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Posts Tagged ‘Chicago’

Event Bioshock: Splicers Unite – Family Pavilion Stage @ Navy Pier in Chicago, January 9 @ 6pm

January 5, 2010 - 5:31 pm

splicer girls

The year of Bioshock 2 is upon us…Join the Bioshock mob–this time, it’s all going down at Navy Pier in Chicago, January 9th, at 6 P.M. We know it’ll be a bit nipply out, but never fear, it’s been moved to Family Pavilion Stage @ Navy Pier. Try to bring those drills, rivet guns, bloody wrenches, and Little Sister needles–even if they’re hardly visible underneath your 6 or 7 layers of clothing, we’ll know you belong to the Rapture Family.

http://twitter.com/BioShock2

http://www.facebook.com/2KGames

www.cultofrapture.com

Splicer wrench

splicerlogo3

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Art/Design A Pirate’s Life for Me

October 13, 2009 - 12:59 pm

Real Pirate Exhibit at The Field Museum

Chicago has a lot to offer, amazing pizza, incredible concerts, Da Bears!  But what I was really drawn towards was the Real Pirates exhibit at The Field Museum.  Let me start by saying that I fancy myself a bit of a pirate at heart. Of course unlike the lame “white” witches, piracy never really gets warm and fuzzy. Johnny Depp put a nice Disney spin on the lot of them but essentially they were just plain rotten. And for that I truly love them. Rape and Pillaging aside they were some of the most colorful characters in history.

Driving up to the museum you can’t help but notice the massive  Jolly Roger flag splitting the Roman columns like a beacon calling all the wayward braggarts home.  Its skull and cross-swords is imposing, majestic and dare I say it, fun!  I was thrilled to get inside and document the exhibit for my fellow enthusiasts. And I sure would have if the “man” didn’t step in to wreck my documenting desires. The irony of trying to share the Pirate exhibit with you is that the souls of those fearless men on the Whydah, the worlds only pirate shipwreck, are damned to spend all eternity being protected from piracy. Copyright laws do apply.

Sue's Teeth

So instead of showing you an image of the pirate’s lethal sharp daggers and sawed off muskets, here’s a close up of the resident T-Rex’s teeth. Sue, as she is known, is the most complete skeleton of a T-Rex in the world. Not really as cool as pirates but just as deadly.

The Field Museum

Instead of showing you a diagram of two pirates engaged in mortal combat, swords drawn, greed in their eyes, here’s two elephants engaged in what I can only assume is not a game of slap and tickle.  Pieces of eight or peanuts? You decide.

Groundhogs engaged in un-sportsman like activity

And just as you can imagine the power struggle between satan’s own sailors, these two stuffed groundhogs paint a convincing portrait of the struggle of the fittest.

However, joking aside, the museum did successfully showcase this unique pirate find. They have a stunning display of the only legitimate pirate treasure known to ever be found, and a collection of tales of all known pirates, not just the sailors on the Whydah. My favorite, and dare I say most inspiring, story is of Mary Reed and Anne Bonney. Both women who disguised themselves as men and first ran away to join the army, but later rebelled further by becoming the most legendary female pirates in the annals of history. These women were two of the most fearsome creatures, famous for their cruelty and aggression.  Eventually they were caught and sentenced to death only to surprise the court by claiming to be pregnant. Both sentences were changed to life in prison where Mary died of fever and Anne was never heard of again.

Let that be a lesson to you women with loose morals and a penchant for violence.

Pirates in the Field Museum

So if you find yourself in Chicago before October 25th, stop in The Field Museum to Shiver ye timbers and walk the plank. As long as the Jolly Roger is flying, you never know who just might drop in!

The Field Museum

Words by Barbie Brady, photos by Matt Brady

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interview Tortoise Comes Out of Their Five-Year Shell

August 27, 2009 - 7:52 pm

Tortoise

Not often does a band with almost 20 years of history and a well established presence take such a long break in between recordings, but that was very much the story for Chicago based Tortoise.  Although they have toured here and there, the band just recently release their first album in five years this past June 23.  Beacons of Ancestorship is the band’s sixth official full-length album and has been long awaited by fans and music industry affiliates.

Tortoise, formed in 1990, has thoroughly confused the world with their almost impossible to categorize and exceptionally unique sound.  According to member, Dan Bitney, it can be hard for the band to even classify themselves.  Attempts at stamping a genre on their music aside, it is pretty unanimous that Tortoise is one of today’s more innovative and musically revolutionalizing projects.  With the launch of a new album and the power of the press on their side, the band is out on the road, performing songs off the new disc across the United States and overseas.

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Music Cold War Kids at Lollapalooza: Under The Alcoholic Sun

August 14, 2009 - 2:00 pm

Cold War Kids

Jeff Tweedy once publicly wondered why anyone would ever attend a festival. On Sunday afternoon, even the most dedicated festival-goers had such flashes of doubtful thought sweep through their minds — the breeze from Lake Michigan was simply not enough to stop the heat from taking center stage. The musicians performing on Sunday faced a challenge — to convince each and every ticket holder they had made the right choice. Cold War Kids, the California-based band born in the shadow of the blogosphere, overcame the challenges of the day’s agenda by focusing on some very basic, very intimate human elements — passion, emotionalism and heavy drinking.

