THE PENDULUM OF IMPOSSIBILITY

2011-10-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

A record store is a sanctuary, a place where treasures are kept, discoveries are made, and where epiphanies take place. A good record store tells a story. It has character, a personality, and might look a little worse for wear. It has walls lined with unusual jazz records from Europe, album covers from bands you’ve never heard of, the sound of LPs being played behind the counter, and a clerk who wears cynicism like a cloak. Like a barber shop, the record store is a gathering place; a spot to connect with other listeners and bond over the vastness of sound.

Logan Hardware is an old boot of a record store, its red walls and dusty floor make the place feel more like a carpenter’s woodshed than a place to find great records. Once inside, the room engulfs you in everything that is grand about purchasing music in public, surrounded by ephemera and history. The store’s space is quite large and features thousands of LPs organized by musical style and format. One of the more unusual aspects of the shop is a fully functioning arcade, where customers can play a series of 1980s arcade games, all free of charge. The sites and sounds of the arcade space create a sort of suspended reality where you’re transported back to a mid-western town in 1985. As customers slowly wander into the arcade, giggling is often heard along with exclamations of “holy crap” and “oh my god!” Arcades, and the games they held, were the single most important adolescent activity for a large swath of American youth, and with their back room arcade, Logan Hardware has created a sort of temple to American puberty.

Logan Hardware arcade photo: John Dedeke

The arcade is a joyful trip down memory lane, but Logan Hardware is also one of the most diverse and engaging record stores on the northwest side of Chicago. The record buyers know their stuff and keep the shelves lined with rare finds, unusual reissues, and a surprising amount of stylistic variation. The shop has a fair amount of rare soul 45s. On the especially interesting 45s, the staff will pencil in a note on the paper record sleeve, extolling the virtues of the music on the small vinyl disk. One might find written on the record sleeve something like, “Great southern soul-funk from Muscle Shoals. Not as bluesy as you might expect, with a hard drum break in the middle. Very interesting.” A note like that does more than describe music, it creates a conversation between the record shop staff and the record buyer.

On a recent trip to Logan Hardware I purchased a fairly rare Chicago soul 45, and the clerk behind the counter told me that the record I was buying was part of one man’s vast record collection. She nodded in approval when I handed her the record, and seemed pleased that I had found happiness in this little piece of musical history. She made sure to let me know that one man had this record his whole life and these small gems were “his babies.” I looked down at the record in my hand and I knew it was something of great value. Suddenly, this piece of music wasn’t just a boss tune that I could play at a DJ gig, it was a continuation of a joyful past, and a shared experience between me and a man I’d never met. The woman behind the counter asked if I was a collector or a DJ, and I just smiled at her and said without hesitation, “yes I am .”

Logan Hardware is located at 2410 W. Fullerton in Chicago, and is open from
Monday-Saturday 12:00pm - 9:00pm and Sunday 12:00pm - 7:00pm.

FORT WELLINGTON SOUNDSYSTEM PODCAST VOLUME 1

2011-08-15T14:03:00.000-07:00

Latest tracks by frankbrenn

Fort Wellington Soundsystem Podcast Vol 1. El Cabildos, El Chicano, Fatback, Steve Spacek, J-Dilla, James Carr, Eddie and Ernie, Barbara Lynn, Charles Wright and the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Curtis Mayfield, Major Lance, Eddie Bo, Roger and the Gypsies, JD McPherson, The Blentones, Les McCann, Ray Barretto, Har-You Percussion Group, Tim Maia and more. Cheers.

CHICAGO FOOD

2011-03-10T02:12:00.000-08:00

Chicago’s Wicker Park was at one time a haven for writers, punk rock jazz musicians, artists, and disheveled bohemians. It was also a place of hard luck stories, drugs and rampant prostitution. In the young morning, street walkers of every size and shape would float out from North Avenue, with their rhinestone dresses and leather boots, looking for dates and fixes. The neighborhood was a shambles, like a clown that had gotten beat up in a particularly colorful bar fight. The area around North Ave. and Milwaukee was not the polished, commercial marketplace it is today. Wicker Park was raw, angry and uncompromisingly bohemian. Like Greenwich Village without the pleasant nostalgia, or the Lower Haight without the barefoot stoners, Wicker Park was at one time a cultural mecca and seedy bed of homespun creativity. When I was a kid, growing up in Chicago, Wicker Park was just a short train ride away from the blue collar monotony of hot dog stands, Catholic churches, liquor stores, and gas stations that made up my reality. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, Wicker Park was a frontier of sorts; a wild west of cultural relevance, music, art and potential danger. On languid Saturday afternoons, a few friends and I would pack into a Chevy hatchback and rumble down Milwaukee Ave. towards the record stores, thrift shops and cafes that made up the small north side neighborhood. Every shop and restaurant was unique, special and run by entrepreneurs with eccentric personalities. Corporate America hadn’t yet figured out how to be cool, or how to market to people that were untouchable.

