfucker for ever... Hoggle: Seventeen lifetimes, we were vikings together. George W: We've done everything but grow up together as kids. Hoggle: In the next life, man. In the next life.
Like I said, a lot of posturing, but a lot of family too.
Date: 6/27/08 Location: (1)The Mutiny (2) The Freeform Shuffle at Spot 6 Bands: (1) Meah! and Michael Michael Motorcycle DJs: (2) Sir Vixx, Crusty, Arvo Fuckhead Things I missed to be there: Opposites Attack, I am the Liquor, Rotten Milk, Total Abuse, Dirty Sheets, and Carrezza at the Co-Prosperity Sphere; the other bands at the Mutiny like The Sass Dragons and the God Damn Doo Wop Band; the other DJs at the Freeform Shuffle like DJ Demchuk and LA Jesus Reasons I went: Too hot to write or work out at home, had to go somewhere, Bridgeport still too far
Global warming is actually a misnomer. While one of the very real consequences of the use of Greenhouse Gases is the deterioration of the ozone, our planet's natural shield of defense against the bad parts of the sun's rays, it does not necessarily mean the world is going to get warmer. Some gases, the kind that form smoke and smog and other grey things can work as a buffer between us and the ultraviolets, while others may reflect them, and still others may magnify them. The one thing we do know about the Greenhouse Effect is that without a natural defense against the sun, everything goes batshit. Light, tides, temperature, menstruation, circadian rhythm.... everything goes crazy. Eventually the pendulum will swing, and before it settles we'll see chilled summers and superheated winters. It'll be New Zealand all the time and I can't wait.
The weather almost kept me in today, after a day of work and an overlong meeting, but I was saved by my own obstinance and a lonely friend with a car.
The sun was nowhere to be seen and it was still too goddamn close for it to be worth it. Wednesday Night was an acceptable loss so all reasonable people stayed inside.
The cops slow down to yell at us for loitering, but think better of it. The car has A/C. Arvo has drunk himself back in time, yelling belligerent nonsense at strangers on the street like a 14-year old with a chip on his shoulder against yuppies.
Inside Spot 6, a naked Sir Vixx hangs from the water pipe and humps his set partner to the sounds of their own spastic techno. His dreads thrash around like a tortured octopus in a Japanese fetish movie. With his hairy muscles heaving, he looks kind of like a gorilla, a gorilla wearing an octopus sombrero, or perhaps one of the nightmares from Jacob's Ladder has taken up breakcore.
A gothic furry in cat ears and pentacle tries to catch an umbrella being waved above his head from the couch. I see my friend across the street in his wheelchair, and everyone thinks it's perfectly dickish of me to not cross the street my own self until he starts trying to bargain for sex. He is not one to be pitied, at least not for any of the reasons anyone would want to.I move his leg for him, as one of the foot plates has been bent out of place, and he asks me if I have any blow. We ditch each other for home and the next adventure. The computer for me. Neo for him.
Margaret runs up with a sweaty, drunken hug, "I'm playing the cymbal!"
At the Mutiny, MEAH! plays a dual set with Michael Michael Motorcycle. A blue bin in the center holds various pots, pans, cymbals, drumsticks, and coffee cans for interested parties to band upon, although most of the people remaining have put them down to jump up and down with what is left of their half pitchers.
I can't imagine the Mutiny having an awesome air conditioning system, but for the few minutes we got to see the last set of the night, we were as comfortable as Australians in July, getting ready for winter.
Date: 6/26/07 Location: Club Azucar Bands: Demonslaught, Condenada, and 2 Minute Tantrum Things I missed to be there: Scrabblor with Gutter Butter at Red-i; Thanx for the Memories with Thax Douglas, Daniel Knox, and the Syllable Section at Ronny's; Outdanced! with DJs Rand Sevilla, Pier Novikov, and Peaches at the Funky Buddha Lounge Reason for going: Wanted to see blood get spit + it was a friend's birthday + job interview in the morning and too many motherfuckers at the Funky Buddha
A Chicago institution that may be going the way of the dinosaur is the liquor store with a bar in the back/bar with a liquor store in the back. Personal favorites in West Town and Ukie Village are long gone now, and I can't help but think that Crown Liquors/Club Azucar is next. There's just something so scummy about these places and their clientel, as if as a whole they're scummier than the sum of their parts, that Daley and his lapdog aldermen can't stand them.
