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]

There was a good article in the last issue of Lumpen, where Chicagoan-abroad Party Steve wrote about scene dynamics in the last five or six cities he's been through: Portland was too political for a lot of genre crossbreeding, New Orleans was too punk rock and not enough avant garde, and New York and Austin were both a bit choked on their own hype. Chicago's dilemma has been clear to me for a while, as it's been two years in the making. The weirdos are all becoming club kids.

The way he describes this, is that it's a defense mechanism, a natural reaction to what's been happening in the underground. Back in 2005, maybe a dozen spots shut down. With a smaller pool of spaces, musicians and party people alike have had to acquiesce to going to licensed bars and nightclubs to play their music and get their dance on.

Item! Duder from Mest murders some guy

And you thought that pop punk was for pansies. Apparently, Tony Lovato... frontman for one-hit wonders Mest, and back-in-the-day drummer for the Blue Island white power band Confederate Storm, was arrested for the murder of this guy. Thing is, he didn't kill him like a popper, he stabbed the dude, which is pretty hard (meaning both difficult and -core). Obviously, this sucks the most for the victim, Wayne Hughes, who gets kind of lost behind fans of punk music, who are laughing their asses off about the whole thing, and fans of Mest, who are handling this with obvious poise and class.



Apparently, Tony is out on a million-dollar bail. In my opinion, he's missing a great opportunity by not staying in prison, where he could become some sort of epic emo Tupac that blows everyone's mind. Perhaps Tony should seek the counsel of Bertrand Cantat, singer for the French dancepunk act Noir Desir who is still quite beloved, despite beating his girlfriend to death in 2003.

Update! Lovato was cleared of charges, won't become some sort of soulful jailhouse Tom Waits emo Tupac God, and will still have to live with the legacy of singing that crap-ass song "What's the Dillio?"

obelisk
Things I missed to be there: Mala Sangre, Tras de Nada, Securicor, Sofakingdom, and Sic Semper Tyrannis at La Casa Maldita

Two Slaps Radio [WLUW]

James Brown - Please, Please, PLease
Wallace Johnson - I'm Grown
Mavis Staples & Billy Preston - That's Enough

Cliff Gober - A Poor WAyfaring Stranger
Nina Simone - Nobody Knows when you're down and out
Carla Thomas - Comfort me

Irma Thomas - Take a look
spanky Wilson - Blood From a Stone
Sharon Jones & The DAp-Kings - How Long Do I have to Wait?

Funky Porcini - We're Out of Here
Lee Fields & The Explorers - I'm the Man
Fishbone - Party With Saddam

Booker T. And the MG's - Melting Pot
Zebra - Simple Song
Percy Sledge - These Arms Of Mine
The Flamingos - I only have eyes for you

Patti LaBelle & The BlueBellies - Over The Rainbow
Annette Poindexter & the Pieces of Peace - Mama
The Miracles - Going to a Go-Go

Love Trio - Rub A Dub Style
Herbie Hancock - Sly

Brenda & the Tabulations - Dry Your Eyes
Lightnin Hopkins - Bald Headed Woman
Norman Hopkins - Creator

Snooks Eaglin - Red Beans
Anders Osborne - Stoned, Drunk, and Naked
Robert Jay - Alcohol Pt. 1 & 2

The Co-Real Artists - What About You (In The World Today)
The Chefs - Mr. Machine


[at various points in time, Billy Preston was cooler than anything you've ever seen]

Man's World

Date: 3/25/07
Location: La Casa Maldita
Bands: Bruise Violet, Sin Orden, Condenada, S.S.EX, and Sangre De Abajo
Cost: $5
Things I missed to be there: ? and the Mysterians at the Empty Bottle; Weekend Nachos and some SxE bands at some joint on Belmont; LMNOP and Super Meego at the Country Club; Scalpels at Ronny's; Resonate2.0 with Schizowave, Environmental Encroachment, SPUNN and all sorts of rave shit
Reason for going: I never got a ride to a punk show from my Dad before; today he made up for that missed high school experience



I wonder if there's a name for that part of a song, particularly a punk song, before it gets all fast and you don't know where it's gonna go. It's not an intro so much as a teaser. Back in the day, my favorite band for this was The Mascots. They would play these intricate teasers that bordered on jazz, before devolving into incomprehensible shrieking hardcore. Then they would trade instruments- the bassist and guitarist would switch, then the drummer and the singer- and do it all over.



Condenada is getting good at this. They always had some slow songs (they fall closer to punk than hardcore on that limited spectrum that separates one loud screamy band from another), but their teasers are sounding as much like complete movements as the thrashfests that follow. While some of their songs reminded me of Mary Tyler Morphine (another old favorite, melodic but loud, recently reunited but with no worthwhile web presence), some of their teasers reminded me of pogo, postpunk, and hard rock from the 70s, Deep Purple kinda shit, Mott the Hoople kinda shit. Plus they soundchecked with Inxs. I've said it a number of times on this blog before... Chicago's punks are getting good.



Tonight's show was all about the ladies. I'm not saying this because of the bands, sure the girls outnumbered the boys three to two, I'm saying it because of the crowd. Just before Condenada started the last set of the night, a friend of mine, a tiny girl with a big voice yelled into the back yard that the band was starting, and started a stampede. Girls were skipping the stairs and literally jumping down to the basement; from the front of the room, it looked as if the crowd was segregated by height, as girls, women, and womyn all crowded the pit, leaving the men and the boys pulling up the rear, and the groups only totally intermeshed when the music got really fast and they started slamming into each other.



