Recent Articles
Interview : JC Brooks & The Uptown Sound
It’s A Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance World He knows how it looks. JC Brooks can’t factor his age, background, and performance style and think there’s no one out there raising an eyebrow and spitting out a toothpick. He’s not quite the blackfacehedging outrage that Jon Spencer Blues Explosion could be, but this is Chicago.
Profile: Rainbow Foundation Music Inc.
With The Help Of My Friends For the past 20 years, the Rainbow Foundation Music Inc. has staged a series of benefit concerts, rock ‘n’ roll auctions, and toy drives to help Chicago-area children and families in crisis. Along the way, the organization has staged shows with a who’s-who of local and national classic rockers, […]
Caught In A Mosh: January 2011
Johnny, 5 Is Barely Alive What a strange year for picking a top-five list. This is the first time I’ve ever had so much trouble choosing my number one, for starters. Usually there is a hands-down favorite and the real fight is duked out for the fifth and final spot.
Sweet Home: January 2010
A New Kind Of Kinds James Kinds‘ voice cackles with the sweat of the Mississippi delta and the grit of Chicago’s West Side. It’s the kind of voice that can translate heady emotion with a quick shift of tone.
Around Hear: January 2011
Local Band Reviews Where some faith-based acts shroud their lyrics in metaphor to broaden their appeal, DeKalb’s Fue instead blanket their brooding alt-pop in mystery.
Media: January 2011
Blast From The Past: Triad Magazine I recently scoured local record stores for 7-inch vinyl with Grinderman drummer Jim Sclavunos — who found plenty of records to play at the band’s L.A. after-party.
Digital Divide: January 2011
Inception Fox Home Video According to the literary and Tinsel-town adage, there are only seven plot lines with which to work. If you take this logic as absolute, then once you’ve seen a film with one of these individual stories, you’ve seen them all.
Studiophile: January 2011
AVM Meets Joe South When AVM co-founder and vocalist Robert Mackey decided he wanted to add a remade version of “Hush” to the band’s new CD, A Matter Of Time, he decided on whim to contact the original songwriter of the Deep Purple ’60s classic, Joe South, to ask permission.
Gear: January 2011
Rock Lock Company The Rock Lock If you constantly worry about your guitar getting stolen from the stage, then entrepreneur Chris Goulet thinks a lot like you. While in college, he had a pretty good idea when he sketched out a drawing for a way to lock up his guitar after his roommate “borrowed” it […]
Chuck Berry’s aborted New Year’s show
Photographer Tim Hiatt was shooting Chuck Berry’s rare, local appearance on New Year’s Day, a gig that was cut short when the rock legend slumped over his keyboard and couldn’t continue. Click for photos.
Elvis Costello’s Coffee House Show
Chicago Theatre, Chicago Monday, December 20, 2010 You would have been forgiven, on a cold and snowy winter’s night, if you chucked your Elvis Costello tickets and just hunkered down in front of a crackling fire. Never mind the Bears were also playing, nothing else seemed to matter to the 3,500 who saw Costello at […]
Satch-a Claus is coming to town
Thanks to Trans-Siberian Orchestra, orchestral guitar rock has joined instrumental acoustic-guitar picking as a default holiday-music setting. (Along with rockabilly, oddly.)
Holly Days
Metro presents its annual “Home For The Holidays” concert series, which begins tonight and runs through the 30th. The idea is to draw separated college kids together over cheap — er, inexpensive — music and help some less-fortunate folks out, as well.
Digital Divide: November 2010
The Killer Inside Me IFC Films In the literary world of the ’40s and ’50s, there are writers of mystery and crime novels with standard whodunit plots that involve characters and situations to be neatly resolved at the end of act three.
Plus or minus
The plus/minus stat remains unique to hockey, an exploitable but generally accepted measurement of a skater’s defensive worth. It’s an aggregate of the number of times a player is on the ice when his team scores either at even-strength or shorthanded, versus the amount his side concedes while at equal numbers or on the power […]
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