ChinaShop’s coverage of Chicago outfit Prairie Cartel concludes in the 3rd and final entry of guitarist Blake Smith’s diary. The rough times continue as the band scrambles to make ends meet, encounter mastiffs of a nefarious nature, and jam a little Supertramp — only out of necessity, of course.

Prairie Cartel – Ten Feet Of Snow

Note :
Award-winning Chinese director Peng Lei (an accomplished filmmaker/animator whose clay animation film “Beihai Monster” from 2006 was a hit in the Chinese indie-film world and has won numerous awards) discovered The Prairie Cartel’s music online and reached out to them about wanting to
direct their video. He just completed his psychedelic urban-yeti  dance video for the track “No Light Escapes Here”. As Peng explained to the lads, “The reason I wanted to direct this  video was that I’m impressed with the lyrics to this song, and  understand that the lyrics are about trying to express yourself artistically in an oppressive communist regime.

Musically he also  felt connected, Peng Lei is a member of New Pants, one of the most revered bands in China’s contemporary music history who formed in 1996
and their early sound was influenced heavily by new wave and early  punk rock, particularly the Ramones. And in true punk rock fashion,  Peng takes a huge risk by using Mao all over the video.

PART 3 : FALL

By Blake Smith

Another bizarre situation fled, another season, another place to be turned into a functioning studio. How long would we be at this one? Would we actually finish this thing before something truly awful happened to one of us? We traded a tiny apartment in Wicker Park for a good-sized house in Humboldt Park. The house was a big step up from the previous hole, but the block we moved to in Humboldt was sketchy beyond belief. The street went: Housing Project, House, Housing Project, Lot Where Unspeakable Things Happened To People That Should Know Better, House, Us, Apartment Building of the Slightly Living. Across the street was a make-shift auto shop that was really a house with an aluminum fence in front of it and rusty pieces of junkyard shit on blocks scattered around the yard. They also openly sold drugs.

So did three or four other places on the street, but this place obviously had the most loyal customers as there was hardly a moment 24-7 where someone was not pulling up and blatantly scoring.  A sheriff’s car was often parked on the block, but instead of launching themselves off the hood of an Impala to make a slow-motion flying tackle on one of these motherfuckers, they spent most of their time chatting amiably with the various entrepreneurs/prostitutes/non-Prairie Cartel fans that were always in the street milling around.

Next door was a house similar to ours that several hundred people lived in. There was always a large group of hale young men out front splitting cases of malt liquor surrounded by many dogs of great size and impressively low body fat percentage. One of the Rottweilers had a Crunch membership. Always at the center was a guy we quickly realized was the real sheriff in the neighborhood. He did not like to party alone. As a sort of reverse house warming gift, we gave him a bottle of Herradura (silver) the first week we moved in. We had tried paying tribute to the local gods in our last place using tacos as our currency and ended up having to leave in the middle of the night with all of our stuff. But given the looks of the situation, it seemed foolish not to try to supplicate and appease. Real Sheriff  looked at he tequila,  said ” I got your back,” and handed us each what tasted like the contents of post-marathon high performance running shorts squeezed into a glass. Gross, but intoxicating. However, we were skeptical about the “got your back.”

Mike’s lease was kind of a handshake deal. The owners of the house were “occupied elsewhere” for three months and were exploring selling the place. In the meantime, Mike would pay rent for three months and when the owners returned he could choose to apply that money towards purchasing it. We quickly realized having a house meant total freedom. We had parties and BBQs all day outside, then headed downstairs for ear pummeling late night practices, sunburnt as otters, skunk-drunk and wild.