As scummy liquour store bars go, Club Azucar isn't that bad. Sure, some of their regulars look equal parts living dead and cautionary tale, but if you walled off the fluorescent entrance to the store, you'd have a better looking place than any of the bars on my block. Nice TVs and jukebox, good selection, nice design, a fairly ample dancefloor and now.... punk and grindcore shows!
I hate to say it, but this may very well end up being the place's undoing. Maybe not, though, or at least not for a while. The place is doing steady business and the neighborhood is gentrifying but not a whole helluva lot. The two biggest signs I saw last night were the sign for the new comic book store and Elastic Arts, in its little space above the Chinese Restaurant.
Bludwulf was supposed to play tonight's show, but rumor has it that one of them got arrested on the road. I'd seen them before, awesome horrorcore cstumes, uninspired horrorcore music. The big draw for me was Demonslaught, which one of my friends described as "Gwar from the Southside."
The show started with Demonslaught's singer Jack rampaging through the crowd with a rubber chainsaw in a bloody jumpsuit like a viking zombie. At basement shows, I hear the band spits blood all over and plays with fire, but here they just handed out a bunch of toys.
"I now dub you Ninja...Pirate...Princess," Jack announced as he placed a talisman necklace, a Jolly Roger hat, and a light-up scepter on birthday-boy John, "and for you, we play The Beatles birthday song."
The crowd raised plastic daggers in toast as the band launched into some blistrering grind.
Condenada did their Condenada thing, with the fast parts jackhammered and the slow parts dirge-y (search this site for about a million descriptions of how they're awesome.)
2 Minute Tantrum played next. Three women from Minnesota and a guy who left Chicago for the Twin Cityies years ago. They played fun, 80s style bouncey hardcore, with a little bit more overt of a Ramones/Naked Raygun influence than most hardcore bands are willing to share these days. Happy anger.
They played til the singer's eye-makeup ran own her cheeks with sweat. The bar sold out of PBR bottles, so people toasted cans. I grabbed some 25 cent granola bars from the store out front, and left.
Date: Saturday and Sunday 7/23-24/07 Location: (1) The Boris Kar-Loft; (2) Berlin Bands: (1) Waterbabies, Brenmar Someday, and Run 184; (2) JD Samson & Johanna Fateman, Greg Haus, Heather Doble Cost: (1) $5 (2) $10 Things I missed to be there: The only worthwhile jam was a Skeleton News benefit at the Junk Shop featuring Tight Phantomz, Brett Gand is Dead, Eric Ziegenhagen, and a puppet show; I also missed the Belmont and Sheffield Music Festival and the Switchyard Fest with Bob Mould and the Wrens, the Pride Parade and the Dyke March Reason I went: I was looking for something for something to do after work one day and before work the next
The last time I went to the Boris Kar-Loft, it didn't have a name yet, let alone the best name ever. It was just some dance-party at some awesome, run-down old loft that was too dark to tell if the dark spots on the wall were black mold or someone painting with fire. Now, they're having like one or two shows a week.
When I got there, some guy whose name, I believe was Run 184, was flooring the crowd with a synth-and-drums cover of Smashmouth's "Walking On the Sun". His one-man-band dance set had people coming and going, but ironic-minded 90s kids were glued to this like a trainwreck.
In the interim before his dual set with Waterbabies, Brenmar played some mash ups while a bunch of televisions showed one of the boring-er scenes from Tim Burton's Batman. He was building up for Waterbabies, Hunter Husar-s Mahjongg side project (along with a half dozen other semi prominent local noiseos, that is), whose sound is kind of an electronic tribal jam. It was so good, it knocked out the power (three times). The first time, the power got cut, and switched on again, the band came back with a fury, blowing away anything that they'd been doing prior, but the secnd time, the mood kind of changed; all the people who'd bee playing electronic instruments started banging on drums, which kept people going until the lights came back, but the third time, it was pretty much over. Some people grumbled about the ferocity with wich door charge was checked, and some people left sated, onto home or the next jam.
