WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Mike "Pitchfork" Reed's ever-evolving "Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements" end-of-summer mixed-media blowout will return in its third incarnation on September 21-23 at the new Riverfront Theater at 650 W. Chicago).

"Taking a vaudevillian approach" this time around, according to the press release, the event will include comics and circus acts, as well as some impressive musical legends including John Cale, Bobby Womack and Van Dyke Parks

Tickets go on sale here tomorrow at noon, and the full schedule follows.

FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 21, 7 p.m.

John Cale

Zola Jesus

Late Comedy Show (FREE), 10 p.m.

Drew Michael

Megan Gailey

Hosted by Brandon Wetherbee

SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 22, 5 p.m.

El Circo Cheapo

Conor Oberst

Van Dyke Parks

Late Comedy Show (FREE) , 10 p.m.

Jon H.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

The mid-year best-of always has been more of a Kot thing: He’s the king of declaring, three weeks into the new annum, that a disc may be his “album of the year.” Me, I prefer to live with a record as long as possible, to see if it rises or sinks in estimation, before committing to a definite position on the all-important year-end tally.

With that in mind, and to expound on my comments on this week’s episode of Sound Opinions, here is where I stand so far in 2012. (Follow the links to my original reviews.)

1. Spiritualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light (Fat Possum)

You may think that Jason “Spaceman” Pierce has no surprises left after three decades of exploring the intersection of spiritual and drug-induced transcendence.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

As noted in revisions and an update to today's original post on the fatal stage collapse at the Toronto Radiohead concert promoted by Live Nation, the story contained two errors.

The company was not the promoter of the Indiana Sugarland concert that claimed seven lives last summer; it sold sponsorships to the event and was named in the civil lawsuit filed by victims’ families along with the band’s ownership company, ESG Security, the stagehands’ union and other companies.

Also, while Live Nation has a hand in this year’s Big Valley Jamboree at the Camrose Exhibition Centre in Canada, Panhandle Promotions, not Live Nation, was the promoter of the 2009 concert that claimed one life and injured 15 people.

We regret the errors.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

Updated 9:30 p.m.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

Often marginalized, power pop is a genre that not only refuses to die but which ages more gracefully than almost any other sound in rock. Gray hair or baldness, middle-age paunches, the “hip factor”—nothing else matters so long as a band can still deliver an exuberant explosion of sound and songs that you feel as if you’ve been singing your whole life from the very first time you hear the chorus. And on Falling Off the Sky, for the first time since 1982, the original members of the dB’s return to prove they’re masters of the form.

 Though the musicians all hail from Winston-Salem, North Carolina—and grew up worshipping their Southern progenitors Big Star (as well as the Beatles of Revolver)—guitarists, vocalists and songwriters Chris Stamey and Peter Holsapple, drummer Will Rigby and bassist Gene Holder first came together as the dB’s in New York in the wake of the punk explosion of the late ’70s.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

Sporting a velvet lavender suit, an attitude bad enough to redefine that term and a hustler’s life story that Elmore Leonard couldn’t invent, Chicago-born R&B legend Andre Williams has been enjoying a long-overdue career renaissance in certain corners of the raw ’n’ rootsy rock underground in recent years—one that isn’t necessarily glamorous or lucrative enough to make up for decades spent in underappreciated servitude to labels such as Fortune, Motown and Chess, but which at age 75 at least garners a lot more love than he ever got when he was strung out on drugs and living homeless in the Loop.

Alternately hailed as “the father of rap” and the all-time master of “sleaze rock,” Chicago’s Bloodshot Records deserves much of the credit for introducing Williams to a new generation of fans, with a relationship that started in 1999 and which paired him at various points with the Sadies, the New Orleans Hellhounds and members of the Dirtbombs, among others.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet

Hot on the heels of announcing that in year eight, Riot Fest will stage its biggest punk-rock bash yet outdoors in Humboldt Park, its promoters have broken the news that in addition to Chicago and Philadelphia, they will add three more cities to their quest for world-domination: New York, Toronto and Dallas.

Meanwhile, red-hot electronic dance music promoters React Presents are gearing up for their biggest glow-stick-lit blowout yet, with the massive Spring Awakening Festival taking place in Soldier Field topped by Skrillex and with a cast of countless other DJs Saturday and Sunday–all for the bargain price of $143 for a two-day pass, or $262 for the V.I.P. package.

Over the last few years, Riot Fest and React have become powerful forces on the Chicago concert scene, finding their own lucrative niches with sounds either slighted or ignored by the big boys like Jam Productions and Live Nation.

…Read Full Entry

• Comments
• Send
• Print
• Share
• Recommend
• Tweet