brian costello show

Date: 4/28/07
Location: The Empty Bottle
Show: The Brian Costello Show with Matt Flaiz, Max Glaessner, Chris Deguire, The Screaming Yellow Zonkers, and The Tony Sagger One Man Band
Cost: Free
Things I missed to be there: "Finding Our Roots: The Chicago Anarchist Conference" at Loyola University; Version>07 NFO XPO at the Zhou B. Art Center
Reason for Going: Iunno, I always forget or miss it. Figured it was about time

There wasn't jack shit worth paying for on Friday night so me and Sarah stayed in, drank some Makers, and watched a bootleg of Hot Fuzz. Like most couples, we have our little tiffs, and like most couples who fight, the things we're most likely to argue about are sex and aesthetic design. This particular argument was about whether or not the movie was a parody or an homage. To be honest, we weren't fighting so much about the movie itself but about the concepts we would use to describe it. When I was wasting away my parents' money in writing school, I had a very specific concept of "parody" hammered into my head. In fact, 'parody' was the main element that separated Fiction II from Fiction I. There were less than a dozen of us, week after week, writing our own version of Gogol's "The Nose" or Kafka's "Metamorphoses" or Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener". Little by little after the first wave of stories came in- "The Cock", "Bartleby the Gangsta", and dozens of stories where unsuspecting men awoke to find themselves ferrets, squid, and no small amount of intangible ephemera, we learned two things:

1. Parody doesn't have to be funny, and is in fact, often a terrible venue for comedy.

2. It only works when there is an element of love. A story making fun of another story is not one that will last. A story poking fun, using hallmarks of the original's style or genre.

That's what Hot Fuzz is. A story that understands how stupid the buddy cop genre is, but also how fun, and how lasting, and that these elements are not mutually exclusive.

No one would understand this more than Brian Costello, because, well, he teaches Fiction at the school where I wasted a great deal of my parents' money. Brian Costello plays drums in the Functional Blackouts and recently published the novel The Enchanters VS. Sprawlburg Springs. Once a month or so, he hosts the talkshow "The Brian Costello Show with Brian Costello" at the Empty Bottle. It's kind of an indie rock Tonight Show.

After maybe three years of missing it, I dragged myself out because it was a nice enough day to do so. The show could be considered a parody. While it isn't filmed, it uses many of the same tropes that have been talk show standards since before Johnny Carson, including the introduction of the show with a skit and a monologue, the regular cast of characters including a a bandleader, a cohost, celebrity guests and lots of booze to warm them up. The show didn't go for the lowest common denominator humor of Leno or the avant garde nonsense peppered throughout Conan O'brien's show, but rather resembled an unpolished version of Letterman at his best. It is Letterman, after all, who seems at his best around normal, weird people, whether they be Harvey Pekar, Larry "Bud" Melman, or Rupert from the deli down the street.

Brian's guests were a former satanist, who told stories about editig the Church of Satan's myspace page, and a "Wisconsin expert", who handed out cheese samples. In between, Brian gave up the stage to his sideman, who in turn stripped down to a shirt that said "Fuck Yeah!" and threw a Risky Business-style party, only to have Brian come back a few minutes later, bedlam on stage, beers everywhere, announcing that he wasn't really leaving for the weekend and, stripping into his own "Fuck Yeah" shirt, announced that his protege had passed the test. As the band Screaming Yellow Zonkers tore through a surf number, Brian led volunteers from the audience through a multi-round Hula Hoop competition.

I'm Not Dead, the Shows this week just haven't Gotten Me Off [WZRD]*****

A week of new music and old radio

Ovo - CoCo
Aids Wolf Vs. Athletic Automaton - ???
Aleks & the Drummer - Eye to Eye

The Hour of Slack - Old School ridiculousness, put out by The Church of the Subgenius foundation back in 1988. Absurd conspiracy theory, avant gard sound collages, and underground hip hop.

Plok - Uberclass
Metalux & John Wiese - ???
BiG A little a - ???

Sounds from Chicago - Four works for radio by performance artists, curated by Iris Moore. A lot of good stuff that sounds just like the title implies it would.

Diskaholics - Live in Japan, Vol. 1




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*****Actually that's not true. Just this Wednesday at the Spot 6 show, I got to see Yeabig + Kidstatic.



The mismatched duo kicked some goofy hyperactive electro-rap that would make them a shoe-in for the MF Doom role on the city's indie/party rap scene, if they ever hooked up with Vyle and Floss.

