Recent Articles
A little bit o’ country, but it’s really rock ‘n’ roll
Country Music Festival 2010: While we won’t completely side with Robbie Fulks’ assessment of “soft-rock, feminist crap,” country music isn’t in such a state that it deserves to be feted in a town to which it has few connections.
Farm Aid 2010
The 25th annual Farm Aid took over Milwaukee’s Miller Park Saturday for an 11-hour beer, cheese, and music fest. We sent photographer Brian Ormiston to investigate.
Cover Story: John Legend & The Roots
There’s Still A Riot Goin’ On In politics, as in music, timing is everything. In 2000, reborn George W. Bush rode the religious right’s disgust with the Clintons into the White House, just as Barack Obama’s galvanizing ’04 DNC address rekindled idealism when America had grown tired of sucking down fear. In contrast, the roads […]
Jimmy Eat World interview
Searching For A Former Clarity Midway through Jimmy Eat World’s seventh studio effort, Invented (Interscope), the album presents its immediate and undeniable pop apex in “Coffee And Cigarettes.” The song finds the band at its power-pop: finest all huge harmonized hooks and crunching riffs buzzing just under frontman Jim Adkins’ honey-laden, eternally boyish vocals.
Mumford & Sons interview
India ‘N America Sure, there are shiny new electric toys that can make a rock band sound like a million bucks. But for the rustic-minded Marcus Mumford – and his folksy four-piece Mumford & Sons – the older and dustier the musical instrument, the better. “I just bought a hundred-year-old harmonium,” the 23-year-old enthuses. “And […]
Eric Mantel Interview
Coming Unstuck Anyone in town who ever spent a split second in a blues bar or rock club from the 1970s through today has likely run into Chicago-based guitar slinger Eric Mantel.
File: October 2010
Dave Matthews Bang! When you dump a truckload of shit in the Chicago River, you answer to Samir! Clark Street belched a bummed-out “No way!” late last month when the FBI foiled a plot to kill Dave Matthews Band fans after the September 18th Wrigley Field show.
Hello, My Name Is Kevin
Q&A with Kevin Chalfant IE: You’ve been in a ton of bands over the years. Could you give us the official lineage? Kevin Chalfant: Well I started in Illinois in the late 1970s, went to California in the ’80s through mid-’90s and them came back to Illinois. In Illinois, one group was called The […]
Around Hear: October 2010
Local Band Reviews Algernon‘s intentions of blending hippie grooves with kraut rock, art punk, and avant-garde jazz are certainly admirable, but the results throughout the entirely instrumental Ghost Surveillance are scattered at best.
Digital Divide: October 2010
Iron Man 2 Warner Bros. Iron Man may possibly be one of the best comic-book movies ever made, and its critical and financial success meant that the sequel was as inevitable as the sun rising in the east or Lindsay Lohan doing something stupid.
Caught In A Mosh: October 2010
With The Lights Out Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell love black metal. More accurately, Aaron Aites and Audrey Ewell are obsessed with black metal. The couple spent significant time at Aquarius Records in San Francisco where friend and co-owner Andee Connors recognized the couple’s bias toward lo-fi music and suggested they check out black metal.
Media: October 2010
Faces For TV: Chicago’s Fabulous Manno Brothers “Growing up, I never thought beyond Q101,” says Kevin Manno, 27, who recently left the WKQX-FM show he co-hosted with older brother Ryan Manno, 29, for the MTV show “The Seven” – a live countdown of the day’s top seven pop-culture stories that debuted September 20th.
Sweet Home: October 2010
Harper’s Calling Traditionally, autumn signals the harvest and what a bountiful crop that the blues has sown. A new Chicago label, Swississippi Records, launched last month and has released an impressive collection of classic blues albums.
More Pygmalion recap!
Friday the 24th and Saturday the 25th were the last two days of the 6th Annual Pygmalion Festival in Champaign-Urbana. They were also – entirely unsurprisingly – fully loaded, with music running night and day over nine venues.
Studiophile: October 2010
Not only did Disturbed hire a local producer to monitor proceedings for this summer’s Asylum (Reprise), but they tracked it at a local studio. O.K., so guitarist Dan Donegan isn’t exactly an outside hire (even frontman David Draiman and drummer Mike Wengren get themselves some co-producer credits), but Johnny K.’s GROOVEMASTER STUDIO in Chicago certainly […]
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