Sin Orden played hard as always, but I missed a good portion of the set because Martha, the little girl with the big voice, was discussing an article in a paper I write for that she felt was racist. I didn't get there in time to see the two new bands, Sangre de Abajo and S.S.EX, but I did catch Bruise Violet, who came to town to join Condenada on a tour of the Midwest. Named after a Babes in Toyland song, they're another group on the political tip, but unlike most bands, I can actually understand what they are saying (at least in their recordings, live tonight their vocals were as fuzzy as their guitars). They were really good. Someone was bitching about them being too LA-style. I don't know if that's true, they sounded fairly Chicago, but not like anything that's being made here right now. I figure that to be a good thing.

Next on the Agenda: Sunday jam at the Orphanage (finally?)

Sharks in Sheep's Clothing

Date: 3/23/07
Location: Cal's
Bands: Sharkula, The Strange Attractor, Daily Void, and Red Denizen
Cost: 5 bones
Things I missed to be there: Lord of the Yum Yum at Lincoln Restaurant; Joe Raglani, Silvum, Glass Bath, and Eavil at Nihilist; Waterbabies and Loto Ball Show at Reversible Eye; I-Attack and Macabre at the Double Door; Alex White and the Dials at Hideout; Ellen Alien at Smartbar; Bitch & the Exciting Conclusion at Old Town School of Folk Music; San Agustin and the Riggs/Sternhagen/McCormack Trio at Enemy; Bjork night at Berin
Things I went to also but aren't worth writing about: Brilliante Records showcase/art show at The Country Club, lam-ass white kid warehouse dance party at 1648 Kinzie
Reason for going: Cheap, never seen Sharkula play an actual show.



It's always great when weirdos join forces. The weirdos in question tonight are Ken the Soul Rebel and Sharkula (also known as Thigamahjiggee, Cumberjack, Mr Diffy, and Dirty Gilligan). Ken is an old skinhead/rockabilly cat who hosts a couple of radio shows on WLUW and WNUR. Fans of Chic-A Go-Go may recognize him as someone who has appeared on almost every episode, picking up quarters, pogoing, and doing steel-toed Russian kicks on the dance floor. None of that is really weird, just general background info. The weird part comes out when he starts talking, or even more when he starts writing. He's just incredibly verbose, perhaps the only person alive who can't make a show flyer in under 100 words. He nails his subjects, in his own spazzy way, and I'm going to let him explain the bands, starting with Sharkula.

SHARKULA (The most surreal and punkish DIY rapper around Chicago joins forces with us. The only rapper to dare rap onstage before Disrobe, The Coughs, and Pelican that lived to tell!!! As seen on Chic-A-Go-Go and on
the streets selling his tapes and CDs!!! A brother who does his own thing avoiding bandwagons and police wagons!!! Also known as Thigamijig and Denzel Washington. Buy a CD from him so he can get CTA fare.)



Sharkula has been around since before I can even remember being aware of what was around me. I started to see him around Belmont a decade ago, selling tapes by the CTA. I would later learn that it was one of many spots he would frequent daily, until he had a good third of the city under his jurisdiction. It took me maybe six years to buy a cassette, which was almost surely the last new cassette I ever bought. The tape was hilarious, just him walking down Milwaukee Avenue rapping into a tape recorder. At one point, he stops to try and holler at this girl. It's one of the hardest and most rewarding tapes I have to listen all the way through.

A couple years ago, Miles Tillman an up-and-coming glitch IDM producer picked up one of Thig's tapes and decided to remix it. He ended up going through Thig's back catalog (a collection of home recordings only rivaled in this city by Wesley Willis and Mark Soltroff) and put out a best of. It got a fair amount of press and all of a sudden, this dude who'd been trying to push tapes on the street for fifteen years was a bit of a celebrity. I remember an event at the Jerkstore where he was dancin' and acting a fool and had this huge posse of hot chicks and white kids standing all around rooting for him. That year he put out one of the best-titled cds in the history of hiphpop: Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Whopper with Cheese. Still, he only plays a scant few shows a year so I was excited to hear him play with The Strange Attractor backing him up.



THE STRANGE ATTRACTOR (We're last but we will make sure that we will contribute to the magickal symbolism of 23 in our high energy mix of punk/soul/glam/jazz/metal/Latin/surf/Middle Eastern/etc. sounds with revolutionary theory and humor. We are also the live backing for this cat...)


On Tape, Thig mixes a lot of stream of conscious rhymes with pop culture references. When I say stream-of-conscious, I don't mean the well edited free association that often gets branded with the term. I mean that he's been freestyling into a tape recorder for an hour straight and some weird shit comes out. Tonight though, I think he was a bit too trashed for his own good. He pumped his fist and shook like a seasoned rock star but the lyrics were garbled and confused, so that often, all you could make out was a growled "SHARKULA!" The band was good, but it wasn't dancy, it was the kind of shit you hear when people who know how to play their instruments have someone come up and freestyle, where they play it safe so that it works but doesn't really do anything.

RED DENIZEN (The Plastic M.O.T.O. Band / 2/3 of The Plastic Bullets and Lawrence from M.O.T.O. go second)



Red Denizen was fun, in my opinion better than the sum of their parts (or at least the bands that they derive from). I could say the same thing about the Daily Void. They were both fun, singalong punk bands that weren't in any way soft. Comparisons could be drawn to The Misfits and Iggy. All either one needed was a little more dynamism from their singers, but let's let Ken say it, because he does it with more enthusiasm.