Back in the day, Wicker Park's Earwax cafe was hard to miss. The hand painted burlap exterior featured a carnival theme promising exotic delights and freaky weirdness. Two large bay windows, with tables on elevated stages, sat on either side of the doorway. The tables would, without fail, be filed with brooding thinkers or disheveled artists sipping coffee from heavy ceramic mugs. To sit in the Earwax windows was to be on display. When walking through the two doors into the cafe, there was a warmth that was hard to discern. The strong smell of the coffee, cigarette smoke, and food cooking in the ovens seemed to bounce off the high tin ceilings, and wrap around you as you entered the room. The smells and sounds were purposeful and not at all pretentious. Earwax was a space without preconception - it was a cafe, but more than that, it was a room filled with potential. The first floor was heady with its dim bar lighting, and haphazard decor that looked like something out of a carny’s drug induced nightmare. The wooden tables were painted with circus colors and pinwheel patterns, and the walls were covered with gigantic canvas ‘freak show’ paintings of strong men and bearded ladies. The place was a cornucopia of wood, enamel and tin, and the whole environment was caressed with oddity and charm. In the back of the cafe, past the floor to ceiling iron prison bars, was a shop that contained records, hard to find magazines, and obscure rental videos that covered topics like Japanese bondage and German film noir. Music filled the cafe with sounds from Morocco, Jamaica or Memphis. At night, the cafe bubbled over with shoppers and their bags filled with records and books. Famous people mingled with shifty drunks and graffiti artists with their snarls and black notebooks. Everyone was working on something, making plans, sketching, writing or battling with words. Me and my friends would sit in a wooden booth for hours, just looking over records, drinking coffee, and watching other people stroll in and order carry out. We ordered tea or coffee and watched the waitress’s apron pull at her shirt as she bent over to tie her army boots. Earwax became a sort of home away from home for us, and we started meeting there at night, after school, before a show, or on quiet afternoons. We picked up our news there and scanned the cork board wall for interesting band posters. I started smoking cigarettes with my coffee, and some of my friends got an apartment down on North Ave., so we could be closer to the action.

When I was 22 I applied for a line cook position at Earwax. I had no real culinary experience to speak of, but I was eager, and I could talk my way into and out of most situations. The owners were middle aged art school types, and they both looked like they could hang out with Lou Reed. They were both jive in a comforting way. They believed in their little slice of heaven, and they were happy that I appreciated what they were up to at the cafe. After I got the position as a line cook, I went to a shoe store up the street and bought some stylish cream colored Italian shoes. I knew that if I was working at Earwax, I’d need some more fashionable footwear. I worked early in the morning and was usually the first person to arrive at the cafe. On those early spring mornings, the whole city was covered in damp dew and hazy sunlight, and everything was quiet and still. I was usually paired up with an older, rather eccentric barista, who would lecture me on the seriousness of espresso and how to pull the perfect cup. She was small, grey and fragile, like a painting teacher by way of erotic masseuse. I studied food prep, cooking, and the culinary arts with a stout man with long hair and a fantastic beard. He was a Chicano, and he taught me to have a general disdain for white people, cafe customers and the majority of the waitstaff. He also knew, almost instantly, that I knew nothing of food, or how to prepare it correctly. I spent my mornings prepping gallons of guacamole, tuna salad and hummus for the cafe’s patrons. I enjoyed the work, and began putting my creative stamp on Earwax’s dishes. Tuna salad got a little lime juice and paprika, which turned the once beige dish a pastel pink hue. I put fresh cilantro in the salsa, and cut out stencils to decorate the dark chocolate cake with powdered sugar. The mornings went by slowly, and once my prepping was done, I spent time listening to music, drinking coffee, and watching the world through the bay windows. We had a few regulars who ordered obsessive compulsive variations on oatmeal and coffee. Most of the daytime customers were playwrights, out of work artists, or tourists. At night, the open kitchen turned into theater, and I was a lopsided magician, turning out hundreds of dishes for the stream of customers. Orders flew at me like paper planes and a never ending flurry of waitresses demanded quick fixes and alterations to the day’s specials. The energy was addictive, and at night, the music would get turned up loud, and the whole cafe would take on a nightclub feel. I decorated my plates using fanciful techniques I had seen on cooking shows. I put my sauces in squeeze bottles, I cut things on the bias, and I cleaned my station meticulously. The nights hummed past, and at the end of the shift everyone in the cafe would help each other clean, and we would all drink strong German beer and smoke cigarettes as we worked. I got to know everyone’s story, and I made friends with world traveling waitresses, recovering addicts, and film students. There were wonderful quiet moments when a shift was winding down. I enjoyed the back of the coffee counter with its hand scrawled instructions, doodles, mugs, and bags of coffee and tea. The work was harsh, but filled with stimulation.

On a calm afternoon I was brought to the back of the cafe and told I had been fired. The boyish, middle aged man who owned the joint told me he received complaints from his waitstaff about my speed expediting orders on busy nights. I looked into his bespectacled face, both extraordinarily disappointed and self satisfied that I had lasted as long as I did. I worked at Earwax for around six months, and during my time there, I got to see the bustling Chicago cafe from the other side of the counter. I liked being on the other side. I liked being in the kitchen. The owner gave me a few harsh words and then a few words of kindness, and he ended his speech by exclaiming, “It doesn’t matter how shit looks man, you worry too much about plating...this is a cafe man, not a fucking sushi restaurant.” I hung my white apron, stained with tomato, chive and chick pea on a metal hook in the back of the kitchen, and said my goodbyes to the small barista.

