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Now go get your shine box!
Shoeshine Boys Productions celebrates its 11th anniversary with a party at Double Door, but before it gets a big head we also have preview Femi Kuti, and El Ten Eleven.
Arcade Fire live!
Arcade Fire often blurs the lines between a nuts-and-bolts rock show and performance-art extravaganza. Despite an absence of costume changes, a cadre of flashy backup dancers, or life-size props, Win Butler and co. managed to dazzle the senses
Won’t you be, won’t you be my neighbor?
A trio of local record-releases (Cameron McGill, The Part Five, Scattered Trees) pound the Chicago coast this weekend, bringing stormy emotions, windy verbage, and thunderous applause something.
Electro Pure, eh?
Don’t try to make sense of why some bands become critical darlings and others are denounced as namby-pamby trash. You’ll make neither heads nor tails of it, and everyone will still laugh at you.
Clean the wall when you’re done
Accept fans quietly rage when they run into people who only know the band for their biggest hit, “Balls To The Wall.” The German band did release two earlier albums that were more in line with the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal — speedy, aggressive — and never intended to become the teutonic AC/DC. […]
Dawn bringing
Almost as if they’re New York and Los Angeles, the Chicagoland’s suburban and city metal scenes have more differences than simple geography.
The hardest Parts
Within the first couple minutes of Parts & Labor‘s Constant Future (Jagjaguwar), a surge of electronic and other malfunctioning noises conspire to produce
At the movies!
A new, Scion A/V-backed film won’t boast the legal fireworks caused by Fix at the CIMM festival, but this Tuesday’s local premiere of New Garage Explosion!!: In Love With The Times is all about the warm fuzzies.
Rush live!
Coming up on four decades of touring, it makes perfect sense that Rush has perfected the formula for their live show. And while it offers repeat customers few surprises, it never disappoints. The latest proof of this came Tuesday night, as the Canadian classic-rockers brought “The Time Machine Tour” to the United Center.
International Pop Overthrow returns!
International Pop Overthrow is about to make its 10th anniversary swing through Chicago, with a two-week run that will present more than 75 power pop and indie rock bands at The Abbey Pub and Red Line Tap.
Rod Stewart & Stevie Nicks live!
Even if Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks don’t seem like the most obvious tourmates, their careers actually share several parallels. For starters, each found fame with an influential group, with Stewart fronting British rockers Faces from 1969 to 1975 and Nicks co-leading Fleetwood Mac since ’75.
Queens Of The Stone Age live!
Read any industry rag and you’re likely to see that record companies are dying on the vine. In the scramble to generate income, the big trend has once again become the reissue. That means attempting to sell you again what you already own or entice you by adding to your collection something you may have […]
Cover Story: Beady Eye
In many ways, it smacked of the old boy-who-cried-‘Wolf!’ yarn. Mouthy Mancunian siblings Noel and Liam Gallagher — the guitarist and vocalist of legendary Britpop combo Oasis, respectively — had gotten into so many knock-down, drag-out scraps, and walked out on each other mid-tour so many times that it was starting to feel routine.
Interview: Ezra Furman & The Harpoons
Vulgar Display Of Power Pop music needs a magic story to stir our imaginations again. Enough talent shows, “leaked” tracks, and teen boys prancing in front of a Web cam. What would it take to find a local band on the cusp with a bit of fantasy behind them? From whom can the sweat-pantsed masses […]
Interview: Raphael Saadiq
Soul Power Raphael Saadiq’s recent single, “Radio” — the last song he wrote for his new album Stone Rollin’ (Columbia) — speaks volumes on his unusual place in the music industry.
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