TwoSlaps Radio [WLUW]

TV on The Radio - I was a lover
Gnarls Barkley - Boogie Monster
Quantic - Bomb in a trumpet Factory

KtheI??? - Go Go Go Girls
Nine inch Nails (DFA Remix) - the Hand That Feeds

James Last - Soul March
MSM&W- Down The Tube
Masonic Wonders - I call him
Ann Peebles - tonight i'll be staying here with you

Irma Thomas - Time is on my side
Helene Smith - Pain In My Heart
Manhattens - Why Should I Cry
Spanky Wilson - I'm Thankful

Otis Redding - Sittin On the Dock of the Bay
Amy Winehouse (feat. Ghostface Killah) - You Know I'm No Good
Mavis Staples - Eyes on the Prize

Billy Preston - You're So Unique
Stormy - The Devastator
Eddie Floyd - Raise Your Hand
Young People - Joey

Brother Ali - Lookin at Me Sideways
Jackie Dee - Outlaw
The Detroit Cobras - Leave My Kitten Alone (Little Willie John cover)

Michael Jackson - Thriller
Baby Huey & the Babysitters - California Dreamin (Mamas & the Papas cover)
Brian Auger & Oblivan Express - Inner City Blues

Howlin Wolf - Evil

Today Was a Good Day - old time radio gangsta fun on [WZRD]

As a young man with an inquisitive mind and an active social life, there's nothing I want to listen to on this beautiful, sunny Friday evening more than educational programming and classic hip hop, so today's show is all old radio and rap music I listened to in high school.



"Why Did the Anarchist Cross the Road", a radio special about radical comedy put out by the Great Atlantic Radio Conspiracy in 1994.

Ice Cube - Today Was a Good Day
The Wu Tang Clan - C.R.E.A.M.

"Sounds of Chicago" with John Corbitt and the Experimental Sound Studio. Radio Dada visits Sounds of Chicago for an old fashioned sound collage in 1990.

Da Brat - Fa All y'all
Bone Thugs N Harmony - Thuggish Ruggish Bone
Timbaland & Magoo (feat. Missy Elliott and Aaliyah) - Up Jumps da Boogie

"Burns and Allen" - Classic pretelevision comedy, advertizing and shmaltz jazz from George Burns and Gracie Allen, A lot of stereotypey, women are frivolous type ofhumour, first aired 60 years and a month ago, on March 13, 1947.

Crucial Conflict - Hay
The Fugees - Fu-Gee-La
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip 'Thou Shalt Always Kill'

"High on the Airwaves: The High Times Radio Hour Demo" a demo tape of a marijuana themed radio show that may or not have ever made it, put out by High Times agazine. Impeccably curated music and film samples from the likes of the Beastie Boys, Emergency Broadcast Network, Dash Rip Rock, Clerks, Dazed and Confused, et cetera. Interviews with Woody Harrelson and Hunter S Thompson.


[Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip doing "Thou Shalt Always Kill" - this song wasn't from the old school collection, but it's pretty awesome like a British hipster mix between Gil-Scott Heron's "The Revolution will Not be Televised", Material's "Words of Advice for Young Children" with William S. Burroughs, and that Baz Luhrman "Always Wear Sunscreen" joint]

a little post-noise metal to cleanse the palette

Late Show

Date: 4/18/07
Bands: Sweet Cobra, (Lone) Wolf & Cub
Location: People Projects
Cost: Free(?)
Things I missed to be there:See below
Reason for going: I'd never been to People Projects


[Sweet Cobra playing "Tom Knees" live at the Fireside]

A few years ago, The Machine Media had an office in the Congress Theatre building, next to a gallery. When the lease ended, both businesses had to move, replaced by The Yard Sale(a second-hand clothing boutique) and Manifest (a gallery, later renamed Zoku). Now that the lease is up again, both businesses have For Rent signs up. They aren't the only young people ventures on that row of storefronts though, just one door East is People Projects, a gallery/concert venue, and next to that a moped store. Despite the fact that the Congress Theatre is in a prime location, that only gets prime-er each year as the neighborhood gentrifies, not a lot of businesses make it. I've seen everything from a pizza-by-the-slice joint to Chicago's Autonomous Zone pop up and shrink back down, and while I must admit that I cursed Manifest/Zoku under my breath for their hubris in opening up a gallery where a more-professional gallery had folded less than a month earlier, I would like top see People Projects succeed.

Upstairs, People Projects is a gallery. For their first show, they built a half-pipe in the storefront's doorway; for their second, they built a wall of cardboard televisions that now stands as a backdrop for the bands playing downstairs.

I got there just in time to see Sweet Cobra, a metal thrash outfit, featuring my old neighbor, Logan Square's supercute heavy metal Dad. The band split their songs into pummeling dirges and slightly-twangy party metal. The singer growled, people slammed into each other, a pipe started to drip icky water near the front of the stage. (Lone) Wolf & Cub was next, more growling but softer guitars. I prefer this band's sound, but I wasn't in the mood so I ankled.

The night, as I chose to live it, didn't meet its own hype. Whatevs.


