Location: The Co-Prosperity Sphere
Show: Select Media Festival with Brilliant Pebbles, Evolutionrevolution, OCDJ, and more
Cost: $10 Suggested
Things I missed to be there: Million $ Mano, Major Taylor, Vyle, the Cool Kids and pretty much everyone else who's ever opened for Flosstradamus at the URB 150 party at Lava; No Vinyl Allowed featuring Joe Vor-Tech, Mr. Automatic, and OneFiftyOne at the Velvet Elvis; David Diarreah and Cave at Heaven; On Parade:A Screenprinted Rock Poster Extraveganza at Clothes Optional; Star Muertos with Mr. Bobby, Rayaline, and Batgerms at the new Pilsen House
Reason for Going: It was a spaceship... a motherfucking spaceship!
Ever since setting up shop in the Co-Prosperity Sphere, a big empty space in Bridgeport that once served as a neighborhood grocery store, the cats behind the Version and Select Media Festivals have shown themselves capable of putting up some truly impressive installation art. Earlier this year, they unveiled We're Rollin, They're Hatin, an exhibition of art inspired by the game Dungeons & Dragons for Version. There's really no way to describe how cool the exhibit was because there really isn't a way to seperate the the art, which included murals, shirts, and large scale statues, from the severely uncool source material it was steeped in. For this year's Select Festival, they've created CPS1: A Space Colony replete with control stations, robots, all variety of blacklit space debris, and a video journey to a party planet called Earth.
It was like some squatters had taken up residence in the outdated corners of the Museum of Science and Industry and thrown a party there. Unfortunately, as wonderul as the exhibits were, the party seemed lacking. It wasn't the acts. I mean, sure, Evolutionrevolution did everything to drive people away, but not too many people ledt. At the same time Brilliant Pebbles and OCDJ did everything they could to get people's asses moving, but the asses mostly just milled about, making them easy targets for the sticker bandit labeling everyone with insults, puns, and punny insults ("space douche", "space lame", "myspace", "personal space").
It might have been that the soundsystem was shit (which is rare for these kids), or that there were parties all over the place that didn't require Northside kids to move south of Grand Avenue, but it might have just been that the opening night of the Select Media Fest was (gasp) more of an art show than a party.
If that's the case it would've been fine by me. I snorted ketamine and drank rocketfuel in the ship's hull, fought with aliens, and simulated sex in the makeout room. It was a party for me, but, again, even if it wasn't, even if it was just a really cool art show, I probably would have been alright. The last month was full of parties. Parties that had no atmosphere but good music and a lot of heads (Hilary Rawk and Skyler's jam "Fierce" above Open End), parties that had great atmosphere but shitty music and sound (The Cobrasnake's "They Live" jam, with it's dayglo drag queen dancers and bloody suspension acts for goth thrill seekers at Das Butt), parties that had good music and good atmosphere but no heads (just about any party I played at), and parties where everything was wrong but were full of heads (Alexander Bassett's "The Deep", and just about every party Mr. Bobby threw at that stupid lumberyard).
I got a job this month, at a clothing store that may never actually open. All of my co-workers are DJs, possibly because the only people left in this city that aren't are my Mom and my sister. Either way, I'm sick of lackluster parties, I'm sick of dance music, and I'm really fucking sick of Chromeo.
Sure there were shows, but they didn't move me. LatinoFest should have been the best thing ever, but it came only a week after Apocalypticrust Fest and I had a better time chugging beer in the alley and talking shit than I did listeing to La Armada Roja. Same thing with the Blog Cabin's Halloween party, where the noise band Suddenly Susan reenacted their set getting shut down a week earlier at Sonotheque. Velcro Lewis played a set at the Cobra Lounge showcasing everything that was good about him and his 100 Proof Band, and everything that made them an obnoxious, novelty bar rock act.
