WBEZ | rock

Furthur at Northerly Island: No Jerry, but not bad

Wed, 18 Jul 2012 13:44:00 -0500

Jerry Garcia, the guitarist/singer/songwriter/reluctant leader of the Grateful Dead and the Deadhead nation, played his last show right here in Chicago, at the “pre-spaceship” Soldier Field in July of 1995. A month later he was gone. Since Garcia’s death, various members of the band have toured together under various names-The Other Ones, Ratdog, Phil & Friends, The Dead, and now Furthur-each trying to capture the sound and energy of the band when “Captain Trips” was alive. I’ve attended concerts from several of those iterations over the last 17 years, and each time I’ve walked away disappointed. The tempo was too plodding. The riffs were too predictable. The magic simply wasn’t there.

Now, let me explain something. The Grateful Dead were plodding and predictable before Jerry died! Even the band’s most ardent supporters couldn’t possibly argue the fact that heavy drug use, the weight of holding up a huge business juggernaut (the band employed hundreds of people), and the isolation brought on by superstardom had been eating away at Garcia’s abilities and attitude for years. The Dead went from having outstanding tours in the 1970’s (where it seemed like everything they played for an entire month was fresh and inspired), to great runs in the 80’s (perhaps a 2 or 3 night stand at Chicago’s Uptown Theater that was pure gold), to solid single performances, to one or two nice-but-fleeting moments within a show.

But despite the sub-par tunes, and the annoying travelling circus that followed the band (it felt like there were more people there for the party than the music-I voice a similar complaint every time I go to Wrigley Field to see the Cubs) Deadheads like me kept going back for one reason: Jerry. If he had that twinkle in his eye, and the mood and the crowd and the venue and the band came into some kind of cosmic alignment, he was the one who could pull out something transcendent. Something that made you think about yourself or the universe or your place in it in a totally different way. Something life affirming. Something that nobody had heard before and nobody will ever hear again. A dunk from Michael Jordan. A riff from Charlie Parker. A moment of divine inspiration, channeled through a great artist, and he’s sharing it with you.

Which takes us to last night’s performance of Furthur at Charter One Pavilion on Northerly Island. Out-of-town friends had descended on Chicago. I’d seen dozens of actual Grateful Dead shows with these jokers, and I’ve been mocking their enthusiasm for the post-Jerry product for years. While they didn’t pull me in kicking and screaming, I did yell “I’d rather be sitting on my couch in the A/C listening to the real thing!” (I probably have 1,000 hours of high-quality bootlegs covering the band’s 30+ years) several times. For the 2 hours before the show, I was peppered with plenty of “Dude, trust me”'s. So I took my suspicions, my past experiences, and my general negativity to the middle of the GA section of Charter One (nice place to see a show). There I folded my arms, glowered at the stage, and dared the musicians to impress me.

I’m here to tell you….it didn’t suck. As a matter of fact, it was actually...pretty good. Bob Weir’s jagged, staccato playing and herky-jerky lyric delivery were perfectly summed up by my friend who said “he’s the Shatner of Rock ‘n Roll”. And even at age 70, Phil Lesh continues to defy the role of the bass player in rock by simultaneously grounding and leading the jams. The double-drummer lineup has been pared down to a (much welcomed) single, solid drummer. A couple of backup singers have wisely been added, and they do a great job of shoring up the vocals.

The Grateful Dead were at their best when they were acting like a jazz band, with each member listening intently to the others and playing in the service of the whole. It was collective improvisation in the truest sense. But let’s not kid ourselves. Garcia was the first among equals, and the guy playing “the Jerry role” will become the focus of much of the music. That role these days is filled by John Kadlecik (who spent his teens and early twenties in Palatine, Ill.), best known for his work leading Dark Star Orchestra. DSO toured the country for a dozen years re-creating whole Grateful Dead performances (they’d pick out a specific night from, say 1968 or 1977 or 1982), virtually note for note. He knows the tunes, the the riffs, and the sweet spots as well as just about anyone. And Kadlecik delivered the goods. From the opening notes of "Here Comes Sunshine" to the thunderous climax of "Morning Dew," he really has a knack for sounding like Jerry when Jerry sounded like Jerry.

Like all of the guitarists filling Garcia's shoes, he might be a little “too good” for me. He doesn’t make mistakes. One of the things that made Garcia so endearing was he liked nothing more than the challenge of painting himself into a musical corner and then figuring out how to extricate himself from said tight spot. Most of the time he escaped, and you’d exhale along with him and shout an “atta boy!”. Sometimes he got stuck in that corner and he/we would use it as a metaphor for life-acknowledge you blew it, have a good laugh, pull up your pants, and move on. In addition to the “perfection question”, several of the tunes could use a bit more speed. One or two slow-churning boogies are ok over the course of the night. The number was closer to five. But the band put plenty of pep into chestnuts like "Mississippi Half-Step," "Cassidy," and "Passenger." They ended the first set with a fantastic version of the Weir combo "Lost Sailor/Saint of Circumstance."