[(Lone) Wolf & Cub's video for "Misplaced Mortar Gag #2"]

'Noise' is just another word for Sausage Fest

Early

Date: 4/18/07
Bands: Z'EV, Illusion of Safety
Location: Enemy
Cost: $10 suggested
Things I missed to be there: Rejects! with Far Rad, LMNOP and DJ Rotten Milk at Sonotheque, The Freeform Shuffle with Jilt, Fragmentation, Oxime and Scrabblor; Flosstradamus and Kid Sister at Subterranean; Scape Grope, Right Eye Rita, Dewayne Slightweight, Slyfox at Nihilist; The Hump Day Dance Party and Mary Nisi at Shubas; Kate and Rachel's Old Time Radio Show at Town Hall Pub
Reason for going: Z'EV hasn't played Chicago in 21 years



I often have a hard time differentiating between noise and jazz, at least I do when the noise in question has an obvious structure (not that the structure is obvious, just that there obviously is one). There's a part of me that refuses to acknowledge the difference between the two. It is probably the same part that struggles with punk::hardcore and techno::electro. The running theory is that noise is just a term that jazz musicians use when they don't want to deal with the people who tend to go to jazzclubs. For example, Enemy's downstairs neighbor Heaven Gallery is the type of place where you might hear soul patch jazz, whereas Enemy is the place you'll end up if you want to hear the type of jazz favored by guys with pierced dicks.

Z'EV and Illusion of Safety are both experimental musicians who thrived on the outskirts of the early eighties industrial scene, Z'EV utilizing more acoustic, percussion based instruments and Illusion of Safety favoring more synthesizers and electronics.

As I climbed the stairs past Heaven and the tapas restaurant below, I heard something that sounded like a wave of shrapnel washing over a beach of broken glass. Z'EV crouched in a corner playing an array of percussive instruments, from maracas to a hanging box that looked like some sort of a bird feeder. Perhaps his most interesting drum was a large piece of sheet metal that looked as though it had been folded as carelesly as the tinfoil around the bag of mixed meats I bought at the Polish deli earlier today. It made a terrible crash when he hit it, but it did something else when he rubbed it with a little mallet, the way you might rub your finger across the rim of a wine glass. Here it would make a sound like a star might make before it supernovas and dies, this low cosmic howl that shook inside your head.

Every one of the secret jazzbos, including more than a few reps from the North Side's WZRD and the South Side's WHPK, sat silent, the only sounds were Z'EV whose music would come in waves, first a battery of bangs and clangs and then that otherworldly moan, and the floorboards creaking underneath them as they tried not to shift in place. He finished when he had run out of instruments, announcing that he would be playing more of a rock set tomorrow at The Empty Bottle.


[Z'EV live in 1988]

We Don't Need to Sit, Just Let the Motherfucker Burn

Date: 4/16/07
Bands: Soft Serve, Fuck 911, David Diarreah, William Sides Atari Party, and more
Location: The Blog Cabin (aka Tha Blogg Cabin)
Cost: FREE!
Things I missed to be there: Chances Dances at Subterranean; free cheesecake and pinup art at Art + Science; Bloodyminded, Charlie Draheim, Climax Denial, Silvum at Elastic



As the temperature starts creeping up and expatriat Chicagoans return to the city to participate in Version07, you can see the number of shows increase exponentially with each passing day. The Blog Cabin's first show of the year marks the beginning of a series of Version pre- and post- parties that should last well into May and carry us into the summer. There were nine bands scheduled to play short sets throughout the night, each and one was a side project of a side project. I think that the intention was to end the night early enough to stay on the neighbor's good side. I'm not exactly sure how successful they were. The show finished well before midnight, but by that time there had already been a visit from the police and the fire department. The fact that I was only there for about an hour and a half notwithstanding, it was one of the better house shows I've ever seen.



It's been a while since I've been to a show where a house was utilized so effectively. I got there just in time for a breakcore dance party in the attic, followed by William Sides Atari Party and his spastic glitch electro. As soon as he was done, the crowd filed down to the front of the house, where Soft Serve was playing an acoustic reunion show in the back of a parked truck. It was incredibly soothing, and the whole crowd got quiet as Eleanor Balson and Janina Bain traded back and forth on drums, a vibraphone, a tiny casio keyboard, and a pan flute, harmonizing with ethereal otherworldly nonsense vocals.

Their short set felt too short, but it was followed by David Diarreah on a four-stringed guitar in the backyard. As he played songs like "I am on the South Side" and "Punk Song in Gf Major" , a couch was dragged out from the alley and set on fire. A group of girls danced around the flames like blissed out flower children before it was extinguished with CO2 and urine. David Diarreah finished his set by leaping into what was left of the couch, just seconds before we saw the flashing lights race past the front of the house and piled inside.

Ending the night was Fuck 911. It was the second time I'd seen them and the second time I'd seen them play in a kitchen, but where their show at Nihilist was more of an electronic noise show, tonight their set was an all out tribal jam as Rand, Rotten Milk, and everyone that could fit in the room picked up pots, pans, bottles and chairs for percussion. Rand opened an umbrella and was pelted with trash that had been dumped out so that the garbage can could be used as a drum. Rotten Milk slashed his finger open with the bottle he was hitting against the wall and soon there was blood mixing with the mud on the floor, and as Rand scooped in with the umbrella to carry him off, The Bodyguard style, to get a scarf for a tourniquette, Fuck 911 consisted of everyone but the two members of the band.

