Let’s just get this out of the way: hip-hop shows, more than any other genre, regularly feature an absurd amount of waiting before the headliner you went to see finally hits the stage—often after midnight. Some of the opening acts or DJs you see beforehand might be good and you may even be hyped to have been introduced to them, but when it takes four hours before the main act steps on stage, shit can get old. With this in mind, Black Milk’s last minute, Red Bull Big Tune pre-show in Chicago at Reggie’s Rock Club was as close to ideal as you can get.
The amount of options on Halloween weekend this year for live music in Chicago was dumbfounding yet word of the Magical Properties Tour stopping by the Double Door was hard to pass up. While The Gaslamp Killer and Daedelus have both made repeat appearances individually in Chicago during 2010, seeing the two on the same bill outside of L.A. is a rarity—one only heightened by the addition of 12th Planet and Teebs to this ridiculous bill of beatsmiths.
Bands who bring their own light setup to a show in a modest-sized venue clearly have an appreciation for their audience. In a sense, it’s a statement that the live show experience is about more than the music—one that young Australian rock quartet The Temper Trap regularly makes on stage.
After being intrigued by the band’s highly visual set at their Hard Rock Lollapalooza after show, I made sure to catch their next Chicago appearance at Metro. This sold out performance featured lead vocalist/guitarist Dougy Mandagi and bandmates recreating their debut and only album, Conditions (along with a couple new, unreleased tracks), with each song enhanced by an all-out light spectacle—one that gave this photographer a welcome challenge to keep up with.
Riot Fest started the five-day celebration of punk music last night by hosting seven legendary Chicago punk bands at the infamous Double Door. The highlight of the evening was Naked Raygun’s performance. The most anticipated act of the night, the sold-out crowd went wild when Santiago Durango joined Raygun on stage. After 24 years without playing a Raygun song, he exploded onto the stage, his trademark booming guitar sounding the same as it did in 1986.
For most of us the awkward creations of our adolescence are safely tucked away in the back of a closet or in the deep reaches of the attic. We stumble upon these relics while packing or spring-cleaning, we laugh, cringe, reminisce and then tuck our creations back in the boxes where they live. Then there are the few among us who drag out old journals, letters, poems, lyrics, plays, home movies, and art and present them publicly. Welcome to the world of Mortified, a hybrid of stand up comedy, performance art and show and tell; a meeting of comedy and catharsis.
Without a doubt, Kid Koala’s latest project The Slew put on one of the liveliest and most engaging sets at the inaugural Sónar Chicago festival. In this weekend fest dominated by avant-garde electronic sound play, this international four-piece group brought a welcome alternative: an approachable onslaught of turntablism, psych rock, and no shortage of hard-hitting sonics to the modest-sized yet appreciative crowd at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion.
“It’s a strange existence,” actor Jake Lloyd bluntly tells the Chicago Comic Con crowd about working the convention circuit. Lloyd, best known as playing young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), has largely grown out of acting and moved onto other endeavors (film editing) hence why talking about a childhood role can be so awkward. Yet Lloyd remains an avid Star Wars fan and will be forever connected to what comic con fans love: iconic characters.
The tens of thousands of attendees who poured into the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center August 19-22nd in some way were all looking to embrace the heroes and villains they grew up with. And this includes attending panels with actors like Jake Lloyd, buying dirt-cheap vintage comics, picking up a T-shirt, or recreating the characters themselves in costume. Regarding the latter, homemade Iron Man and War Machine costumes were just a sample of the incredible cosplay seen at “The Con.” A female take on a beat-down Kick-Ass also remains ingrained in my mind with her all too real make-up job.
By midnight, the line was 200 deep outside of Soundbar – legions of house heads shivering in the drizzle with muffled kick drums audible from the street. The scene wasn’t entirely surprising – whispers about Green Velvet’s birthday party had floated around Chicago for weeks. The excitement was palpable – not only did the lineup feature Velvet kicking off his new Soundbar residency, but also UK superstar duo Basement Jaxx and Chicago ex-pat Mark Farina.
Props have to be given to Velvet himself for the impressive artists gracing the bill. As Lucas King, owner of React Events and one of the promoters behind the night disclosed, “He called the Jaxx and Farina himself to play the party and arranged everything. Give Curtis [Green Velvet] a ton of love for that.” It’s certainly what he got as house lovers turned out in droves to support, both from the new and old guard, including Chris Santiago of Santiago and Bushido, Lego, James Amato of Potty Mouth Records, Sombionix and Hiroki.
The indie streetwear business can be fickle. In Chicago alone, many boutiques that focus on carrying super exclusive kicks and Ts have come and gone lately. But a few have held strong, including Jugrnaut—the only shop of its kind standing in Chicago’s downtown, loop area.
Could Chicago electronica darlings Prairie Cartel have better luck? Could their misfortunes seem any crueler? After making their name on the soundtrack to the Grand Theft Auto video game series, P.C. seemed about to make some serious noise amongst the big boys, were lacking no acclaim from the underground music scene (being called “the next big thing out of the Windy City” by countless rags), and even receiving that rare accolade of being featured on NPR. The road to success has been anything but simple for these lads, filled with rabid dogs, Motor City Witches, and the overall flakiness that is par for the course in the business side of rock n’ roll. This is a track from the band’s Where Did All My People Go, which might help you judge for yourself:
Over the course of the next week we’ll be giving an inside glimpse at the band’s damaged psyche, the trials and tribulations of an up-and-coming young rock band, and all the perils of rock and roll decadence (that a studio and Lincoln Square can offer).
PART ONE: SPRING
by Blake Smith
Mike and I had just gotten dropped from a major label. Again. And again we had taken a perfectly good band, gotten it signed, and then proceeded to watch it get bent, spindled, and mutilated by the machine. What started as something respectable was now a junked-out shell of a group hunkered out in the alley trying to blow you for radio play. The problem was that we were in the alley voluntarily. When fed that classic label bit that our album was great, but just needed that one immediate track that radio couldn’t possibly refuse, we didn’t fight it. Fuck, we would write you four songs for radio. By tomorrow, if it meant the good songs got to stay on. But to get on radio you have to write shit. And once you showed an A&R guy how easily you could turn shit out, you were doomed. Your record quickly ceases to resemble what you thought you had made. We were screwed (again). Why couldn’t we learn? Read the full story →