I was a little awkward though. I had been the whole night, especially before my friend gave me a few swigs of Old Granddad, but I wasn't able to put my finger on it until a friend took me to berlin the next day, to hear the non-Kathleen Hanna members of Le Tigre spin.
My friend used to do a show there with her partner (life-partner, that is, in a much realer way than they were clubnight partners). She paid my way, because I think she wanted a friend there, to be near her while everyone asked her where her ex was. She wasn't there to dance though, just like I wasn't there to shmooze/reconnect with old promoter friends, so when they all showed up and gathered around her, well dressed, beautiful and, inordinately, tall, I had nothing to do but dance or get out.
I did a quick look around for a dance partner.There were people I recognized, the usual suspects of writers and photographers, but no friends, and I didn't have the balls to dance, just like I didn't the night before.
It's not really something new, but more something that's always been there. Without a posse, I feel ridiculous, like someone who doesn't fit in, like an object of invisible ridicule. I don't know how true it is, if it's a sign that I'm getting older, or just something I need to recognize and overcome.
I'm having a very low-confidence time right now, and I don't like it.
Tom Waits - God's Away on Businress The Shadows - Jungle Fever Bhopal Stiffs - Bottle It Up Kid Dynamite - Sweet Shop Syndicate
Puffy AmiYumi - Sunday Girls Red Elvises - Mamasita Quintal de Glorofila - Viver Shyheim - Here Come the Hits
DJ Spooky - It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World Pantychrist - I Love Army Bugs in the Dark - Apple Pie / I Change # Morcheeba - Over and Over
Half Pipe - I trade My Food Stamps for Kool Aid Points # Air Conditioning - Where to Litter # Klaus Nomi - Lightning Strikes Powerhouse Sound - Coxsonne #
Quantazelle - On Welcome - First Flying Luttenbachers - Eaten by Sharks
Date: 6/20/07 Bands: The Deccas with the Hushdrops Location: Liar's Club Cost: $5 Drinks: $1 PBR Things I missed to be there: 16 Bitch Pileup and Magic is Kuntmaster at Enemy; Flosstradamus as Subterranean; Women's Worth, Binges, and Fake Lake at the Boris Kar-Loft Reason for Going: A girl group! A damn hell ass girl group!
The time is right for r&b and soul music to shed some of the trappings of hip hop and come back into its own right. I'm really happy with the way artists like Gnarls Barkley and Amy Winehouse, and even- ashamedly- Christina Aguilera have been adapting the old shit, from Sly and the Family Stone to the Shangri-La's, to the new era, one of stolen, digital music, energy crises, and orange alert terror warnings. The only thing is that all those big name artists had their start doing something else. Amy Winehouse got people to care about her overseas with some slightly boozey, kinda racy adult contemporary shit, trip hop and Norah Jones-style jazz; Cee-Lo Green was already doing some neo-soul crooner work when he started Gnarls Barkley, but even he got his start doin Dirty South hiphop with Goodie Mob; it probably doesn't need to be said, but Xtina built her name using one of the best voices on the radio to make some of the worst music of the last decade.
The question, for me, is whether you can build this kinda thing from the ground up, especially when it comes to girl groups. Even though a lot of the recordings seem pretty lo-fi today, the production was often considered more important than the talent, and pretty very high-end. Most of the girl groups that we think of when we think of girl groups (the white ones that is, not the Motown ones who, up until the Supremes stayed pretty steeped in a doo-wop sound) were put together by the legendary producer/psychopath Phil Spector. Bob B. Sox and the blue Jeans, Darlene Love, The Crystals and the Ronettes all had the benefit of Spector's Wall of Sound and they set the tone for a scene that would include a lot of imitators.
Twenty years later though, after he would work with Tina Turner and the Beatles, Phil Spector would meet the Ramones, and produce their 1980 album End of the Century. This was the Ramones' fifth album, and their throwback 1950s sound had long since been established, but I think something happened in that meeting of the Ramones and Phil Spector, that would make it impossible for a band to just style themselves after the old girl groups and actually sound like them.
