Jim DeRogatis

Dave Matthews' to visit Far South Side: July 8-10

By: Jim DeRogatis | Apr. 7, 2011

Apr. 7, 2011

As first reported here on Monday, the Dave Matthews Band will bring its three-day Caravan festival to Lakeside, the name developers have given the former site of the United States Steel Corporation’s South Works site on the Far South Side.

The dates are July 8 to 10, and tickets already are on sale here, priced at $195 plus egregious service fees for a general-admission three-day pass, or an astounding $825 for a VIP package that includes “reserved viewing sections at each stage and a VIP hospitality area (with VIP restrooms) serving complimentary snacks, beer, water and soft drinks, plus a gourmet buffet dinner each night from 5 to 8 p.m.” (That price comes with extra egregious service fees, too, though the promoters are tossing in “three-day VIP parking passes… offering reserved parking in the closest lots to the main entrance,” mighty generous of them, considering that the site is nothing but acres and acres of flat dirt field, albeit with a view of the lake—and the surviving industries of Gary, Indiana.)

Tickets will be available only as three-day passes.

In addition to the headliners, the lineup includes David Gray, Ray LaMontagne, O.A.R., K

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DeRogatis: TV on the Radio album review

By: Jim DeRogatis | Apr. 5, 2011

Apr. 5, 2011

From their start, four albums and a decade back, the master fusionists that are TV on the Radio never have stopped evolving. Among the Brooklyn-based art-rockers’ most successful transmogrifications: the angry, genre-defying political protestors of “Return to Cookie Mountain” (2006), and the frenetic good-time dance musicians of “Dear Science” (2008).

“I don’t know anyone who just listens to one kind of music,” vocalist Tunde Adebimpe told me after the latter release. “The whole idea of sticking to one genre… I feel like there are people who do that really, really well, and that’s the way they hear things and how they express themselves. But it’s not the only way to do things.”

You’d think that by this point, we’d be ready for anything the group might give us, especially after a long hiatus that found its members working on numerous and diverse outside projects.

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DeRo: Will Dave Matthews save the Far South Side?

By: Jim DeRogatis | Apr. 4, 2011

Apr. 4, 2011

 

Local concert promoters Jam Productions and the Midwest office of the giant national conglomerate Ticketmaster/Live Nation will hold a press conference on Thursday morning to announce "a three-day multi-stage artist festival scheduled for this summer"--the Dave Matthews Band Caravan--on the Far South Side, apparently at or near South Works, the former lakefront location of the United States Steel Corporation.

Will this be a South Chicago, jam-oriented, considerably less scenic answer to Grant Park's Lollapalooza? And is that a good thing or a bad thing for the neighborhood and for the city's festival-glutted summer music scene?

We'll reserve judgement until the details are out. But two of the area's aldermen, Sandi Jackson of the 7th Ward and John Pope of the 10th, are slated to speak at the 10 a.m. press event, which indicates city approval for the plan. They'll share the platform with representatives of Jam, Live Nation, and developers McCaffery Interests at their Lakeside Marketing Center.

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DeRogatis: Weaselfest is off

By: Jim DeRogatis | Mar. 31, 2011

Mar. 31, 2011

With a final, resounding thud, Ben Weasel apparently has ended his attempts to put together a new version of Screeching Weasel (and the Riverdales, for that matter) and replace the bands that dropped out of his 25th anniverary celebration iin time to salvage Weaselfest at Reggies on Memorial Day weekend.

According to a brief note on the club's Web site: "CANCELLED -- CHECK BACK FOR RE-SCHEDULE OF SOME OF THE BANDS."

Earlier reports in this blog about Weaselgate:
 
 
 

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DeRogatis: Stop with the ukelele

By: Jim DeRogatis | Mar. 31, 2011

Mar. 31, 2011

Except as employed in the traditional music of its native Hawaii, the undersized four-stringed chordophone may be the lamest—or at least the silliest—instrument of all time; it just screams “kitsch,” and to these ears, it obnoxiously cutesies up any music it touches. Yet suddenly it’s the axe of choice for an increasing number of hipsters or wannabes.
 
What the heck is up with all these ukuleles all of the sudden?
 
The trend first crossed this blogger’s radar last year when the cheekily titled Neutral Uke Hotel began to tour with its live rendition of Neutral Milk Hotel’s enduring and heartbreakingly beautiful 1998 album “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”—performing the entirety of it on ukes. (The group comes to Schubas on April 23.)
 
 
Although the original classic album boasts an underground orchestra’s worth of odd instrumentation—from flugelhorn to Uilleann pipes, and from euphonium to zanzithophone—there is no ukulele.

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This is a book? Hipster Puppies? Really?

By: Jim DeRogatis | Mar. 29, 2011

Mar. 29, 2011
In these waning days of dead-tree media, one might expect that more than ever the topics that do make their tortured way between covers to sit on the dwindling number of bookstore shelves are more worthy than ever.
 
But the publishing industry, like music or film, bows to nothing more than the notion of what might generate the benjamins. And “cute” sells.
 
Witness the latest tome from Brooklyn-based rock scribe Christopher R. Weingarten: Hipster Puppies, coming in July as a trade paperback original from NAL/Penguin (144 pages, $14).
 
Weingarten’s work has appeared in the Village Voice, Spin, Revolver, and RollingStone.com, and his first book was one of those classic album considerations from Continuum (Public Enemy’s “It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back”).

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This is a book? Really?

Mar. 29, 2011

Mar. 29, 2011

In these waning days of dead-tree media, one might expect that more than ever the topics that do make their tortured way between covers to sit on the dwindling number of bookstore shelves are more worthy than ever.

But the publishing industry, like music or film, bows to nothing more than the notion of what might generate the benjamins. And “cute” sells.
 
Witness the latest tome from Brooklyn-based rock scribe Christopher R. Weingarten: Hipster Puppies, coming in July as a trade paperback original from NAL/Penguin (144 pages, $14).
 
Weingarten’s work has appeared in the Village Voice, Spin, Revolver, and RollingStone.com, and his first book was one of those classic album considerations from Continuum (Public Enemy’s “It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back”).

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A Lupe fiasco at the House of Blues

By: Jim DeRogatis | Mar. 29, 2011

Mar. 29, 2011
 
Showing disdain for your record company is one thing, especially when you’re an artist who’s been as royally screwed as Chicago rapper Lupe Fiasco.
 
Evincing contempt for your audience is another issue, however, and it’s disconcerting that, rightly or not, people now are hurling that accusation at Lupe.
 
Trailing his debut album “Food & Liquor” (2006) and its follow-up “The Cool” (2007) by a delay of more than three years, the third album by the artist born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco was subject to endless commercial tinkering by his label, Atlantic Records, which, in the classic music-biz cliché, “just didn’t hear a hit.”

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