THE DAILY VOID (Most of The Functional Blackouts and The Worst formed a SUPERGROUP of misanthropes and sociopaths. See them now before hey become the new California Rasins. Chris told me they sound similar to G.G. Allin and the Scumfucs. An inspired case of Devolution after taking a holiday in Butthole Surfers territory from their last FOB album.)



[Let's see one of the many cool Sharkula videos you can find on YouTube. i chose this one because it was shot in 16mm, and I like it like that]

side A side B side ZRD

Once again I dig into the old WZRD cassette vault. Many of these recordings represent the experimental tape trading scene of the 1980s. The rest represents self-released tapes, demos, and the material of a number of local punk and underground bands who never recorded on any other medium.

1. End Result - "Unreleased Stuff" - Side A
Devil Dog
Love Canal
She Devils
B-Bro
Cinderella's Prescription

(old Chicago experimental punk, read a little about them here)

2. Zendik Farm Band - "The Loser" - Side A
Anthem
Acid

(appparently the hippie-punk kids who bug you at outdoor shows with their "Stop bitching, Start A Revolution" stickers hada pretty decent noise outfit going for a while.)

3. Tribe - "Drift" - Side B
Hipster Saint
Drift
Baloramas

4. Quaker Youth - "Quaker Youth Ensemble"
Love Junky

5. La Loca - "You Should Only Give Head to Guys You Really Like & Dragon Man"
Why I Only Choose Black Men For My Lovers

(awesome sex poetry from California, with fun effects tweaking)

6. Eh3 - "Eh?85" - Side B
Human Evolution/ You Are Terrific!
Rasta Duckwalk
Rasta Quickstep
Quanta
High Velocity
Sea Hunt Reprise

(early 80s electronic tape trader shit. maybe my favorite stuff of the show)

7. Insect Deli - Unlabeled cassette

(actualy it was kinda labeled... the name Insect Deli was scratched into the side, but that's it. This is probably a No Sides Records release)

8. "What Is Truth? Vol. 3"
Proof of Utah - ???
Scott Marshall - ???
Illusion of Safety - ???
Legendary Pink Dots - ???
Sebastian Gandera - ???

9. A/Noyz - "Tale of theBroken Mirror"
Death March
Hail Mary

10. "Home-Made Music Volume 2" - Side A
Psyclones - Ashtrays
Dead Heat - Passage to Moscow
Der Akteur - Excerpt from Crystal
F/I - Fetish
Masakai - Beyond the Edge
Architects Office - Bunjiji Pertabation
Deficit Des Annees Anterieures - LaDerniere Saison
Gai Saber - The Killer Song
Viscera - IDBM
The Starkman - Loopy Loo
Polar Praxis - Promenade (Part IV)
Neo Zelanda - No Digas Nada
Bunny & Breaker - Either Way...?
Nun - Orgonica


[Let's watch an old End Result performance while we're at it!]

jivin on hell mountain

Date: 3/22/07
Location: Spot 6
Bands: Rick Garret, DJ Madelin, and DJ Lord Tyger
Cost: Free
Things i missed to be there: Flosstradamus and Matt Roan at Subterranean
Reason for going: I was in a meeting til late, so Subterranean was five dollars instead of free, I wasn't sure if I missed Flosstradamus, and I was offered a ride.



God bless a show where one DJ will play James Brown and the Coasters and another will play Wagner.

Next up on the books: Thursday...watching the Office, than heading out to the open mic at Quennect 4 or the show at Gojangles, maybe Sin Radio at Cananas

the entire history of a band you've never heard of

Date: 3/19/07
Location: Wise Fools Pub
Band: The Sixth Sun
Cost: $5
Things I missed to be there: Chances Dances at Subterranean; Brenmar Someday and Rotten Milk at Myopic Books; LMNOP and Charlie Deets at Empty Bottle; Steve Albini talking about the music industry at the Claudia Cassidy Theatre
Reason for going: Blood:Water



It's hard to write about bands that you're friends with, because whether you like them or not, you feel like you need to quantify what you say. There's probably no band I'm closer to than The Sixth Sun. I went to high school with four of the six band members, and stayed in contact with all of them since. The first time I dropped acid was with their guitarist, the first time I ate shrooms was with their electronics manipulator, and the first time I smoked pot was with their VJ. I've stayed with their drummer twice in New Orleans and had sex in his parents bed.

I've seen the band form and change over the years, into something coherent, which is kinda weird, because they're coherent and not at all bad, but still not my cup of tea in any way.

Most bands just get together and start to play shows, but The Sixth Sun have been on a slooow, slow burn. The band started out maybe five years ago. Brian and Charles were both jamming with this annoying kid Scott, who was kind of a stuck up guitar ace. Brian was trying to do something that sounded like Nine Inch Nails and Charles was trying to do something that sounded like Tool. Scott was trying to do something that sounded like Scott and eventually became too much for either one of them. I'm not sure if they ditched him before or after they hooked up, but once he was gone, they were ready to start putting their own songs together. Originally they were an electroindustrial group with heavy acidhead influences: Indian music, house music, Alex Grey paintings, Aldous Huxley, Bill Hicks, and Hunter S. Thompson.