I was excited when I heard that my old friend Emilie, a girl I went to ska shows with in high school, who has since become enmeshed in Chicago's mod scene, had formed a girl group, and would be playing a show at the Liar's Club. I like the Liar's Club a whole shit ton. The drinks are in the affordable range, the owner is nice, the bartender is nice, they've got a good mix of b-movie, horror and porn on the tv screens and a good amount of punk rock most days of the week but I can tell you this, the Liar's Club is a terrible place to see a show, especially a band's first show. The sound was atrocious, fuzzed and metallic, and the joint was too thin for most people to really catch a glimpse of the band.
The Deccas had their look down. They weren't totally matching but their outfits, the singers' outfits at least fit thematically with one another, a variation on big hair and tiny, shimmery cocktail dresses. Their sound wasn't crisp though. Some of it could be attributed toi the room, or the sounguy, or whoever was fucking up, but I think part of it could be attributed to Phil Spector meeting the Ramones. They sounded punk, at least a little, the way Japan's 5,6,7,8's sound punk even when they're rocking a Tina Turner song. I'm not completely sure, on account of the fuzz, but I'm pretty sure I had heard The Decca's play Turner's "I'm Blue (the Gong Gong Song), which the 5,6,7,8's perform in Kill Bill.
Not that it wouldn't be awesome in different surroundings. The 5,6,7,8's are ten different kinds of awesome and the Deccas could be too with a little more time. I just wish the band had a little more money thrown at them to get it all together, or that we had our own little Phil Spector here in town, because one thing's for sure: Ain't no Chuck Uchida's or Steve Albini's around that can make these girl's sound like Diana Ross.
[Of course there aren't any videos of the Deccas up on youtube yet, and my good camera's in the shop, so I thought I'd end with the 5,6,7,8's doing that Tina Turner jam for Tarantino]
Israel Vibration - Universal Father Cornish In a Turtleneck - I'm Like You Mutantes - Jogo de Calcada/Haleluia Zbigniew Karkowski and Eric Lyon - [11:43] Charles Bukowski - The Secret of My Endurance
Resplendent - What's To Change The Apes of God - Art Deco John Trudell - Fables and Other Realities Dan Deacon - Breakfast Cake/Penis Sleeve
The Wilburn Brothers - Trouble;s Back in Town Jimmy Martin - Tenessee Bill Anderson - Sleeve Patsy Cline - Sweet Dreams Percy Mayfield - Baby You're Still a Square
The Shangri-Las - Remember (Walkin in the Sand) Lord Buckley - The Hip Gahn Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross - Twisted Slim Gaillard & His Middle Europeans Yip Roc Heresy
[Apparently, this Lord Buckley fellow was indeed the shit, and occasionally, so was television. CORRECTION: Lord Buckley makes me kind of uncomfortable and television is and was often racist]
Date: 6/14/07 Location: Spot 6 Show: The Freeform Shuffle Bands: The Gravetones, Grace Kulp, and Magic is Kuntmaster DJs: Brianne, Arvo Fuckhead, and DJ Demchuk Cost: $5 Drinks: Best to pregame it down the street at Twisted Spoke's Whiskey Wednesdays Things I missed to be there: David Diarreah, Rotten Milk at The Compound; Bike-In Movie at Heaven Gallery; Caution Wednesdays with Accidental People, Daryl Pure, Martin Stoy, Theo-G, Osiris, K'nex, Vinnie Accardo, Jackie Neon, and Malafaktor at Spybar
Back when I had a big pink mohawk, I used to go to goth nights around town, thinking maybe I'd have a chance with some of those exquisite living dead girls, the kind who would always make my heart skip a beat with their harlequin faces and tits all over the place in vinyl and leather. No luck. The punks and the death rockers hadn't been on the same team since back when Medusa's closed down, and i was still scraping my knees on jungle gyms. Eventually I got tired of it. The few friends I made, I would see elsewhere, and all that was left was expensive drinks and bad industrial music.
I could never afford to look the part, but I've always felt an affinity to the scene. All that melodrama; all that theater and poetry. Absinthe and lace. Lewis Carroll and Edward Gorey. And death. Lots of death.
Beautiful inevitable death.
Tonight was the Freeform Shuffle's first Death Nite. It was a unique event, in that the night was inherently goth, and so were the bands, but they came from all over the goth spectrum, completely skipping over, if sometimes grazing, the industrial genre.
