Janelle Monae
The most exciting artist performing in town this weekend isn't even headlining, but if the annual conference of Public Radio Program Directors wasn't taking me out of town -- there ain't no party like a public radio programmers party and the public radio programmers party don't stop -- no way I'd miss it.
Or the theme music does, anyway -- I never cared much about the original TV series, which was hugely popular from 1968 all the way through 1980, no thanks to Jack Lord's wooden acting. And I'm even less interested in the recently debuted New Millennial update of the show. (The sharpest TV critic I know watched it and pronounced it exceedingly "meh," and she rarely is wrong, except maybe about her fondness for "Glee.")
That intro music, though -- wow!
Given the lavish praise heaped upon the self-titled debut by Grinderman in 2007 -- it was my choice for the best album of that year, and its intensity has diminished not a whit since -- let's get this out of the way right up top: The second album from Nick Cave's extra-Bad Seeds side project with violinist and guitarist Warren Ellis, bassist Martyn Casey, and drummer Jim Slavunos is not quite as great as the undeniable garage-blues eruption of that explosive introduction.
The wall during intermission at the United Center on Monday (excuse the crappy cell-phone pix).
In the community of super-geek Pink Floyd fans, of which I have been a lifelong member, I have had three decades of bragging rights for having been among the select few in only three cities (New York, London, and Los Angeles) who saw the group perform its epic double album "The Wall" onstage in its entirety upon its release in 1980.
Since his promising debut with "Get Lifted" (2004) as a new kind of old-school soul man, singer and songwriter John Legend has been busy moving to the toothless center, content to churn out ever more generic and lightweight easy-listening fluff. Apparently, some time after performing "If You're Out There" at the 2008 Democratic National Convention and watching Barack Obama move into the White House, he decided it was time to get heavy again, working with one of the best live bands in hip-hop or R&B, and covering a set of socially conscious protest songs from the '60s and '70s, with one new original (the disc-closing "Shine") thrown in for good measure.
Peter Stampfel, godfather of freak-folk
Ah, Fall is in the air and things are cooling down climactically and heating up artistically as the music moves back into the clubs. My top pick this weekend: a rare local appearance by the legendary '60s musician Peter Stampfel, as good a choice as any for the godfather of freak-folk.
In addition to Kanye West's performance of the new song "Runaway," one more morsel from Sunday's MTV Video Music Awards seems worthy of comment: button-pushing dance-pop diva Lady Gaga and her instantly infamous "meat dress."
Yes, I was deeply offended by Gaga's outfit: As a committed meatatarian, it truly hurts me that she wasted all of that tasty beef when there are so many Webers worldwide that have no meat to grill.
My pain was only somewhat mitigated by this article in the Daily News, which dispatched two reporters to interview New York butchers, discovering that the meat was not of the highest quality, a la what you'd find at my idea of heaven on earth, Chicago's Paulina Meat Market.
One of the best things about no longer working for the daily dead-tree media is the freedom from soul-sapping assignments such as chronicling the annual MTV Video Music Awards on deadline. Now I can catch up afterwards at my leisure on the off chance that the endless show did contain a nugget of interest.