TwoSlaps Radio [WLUW]

James Brown and the Famous Flames - You've Got the Power
The Artistics - I'll Leave It Up To You
Cookie Jackson - Your Girl's Gone Bad
James Moody and his Bop Men (feat. Art Blakely) - Tin Tin Deo
Maxine Brown - Oh No Not My Baby

Afrika Bambaataa and the Soulsonic Force - Lookin For the Perfect Beat
Amy Winehouse (feat. Ghostface Killah) - You Know I'm No Good
Cee-Lo (feat. Big Rube and G. Rock) - Scrap Metal

Donald Byrd - Signed, Sealed, and Delivered
James Knight & the Butlers - Save Me
O.V. Wright - Ace of Spades
Ramsey Lewis Trio - Function at the Junction

Quincy Jones - Dear Old Stockholm

Nina Simone - Mississippi Goddamn
Nina Simone - Pirate Jenny
Nina Simone - Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings - You're Gonna Get It
Billy Paul - Am I Black Enough For You
Gene Anderson - The Devil Made Me Do It

Gnarls Barkley - St. Elsewhere
Curtis mayfield - Superfly
Bobby Treetop - Wait Til I Get to Know Ya

Tony Middleton - Til the Ends of the Earth
Blenders Ltd. - When Ya Git Through Wit It
Marlena Shaw - Liberation Conversation
Julie Driscoll - Indian Rope Man

Martin Jr. Dumas - Mr. Cool
Tickled Pink - Reach Out (and Give Me Your Hand)
Edd Henry - Your Replacement is Here
Screamin Jay Hawkins - Frenzy

Desmond Dekker and the Aces - The Israelites
Ray Charles - A Little Bit of Soul
Prince - A Rock in a Funky Place

In which our hero drops acid and pretends he's Hunter S. Thompson

Menacing vibrations abound in Wrigleyville on a Saturday night. The neighborhood is full of dressed up mutants and dressed-down stockbrokers looking for women to marry and date rape. It had been years since I'd found myself in such a position, butI was useless against the winds, blowing me towards the basement of Spot 6 (and who am I to fight the elements when they send me into some den of iniquity where I'll be treated to bare breasts and free drinks all night long?



I was supposed to DJ a benefit for the Chicago branch of the Sex Worker's Outreach Project, which is working to liberate working girls and boys from the three-headed monster of patriarchy, which includes the beady eyed policeman, the stickyhanded pimp, and the bejowled visage of the city's mayor. Inbetween acts, the DJs represented a timeline of underground dance, each one of them a honkey aping the black man's devil rhythms, from prohibition-era jazz to black power soul, from crackden hip hop to nineties rave house and electro.



Girls raffled off their asses for lap dances in one of those confusing shows of empowerment that's so sexy it doesn't matter how little sense it makes. A dominatrix pissed into a martini glass as a million white hot eyes lit up the room. An anarchist band called Behold! leapt around in back-patched tuxedos. A woman gave birth to two grown men and sucked their dicks. A painted, smirking clown made a bridge of himself over broken glass for a handful of women to walk across.



Similar gender plays were in effect throughout the night. It was the type of thing that LSD was supposed to explain, but not the type of thing to be watched under it. It was weird, and it's weird to say now, but it wasn't the weirdness of the night that was so weird to me, it was everything else. It was my disconnect. It was watching everyone wearing their motivations on their sleeve. The slavish soundguy ran past carryng the entire show on his shoulder. One of the promoters seemed angry with the show's success and his small role in it, and everything he said seemed to drip with a call for respect. A woman walked by and everything she said, seemed to translate to a need for everyone to like her. Two performers argued backstage over their act. One was angry, and while the other sounded angry she was just responding in kind to preserve herself.



Behind the turntables I started to feel myself approach meltdown. I think it was the task of puytting songs together for the dancing people that kept me sane, but when it was over I was unclear on what role I was supposed to play. Was I one of the naked people, a photagrapher, the shmoozing asshole I had felt comfortable as when the night began? Nothing seemed to feel right. I needed fresh air, a soda and a pack of gum, which was in the end what drove me out into the neighborhood's plastic yuppie streets, and only then when I realized how much stranger the normos actually were.

Wide Eyed Wonderment

Date: 4/12/07
Location: The Beat Kitchen
Bands: Screamin Cyn-Cyn and the Pons, The Mathematicians, and The Dials
Cost: 8 bucks (and worth it!)
Things I missed to be there: Kelsey Snell, Kate Sandler, Al Burian, and Liz Mason at Loyola Zine Panel; Indian Jewelry and Clipd Beaks at Mister City
Reason for going: See below

So what's the point of all this? I spend a few nights a week going to the cheapest, most interesting shows I can find. I write about them because I figure that the sheer effort of writing about music over and over will lead me to some sort of breakthrough, where I'll finally figure out how to write about sound, about feeling, about the time and the place that allowed the art/trash/thrash to happen, et al ad nauseum. I want to find that place in my head where everything isn't so literal, and I'm still working on it (today for example, I'm all about referencing bands to other bands, which doesn't seem right at all). It's not a sustainable life though. Unless I become a musician and build a following, I'm destined to become one of those weird old guys who goes to shows alone.