They were calling themselves the Avatars, and creating a real dubby, electro sound, but they really wanted a girl on vocals to anchor down the songs. They went through a string of them before finding Tiffany, a bubbly little thing with a big voice, a nice look, and her own songs.

If they ever make it, it'll be because of her. Together, they'd been a good jam band, but no one really had a dynamic enough personality to command a stage. Her songs are basically relationship pop, but she brings a pretty solid set of references with her, nothing too out there but good shit nonetheless: Bjork, nine inch nails, PJ Harvey, and Portishead.

With their dark side (essence?) and her light side, they end up sounding like a Bonnaroo-ready Evanescence, with shades of Stabbing Westward and Morcheeba replacing Amy Lee's Tori Amos fixation.

So when I saw them on Monday, I made allowances for them that I wouldn't have for bands I'd known less about. They sounded demo tape ready, but not album ready, they were kinda boring but it was only their third time playing in front of a real audience. My favorite moment of the night came between songs, when Tiffany started to sing a song from the Little Mermaid (the one with the ,whoozits and whatsits galore). There was an amazing sense of honesty to that, Tiffany was a happy person, and she wasn't going to play up the scorned sexpot image when she didn't need it. It was pretty obvious that given the right break, the band could make it, but it was little moments like that when the band showed that, maybe with some more time in front of an audience, they might turn into something I can enjoy as well.



Next up on the agenda: Tuesday seems very promising with Noise shows at Red-i, the Mutiny, Nihilist, and Elastic

Two Slaps Radio [WLUW]

Nina Simone - Speak Low (Bent Remix)
Gladys Knight & the Pips - I Heard It Through the Grapevine
Essence - Fever

Charles Crawford - Fat and Funky
Curtis Mayfield - Junkie Chase
Chocolate Milk - Pretty Pimpin Willie

Soul Children - I'll Be The Other Woman
Mandrill - I'll Never Smile
The Clovers - Love Potion #9

The Cookies - Chains
The Penguins - Hey Senorita
The Pharohs - Teenagers Love Song

Fabulous Originals - It Ain't Fair But It's Fun
James Brown - Just Won't Do Right
The Five Stairsteps - Danger! She's a Stranger
Otis Redding - Scratch My Back

Dr. King Cobra - Anedo Special
Bobby Treetop - Wait Til I Get to Know You
Chosen Few Band - What It Takes To Live

Eddie Bo - The Thang
Julie Driscoll - Indian Rope Man
The Fugees - The Score

Idris Muhammed - Loran's Dance

Ken Boothe - Is it Because I'm Black?
Albert King - Born Under a Bad Sign
Johnny Nash - Love Ain't Nothin (But A Monkey On Your Back)
Gene Chandler - Lovequake

Antibalas - I.C.E.


[Here's video of Antibalas playing last week at SXSW]

Ratticus St. Patticus

Date: 3/18/07
Location: The Whale
Show: Lamprey St. Patti's Alternative Artists Parade with Environmental Encroachment and friends
Cost: Free
Things I missed to be there: Adhamh Roland at the Lowercase Collective; Jam at the Orphanage
Reason for going: Better than all other options, known or unknown



The first time I went to The Whale was the Summer before I started started college. I was seventeen years old, in the midst of a three year relationship that I thought would last forever. I was full of self-esteem and open to anything. When someone called me up and told me to go to the Lamprey Pig Roast, it was probably the furthest South I'd ever been to for a party that wasn't at someone's parents house (at the not-very-South location of Halsted and Canalport). I don't remember much of the details of that evening except that it was one of those magical, inspiring nights that the summer was full of. I'd missed out on the swine but the fire pit was in full effect, as was the beer and Devil in the Woodpile. I got my dance on and my laugh on and my drink on and wouldn't see the place until four or five years later when it participated in the Version fest that dubbed Bridgeport the community of the future with The Whale listed on their maps as The house of the Future.

I ditched the Typewriter/ Mathematicians show at Texas when the prick at the door wouldn't let my friends in and biked over to the Lamprey Compound. There was still a fire pit going, but the majority of the yard was taken over by a maze of tubing. Model Rocket Scientist were playing and they blew us away (but the album the dude gave us was kinda meh). That whole night, I had the same feeling I did that first time. I was thrilled that they were still operating out of that dope spot, even if I was a bit saddened by the fact that I'd been missing a half decade or so of cool shit.

Outside of the annual pigroast, one of the things I'd been missing out on was the St. Patrick's day parade. I'm not sure when the parade usually falls. St. Patrick's happened on a Saturday and the Lamprey parade happened a day later. It was your standard weirdo parade with overlapping crew diagrams of kids from The Rat patrol, Lumpen, T.H.O.N.G., Terry Plumming, WZRD and the extended Environmental Encroachment family rolling down 18th Street with freakbikes, costumes, drums and horns.

Back at the Lampreys everyone did their own thing. Johnny Payphone was passing around a hat and tasering people for charity. Drunken vegetarians fought over hunks of steak as soon as they came off the grill. rotten Milk passed out on a couch. People paired off and snuck off to parts unknown. Impromptu jam sessions were happening all over until everyone came together in a big mess around the fire.

I don't really think of Environmental Encroachment as a band, so much as a thing that happens at parties and spectacles. As such, I'm glad when it does. I saw them for the first time, that summer that I first went to The Whale, and had one of those magical experiences. Since then, I've probably seen them play more than any other group in this city, and I don't think I've ever been disappointed.