Unlike past performances I didn’t walk away muttering obscenities, swearing that I’ll stick to my bootlegs and my memories. If I can use a foodie/restaurant metaphor: they weren't trying to be Alinea. This wasn't about moving the music in new, unrecognizable directions. This was more like going to The Original Pancake House on a Sunday morning. You're dreaming about your order the minute you wake up, and when the food arrives, you get exactly what was swirling around in your head for the last few hours-good ole' American staples done right, maybe with a little twist. Jerry Garcia was a unique talent and personality that can never be replaced. Period. But for once, instead of focusing on what this band is not, I decided to focus on what it is. And what it is is probably the best darn Grateful Dead cover band that ever existed.

Pittsburgh punk rockers Anti-Flag go on 'General Strike'

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 22:50:00 -0500

Pittsburgh punk band Anti-Flag is well known for piercing messages against war, imperialism, and human rights. Their new album The General Strike is no exception! Anti-Flag's Pat Thetic joined Jesse Menendez on Vocalo's MusicVox to discuss the new album, social activism, and strikes as a tool for political action.

Musician Chris Connelly relives the underground industrial rock of the 1980s

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 18:28:00 -0600

When Scotland-born musician Chris Connelly bumped into Chicago industrial music icon Al Jourgensen back in 1986, the connection was nearly instant. Jourgensen and members of the seminal industrial rock band, Ministry, were in Connelly’s native Edinburgh at the time.

Listen to Steve Edwards interview Chris Connelly on Afternoon Shift

Not long after this initial encounter, Jourgensen invited Connelly to come to Chicago to record with a newer venture, Revolting Cocks (aka, RevCo).

According to Connelly, a six-month stint of traveling back and forth from Edinburgh and Chicago to record with Revco finally got to him – in a good way. He’d grown quite fond of the city. Then, when Jourgensen invited him back to Chicago to play some shows with RevCo, Connelly decided to make his stay here permanent.

Since these early days when the genre of industrial was still coming of age, Chris Connelly has continued to innovate and break new ground. His bands include the aforementioned RevCo and Ministry, and scores of others including Pigface, Murder, Inc. and Damage Manual, as well as solo releases. And, more than twenty-five years later, Connelly is still belting out his vocals with a hint of a Scottish accent.

His most recent solo release is Artificial Madness (Relapse Records, 2011).

Chris Connelly will join Sound Opinions hosts Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot for a WBEZ Off-Air presentation, Chicago Sounds in the 80s: Underground Incubator. They’ll be joined from greats from two of Chicago’s other big underground scenes of the '80s: Legendary house music DJ Frankie Knuckles, and punk rock innovator Santiago Durango (Big Black, Naked Raygun).

The Moses Gun discuss 90's rock music and their new self-titled LP

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:48:00 -0600

Vell Mullens and Rich Harris met up and started jamming on Chicago's South Side in 1989.

Inspired by rock and grunge of the era, the two formed The Moses Gun in 1995 - a rock group with heavy guitars, thick bass lines and poignant lyrics. Their self-titled LP is out now on DKT Records.

Vell and Rich joined Jesse Menendez on Vocalo's MusicVox to talk about how they became such avid rock fanatics as well as the pre-conceived notions that others have about Black rock musicians.

Hits from the music world in 2011

Wed, 21 Dec 2011 15:00:00 -0600

With hundreds, if not thousands of records released each year, finding fresh tunes can be a tough task. Luckily, Eight Forty-Eight grabbed two people who have their fingers on pulse to distill it down for you. Radio M host Tony Sarabia always has his ear to the best sounds from around the globe-either new, or, newly dug up. And music journalist Althea Legaspi soaks up rock, pop and hip hop like a sponge. They recently sat down with Eight Forty Eight’s Alison Cuddy to talk about their favorites from 2011.

The Singleman Affair makes psychedelic folk-rock for escape

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 15:24:00 -0600

The Singleman Affair has a new record out this week and a gig Friday night at the Hideout. For WBEZ, music critic Robert Loerzel spoke with the group’s singer-songwriter, Daniel Schneider, to find out how he came up with his psychedelic folk-rock sound.

Daniel Schneider grew up in the 1980s and '90s. But the music he fell in love with was from decades before. He says “My dad had an amazing record collection: The Velvet Underground, old Bob Dylan records, Neil Young. That kind of opened up the door. One of the great examples of something that stuck to my head of being like, “This is what I want to do,” is when you listen to the Stones’ version of “Play With Fire,” and you can just hear the tambourine with the reverb and it’s like “Chhh! Chhh!” When I heard that, I was just like, “Wow! Why can’t all music be like this?”