So why music anyway? Why concerts? There are tons of reasons... I can dance without having to deal with all the pressures and the plastic ugliness of dance clubs. I can see friends, and be affected viscerally by live art. I can stay out of my house for a few more hours, nearly any day of the week. I think it's a little bit of all those things, that when they come together I come close to experiencing MAXIMUM JOY.

I can dismiss a lot of shows for their lack of joy, but I wouldn't have missed this one for the world. It promised more sheer fun than any show in the city, since Dan Deacon's gig at The Shape Shoppe was shut down by the cops two weeks ago. Two of my favorite live bands from the last two years had found each other for a mini-tour stopping through Chicago. I got to see The Mathematicians play with Typewriter at Texas Ballroom in 2005, and Screamin' Cyn Cyn & the Pons play with Totally Michael at Ronny's last summer, and I've missed each band once or twice since. It was weird that the only band on the bill I hadn't seen was The Dials, and they were the local act.

Because of all the trouble I've been having missing shows lately I aimed to get there on time; still I was late but only by a few minutes and so was the band.



"Aw shit, hold on a second." Shane O'neill, singer and keytar player for Screamin Cyn-Cyn and the Pons, pulls out a stand and an old Casio, "The poor man's keytar, ladies and gentlemen." This happened about a minute after he berated the rest of the band for having to tune inbetween songs, and a seconds after his keytar started acting out.

Aside from a couple technical malfunctions, Screamin Cyn-Cyn and the Pons have come together a lot since the last time I saw them, but their show was a little bit more restrained. When Screamin' Cyn Cyn played at Ronny's it was fantastic. There was no stage to seperate the band from the audienCe, and Shane, glistening with eye glitter and sweat stomped and juked his way through the crowd, pummeling his keytar, and launching into routines the likes of which this world hasn't seen since Flashdance.



Much of the band's lyrics, on songs like "Set The Table", "Slumber Party". and "Pedro's" (their girls night out song) make them sound simultaneously like children playing dress up in their parents clothes, and overgrown teenagers having tantrums over the phone. It's a girl-punk group with only one female, and overtones of 90s acts like Pansy Division and Atom & His Package, and 50s acts like Dion & the Balmonts and The Shangri-Las. The band just released their second album, Screamin Heart Rate which, like their stage show, was a lot tighter than the one before it. If they aren't coming to anyplace near you anytime soon, I'd suggest the roadtrip to Milwaulkee to see them on their own turf. I love them that much.



The Mathematicians, on the other hand, put on the best show I've ever seen at The Beat Kitchen, and blew their last show out of the water. The Mathematicians remain the same goofy nerds as last time (Dewi Decimal, Al Gorythm, and Pythagoras) but the real difference was made by their VJ, who completely transformed the stage with projections and a really odd light kit that gave the back of the Beat Kitchen the feel of being inside the hull of some kind of terrestrial spaceship. The band started off with a rap worthy of MC Chris or the Evolution Control Comittee, before launching into a mix of electropunk songs about math and robots.



Inbetween songs, the band was taunted by aliens, mutants, and cyborgs on their projection window. At various points in any song, the electronics might take over the role of any one Mathematician, who would take the chance to jump into the crowd and start bumping and grinding like a spazmodic breakdancer or an electronic humping machine. They had a fair amount of devotees in the crowd, and a number of cynics who found themselves dancing against against their will as the band continued their assault. Seriously--one of the best shows I've seen in a long time.

Unnecessary references: Ladytron, Orbital, The Screamers

The last band up was The Dials. I like what I've heard of their music, and usually give them a spin during The Machine Media's Chicago Music Nights, but I've never seen them live before, mostly because they play more gigs like this, real gigs at real venues with unnegotiable admission prices, than the houses and spaces I tend to prefer. My friends and I were worried that the band would be more of a let down after the epic Mathmaticians set, but it was more of a comedown, like fooling around after sex just to ease out of all that extra energy and adrenaline.

The Dials were pure bubblegum, somewhere between Joan Jett and The Knack (putting them in line with the Lunachicks, perhaps). They were three beautiful girls (and a drummer) playing bouncy rock and roll with a heavy synthesizer emphasis. I listened and bobbed until I was done, and ready to leave, and I did, joyful.

Another Fucking Entry About My Friends in the Freeform Shuffle

Date: 4/11/07
Location: Spot 6
Bands: Locrian, Detholz!, Plastic Crimewave Sound, and DJs Arturo VS. Johnny Kesh and Andy Ortmann
Cost: 5 dollar suggested
Things I missed to be there: Surprisingly little, all the regular wednesday night residencies.



At this point, I've written a fair amount on The Freeform Shuffle at Spot 6, put on weekly by my friends Arvo Fuckhead and DJ Demchuk. Previously, the show would feature music by one band, three djs, and the two hosts at the start and end of the night, but the reopening of Spot 6's basement allows for a new standard of three bands downstairs and the upstairs DJs, a little more time to stretch their legs. This alleviates some problems (dance party kids don't have to sit through an experimental cabaret act), and creates a few more (when Arturo and Kesh started spinning, the peoplen who'd gone downstairs had no idea).