I threw a couple shows. One went well and one didn't. My new monthly, All City Night, at Reggie's Live with DJ Demchuk co-hosting, was too heavy with DJs. Million $ Mano had everyone grinding up on each other at the end of the night, but everybody only consisted of a few handfuls of people. The Image Front, consisting of Joe Vor-Tech and Mr. Automatic were good but not so dancey, with a mix of left-field mashups that was often hilarious, and Skyler's disco would have been the perfect opener to a better show, but as it was, it was mostly relegated to background music. The highlight of the show, that made sure everyone left happy, and feeling like the show was as different and fun as we'd intended it to be, was the BR Trio, a jazz trio that played ragtime covers of The Dead Kennedys and the Misfits, and old-timey music so bawdy it would have made R. Crumb's band blush.
The other show was Windy City Soul at the Darkroom, a celebration of Two Slaps Radio's first anniversary. We were billing the show as a "sophisticated soul party" and despite the technical problems that made the first hour hellish for me, Arvo, and the sound guy. The show was everything it was supposed to be by the time real people showed up. Harlet Star played a set of Def Poetry Style hip hop, with a heavy jazz-soul fusion base and a little chick who could blow Aretha Franklin's ass out with her singing voice. It reminded me of one of those children's sports movies, Rookie of the Year or The Mighty Ducks or some shit where there was always some kid who was incredibly, superhumanly powerful but had no control (I'm embarassed to say it, but my geek-geek double geek ass is specifically thinking of the black kid with the "knucklepuck" in D2: The Mighty Ducks)... her voice was so strong that sometimes it got away from her, but overall it was a good thing. The Revelettes came out between bands to do a throwback go-go dance set, replete with big hair, short skirts, tall boots, and costume changes that brought out more short skirts and tall boots. I'd never taken into account how slick the atmosphere of the Darkroom was because I'd mostly just been there for hipster shit, but it was really smooth. The last band up was JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, a soul band with an iconoclastic lead singer who channeled James Brown into call-and-response songs about how the Chicago Transit Authority s fucking us over.
Out of the whole month, there were only two things that relly impressed me. The first was Puppet Night over at the Heart of Gold loft in Lincoln Park. I almost didn't go because it was starting on the early side and I was pretty depressed but I figured that if puppets couldn't cheer me up, then nothing could. They did. A cat named Dax sang a beautiful song, an ode to a pirates freedom, loneliness and regret as he assembled a cardboard sailboat from pieces of junk in his suitcase and pushed it across the room. Le Cat Show, a show about the idle rich, their disgruntled workers, and the words pussy, kitty and cat being used interchangeably both literally and as innuendo, premiered 6 months ago in an earlier draft that that may very well have been the most annoying thing I've ever seen (just ahead of Evolutionrevolution at Co-Prosperity and just behind My So-Called Lice at the Fireside Bowl years ago). Since then, they have molded it into something that resembled an Edgar Allen Poe piece as interpreted by the cast of The State. The show ended with a muppet-like handpuppet talking about the process of breeding cows in captivity, that ended with the bird muppet ejaculating turrets of silly string all over his human counterpart. You'll have to take my word that this was less stupid and much funnier than it sounds, or has any right to be.
The other great show was Hallectroween at Subterranean. It was a twist of that time-honored tradition of bands playing as other bands for Halloween, but instead of Local H playing Cheap Trick, or Bibe of the Devil playing Local H, it had a bunch of poppy/punky electro acts playing German electro legends in all of their fascistic glory, including Beau Wanzer and Rolan Vega as Front 242, Detroit artist Goudron as Gary Numan, and Schiller Park's J+J+J who blew everyone away as Kraftwerk, tossing out dozens of red shirts silkscreened with skinny ties, blasting us strobes and flashing LCDs and playing amped up, sped up, house influenced covers of "The Model", "Radioactivity", and "Trans Europe Express".
This show was the perfect marriage of style and substance, sound and atmosphere and I was surprised to see it happen at Subterranean on a Sunday night. Still, I'm glad it did, it made my whole goddamned month.
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