WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

“This is my happening and it freaks me out!”

Laura Emerick, Roger Ebert’s beloved editor at the Chicago Sun-Times (and one of my favorites as well), introduced me to the man at some stuffy function or other not long after I became the paper’s pop music critic in 1992.

Ebert was the reason I came to Chicago, the Sun-Times, and—second only to rock critic Lester Bangs—a life devoted to writing about and critiquing art. And the line I’d been waiting forever to say to him in person was the one he gave the acid guru Z-man in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, the brilliantly campy 1970 cult classic that he co-wrote with big-bosoms-loving director Russ Meyer.

“This is my happening and it freaks me out!” I blurted as we shook hands.

Roger gave me the weirdest look I ever saw cross his face and turned and left without saying a word.

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Borrowing the concept from the Dean of American Rock Critics Robert Christgau, Sound Opinions hosts its roundup of foul feathered friends as an annual event thematically pegged to Thanksgiving. But the last few weeks have seen such an unseasonable bounty of turkeys—technically defined not merely as bad records, but as really bad records from artists we expected to do much, much better—that loathe as I’ve been to write about them, I’ll do so here as quickly and painlessly as possible in the interest of public service to you, dear readers.

Avoid the following if at all possible, and your life will be better for it.

The Strokes, Comedown Machine (RCA) [1/2 star on the four-star scale]

Early in the new millennium, after the sorry post-alternative depression of rap-rock and teen-pop, the two bands that offered hope of rock resurgence were the White Stripes and the Strokes.

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When WBEZ listener and blog-follower Patrick Gallagher found himself wondering about the best double bills ever hosted on our local concert stages, like many a stumped Chicagoan before him, he turned to the fine folks at the Curious City project. But this query is a bit different than others about hidden missile silos and long-gone amusement parks, because there really isn’t a definitive answer.

For one thing, no master list exists of concert pairings on the city’s many stages from the last seven decades—and that’s if we’re restricting ourselves to the rock ’n’ roll era.

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Most of the history books would have us believe that the business of writing about and critiquing rock ’n’ roll was invented and perfected by Rolling Stone magazine, launched by Jann Wenner in San Francisco in 1967. But as with so much about that fabled Summer of Love—or, indeed, about the thumbnail musical histories of any era—that version of the roots of rock criticism and journalism is complete and utter bull, and the real hero is ignored as we celebrate the myth.

That hero, Paul S. Williams, died on March 27 after a long and difficult battle with dementia.

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Sgt. Joseph Giambrone testified that Congress Theater staffers lied about serving alcohol when his unit arrived to investigate suspicions of underage drinking during a DJ Rusko set in the early hours of May 6, 2012.

Giambrone’s testimony came during a disciplinary hearing at City Hall Tuesday morning, the second conducted by Chicago’s Liquor Control Commission looking into alleged illegal activities at the Congress. WBEZ's Leah Pickett has more on the hearing.

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Surprising no one—or at least not anyone who read Tuesday’s post on this blog—the City Plan Commission today unanimously approved the expansion of Ticketmaster/Live Nation’s Charter One Pavilion on Northerly Island from a capacity of 7,500 to a massive 30,000.

The size of the expanded venue means the giant national concert promoter now has two venues of that size in the Chicago market: the Charter One Pavilion, and the dreaded First Midwest Bank Amphitheater in Tinley Park.

Among the performers slated to initiate the new mega-venue at the former site of Meigs Field this summer: Jimmy Buffett and Phish.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the expanded concert venue will double Park District revenue, with $2 million being pumped into nature programs—though of course, Northerly Island will lose quite a bit of nature to make room for all of those extra Phisheads and parrotheads.

Once again, it is worth pointing out that Ticketmaster/Live Nation is in the ninth year of a five-year deal to run the venue, which was slated to have been put out to public bid once it became “permanent.”

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With an impressive cast led by Dame Helen Mirren and that perpetual scenery-chewer Al Pacino plus a legendary director-writer, Chicagoan David Mamet, hopes were high for Phil Spector, the HBO movie that debuts on Sunday and which charts the murder trial of the legendary architect of the Wall of Sound.

Alas, this thoughtful and exceedingly well-reasoned piece by Harriet Ryan, a Los Angeles Times reporter who spent months covering the real trial, points out the many glaring factual errors in the film, which Mamet tried to use to say that Spector was unjustly convicted because of his celebrity and his notorious eccentricity—even though anybody familiar with the evidence in the case or with Spector’s mercurial personality and longstanding obsession with guns will find that impossible to buy.

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