The basement, which is a fairly raw, unfinished area with an untended bar, some plush couches that used to live at the bar next door, and numerous elictrical tape demons stuck on the walls). The first band to christen it was Locrian, an intense, two-man outfit that did some ear splitting, wall of noise shit, that drove the first wave of curious drinkers back upstares as quickly as they came down. My ears could only take about ten minutes of the assaults before I gave up on it, but the noise crowd seemed to be getting off on it, nodding their heads and making appreciative jazz faces.

Upstairs the battle started with a whitelabel remix of Amy Winehouse's "You Know I'm No Good" and continued on an electro, hip hop, dance punk tangent.



The Detholz! took the stage second, as a sort of secret pre-release party for their new album. It was my first time seeing them, and I'd been led to believe they were sillier than they actually were. They weren't really that silly though, just fun. It was as if they'd taken the all the fun parts out of every era of rock'n'roll from prog to glam to metal to new wave, with frenetic keyboards, cowbells and woodblocks, dueling guitars, quick solo bursts and novelty songs. This was a show for their big time fans, who came in fairly large numbers to whip their heads and shake their asses. They were fun (how could they not be?) but after half a set of songs that weren't really grounded in anything, I got curious about what my friends were doing upstairs.

When I got there, they were the only ones upstairs, not counting Arturo and Johnny. My friend Tyree was all kinds of high and fiending for a dance party --which they were happy to provide-- so the five or six of us started bumping and grinding in the corner by the door where DJ Demchuk was collecting money, alternatingly advertising to and driving away all possible walk-in clients. We thought the party would have to end when Andy Ortmann took over.

Andy Ortmann is the head of Nihilist Records, and has helmed any number of experimental noise acts. A recent flyer described him as "the Chicago noise royalty behind Panicsville" which was probably as apt as it was tongue-in-cheek. I tried describing his usual sound to one of my friends as someone "whose instruments break so he starts throwing them into the amps until everything shorts out or there's a feedback explosion." We were all therein presently surprised when he spun an all-disco set full of songs I've never heard of, plus Klus Nomi's "Simple Man" and something I'm pretty sure came off of one of Giorgio Moroder's Munich Machine albums.



Plastic Crimewave Sound is a band that has at various points in time been filled with noise royalty and scene celebrity, from the aforementioned Andy Ortmann to Cat Chow the only person as likely to appear in Chicago Social as Chicago Antisocial, with guest performers like Josephine Foster, Chris Connelly, and Michael Yonkers. PCS isn't a noise band though; they're a psychedelic act on the fringes of the New Weird America.

They're headed up by Steve Krakow, aka Plastic Crimewave, the man behind the comic strip "The Secret History of Chicago Music", the beautiful zine Galactic Zoo Dossier, and the Million Tongues Festival. Formerly he was that guy at the Wicker Park Reckless with the Salvador Dali moustache and perpetually the owner of the best tight pants in Chicago. Steve Krakow is a real lover of things, who collects long-lost records and antique toys the same way he collects famous weirdos to work with and his band is both a museum, a tribute to, and a continuation of the psychedelic sounds that he loves.

When I saw them at A Million Tongues, they bored the shit out of me. When I saw them today (with new member Nick D'Vyne of the band Vee Dee), they were pretty fun. Their music was all fuzzed out blues rock with extreme space echoes, mixed with something that kinda sounded like The Melvins would, if recorded by Phil Spector.


They brought the night down well, and the future looked better for the Shuffle than it ever has.

Two Slaps Radio [WLUW]

Amy Winehouse - You Know I'm No Good #!
Irma Thomas - It's Too Soon to Know

Larry Levan - Heartbeat (remix by Taana Gardner)
Milford Reynolds - Building 453
Dynamic Tints & Pieces of Piece - Rosemarie

Kaldirons - You and Me Baby
Gil Scott Heron - Hello Sunday! Hello Road!
Wanda Davis - Save Me
The Imperials - People in the World

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - Your Thing is a Drag
Curtis Mayfield - Pusherman
Bobby Womack - Across 110th Street
James Phelps - La De Da (I'm a Fool in Love)

James Brown - Blind Man Can See It
Lupe Fiasco feat. Jill Scott - Daydreamin
Outkast - Chronomentrophobia

Harmonic - Ou Est Passee Ma Planete
Beatlettes - Reste Encore
Bop-Chords - Castle in the Sky

Little Caesar & the Romans - The Songs They Were Playing
Casualairs - Thunderbird
Johnny & the Jokers - Comic Book Romance

The Fania All Stars - There You Go
Frankie Dante - My Daddy's Farm !
Os Brazoes - Volkswagon Blue
Zapata - Do Your Thing

Skying High - Getting Off On Your Loving

Little Richard - Heebie Jeebies
Fats Domino - I'm gonna be a wheel someday
The Meters - Chicken Strut

