WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

A little more than three weeks after pulling the plug on movies at the historic Portage Theater on the Northwest Side, controversial venue owner Erineo “Eddie” Carranza is putting tickets on sale tomorrow for his first musical offering at that venue: a show by Los Angeles rapper Kid Ink.

Tickets to the July 13^th show go on sale Wednesday for $25 through Ticketfly.com. It is being advertised as an all-ages event; Carranza is fighting the revocation of his liquor license at the Congress Theater and has not yet secured a liquor license at his second venue the Portage.

Carranza had promised concerned residents at Six Corners that bookings at the Portage would be more in keeping with the neighborhood than the hip-hop and electronic dance acts featured at the Congress.

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The ever-intrepid musical entrepreneur Jake Austen (Rocktober, the Goblins, Chic-A-Go-Go) is hosting a benefit for Norton Records at 9 tonight at the Bottom Lounge. New York’s long-running garage-rock label, one of the finest indies in America, suffered the loss of nearly all of its stock during Hurricane Sandy.

Topping the bill: Miss Mia’s a 12-piece Shangri Las tribute band with horns and strings and the manic 81-year-old R&B legend T. Valentine.

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Yesterday the unhappy whispers I first heard a few weeks ago from my buddy Jim “Jersey Beat” Testa officially became news: The legendary rock club Maxwell’s will close at the end of July.

To say that the tiny (capacity: 200) club was the best in Hoboken, N.J. (population: 50,000) is meaningless. Nor does adding that it was for decades the finest music venue in the greater New York metropolitan region add much to understanding its importance.

Now, consider that pretty much every important underground rock band in the last 35 years not only has played Maxwell’s but cited it among its favorite clubs in the world, and you’ll be starting to close in on what was special about the place.

The brownstone on the corner of 11^th and Washington just across the Hudson River from midtown Manhattan originally housed a shot-and-a-beer joint open only during break times for the Maxwell House Coffee factory down the block.

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When the Chicago Park District decided to allow giant national concert promoter Live Nation to expand its Northerly Island music venue from 8,000 to nearly 30,000 seats, it never considered any other bidders for the project, and it ignored specs for the venue issued in its last request for proposals in late 2011.

The City Plan Commission unanimously approved the expansion in March, almost quadrupling the size of the lakefront concert arena. With it will allegedly come $2 million in increased annual revenues for the city—as well of course as larger profits for Live Nation.

Live Nation is the only company that has operated the venue since it opened in 2005, and it was the only company that responded to the request for proposals in 2011.

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Time for round two of recent rock-reads to pile into the beach bag, starting with the definitive biography of one of the most important bands of the last century, without whom much modern music is unimaginable.

Kraftwerk Publikation: A Biography (Omnibus Press) is not the first attempt to tell the German band’s story; Pascal Bussy’s Kraftwerk: Man, Machine and Music also is a worthy read (and is richer with photos). But with his new book, British music journalist and critic David Buckley, the author of earlier tomes on David Bowie and R.E.M., has given us what is likely to stand as the definitive biography.

Granted, there is the nettlesome fact that Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider, the two primary forces behind the electronic pop band from its start in Düsseldorf in 1970 through its last great album Electric Café in 1986, declined to speak to Buckley, as they have with every other prospective biographer.

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UPDATED SUNDAY 7:45 p.m.

Although the city on Friday revoked the liquor license owned by mercurial landlord Erineo “Eddie” Carranza at Logan Square’s Congress Theater, the move did not immediately affect his second venue, the Portage Theater, four miles northwest on Milwaukee Avenue at Six Corners.

Yet several hours after the license revocation became public Friday afternoon, the Facebook page maintained by the current Portage film programmers announced that, “Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Portage Theater is closed until further notice.”

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UPDATED 4:45 P.M.: NEW COMMENTS ON THE APPEAL AND THE PORTAGE THEATER

Controversial Congress Theater owner Erineo “Eddie” Carranza has lost his liquor license at the embattled Logan Square concert venue.

“We will appeal,” Carranza said.

Despite the city’s revocation of the liquor license, state law allows a venue to continue to sell alcohol during the appeals process.

The city issued an order to police to close the venue. But Carranza’s attorney Harlan Powell said the appeal was filed this afternoon and copies were forwarded to police, who should allow the next public event, a Latin music show on Sunday afternoon, to continue as scheduled.

Today’s decision from the Liquor Control Commission comes after three sessions of sometimes harrowing testimony before Hearings Commissioner Robert Nolan.

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