First up was Magic is Kuntmaster, a beautiful woman who filled the room with strobe lights and fog while blasting out music along the lines of Panicsville and Insect Deli, with grinding synths, tape loops, and creepy vocoder experiments. She was an indicator of what was to come throughout the night, and what already was, namely theater and melodrama.
Magic is Kuntmaster used her props to suffocate us with noise, light, and smoke, to the point where if we didn't have someone to touch, we were completely alone, and that's how I experienced most of her set, misty and half blind, trying to focus my eyes on a thrashing silhouette who for all the flashes, may have been beating up some celestial body. We were listening to the epileptic death knell of the moon, or something like it.
Upstairs, people milled about in the finally-tolerable night air, smoking cigarettes and personally fuming. Magic is Kuntmaster arrived late, and the Dead Superheroes Orchestra cancelled, but instead of rearranging the set, the show just waited (in the way that death waits for us all? sure, that's an alright metaphor I guess.).
A lot of people were angry, but not me. The show started late enough for me not to miss anything. The DJ was playing Nick Cave's "The Curse of Millhaven", followed by Bauhaus' "Bela Lugosi's Dead" and Miss Kitten's "Frank Sinatra".
While Magic is Kuntmaster loaded up her Mini-Pink Floyd setup, Grace Kulp unloaded an awe-inspiring set. They unpacked a few curved blac slats of wood. They brought their own stage.
"Has the second band even started yet?"
"Almost. They're putting up a fish net in front of them."
I don't know if I ever heard as impressed a groan as I heard from the milling-about members of the headlining Gravetones. I don't know if Grace Kulp expected to get paid, or how much money the show may have raked in, but I can't remember a time when I'd seen a middle band put so much effort into dressing their set.
It gave people a chance to get intrigued (if annoyed), and time to smoke their cigarettes, before returning.
Some people knew what to expect, and some didn't. I've written about Grace Kulp's dark wave folk music before, played on an electric acoustic with Peter Murphy's voice, but it's still pretty impressive.
The last band was The Gravetones, one of the bigger names on the local psychobilly scene. Starting with their guitarist's soundcheck of Naked Raygun's "Rat Patrol", the band were consummate crowd-pleasers. Flanked by a backing band of regular dudes ripping out one-at-a-time the Gravetones singer had an Elvis look to him, were Elvis to simultaneously return as a bloated zombie and the voodoo priest who'd conjured him. Their set drew more encores than they were ready for, with foot stomps, hand clap, circle pits, and singalongs. They were a bit bitter about performing last, well past the midnight hor, but no one else could have followed them and held the crowd.
It was a good night. It was a good night to die.
[Here's a clean version of Grace Kulp's song "Hatchetwound", the uncensored version can be found on the director's website at www.brianlange.com, the video at the top of the page is Magic is Kuntmaster's "Hold my Scissors"]
Slim Harpo - Baby Scratch My Back Abner Jay - Cocaine Blues
Natural Bridge Bunch - Pig Snoots Part 1 The Four Larks - Groovin at the Go go The Olympics - The same old thing
Tommy Neal - Goin' to a happening Shirley J. Scott - Goose Pimples Ed Crook - That's Alright
Otis Redding - The Dock of the Bay Carla Thomas ; Otis Redding - Tramp Carla Thomas - I'll Bring it home to you Rufus Thomas - I think I made a boo boo
Booker T and the MG's - Hip Hug her Albert King - Cold Feet Bobby Wilson - Let me down Slow Rufus Thomas - Willy Nilly Mar-Keys - Bo-Time Bar Kays - Knucklehead
Floyd Newman - Frog Stomp The Charmels - Please Uncle Sam (Send Back My Man) Mable John - Wait You Dog Sir Mack Rice - Mini-Skirt Minnie William Bell - Eloise Hang on in there Sam & Dave - You Got me Hummin'
Howlin Wolf - Sittin at the Bottom Huey Piano Smith - Little Liza Jane Howie & the Crystals - Golly Gee
Jack McDuff - Hunk 'O Funk Marvin Holmes and the Uptights - Day of Rest K. Frimpong and his Cubano Fiestas - Hwehwe Mu Na Yi Wo Mpena
The Meters - Just Kissed My Baby Sean Kingston - Beautiful Girl