Edith North Johnson and Henry Brown - Little Drops of Water
Buddy Guy - Keep it to myself
Howlin' Wolf - Got my Mojo Workin'


[Frankie Dante live in Central Park]

Thick Glasses, Spillt Beer

Date: 4/9/07
Location: Empty Bottle
Bands: J+J+J, Archaeology, and King Kong
Cost: FREE!
Drinks: $1.25 PBR
Things I missed to be there: I thought there was a show on the South Side was supposed to remember but there was no chatter about it on theinterweb so I couldn't figure it out
Reason for going: Needed to get out of the house



The free show tonight was like the geek hipster pride parade. It was as if every one of Chicago's administrative assistants, comic book artists, and effete-looking mountain men had gathered to hear the spaz-dance synthesizers of Schiller Park's J+J+J and King Kong, whose silly, warbled lyrics make them sound like a children's band version of postpunk and R&B.

Completing the fest was Chicago's Archaeology, who (somehow) did this really hard assed version of shoegazer indie rock. They were goofy motherfuckers, full of G.E. Smith O-faces, and it looked as though you could have broken the entire band into a screaming match by asking which album, exactly, did Radiohead sell out on, but they weren't afraid of ripping out some Thin Lizzy drumlines and guitar hero solos that was much dancier than the crowd was willing to admit (which doesn't say much, considering the show was at The Empty Bottle, where the crowd won't let their guard down for anyone less than Prince or, um, Girl Talk). As indie rock as they looked, and that I was willing to begrudge them, I liked Archaology. You could tell, watching the band, that there were some secret jazzbos writing the songs, and you could tell listening to tracks from their album, that they had owned all the same Rush albums as Mars Volta.

Next up on the agenda:
Tuesday - The Machine Media DJs at Delilah's
Wednesday - Plastic Crimewave Sound, Locrian, and the Detholz! at Spot 6
Thursday - A tough decision between The Mathematicians and Screamin Cyn-Cyn & the Pons at the Beat Kitchen [versus] Indian Jewelry and Clipd Beaks at Mister City



[Here's J+J+J at a place where people actually dance]

bunny hop party train

Things I missed to be there: Midnight Mass; HeNotIn at Cal's; Schizowave and Mister Fuckhead at Elastic; Pirates 'n Hoes with Vyle, Mathew Arkell, The Beatkids, and Nightfox at private residence; Disrobe, Abrade, Intifada, DFN, Murder of Crows and Pygmy Death at La Casa Maldita; Yasunao Tone at 6Odum; Exene Cervenka at Hideout; Condenada and Gamine Thief at South Union Arts

another WZRD cassette party!

Ethyl Meatplow - You Are Listening to WZRD

The Unnatural Logarithm - Do Not Play This Side
1. Astral Bells
2. The Foghorns of Snerf
3. Astral Tranquility
4. Consternation

Cultural Amnesia - Video Rideo
1. Laughter in the Next Room
2. The Fountain Overflows

Foundation - Sans Etiquette
1. Horizon
2. Balavano

Little Fyodor & Babushka & Dan Susnara - Eating the Office Birthday Cake
1. Eating the Office Birthday Cake
2. Dance of the Salted Slug

Nurse with Wound - Split with Current 93
1. ooh baby [coo coo]
2. fashioned to a device behind a tree
3. I was no longer his dominant
4. A snake in your Abdomen

I Scream - Tomorrow is Another Day
1. Scars
2 Nothing to Do
3. Tomorrow is Another Day
4. L'Arabe est le Juif du Juif
5. European Death

Smegma - Mystery Sounds by Smegma

thirteen weeks' madness

Date: 4/5/07
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.

so if I made the joke about making the joke, I'll just say the word to be funny: hump day (part two)

Date: 4/4/07
Location: Spot 6
Show: The Freeform Shuffle with Gypsy Feelings/Chew on This, Protman, and DJs Scrabblor and Rotten Milk
Cost: Free
Drinks: Expensive
Things I missed to be there: Fuck The Facts, La Armada, Moral Decay at Crown Liquors/Club Azucar
Reason I went: The night wasn't over yet.



The titty show started late and ended early, so as a barely-employed loser who spends all of the sunlit hours sleeping, blogging, and jerking off, I had plenty of time to rock out when Brandon and Kelsey dropped me off at the Red Line, so long as I could do it on the cheap. This brought me to my old standby, The Freeform Shuffle.

I like this spot for reasons that might not translate to an audience that isn't me. I can often get a free drink or two and there are a few girls who'll bump and grind on me if I'm in the mood to dance. Other than that, the show is a crapshoot. Booked and hosted by two noise artists, one of whom likes hiphop and another who likes goth shit, it's anyone's guess what you're gonna hear one week to the next. Today's show wasn't hosted by either one, but by Rotten Milk, another noise guy who's been spinning a lot of house and juke lately, and that's what he played in a tag team set with Scrabblor.