[I'm still kicking myself for missing St. Ratrick's Day 2006]

punk show, shmunk show, I'm not Irish and I wanna do everything!

Date: St. Patrick's Day
Location: Unnamed apartment on 25th/Homan
Bands: Intifada, Sin Orden, Eske, Tras De Nada, Disrobe, Usless Wooden Toys, and Loaded First
Things I missed to be there: Hentai Lacerator, Sister Sister, Expendable Youth, Pygmy Death, and Abrade at the Expendable Youth House; The Binges and The Black Ladies at Permanent Records; Zeropoint, Labycz/Sprikut Duo, and OUR080R05 at Enemy; The Beer Nuts at Double Door
Things I didn't have to miss but did anyway: Busker and Dai5ychain's hackerfest at the Little Flower Shop
Things I ditched the punk show for after the first few bands: An Argo Tea party and a Bluegrass St. Patty's day party in Logan, two dance parties in the Congress Theatre building that got busted by the cops
Cost: 6 bucks plus the price of a forty
Reason for going: I woke up on the Southside, ordered Chinese food, had sex and left from there



This was a good show at a place that was smaller than The Beauty Shop was. In fact, there were only two small rooms you could see or hear the show from, as well as a kitchen that was only good for smoking pot and a bedroom where they were selling keg beer. There isn't really anything I can say about this show that I couldn't say about any other punk show, so I'll just post some pictures once I upload them.

Disrobe:











Intifada



Loaded First

Attack of the Killer Beers

Date: 3/16/07
Location: Cobra Lounge
Bands: Squared Off, The Wanderers, and Murphy's Law
Things I missed to be there: Radio Arte Benefit with Pkdores, Cubicky, Crather, and Condenada; Question, Black September, Demonslaught, and Securicor at La Casa Maldita; Aleks & the Drummer, A Tundra, and the Pussy Pirates at the Empty Bottle
Cost: Free
Reason I went: My girlfriend was already backstage, I had to make sure I got there before she was seduced by skinheads



"I'd like you to meet our new drummer, that's right we got a new drummer. I swear by the time I'm 70, each and every one of youse will have a chanca ta play in Murphy's Law." - Jimmy, Murphy's Law

It's not very often I make it out to a big time punk show, at a place where the doorman gets paid with a band that brings out all the old heads. It maybe happens once or twice a year (the last three were Naked Raygun, the Subhumans, and MDC). It's nice, though, after months and months of DIY shows, where the bands talk politics between every song, to just go to a bar and see some old meathead hardcore that reminds you of high school.

I have this tremendous luck, where whenever I go see Murphy's Law, I've got a friend who gets me backstage. The last time was five years ago at The House of Blues, with Secret Agent Bill and The Tossers, and Jimmy's chihuahua running around all over the place. This time I got there late, just as Squared Off was finishing their set and long after my friends the Wanderers had left the stage. My girlfriend intercepted me at the door and whisked me up to the green room. It wasn't furnished by Disney money but it was still pretty dope, just a sparsely decorated apartment on the third floor with a fridge full of beer and a radio that only got the classic rock station. We listened to Thin Lizzy and drank Bud Dry with the Wanderers and their friends, who are a fun mix of Chicago zinesters, fat dudes from Indiana, and these immaculate rockabillians.



As I've said before, the Cobra Lounge is kind of weird. We were told we had to vacate before Murphy's Law set up so we all went downstairs, and the DJ was playing Murphy's Law! They were playing "Somebody's Gonna Get Their Head Kicked In Tonight" (which was actually the song that Murphy's closed with). It was weird enough that they were playing a song by the band that was about to play, but even weirder when they cut the song early and played another track from Back With a Bong. It took a few moments, until Jimmy made an impromptu "Chicago" remark, that we realized that this was actually the band playing, piped in from the other room.



The band is still making new music but they've been touring forever and came out ready to give the fans what they want, which was basically, the shit they knew. They played "Care Bear", "Secret Agent S.K.I.N.", "Panty Raid", and "Cavity Creeps". They didn't have Fishbone to provide horns for "The Ska Song" like they did in the old days but they did have their new drummer wailing on a Jaeger bottle solo. On "The Beer Song" they brought out Herb from the Beer Nuts. The song still had a kick to it but, maybe because I spend so much time in the aforementioned overly political part of the scene, it was a bit shocking to hear the line "What are you, a bunch a fuckin queers?" I wonder if the Descendents would still play "I'm Not A Loser" if they were to tour again. I can't remember if they did when I saw them ten years ago (which is so long ago it doesn't even count)



The definition of Murphy's law (the theory) is anything that can go wrong, will go wrong. With this is mind, it's amazing how well the show went. There was only one fight, which didn't end in hospitalization; they never ran out of beer and Jaggermeister to give to greedy punks in the crowd; and for a 20-plus years old punk band, they were tight. Real tight, which is why we couldn't tell the difference between them playing live and a track from the cd.

You should go to Murphy's Law's website. It has animated .gifs!