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Music Say Good Night Chicago: Lollapalooza 2009

August 13, 2009 - 1:37 pm

Lollapalooza 2009

Somewhere along the way at my first trip to Lollapalooza, I thought to myself, “why did I never make it out to this festival before?” In its fifth year of being held in my home of Chicago, this three-day festival continues to provide arguably the biggest and most wide-ranging showcase of music in North America. That old marketing cliché of, “there’s something for everyone” actually holds weight at Lolla. And of the hundred-plus acts that played the multiple stages, I only wish I could have seen more.

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Music Friendly Fires

August 13, 2009 - 12:46 pm

Friendly Fires

From a photographic standpoint, shooting dance rock act Friendly Fires is an ideal way to kick off a long day at a music festival. Yeah, it was blazingly hot and humid by the time this trio of drummer Jack Savidge, guitarist Edd Gibson, and vocalist/keyboardist Ed Macfarlane bounced onto the Budweiser stage on day-three of Lollapalooza. And sure the crowd was thin and slow to show up for this opening act. But none of that could stop the super charged energy of Macfarlane and company, which is exactly what concert photographers hope for.

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Music Jane’s Addiction

August 13, 2009 - 11:48 am

Jane's Addiction's Perry Farrell

Of everyone I saw at Lollapalooza, Jane’s Addiction’s headlining Sunday performance was undoubtedly the most over-the-top. Who else would have a helicopter circle the concert grounds just prior to a performance to illuminate the fans and stage? Moves like this had front man Perry Farrell’s fingerprints all over them. And being the catalyst for this whole Lolla phenomenon, we shouldn’t expect anything less than the biggest and baddest display of rock possible from Farell and his Angelino brethren Dave Navarro, Eric Avery, and Stephen Perkins.

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Music Portugal. The Man. Plays Lollapalooza

August 13, 2009 - 11:47 am

Portugal. The Man

As the sounds of Snoop Dogg laying down his hits like “That’s That” rumbled in the near background, I tried my best to have an audible conversation with the nomadic four-man band known as Portugal. The Man. Distractions or not, I was able to have a good talk with this group that derives from both Portland, Oregon and Alaska. Earlier in the day I was lucky enough to catch Portugal at the Lolla’s PlayStation stage. Here I experienced musicians with a strong influence from late-60s/early-70s rock, pop, and soul, but who are unafraid to step ahead. With a dual guitar, drums, multiple keyboard set-up and almost everyone on vocals, members John Gourley (vocals/guitars), Zach Carothers (bass/vocals), Jason Sechrist (drums), Ryan Neighbors (keys/vocals), and touring player Zoe Manville (keys/vocals) easily glide across a wave of old school-minded harmonic freshness. I spoke to Portugal. The Man about their sonic commonalities, touring, and how home is now a hard place to find.

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Music The Raveonettes Rave On

August 13, 2009 - 11:47 am

The Raveonettes at Lollapalooza

A very strange thing happened on Sunday afternoon happened when The Raveonettes took the stage. Not only did those gigantic dragonflies make a matinee appearance, swirling over the heads of sweat-drenched patrons and frightening the small ones, but also as the band began to perform, a surplus of sexuality spilled into the crowd. Perhaps it was the two-piece Raveonettes (consisting of Danish guitarists Sune Rose Wagne and Sharin Foo) transformed into a magnetic five-piece, complete with a minimalist drummer simply banging upon a stand-alone tom and snare. Perhaps it was the tension of a weekend spent watching gorgeous patrons, both vivaciously female and chiseled male, fondle and eye-fuck each other until someone went numb and blind.

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Music Pop, Drop & Glitch

August 13, 2009 - 11:47 am

Glitch Mob at Lollapalooza

If Glitch Mob were a well-dressed boy band parading around a 20-feet-high stage, we would be the droves of screaming girls in the audience throwing our training bras on the stage in hopes of getting noticed among the flashing lights and pubescent mayhem. At Lollapalooza at Perry’s stage, as the sun burnt us to a crisp, we really couldn’t tell the difference between Glitch Mob members edIT (“The Crunkmaster Himself”), Boreta (“The Iceman”) and Ooah (“The Mob Boss”) and their boy band alter egos because we were … er … screaming like little girls from the sweaty, gyrating crowd. We’ve had the pleasure of becoming freaks in the night to Glitch Mob’s notoriously bass-heavy sets with the moon suspended in the air (along with covering the boys on ChinaShop when they performed on the Red Bull Music Academy Stage at this past year’s Detroit Electronic Music Festival), but in the middle of the afternoon with the Chicago skyline all around us, the vibe took on a different feeling and meaning — one that reminded us of those midday warehouse raves we used to frequent in our teens (which, you know, is a good thing). Perhaps it was the amount of ineffective glow sticks floating around in the crowd, or the rows of passed out humans creating a sort of flesh border around the dancing perimeter — we can’t quite put our finger on it. But when the electronic trio, who are noted as some of the more accessible deejays around considering their innovative performance set-up, dropped their initial nugget of drum-and-bass splintered jams, we knew we shouldn’t have taken the blue pill … or was it the red one?

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