Jon Spencer at the Pitchfork Music Festival (photo by Kate Gardiner)
Jon Spencer doesn't like me
Jul. 29, 2010Pitchfork's policy on photos under scrutiny
Jul. 29, 2010
An interesting piece in the Reader by ace reporters Ben Joravsky and Sam Adams asks, "Do festivals like Pitchfork and Lollapalooza have the right to restrict photography in a public park?"
Stop making that Duck Face
Jul. 29, 2010
Warning: This clip has some nasty words. Don’t play it when the boss is around.
Though it wasn’t a phenomenon I’d ever really noticed until a friend of mine sent me the video clip above, once you’ve been made aware of it, the duck face does indeed seem to be ubiquitous and inescapable in the Facebook/MySpace universe. And what the heck is up with that?
Antiduckface.com, a Web site devoted to ending this plague by pointing out just how goofy it is, defines the duck face as “the pose where you push your mouth out in that sort of pout/kiss face to make it look like you’ve got big pouty lips, a super-defined jawline, and model-quality cheekbones” but wind up looking “really, really stupid.”
Chicago gets yet another festival
Jul. 28, 2010
Officially billed as”a festival of Advanced Music and Multimedia Art,” the three-day Sónar Music Festival has been taking place in Barcelona every year since 1994. Last year, it branched out to events in New York and Washington, D.C., and this year, it’s coming to Millennium Park and the Chicago Cultural Center just across Michigan Avenue on Sept. 9 to 11.
Performers at the fest, which was announced today, include Kid Koala’s “scratch-rock” project the Slew, electronica legends Oval, Martyn, Lesley Flanigan, Ben Frost, Nosaj Thing, Nicolas Bernier + Martin Messier: La Chambre des Machines, and Jimmy Edgar, as well as the Catalan artists Bradien, bRUNA, Huan, and Faraón.
Album Review: Arcade Fire, "The Suburbs"
Jul. 28, 2010
Arcade Fire, “The Suburbs” (Merge) Rating: 3.5/4
Bandleader Win Butler is a man of contradictions, which he fully owns up to. “Like a record that’s skipping, I’m a modern man,” he sings on the third track from Arcade Fire’s third album, “The Suburbs.” With the much-acclaimed full-length debut “Funeral” (2004), a meditation on death and loss, and the follow-up “Neon Bible” (2007), a consideration of the hollowness of religion, his Montreal orchestral-pop collective has made some of the most personal, heartfelt, and unashamedly un-ironic music that the indie underground has produced since Neutral Milk Hotel, which just happened to record for the same label. At the same time, the rousing, anthemic nature of the group’s roiling grooves marked it as the one indie band of the last two decades that actually could make it to the arenas—or at least the main-stage headlining slots at Coachella or Lollapalooza.
Not that Arcade Fire necessarily wants to be the hipster Springsteen or U2, as some critics posit.
Soundgarden to play the Vic Theatre
Jul. 27, 2010
If reunited ’90s grunge merchants Soundgarden were the only reason you were considering going to the Walmart on the Lake that is Lollapalooza, you’re in luck: The band has announced that it will play the Vic Theatre the night before the festival starts, on Thursday, Aug. 5.
The interesting twist here: The Vic is owned by Chicago-based Jam Productions, which has been battling Lollapalooza promoters C3 Presents since the massive festival started decimating the local company’s summer concert business. And Jam–along with the local offices of the giant national concert monopoly Ticketmaster/Live Nation–appears to have been one of the local entities whose complaints about Lollapalooza’s nine-month, 300-mile radius clauses triggered the ongoing investigation by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.
Is C3 trying to buy off Jam with this superstar-level sanctioned pre-show? (C3 was booking these kinds of shows into the similarly sized Congress Theatre in the past.) Ah, the serpentine ways of Chicago politics!
In any event, at the moment, tickets apparently will only be available through the band’s fan club.
Rimshots: Dead Nation's pigeongate; Kid Sister's new video, and Neu! is coming to Chicago
Jul. 27, 2010
You may have heard by now that classic-rock wannabes the Kings of Leon cancelled their show at the Verizon Amphitheatre in St. Louis Friday night after playing only three songs because pigeons in the rafters above the stage kept pooping on the group—everyone’s a critic!—and bassist Jared Followill almost caught a mouthful.
Said the band’s manager Andy Mendelsohn: “It’s not only disgusting—it’s a toxic health hazard.”
There’s a metaphor in here somewhere: The Verizon Amphitheatre is, of course, a Ticketmaster/Live Nation venue—the promoters are offering a refund—and that mega-company dumping on fans and artists alike certainly is nothing new.
The Vortis Diaries: A weekend at Wall to Wall
Jul. 26, 2010
The recording studio is a magical place. From the first time I entered one 27 years ago -- a cramped eight-track facility in the basement of a house in suburban New Jersey run by a guy who went on to record Christina Aguilera -- through about four dozen projects since, up to the 19 hours that Vortis spent at Chicago's Wall to Wall Recording last weekend, I've always felt like a kid in a candy store whenever I've been within the studio's mysterious, buzzing, and womb-like walls.