Overheard Goes Unheard [WZRD]

Nobody & Mystic Chords of Memory

Einsturzende Neubauten - Sensucht
Peter Murphy - The Light Pours Out of Me
The Pogues - London Girl

The Fall - Spolt Victorian Child
The Virgin Prunes - Down the Memory Lane
Black Flag - Slip it In/Gimme Gimme Gimme

Laibach - Panorama
Psyclones - Gift of Noise!!!
Cacophony - Angst in the Shadow of Conception
Ominous Clam - Roomful of Stares

Tack Head - Now What
Occupants - You Danced Into My Life
Greaseballs - Last Wave

Book of Lies - Sleepily Coiled !
Zen Bovine - Going Down
Tribe - Circles and Squares
Sex Kittens - It's Been Like Hell
Amorfati - Destruction of a Desiring Machine: For Blanche and Tennessee Williams

Occupants - Blue Onions of Justice
Heavy Mental - One Dollar Bill
Greaseballs - Igwanna
Ominous Clam - Gonzo Boogie
FTPLR - Anarchy A
The Replacements - Here Comes A Regular

Metnong - Enough/ Rainbows Over the Vast Orbital Somewhere !
Tribe - Drift
Sex Kittens - Still Night
Preston Klik - Sapflo


[I love Einsterzende Neubauten! and I love Meret Becker! Win/Win! Exclamation Mark!]

Two Slaps Radio [WLUW]

Lab Rat set:

Antibalas - Hilo
Marie Boubarere - I'm Going Home
Dorothy Ashby - Myself When I Was Young

Parliament - Chocolate Snow / A Day in the Life
Dayton Sidewinders - Funky in Here
All the People - Cramp Your Style

Lupe Fiasco feat. Jill Scott - Daydreamin'
Salt - Hung Up
American Gypsy - Inside Out

Rasputin's Stash - Mr. Cool
Black Ivory - Surrender
Spittin Image - JBs Latin

Bill Cosby - Funky North Philadelphia
Jack Hammer - Wigglin' Fool
Martha and the Vandellas - Heatwave

Bootsy Collins - Cool Jerk

Arvo set:

The Four Tops - Ask the lonely
Quantic ft. Spanky Wilson - Don't Joke With a Hungry Man
The Temptations - I've Got Sunshine
Al Green - Take me to the River

Otis Redding - Satisfaction
Irma Thomas - Time is on my side
O'Jays - Backstabbers

Bobby Womack - Baby! You oughta Think it Over
Bobby Womack - I like to see my baby (w. Hank Ballard)
Hank Ballard and the midnighters - The Float

Curtis Mayfield and the Staple Singers - Funky Love
The Staple Singers - Respect Yourself

Ann Peebles - Mon Belle Amour
Carla Thomas - I've Got No Time To Lose
Solomon Burke - Hard Ain't It Hard
Paris Sisters - I Love How You Love Me

The Delfonics - Ready or Not Here I Come (Can't Hide From Love)
Sharon Jones - My Man is a mean man
Percy Sledge - If Lovin' You is Wrong (I dont wanna be right)

The Stylistics - You make me feel brand new
Sly and The Family Stone - You Caught Me Smilin'
The Intruders - Be Thankful For What You Got


[Every Monday night, from 2:00 - 4:00 AM (cst), Eric lab Rat and Arvo Fuckhead play the the best of funk and soul, its roots and derivatives. Two Slaps Radio airs on 88.7fm in Chicago and streams worldwide from wluw.org]

Go Go Buffalo!

Location: Can TV Studios
Show: Chic-A Go-Go's 500th Episode Taping with Casper
Cost: Free
Things I missed to be there: Sleep


Derik the Cameraman: For some of you, I may need to set this up. If you have been to any... African-American social events in the last thirty years, you've heard something by Casper. He's our Frank Sinatra.

There are only a few benefits to playing music in Chicago: occasionally you might get a blowjob, you get free half-pitchers at the Mutiny, and then there's Chic-A Go-Go. Chic-A Go-Go is a cable access dance party that's kind oflikeaSid & Marty CrofftSoul Train. The show is hosted by the tattood Miss Mia and the skinhead rat puppet Ratso. The tapings are open to the public, and attract a good mix of children,hipsters, weirdos, and college students dancing to music by the likes of The Shadows of Knight, Ol Dirty Bastard, Prince, Ciara, the Ramones, and Howlin Wolf. The show features at least one "live" band an episode. I've got the "live" in quotation marks because the bands never plug in so most of the time, the band is just miming and lip synching.

However fun that is (and it isone of the most fun things you can do in this city), it's one of the reasons I haven't written about it in Omophagy. Sure, I've had the opportunity to dance with Shonen Knife to one of their songs, but I wouldn't describe it as seeing them. Every once in a while though, there's an act with low enough technical requirements that they can do a real live set. Black Bear Combo was able to do their gypsy dance alongside the skating girls of the Windy City Rollers, K.A.R.A.O.K.E. was able to bring people up in front of a green screen to sing revolutionary spoofs of classicrock songs, and for part two of their five-part, 500th Episode Spectacular, Chic-A Go-Go brought out one of Chicago's first rappers, Casper.



Casper, who got the name because of his tendency to only wear white, has been DJing and rapping in the city since the 1970s, but his most lasting contribution to music has been the "Cha Cha Slide". The Cha Cha Slide is an update of the old electric slide, it's one of those catchy/annoying/earworm songs that tells you how to dance to it so that everyone is doing the same thing at the same time: turn left, turn right, hop, step, crisscross, Charlie Brown, et cetera. Needless to say, it's a big hit at weddings and Bar Mitzvahs and will probably remain so for years to come. While the song hit big in 2000, it was actually created four years earlier, for a Bally's aerobics instructor who wanted to a song that he could use as a work out (for reference, this is a few years before the Dance Dance Revolution workout and a few years after Sweating to the Oldies, about the time that Tae Bo was the big thing).