Music isn’t the only thing Schneider loves about the ‘60s. The 1968 classic, The Graduate provided his band name.

There’s a scene in the movie when the main character, Benjamin Braddock … he’s about to have an affair with Mrs. Robinson, and he comes to the hotel clerk. … He’s really nervous. He’s fidgeting around. The clerk says “Can I help you, sir?” Dustin Hoffman’s character Braddock replies “What? Oh, no, I’m just…” The clerk asks “Are you here for an affair, sir?” There’s a pause, and then Braddock says “What?” The clerk says “The Singleman party, sir.” “Oh , yes, the Singleman party.”

Years later, Schneider decided to call himself the Singleman Affair when he began recording solo music…music that was influenced by the gentle folk rock of Nick Drake and the psychedelic sounds of Moby Grape. A Chicago music magazine called Galactic Zoo Dossier included one of those songs on a CD. And then someone in England heard it. Schneider explains, “Alan McGee, out in England, who is the founder of Creation Records and discovered Oasis and My Bloody Valentine and Jesus and Mary Chain – he had heard one of those songs and contacted me.”

That’s how the first album by the Singleman Affair, Let’s Kill the Summer, ended up coming out on McGee’s Poptones label. Schneider couldn’t get a record deal in the U.S., but he was getting rave reviews in England. But then, almost as soon as the record was out, Poptones went out of business. Schneider wasn’t all that disappointed, however. He says “I never really felt when it ended that I lost anything. It wasn’t like millions of fans or anything (laughs). I’ve always continued to make music and this really – that ending didn’t change it. I just had to figure out who would put out the next record.”

That didn’t turn out to be so easy. Schneider’s been working on his latest album for the past four years. He spent most of that time trying to get record labels interested. “I had been given offers to do limited runs of vinyl only for, like, 300 pressings with no real publicity. I just didn’t see the benefit of doing that. I could probably do the same thing myself for cheaper.”

That’s why Schneider decided to release it on his own record label, Cardboard Sangria. The second Singleman Affair album, Silhouettes at Dawn, is out this week on CD and vinyl. He says “I wanted to do something that was really epic. I brought in Mark Messing of (the Chicago band) Mucca Pazza to do all the string arrangements, and we pulled in different guest musicians to kind of fill out that sound that wasn’t there.”

For the song “Asleep on the Ground,” Schneider wanted strings that sounded like the music he’d heard in movies as a kid. “They used to have Frazier Thomas’ classic movies on Channel 9. And I always used to remember the old Moby Dick they would show. And they’d have, like, these really cool string parts that would come in when they would start rowing across the sea. The narrator says “Long days and nights we strained at the oars, while the white whale swam freely on, widening the waters between himself and Ahab’s vengeance (music swells). That was kind of the initial idea for strings with that song.”

The songs tell haunting stories about Civil War soldiers and mythical creatures, searching for the lovers they’ve lost and the homes they’ve left behind. “Wings” is a song about a world where the people are half-human and half-bird. Schneider says, “This main character in this song doesn’t have wings, and all he’s ever wanted to do is to be able to fly.”

Schneider says these songs come out of his experiences coping with depression and anxiety. He says his music is an escape from all that – especially now that the Singleman Affair isn’t single anymore. It’s a full band.

Friday night at the Hideout, Daniel Schneider and his band mates will celebrate the release of their album, Silhouettes at Dawn.

Songs featured:

The Rolling Stones, “Play with Fire”, (B-side to 7-inch of “The Last Time” on Decca / London Records)
The Singleman Affair, “Dragon Flies To Find”, Let’s Kill the Summer (Poptones)
The Singleman Affair, “Asleep on the Ground”, Silhouettes at Dawn (Cardboard Sangria)
The Singleman Affair, “Wings”, Silhouettes at Dawn (Cardboard Sangria)
The Singleman Affair, “Same Sky I See”, Silhouettes at Dawn (Cardboard Sangria)

The Singleman Affair performs "Same Sky I See" on WBEZ's "Eight Forty-Eight" from WBEZ on Vimeo.

Purple Apple: Teen rock group immune to Bieber fever

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:07:00 -0600

Becoming a teenager involves a lot of firsts: Your first time driving, your first kiss, your first boy- or girlfriend. But what about your first rock concert? Not just as a spectator but as the onstage act?

Local band Purple Apple hit that first just over a year ago. Purple Apple is a trio of 13 year olds: Olivia Eigel, Madi O'Brien and Nonie Andersen. They’re joined by Eigel’s 25-year-old nanny, Devin Owens.

Saturday night they plan on blowing the doors off the Hideout Holiday Music Hour on W. Wabansia in Chicago.

Purple Apple recently joined "Eight Forty-Eight" in WBEZ's Jim and Kay Mabie Performance Studio to play a set and to talk host Alison Cuddy about their music.