Date: 6/9/07 Location: The Flower Shoppe Price: $5, $10 once the place got packed Drinks: Foamy kegs with admission, mixed drinks for a buck DJs: Livewire, Skyler, Mr. Bobby, DJ Demchuk, Rayaline, and Fabian Things I missed to be there: The Chicago Rocks Hip Hop Showcase with Flosstradamus, Qwazaar, Crucial Conflict, Psalm One, All Natural, Verbal Kent and more at The Metro; World Naked Bike Ride and its assorted afterparties; Pilsen to Pilsen festival at Busker and Polvo; Ohtis, Maps & Atlases, and So Many Dynamos at PeopleProjects; Itch13 and Intel at Ohm Reason for going: One of the DJs wanted me to take some pictures of him, plus I failed to get my bike operational after six hours of trying
The Flower Shoppe, home to Busker and Dai5ychain, throws some interesting events, everything from noise shows to lectures to hacker workshops to dance parties. I came tonight expecting more of a blowout than I've been able to make it to in a while, and while the place gotcrowded, it never quite blew up while I was there. I think the failure to become the jam of the century came from the misperception that people like elctro more than they do. At any point in the night, the right cheeseball hiphop track, mouths frothing and sex on the floor. I mean new cheeseball, old cheeseball, R. Kelly, Sean Kingston, Wreckx N Effect, Chamillionaire, Junior M.A.F.I.A. or the Humpty Dance. People were dancing but they wanted to yell shit with the songs. I did too.
This was the youngest dance party I'd been to in a while, more late teens than early twenty-somethings, and it was cool to see the new school work their shit. Not to be all back-in-my-day about it but these kids all grew up with cell phones, digital cameras, cell phones and myspace accounts and are just that much more involved in preserving the moment for the future/the internet. Cameras were flashing everywhere, often overwhelming the projected video, and everyone was famous.
Date: 6/8/07 Location: The Viceroy DJs: Protman, Alexander Bassett, Pinches Cowboys and more Drinks: BYOB Price: FREE! Things I missed to be there: Chicago Rocks Hip Hop Showcase (Day 1 Sucks); Mister Fuckhead Brass Ensemble, Complicated Horse Emergency, Mucca Pazza, Aloft Loft, and Why Are We Building Such A Big Ship? (Ended before I got out of work); Claremont keg jam with Nightfox, Cophands, and Menowax (busted before I could get out of work) Reason I went: Easiest party to meet my sig-oth at; most promising as well
A lot of DJing today. Like most Fridays, I started out the day at WZRD, trying to bleed the weirdness out of my systen before working a corporate gig. You can see my setlist immediately below this post. Then I set off to make money. I was spinning at an upscale sushi lounge. They like downtempo, dub, electro, chilloit hip hop and a little bit of 80s and radio R&B. This is the only place I'm spinning for my company that expects me to play my own shit. I'm still figuring out the compromise, and building up my collection. A lot of stuff from Verve Remixed and Motown Remixed. A lot of couple-years' old shit that grazed the mainstream: Ladytron, DFA, M.I.A., Miss Kittin, Lily Allen, Nouvelle Vague, Propellerheads; A lot of hip hop producer shit: RJD2, Ghislain Poirier, Blockhead.
The more I do it, the better I feel about it. Skillbuilding and whatnot.
I was really annoyed this time, though, as four idiot people kept me from getting my party on. In one of my favorite songs right now, R. Kelly chastises motherfuckers of a moderate income for bringing their girls around him when the girl's are very likely "looking for a platinum type of guy." The problem with working a platinum joint is that you've got to deal with platinum motherfuckers with platinum egos who think the world resolves around them. I didn't leave the joint until one in the morning, which isn't at all unreasonable, except for the fact that there was one couple still sitting around at one, forty minutes after the bartender walked around the room extinguishing candles and twenty minutes after he turned on the houselights. They weren't drinking, or eating. They had settled their bill. They just didn't want to leave. Atually, I'm pretty sure thast she did and he didn't. I think she wanted to go out dancing where he just wanted to go home and fuck, so he tried to stall her at the restaurant. Don't be that guy. I will put a mystic cockblocking hex on you like I put a hex on him, and your lifetime sexual batting average will resemble that of the Chicago Cubs after they were hexed some eighty years ago. If you were going to stay someplace, buy things. Tip the bartender (and, er, um, the DJ) and get the fuck out when it's obvious that he or she is no longert interested in keeping the place open for you.