Great and unexpected things occurred. We would set out to write a song with the panty-incinerating seductive power of peak 80s Roxy Music, drink a bottle of whisky, and end up someplace closer to where New Order meets Dinosaur Jr. We fried amps, tortured keyboards with inhumane effects pedal chains and laughed until we couldn’t stand up. We repeated this nightly. Getting stuff fixed cost a shit-ton of money. As our gear tab climbed, American Express started calling up asking if they could speak to the Chief Financial Officer of The Prairie Cartel Corporation. This was endlessly entertaining. We could only imagine the guy who reviewed our application: “Sure they sound like drug runners, but they also sound like they have good midwestern values. And look at that credit rating. Approved.” They would probably issue a card to Al Qaeda if they thought they could get a 25% A.P.R.. Funny at the time, but we now realize that if we had not gotten some money from getting songs placed in a video game and some TV shows, we would be fucked right now.

You are not going to believe this, but being in the Prairie Cartel is not lucrative business. After a certain point we all had to start scrambling for money. We would DJ of course (I am pretty sure their are now more DJs than non-DJs on earth), but that wasn’t always enough. One of the extra jobs I took was as a Yacht Rock sideman. A few years back, these guys in LA started making these short mockumentaries about 70s era smooth rockers and putting them on youtube. They got pretty popular so they started screening them in different cities and having Yacht Rock parties. They were looking for a band to play on a boat in Chicago and the money was great, so I said I would put a band together for them. How hard could it be? I spent a weekend listening to the setlist and learning the songs

I would like it to be known that Supertramp are bad- ass motherfuckers and that Hall and Oates are heavier than Black Sabbath. I was in way over my head (what is a G13 chord?) so instead of putting a band together, I got the music director for Blue Man Group to put the band together and I would turn my guitar way down and just sing lead on the Eddie Money and Boz Scaggs tracks and get paid. I know what you are thinking and fuck you, it’s called delegating. Totally fair.

The day of the show we realized that the boat did not have a mixing board so I volunteered the Prairie Cartel’s. Mike was gone for the day, so he said he would just leave it on the back porch and unlock the gate. The party organizer picked me up in a nondescript white van with no windows (we had a lot of gear to bring to the party). In the spirit of the event he was wearing a Magnum P.I. style Hawaiian shirt , cut offs, and a fairly substantial mustache. I looked like a sexually ambiguous ship’s Captain.

We got to the alley and found the back gate was locked. The fence was high, splintery and unstable. We rock/paper/scissored and I won. I locked my fingers together, he put his foot in, and I heaved him up in the style 5th graders everywhere know as “giving a boost.” We were running a little late so he ran across the back yard to the porch, grabbed the board, and started running back towards the alley. At that point, the fence dividing our house from the house next door began to shake violently. There was an unearthly growl, nay, it was more of a demonic woofing. The fence shattered and the Organizer was pinned by what looked like a Meth-Velociraptor, although I was witnessing this through the slats so I can’t say for sure. The Sheriff from next door came through the new hole in the fence. I am screaming “Dontkillhim! Dontkillhim!” So he came over and opened the gate from the inside. He looked at my hat, navy blazer with gold buttons, peach ascot, white pants and nub-bottomed driving shoes as if I dressed like that every day. He said “I told you I got your back,” called the Meth-Velociraptor to his side, and vanished back through the fence hole.

When we discussed this incident the next day, we decided that Mike had to buy the house. We would be safe from the perils that afflicted us in our last  two places and all it would cost us is the occasional bottle of premium tequila.

As soon as this was decided  the owners returned,  wanted to stay, and chucked us out. I mean, fuck.

This was supposed to be a four part piece, one for each of the places we recorded, which also coincided with a season. Additionally, it would function as a real estate guide to Chicago for destitute bands. As good a structure as any. But when we moved to Logan Square to finish and mix the record, things stopped happening. At least the bad things did. We got remixes from Tommie Sunshine, Hey Champ! Santiago & Bushido, Bright Lights, Only Children and the Hood Internet. People started to come to our shows. Some press paid attention. We got the thing finished and mastered. Even distribution.

There is nothing less interesting than reading about unbad things happening to a band. So we will stop here. And wait…