WBEZ 91.5 Chicago

Roll up, roll up for the magical mystery tour, step right this way… just be forewarned. If you’ve never seen the Beatles’ notorious road movie—first screened by the BBC over the Christmas holidays in 1967, never televised in the U.S. but now available in a restored version on a spiffy new deluxe DVD—you’re in for a bumpy ride that might make you lose your lunch, or at least leave you with a sick headache.

Nearly half a century on, the fascinating thing about Magical Mystery Tour the film is the rare glimpse it offers into one of the best rock bands of all time at its unadulterated worst. And make no mistake: a spectacular, disastrous, largely incomprehensible and nearly unwatchable mess it was and remains.

The PBS series Great Performances finally aired the 52-minute film on American television for the first time a few weeks ago, preceded by a new hour-long documentary about its making. The documentary is featured on the new DVD, though it inexplicably is shortened to 19 minutes.

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If, in the wake of the horrific happenings at Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, a soulless, amoral and blatantly sensationalist musician released an album glorifying the deranged mindset, unspeakably selfish and evil worldview and embrace of indiscriminate violence that led to the mass killing of 26 innocents, the condemnation of that dubious art would be instant and universal, regardless of whatever imagined merits it might have beyond its abhorrent subject matter.

On Tuesday, a 17-year-old South Side rapper born Keith Cozart but better known as Chief Keef will release Finally Rich, his major-label debut for the morally vacuous Interscope Records. The album is a bleak, nihilistic celebration of street violence, gang culture, drug use, disrespect for women and the worship of the almighty dollar above all humanistic conscience, arriving as Chicago nears the end of a year that’s seen an epidemic of violent killings in African-American neighborhoods every bit as tragic—and preventable, if the political will was present—as those in Newtown, Conn.

This is not to equate the words of Chief Keef with the actions of the Newtown assassin.

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Alright, so I’ve waited nearly 24 hours to weigh in on the much-ballyhooed “Nirvana reunion” with Sir Paul McCartney in the role of Kurt Cobain during Wednesday night’s “12-12-12: The Concert for Sandy Relief.”

The reasons for doing so were numerous: Good cause; seems rude to cast aspersions. Declaring that Cobain adamantly opposed such nostalgia and superstar shenanigans could just be kneejerk. Didn’t want rush to judgment. Etc., etc., etc.

I’ve now listened to “Cut Me Some Slack” several times since it first aired, however, and I’ve got to say that Macca on vocals and cigar-box dobro leading Dave Grohl on drums, Krist Novoselic on bass and Pat Smear on guitar through the lamest of tossed-off blues jams—sample lyric: “Mama, watch me run/Mama, let me have some fun”—not only didn’t do any of them or their former legendary outfits proud, it would have made the Dan Aykroyd-Jim Belushi-John Goodman “Blues Brothers 2000” wince.

Mosquito, libido, I don’t think so. But, here, watch for yourself.

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Once again, the time has arrived for that most sacred if clichéd of rock-critic tasks: the annual Year-End Best-of Albums list.

As I note each year on this occasion, the following is my tally not of the most “important” or “successful” releases of 2012, however you define those terms. Instead, I present my tally of the albums I listened to and loved most, which kept me coming back time after time and which grew on me more with each repeated spin, and which I am most eager to hear again right now and to share with you.

Let’s start with the Top 10. (The links are to my reviews of these discs in this space or on Sound Opinions.)

1.

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“We won.” With those two simple words, rock critic Gina Arnold summed up the feelings of many music lovers in the ’90s.

Long since soured on the tired but unending repetition of classic-rock stations and the narrow play lists of the AAA “adult album alternative” format, an entire generation confined itself to college radio and the left of the dial or simply threw Marconi’s little box out the window starting in the mid-’80s. That is, until 1991, “the year punk broke,” to borrow another famous characterization of the era that followed the stunning success of Nirvana’s Nevermind.

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Finally taking the first step in what is likely to be a protracted and bitter battle, the current film operators of the Portage Theater have announced a rally on Dec. 17th to "save the theater as we know it" in the face of what they and many Six Corner residents fear will be the attempt by its new and controversial owner Eddie Carranza to turn it into the Congress Theater Northwest.

Promising that more details will be forthcoming shortly, the management team, who are fighting Carranza's bid to evict them, issued the following flier today.

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Filed yesterday by the Chicago firm of Adelman & Gettleman on behalf of Delaware-based PNC Bank, the lawsuit claims that Carranza has defaulted on repayment of $4 million he borrowed in August 2007 and secured with a mortgage on the historic Congress Theater.

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