Derail one: There's an episode of Futurama where, looking to make a name for himself, the robot Bender horns in on a circle of dancing rollerbladers, trying to get them to "Do the Bender".

"This circle is about free expression, man, not your fascist moves!"

I kind of feel that way, when I'm in the middle of a crowd and one of those songs comes on, but it might just be acase of sour grapes because have really slow reflexes.

Derail two: In 1999, I was on a flight to Israel, watching the movie "She's All That" with my Dad and Sister. At one point in the climactic scene at the prom, the DJ yells, "Now everybody do that dance I taught you!" and everyone breaks into an enormous choreogrphed, synchronized dance. We lost our shit. Now everybody do that dance I taught you became a running joke of ours for years.

So here we are in 2007, a TV station full of children and people who don't look like they dance very often and a black dude in a bomber jacket and white tracksuit, telling them, "Lets hop three times!" and slowly this group of students, weirdos, hipsters, and kids comes together into something nearly reaching cohesion.



It was like something out of a movie, and it'll air next month.


[Here's Leslie & the Lys on Chic-A Go-Go]

Mixtape Masturbation [WZRD]

Lead in: Sunn O))) & Boris - Akuma No Kuma

Cookies & Dirt - Above the Bar
Lupe Fiasco - Daydream

Rothkamm - Independent Bernoulli Trial

James Chance & the Blacks - Contort Yourself
TK Webb - Which Witch
Quincy Jones - Summer in the City
Cypress Hill feat. The Fugees - Boom Biddy Bye Bye
Zapp - More Bounce to the Ounce
Glaxo Babies - This is your Life
Delta 5 - Mind Your Own business

hologram riddle candy

Location: Spot 6
Show: The Freeform Shuffle with Cookies & Dirt and DJS Mickey Massacre, Ken the Soul Rebel, and Eric lab Rat
Cost: Free
Things I missed to be there: The usual Wednesday night jive
Reason for going: I booked the whole damn thing (and performed)



So like it says before, I booked this show so I can already tell you I liked everything. Ken the Soul Rebel surprised me, not just with his encyclopedic knowledge of glam, roots rockabilly, mod soul and punk, but his ability to make it all fit together live (many people have one of those qualities but not the other). Conversely, Mickey Massacre laid me out with a creeper case full of obsessively filed disks that put a hurt on me. The real stars of the show, however, were the hip hop act Cookies & Dirt.

Cookies & Dirt are the closest thing I've seen to a rap act that might break big (respectable big, yknow, like Rhymesayers, Anticon, or Mush level) since I saw Typical Cats back in the late 90s. That's partly my fault, of course, for failing to catch Kanye, Lupe, Rhymefest, and Psalm One before they hit. At home, I've got stacks of cds of Chicago hip hop groups THAT were good live but couldn't pull it together for an album. Most of these are disciples of the spoken word/open mic scene, and most of them suffer from the same problem: too much emphasis on the lyrics, and not enough on the beats, on making asses shake, or on asses in general. That's why great groups like Il.De.Script and Organic Mind Unit are barely a memory, and Twista is walkin around in diamond-studded boxer briefs.

I'm not gonna say that Cookies & Dirt isn't afflicted as well, but they're working on it. The music they're working on isn't super dancy but it does veer into experimental. I think that if the band wants to focus on Idris Goodwin's lyrics, they need to move even further in that direction, into Busdriver territory. Idris doesn't need the music to lead you to him, he's got a commanding, Chuck D kind of voice that will get to you no matter how obtuse the beats are. The band had a pretty good crowd come in to see them, too. The people who make predictions keep talking about how Chicago is about to break, and it's gonna be because of the unpretensious, weirdo hiphop that's been breaking lately. Flosstradamus is almost a foregone conclusion but nobody knows who else might be part of the movement. Heiruspecs could do it but they'll need to do something surprising. Vyle has a good chance, as do Serengeti and Brenmar. I'm not going to say that they've missed their chance but I'm pretty sure I can tell you that even though they deserve it, it won't be Verbal Kent, the J. Davis, Trio or Small Change. The world could use another live band hip hop group and, barring the possibility that I missed some hotness from the Chicago Drop cds, Cookies & Dirt are probly Chicago's greatest hope.

Chicago bands that sing in languages other than English

Condenada
Intifada
Malas
No Slogan
Sin Orden
Tras de Nada

Schizowave

Aleks & the Drummer

Two Slaps Radio [WLUW]

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings - How do I let a good man down?
Irma thomas - I want a true, true love
Ann Peebles - When the Candle Burns low

Ray Charles - In the Evening (when the sun goes down)
Eldridge Holmes - Gone Gone gone (jet set)
Delfonics - Smiling faces
Ms Tyree Sugar Jones - If You feel It (instrumental)

Carla Thomas - Comfort Me
Patti Young - head and shoulders (above the rest)
Jackie Lee - Oh My Darling
Rose Batiste - Hit And Run

The Flamingos - I Only have Eyes for you
Piet Van Meren - Cool Echo
Altyrone deno Brown - If You Love Me
Helene Smith - You Got to Do your Share
Jd & the evil's Dynamite band - Haaa-Sheesh


The Temptations - Papa was a rollin' stone
The Eternals - Astra 3B

Jimmy Castor - Southern Fried Frijoles
The Shangrilas - Sophisticated Boom Boom
Ricardo Ray - Sookie Sookie

DJ Logic - Simmer Slow
Syl Johnson - Thank You Baby
The Towers - The Sneak !
The Fatback Band - (are you ready) Do the Bus Stop
Betty Davis - Nasty Gal

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Ain't No Sunshine
Little Jr. Jesse & his Teardrops & the Tears - Funky Stuff
The New Jersey Queens and Friends - Party and Don't Worry About It
Chicago Gangsters - Gangster Boogie

York Wilburn & the Psychedellic Six - Psychedelic Hot Pants
Spot & the Blotters - Soul Circle
The Big Boys - Funk Off


[I don't know if we're the only funk show in the nation that plays The Big Boys but we shouldn't be. Not only were thy progenitors of the Austin underground that led to SXSW, but of the punk-funk hybrid that would come to be known, posthumously, as Mutant Disco.]