So I finally got free. I'd missed the circus show but dance parties abounded.
When I got to the Viceroy, there were more people outside than there were in, but the music was good. Protman was spinning off cds and a laptop. He was like a much better version of me, playing staples of my weirdier dance sets like The Contortions, Soft ink Truth, and Mr. Oizo, but actually providing a backbeat to match them all into one flow. Protman is often paired up with Mother Hubbard, aka Dangergirl as the Life During Wartime DJs. Somehow, I've never seen them play together even though they're supposed to throw some of the best dance parties on the bar scene. I've seen them each play solo, and considering their solo sets, I'm surprised. Mother Hubbard's sets always had some good gems in them, but overall they were kinda boring. Protman, on the other hand, did a lot of really interesting shit, but his sets were never really so accessible as to get everybody moving. One of my roomates explained that they work really well off each other for that exact reason, and become something more than the sum of their parts. Watching the scene as it grew and grew, and I guess well into the night there were still more people outside than in, I felt kinda jealous and kinda hopeful, that I won't just be able to get it, but I'll actually be able to bring it to the table soon enough.
[I love Flat Eric!! Watch him dance in the Mr. Oizo video for "Flat Beat"]
J Walter Negro and the Loose Jointz - Shoot the Pump The Coup - We Are the Ones The Mad Lads - My Inspiration The Coasters - Charlie Brown
Voodoo Glow Skulls - Charlie Brown (The Coasters cover) Titus Turner - Do you Dig it? Cyril Ferguson - Gonna Build a Nation Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds - Mbube Sam & Dave - Hold On
Desmond Dekker - The Israelites Rufus Thomas - The World is Round Joe tex - The Love You Save (May Be Your Own)
Ray Charles - The Man With the Weird Beard Peggy Lee - Fever Screamin Jay Hawkins - Frenzy
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - I Put a Spell on You (Screamin Jay Hawkins Cover) Cobras - Restless
Little Milton - Grits Ain't Groceries Barbara & the Browns - Big Party Roscoe Robinson - Let Me Be Myself
Ruth Copeland - Your Love Been So Good to Me Funkadelic - You Can't Miss What You Can't Measure Ice Cube (feat. George Clinton) - Bop Gun
Mable John - You're Taking Up Another Man's Place Little Richard - Bama Lama, Lama Loo The Coasters - Down in Mexico
Date: 6/2/07 Location: Eckhart Park Show: The Bel Eckhart Sound Experiment with Prefuse 73 and others Drinks: Illegal Cost: Free Things I missed to be there: Sleeping late, eating well, exercise. Reason for going: Those things are boring as shit
It was a nice lazy Saturday afternoon at Eckhart Park, if a weird one. Prefuse 73, which today included a half dozen knob twiddler, tweakers, and button pushers. It wasn't the environment I think of when I think of hip hop, what with a bunch of hipsters sitting like hippies cross-legged in the grass. They looked like they were appreciating the music but they weren't really feelin it. Same as when rock bands play in the sunlight, it's just this whole different, unnaturally danceless vibe.
The event didn't wholly make sense at all. I think it's because at various points in time, a number of bands were going to be involved that ended up falling through. One of the cooler parts of the show turned out to be the art installations provided by The Chicago Underground Library and The Ice Capades video series, which I hadn't really noticed, until the heavy metal cover band The Battle of Good Versus Evil took the stage, and I got restless.
More than anything else these displays, especially the mutoscopes, helped the Sound Experiment live up to its name, and seem anything more than just a tiny neighborhood street fest.
