Columns
File: November 2012
WHAT ARE YOU DOING NEW YEAR’S EVE? Any day now the elves at The Lite (WLIT-FM, 93.9) will flip that red and green garland-wrapped lever they keep in a back room next to the reserve stash of Coffee-mate creamers and beat us into submission with a non-stop playlist of cheery Christmas carols. Worried you’re developing […]
Digital Divide: November 2012
Magical Mystery Tour EMI At the halfway point of their career, The Beatles found the pedal marked “creative experimentation” and floored it. The three years between 1965 and 1967 saw them release the most stunningly original albums in the rock era with Rubber Soul, Revolver, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was a […]
Caught In A Mosh: November 2012
Attempting to make it as a New Yorker and failing carries with it a few stories. Here is a doozy: I once lived next door to an Irish nurse who would drop a bowling ball on the floor after midnight because she didn’t like the Brazilian couple downstairs. She threw boric acid on their child. […]
Media: November 2012
Open any newspaper or media website and you’re likely to see more hard news bylines belonging to men than women – and even fewer by minorities. But it’s not part of a conspiracy, says Michele Weldon, seminar leader at The OpEd Project. “The gender gap in most all cases is not deliberate. It is a […]
Sweet Home: November 2012
Wayne Baker Brooks has always been a rebel. While most blues musicians were weaned on a steady diet of classic blues, he also listened to house music, ’80s rock, and hip-hop. While most scions of blues legends gain musical schooling from the masters themselves, Brooks is self-taught. And while most musicians regularly perform riveting examples […]
Gear: November 2012
Fender Guitars Jaguar 50th Anniversary The Fender Jaguar electric guitar is 50 years old. Wow. Unveiled in 1962, it was the last and arguably, most criticized of the guitar maker’s four signature electric guitars to be introduced, and, as it turned out, the last major “six-stringer” by Leo Fender whose name is still adorned on […]
Studiophile: November 2012
Longtime studio owner/engineer Michael Kolar has upgraded his Chicago-based SOUNDSCAPE STUDIOS with Carl Tatz Design‘s (CTD) acclaimed PhantomFocus System, a monitor tuning protocol that stands above all other possible control room upgrades. “When you can mix from instinct and taste as opposed to compensating for playback anomalies, the sky is the limit,” Kolar contends. “At […]
Hello, My Name Is Matthew
IE: You channel Abbey Road-era John Lennon on the cover of your debut, Big Inner with a crisp, white suit. Matthew E. White: If I don’t wear a suit, with the long hair and beard I look like hippie man or some rocker guy. The album is kind of classy. [The suit] lets people know […]
Around Hear: October 2012
Counterfeit I takes pride in being unconventional on A Glimpse, An Eclipse, right down to using titles like “. . .” and “(r)this.” The band opts for a harder guitar sound than on its first two releases, creating a sonic landscape marked with battlefields, industrial beats, shouted vocals, and abrupt tempo changes. The fast-paced “Smile” […]
Caught In A Mosh: October 2012
It never fails. Friends grow up, record stores shutter, liner notes shrink, columnists retire, and servers get hacked. But one tried-and-true way of discovering underground music will always remain: the cover song. This writer had never heard of Death In June – possibly the darkest folk group – before Nachtmystium covered “Rose Clouds Of Holocaust” […]
Digital Divide: October 2012
The Cabin In The Woods Lionsgate The Avengers Lionsgate If anyone had a better summer at the box office than Joss Whedon, I sure couldn’t tell you who it was. Not only did he direct the highest grossing film of the year, but another one of his projects finally saw the light of day after […]
File: October 2012
TO COMMON, WITH LUV Common urges Chicago’s youth to stop the violence. This comes mere weeks after local rapper Lil Jojo (Joseph Coleman, 18) was gunned down on the streets of Englewood and inflammatory tweets posted on musical rival Chief Keef‘s (Keith Cozart, 17) profile caused police to investigate the rising star in connection to […]
Gear: October 2012
Steve Vai Ocean Way Mic Locker App With Apple’s new iPhone 5 release flooding stores this month, the timing is right for guitarist/composer Steve Vai (in collaboration with acclaimed microphone expert Allen Sides and Metal Sidecar, LLC) to release the Ocean Way Microphone Locker App. The company calls it an “indispensable and vital tool for […]
Media: October 2012
I recently had a driveway moment while listening to Loyola University’s WLUW-FM (87.7). The host was doing an in-depth, hour-long retrospective on Daft Punk – whom I’d never heard. Yet I couldn’t stop listening. The way the show’s host, Steve Damien, used live and pre-recorded interviews with full-length versions of songs to tell the story […]
Studiophile: October 2012
Following the untimely death of legendary Grammy-winning songwriter and studio boffin Joe South, the owner of SONGWERKS RECORDING in Addison, Robert Mackey, took time to reflect on his professional friendship with South (pictured above left, with Mackey) who performed on his band’s (AVM) cover of “Hush,” (made famous by Deep Purple), recorded at Songwerks. “It […]
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