[Remember, that every Monday night, from 2:00 - 4:00 AM (cst), Eric lab Rat and Arvo Fuckhead play the the best of funk and soul, its roots and derivatives. Two Slaps Radio airs on 88.7fm in Chicago and streams worldwide from wluw.org]

I got to pet a cute dog and Mariam gave me one of her beers...

Date: 3/5/07
Location: La Casa Maldita
Bands: the tangled lines, disrobe, eske, tras de nada
Cost: $5
Things I missed to be there: The Pogues at the Congress Theatre, Clinic at the Apple Store
Reasons for going: Figured (incorrectly) that I could go to this show and sneak into the Congress, but the Congress security is getting craftier.



I don't know if I've used this analogy before, but there's this story my parents used to tell, about going to see shows at Second City, back when Chris Farley was still in the cast. That was where he came up with his Matt Foley character (the van down by the river guy). If you haven't seen the sketch in a while, it involves a lot of pratfalls, and the way my Pops told it, there's nothing scarier than sitting in the front row when that 300-pound motherfucker is barreling towards you at 90 miles an hour and you don't know if he's going to be able to stop himself. That's what watching Disrobe is like, except Josh isn't Chris Farley-big and there was no doubt in anyone's mind that he was going to hit them.

Disrobe hasn't played around in a while, especially not with their guitarist Rick, who's had some health problems this past year, but he was back today and the whole band was hyped. According to Josh, they've been practicing for the past three days in a row with the two-guitarist set up (Rick and the guy who stepped in when he fell ill), and it was good.

The whole show was guitar-ier than usual, to the point that the hardcore was sounding more like metal. Maybe the house brings it out. La Casa Maldita is one of the few joints in town where punk bands and metal bands regularly play together which is no surprise as La Casa is the home to Shaman Records, which specializes in crust, grindcore, hardcore and metal.

It wasn't that Disrobe, Eske, or Tras De Nada sounded louder or faster or harder than any of the other times I've seen them, there was just a lot more shredding than I remember. All three bands have been around for a while and it's interesting to drop out of the scene for a few months and come back and be able to hear how much better they've gotten from just playing together for so long.

The last band of the night was The Tangled Lines from Drezden. They were adorable, and they were adorable without being soft. They played pretty straight thrash, but their singer Luise was this tiny little girl in a hoodie with a powerpuff girl on it and she just took to the stage like Miss Thing, like some kid on a sitcom singing into a comb in the mirror, except she was scrweaming her ass off, and doing it without looking angry. It looked as if she could have walked into a warzone and the entire war would split like the Red Sea to let her pass. Meanwhile the rest of the band wore matching blue shirts with yellow tire skids stampped on. Like I said, adorable. The world (the world of hardcore at least) needs more of that. Just like it needs more guitar.

cirrhosis osmosis - a few hours at Crew and a few minutes at the Green Mill

Date: 3/3/07
Location: Crew, The Green Mill
Bands: House DJ, Sabertooth
Cost: 10 suggested donation

Everyone's Too Hip For Vegas! [WZRD]

Lead in: Mumia Abu Jamal talking about Iran

Glaxo Babies - Kristine Keeler !!!
The Mummys - Shocked
Black Bear Combo - Medley
The Residents - Satisfaction
Daniel Johnston - Happy Time

The Gothic Archies - The World is a Very Scary Place #
Bauhaus - Dark Entries
Snakes Say Hiss! - Talk #
Kleenex - U

Funkadelic - Lunchmeataphobia (Think! It ain't Illegal Yet)
Elvis Hitler - Shotgun Shell *
Naked Raygun - Slim
Ceramic Hello - Climactic Nouveau !

Saturday Looks Good to Me - Last Year
Do May Say Think - Bound To Be That Way
Captain Howdy - Dino's Head !!!
Malajube - Pate Filo
Zimbo Chimps - Inca Vacation

Duchesne - Jumper Le Train De Roberval - Saguenay #!
You Suck - The You Suck Anthem
Glass Candy - Nite Nurses
Einsterzende Neubauten - Pygmaoen

Whitey - AWalk in the Dark/Reprise #
New Order - Beach Buggy
The Psychic Paramount - Echoh Air/ The Eye Glass / Sex Operation #
BPA - Dead Boy/Leroy Neimann

Deerhoof - +81 #
Cointelpro - Jerilyn/Dowry Death/Tickler Transplant

Brenmar Someday -A Husk of Hares #

Pseudocode - Moon Effect/Memories/No Desire/Slow Defeat/Real Action

Whitehouse - 5.5.7

Weird Al Yankovic - Polka Your Eyes Out


[The Gothic Archies - Scream and Run Away]