Date: 5/29/07 Location: Feed Show: Outdoor Crayfish Boil with Al Schorch IV and many others Drinks: FREE Smirnoff, Jim Beam, ice, lemonade, and iced tea, to mix at your convenience Things I missed to be there: Outdanced at Funky Buddha; $6 dollar Tuesdays at Kerasotes AMC Reason for going: FREEE FOOOOD
It's hard to imagine Humboldt Park turning into the next Wicker Park. If you go down the main financial strip of Division, past the 50-foot Puerto Rican flags, the votive stores, the sad and hopeful murals tipping their hats toward Catholicism, revolution, and community, it looks as though nothing short of an astronomical event, a comet hitting the Earth, a second great Chicago fire, could change it's face. If you look to the secondary financial district, the (White) financial district down on California, you can see why real estate devils are calling Humboldt's border "East Wicker Park" the way they used to call Wicker Park's border "South Bucktown" when they wanted to sell the neighborhood to young families in the 90s. There are lounge bars, vegan diners and cafes, and at least one concert venue. Because of the condition of the neighborhood they moved into, they aren't replacing the bodegas and storefront churches, but they are taking up all the spaces around them, and soon property taxes will do the rest.
That isn't to fault these establishments, as they really are of the community. The California Clipper is full of bilingual poetry groups, house bands, and bingo games; The Flying Saucer really wants to save the world; and when the noise cabaret gets to be too much, you can often find the Reversible Eye's neighbors grilling out back.
Then there is The Continental. Pass by the Continental afterhours and you can see what Milwaukee and Damen looked like before it looked like Division and Rush. Hip motherfuckers, yuppies, and drunken jerks making their last stand against going home or, worse yet, going home alone. I try not to fault things for being something I don't like. If the city was willing to hand out more 4AM permits, the 4AM bars wouldn't have such a high concentration of dickheads, but because they are, the city won't grant more, and because the city is so unwilling to grant late night licenses, these bars will stay in business forever, assholes or not. I can't fault The Continental for its patrons as I scan the line around the corner, and I can't fault The Continental for replacing the Hiawatha Lounge, which was a wonderful bar with a wonderful bartender and Bakelite 78 as its awesome house band, I can fault The Continental for it's musical selection and philosophy. A couple friends were spinning one night when they were warned not to play any "Black music". A while later, they succumbed to the urge to grant a request for what was inarguably the song of last summer, Chamillionaire's "Ridin' Dirty". They were immediately shut down and banned immediately from spinning there again. Fuck The Continental for that.
I have much warmer feeling for The Continental's next-door neighbor Feed, a dim-lit country kitchen that specializes in kitchen. Feed may be the first family restaurant in Humboldt Park that specializes in American food (I can only describe the Flying Saucer's mostly-vegetarian fair as an alternative family restaurant; of course there are many great family restaurants in the neighborhood that specialize in Puerto Rican cuisine, which is of course American food, but, well, you know, different). I have a friend who left her barista duties downtown to work at Feed, and apparently they treat her better than anyone else she's ever worked for. On Monday, when the restaurant was closed, the staff was taken to Six Flags.
Today, Feed opens their outdoor patio with ribs and crayfish. Not the best crawdads I've ever eaten, but the only time I've ever gotten to eat them here in Chicago that wasn't at my house. To make it a real celebration, they got a bunch of acoustic bands to play in the back, mostly duos, mostly folk and country, with a little bit of old-timey rock'n'roll. Sweat streams down Al Schorch's beet-red face as he strums away at his banjo. The speed, with which he is playing could be described as furious but there is nothing furious about the way he plays the silly songs he likes to sing when he picks up his banjo. His suspenders droop half off over him. The sun begins to set, and he is more of the place than anything I've seen before it that day, as if it couldn't be a crayfish boil at a country kitchen that sits one block away from yuppieville, one block away from heavy gang territory, and one block away from the diminishing industrial district down Grand.
The restaurant's owners have brought in a number of thirty-something lesbians, families and professional artistic types (-slash artistic professional types). The staff has brought out the new school of the neighborhood. Al has brought out his friends in the Rat Patrol, costumed in various shades of crust, steampunk, and glamarchist. Every racial hue is represented in the twenty- or thirty- square foot yard behind Feed, but it's overwhelmingly White. This is Humgboldt as Humboldt is going to be, for a while at least, a genuine, well-meaning, form of gentrification.
