File: May 2012
Red or white, Todd Rundgren? And which would you choose to sip while listening to the soothing singer/songwriter? Have an answer ready when hitting up the Chicago outpost of City Winery. New York’s staple will open its second location come August in the West Loop and, despite offering a Mediterranean-centric menu to 175 bar patrons and 325 concert attendees, the fruit of the vine takes centerstage. Literally. Stacks of French oak barrels will line the winery’s 30,000 square feet. This isn’t a Disney World scene-setting tactic; these babies will house the joint’s onsite-produced vino.
Dust and rubble accompanied owner Michael Dorf and 27th ward alderman Walter Burnett‘s glass-breaking ceremony last month to celebrate the former food-distribution warehouse’s transformation at 1200 W. Randolph into old-world wine country (think exposed brick and wood beams) jazzed up with sleek embellishments. Dorf says the venue/event space is more supper club than rock outlet, for crowds inclined to uncork a bottle while seated at tables than dance. Rundgren, Suzanne Vega, and Shawn Colvin are already on the calendar, but we predict more eclectic names to fill nights devoted to music and comedy since nabbing Colleen Miller from her 17-year-tenure as the Old Town School Of Folk Music’s talent buyer.
LIGHTS, CAMERA, RIDDIM
Bob Marley died in 1981 at 36 — based on the two hours of Kevin Macdonald‘s Marley, you’d think the reggae superstar continues to pen songs from a Kingston retirement home. It’s either a testament to Marley, the songwriter, Rastafarian, and political provocateur packing a lifetime’s worth of adventures into his short time on Earth, or the filmmakers’ quest to exhaustively examine the minutiae of his career.
With a dearth of footage available (the earliest photo to surface shows the singer at 16), the documentary relies on interviews with Marley’s wife Rita (who selected songs for the two-disc soundtrack), mistress Cindy Breakspeare, and original Wailer Neville “Bunny” Livingston. It would be easy to let Marley indulge its inherent Messianic complex, but the candor offered up in these one-on-ones helps rein it in, even in the midst of contradictory recollections of Marley’s personality. We get a collage of the man — a stubborn philanderer (he fathered 11 children with seven women) with the creative drive of an Olympic athlete — instead of a complete picture.
To a certain generation, Marley’s nothing more than a commercial for an exotic Jamaican vacation and a toking mascot. The film succeeds in stripping away the years of licensing deals that slapped his face on everything from T-shirts to beach towels. Although, the marketing gods surely ringed their hands in glee over Marley‘s 4/20 release date.
— Janine Schaults
NOTHING COMPARES 2 U 2
All told, April was sailing pretty smoothly until blowhards Axl Rose and Sinead O’Connor set us on a collision course for the early ’90s. First, Rose laid out a bizarre, lucid, paranoid, self-righteous, and all-contradictory-bases-covered “statement” on why it just didn’t make sense for him to share a podium for five minutes as Guns N’ Roses got inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. And then he declined to be inducted at all. He wrote that the ceremony “doesn’t appear to be somewhere I’m actually wanted or respected.” Ah, yes. The ol’ “non-vite” from the HOF. He then edifyingly added, “God knows how long I’ll have to contend with the fallout.” Aw. The drama Rose has protracted over 20 years has been squished into the last 5 months for O’Connor: suicidal comments online, a hasty marriage, equally snappy separation, giving it another go, embrace of life, release of new album, 45-date tour scheduled, and then, on April 23rd, utter abandonment of her career, and canceled concerts. She then begged her fans for employment: “Must be Dublin or Wicklow based job and require love of people. NOT showbiz job.”
STACKS ON DECK
You have to wonder if Jim Marshall burned a little every time one of his customers cracked a drummer joke. After all, the inventor of Marshall Amplifiers — a musical symbol every bit as potent as the Les Paul — started his career behind the skins and originally opened a drum shop. Like all good businessmen, he saw a need that wasn’t being met, and met it: first, guitarists wanted him to carry their gear in his store, and then they complained to him that the best amplifiers made them sound too . . . good. When Marshall passed away, aged 88 in his beloved London last month, his legacy wasn’t one of progress or perfection: from a technical standpoint, you could even argue his amps were deliberately faulty because of their gritty tone. But revolutions are always a little messy, and his name was all over rock ‘n’ roll’s.
— Steve Forstneger