If there were more people there, the place would have been bumping, but with just a small crowd, there were only a few regulars poppin' under the dj booth. After Rmizzy and Scrabblor were finished. Chew on This took over. Chew on This is Ossian from Gypsy Feelings rapping solo, and dancing like an overgrown child. He didn't look like someone you'd get some good hip hop out of, but he was, at least he was when you could hear it (it was that common problem where no one seems to understand how to mix live hiphop vocals). His beats were good but he seemed new to them. A few times in a row, the track ended before the song did, so he just stopped.

It was time for Protman (laptop artist and Life During Wartime DJ extraordinaire), to reclaim his laptop and take the stage. For the first half of his set, he made beats with a videogame controller while Chew on This freestyled over them. The only line I remember was calling me out for taking too many pictures:

Stop flashing lights/You fucking photographers/Keep it up/ And you'll be hanging from the rafters!

When Protman took the helm altogether, it was real tight. It was dance music that faded easily behind conversation, but hung in the air, unobtrusively, for anyone who wanted to dance. The night petered off awkwardly. My ride said she was leaving, but didn't, so I sat there in ready-to-go mode, while my friend Mister Fuckhead closed the night out with silly songs about mummies and beer.


[Chew on This rapping from the couch]

I'm Sure I've Already Made the Joke About Wednesday Being Hump Day

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TwoSlaps Radio [WLUW]

James Brown - Sex Machine (live)
James Brown - I Feel Alright
James Brown - Papa Don't Take No Mess

Curtis Mayfield - Now You're Gone
the Impressions - You always hurt me
Booker T. And The M.G.s - Melting Pot

Brand New - Party Time
Herbie MAnn - Push Push
Solomon Burke - Cry To Me
The Marvelettes - Don't Mess With Bill
Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings - How long do I have to wait for you?
Anna Raye - Will You Love MY Child

Aretha Franklin - I say a little prayer
Irma Thomas - Time is on my side

Otis Redding - Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay
Grace Jones - NightClubbing

O'Jays - Back Stabbers
Delfonics - Smiling Faces

Afrika Bambaataa & The Sonic Soul force - Planet rock
Grandmaster flash - The Message
Treacherous Three - The Body Rock

Hag Sameach??? Kurwa Macz!!!

Date: 4/2/07
Location: The Empty Bottle
Bands: Brilliant Pebbles with Unique Chique and The Pumps
Cost: FREE!
Things I missed to be there: Mudboy, Dr WTF MD, and Kill Comedy at The Village; GSD, La Armada Roja, Canadian Rifle and Intifada at Juevos Ranchos
Reason for going: I wanted something where I could slip in, have a drink, watch a band andeave after spending an evening at the family seder



I have a few friends who live and die by the website MyOpenBar. It's a compendium of bars and stores that have free shit on any given day of the week, and just like Craigslist, Flavorpill, and the -Ist family of websites, there's one in every big city. If you do your homework, you can eat, get hammered, see a show and get a facial for under ten bucks (you know, the kind of facial that you might find in the free section on Craigslist, as opposed to the kind guaranteed in casual encounters. Still, it's good to have a good cross section of backup standards if you're like me, and going home just makes you depressed. Wednesday means Soul Night at Danny's, The Freeform Shuffle at Spot 6, and In-One-Ear at the Heartland. Tuesday means quarter beer night amd live rockabilly at the Horseshoe. And Monday is Free night over at the Empty Bottle.

Free Night is always welcome. While they occasionally have a clunker of a show, it's fairly rare, and if the temperature is nice and the rest of the city is mellow, even a slow night will be pretty bumpin. Tonight I came to see Brilliant Pebbles, who have been making the rounds with the weirdo set. The band consists of a lot of people I've seen around before, but never in bands. There's Monikah, who used to have her long hair divided into a black hemisphere and a white hemisphere, that Asian guy who I would descrive as 'dressing ugly on purpose' if that wasn't a mean thing to say, and a guitarist who I couldn't recognize behind his costume (which looked more like a zombie version of the pope than I did when I dressed up as a zombie version of the pope for a costume party two years ago. Also, their drummer used to play with Lozenge (yay).

At first I thought the band was going to be another exercise in theater over substance as Monikah, leapt around the stage, howling and moaning in Polish and English, but by their third song they had gelled into this Proggy New Wave that was so epic it almost sounded like Opera (think Bertolt Brecht raping Giorgio Moroder). My girlfriend suggested that Monikah form an English-Polish-Russian-gibberish supergroup with Right-Eye Rita and Lena from Schizowave, though in actuality, I'd seen her join Aleks (from Aleks and the Drummer) as back-up singers for my favorite incarnation of Lovely Little Girls.

The other good thing about Free Mondays is that they're cheap enough that if you don't like what's going on, or your mind starts to wander, there's nothing holding you back from leaving. I missed Unique Chique, who play indie rock, and The Pumps, who tried to trick me into staying longer than I intended to, by having incredibly beautiful women in the band.


[I highly recommend you go to see Brilliant Pebbles at the Beat Kitchen on April 27th with Tub Ring]