Original business card
illustrated by Daniel Clowes

I never went back to Earwax after they fired me, except to pick up an occasional take out order. My friends and I slowly developed a taste for malt liquor, pot, and bottles of Guinness Stout. We had put our days of coffee and tea behind us. At the century’s end, the cafe was relocated up the street to a more generous space, but the feeling of the original room got lost in the shuffle. The energy that haunted the old location was deafeningly silent in the new spot. Still, Earwax was always a constant in Wicker Park, and it represented a colorful part of the neighborhood’s history. It’s a history that no longer exists, and can scarcely be felt among the chain stores and condo lofts that now make up the neighborhood. On March 1, 2011, Earwax shut its painted burlap doors for good. Wicker Park is now a neighborhood filled with ghosts and shiny new children, all clamoring for market share and attention. Long gone are the gruff, vagabond days of wood, tin, enamel and eccentrics.

DIRTY MINIMALISM : THE POST FAMILY

2011-03-08T21:01:00.000-08:00

In 2009, a small band of Chicago artists and designers got together to create The Post Family, a virtual gallery space where people could share grooming tips, minimalist design proclivities, as well as fine art interests. The whole thing started simply enough as a design and art oriented blog, but the Post Family quickly grew from an online environment into a brick and mortar gallery space that hosts potluck dinners, musical events, and a studio space.

Through the web and gallery space, The Post Family hopes to get the word out about Chicago art and design, and create a forum for further discussion and interpretation. As the family’s mission statement says, "Everything is for the growth of our family members and community by supplying them with the resources and inspiration to accomplish their individual goals." The website acts as sort of a Huffingtonpost for Chicago art, and features interviews with local artists, designers and musicians. The site also hits on relevant art, design and music from outside Chicago, and the family hopes the site will be a place of global connectivity and shared creative ideas.

On March 25, The Post Family will host an opening at their Family Room gallery space at 1821 W. Hubbard. The exhibition, entitled Double Feature, will showcase the madcap design work of Art Dump and Girl Skateboards. The exhibition features a series of original poster prints that relate to skateboard videos filmed for the Girl skateboard company. Some of the videos, featuring obtuse themes not normally associated with skateboarding, were directed by pretty boy auteur, Spike Jonze. Installations of the skate videos in question will accompany the print design work on the walls, making for a skateboard art tour de force.

For more information on The Post Family and their offerings, visit thepostfamily.com.

The Post Family
The Family Room Gallery
1821 W. Hubbard St. #202
Chicago, Illinois
60622

CHICAGO SOUL BREAKS

2011-02-16T12:35:00.000-08:00

Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions - We're a Winner - A real uplifting springtime joint from the undisputed king of Chicago Soul, Curtis Mayfield. This tune is one of those rare treasures where all of the elements work perfectly together to create a perfect jewel of sound. The slack jazz guitar, vibes, crowd vocals, syrupy bass, and the tub thumping drums combine to create something of pure beauty. This track also represents the beginning of the "message" music that Mayfield would embrace in the later half of the 1960s. Mayfield grew up in Chicago and was well aware of the injustices and brutality of racism, and he used his voice to help those around him strive for something better. This tune is all about working for equality at a time of immense change, and Mayfield's words and voice bring that message home.

Young Holt Unlimited - Hey Pancho - A funky little soul strutter from the Young Holt Unlimited. Young Holt created some of the most iconic Chicago soul music ever recorded, scoring huge hits with tunes like "Whack-Whack" and "Soulful Strut". The group began as a trio and played funky, cabaret style piano grooves that were popular in the Chicago's many cocktail lounges in the early 1960s. Organ and piano trios were the staple of the Chicago lounge scene, and The Young Holt Trio, and Ramsey Lewis were the kings of the genre. On this track the Holt gets pretty funky for their album of Curtis Mayfield composed Superfly covers. The track is a loose, funky soul number with hard electric piano, drums and a fierce groove. The Holt was getting a bit long in the tooth when this was recorded, but these old cats played the funky new stuff with confidence and hustle.

Major Lance - Um Um Um Um Um Um - This tune is the quintessential Chicago soul number. Cut in 1964 for the Okeh label, the track was penned by Curtis Mayfield and delivered by Major Lance. From the beginning bass drop in the first measure of the tune, a slinky mood is set, and it doesn't relent throughout the two minute masterpiece. Mayfield's loose, funky guitar style can be heard throughout the track, and the latin percussion and jazz influenced horns in the bridge scream Chicago. In the early sixties, immigrants from Latin America were just beginning to migrate to midwestern industrial centers like Chicago, and as they came, they brought with them fierce rhythms and percussive elements. This tune incorporates those rhythms and layers them with the Chicago blues and jazz feel that was popular at the time. While the music is impeccable and lovely, this tune's message is kind of radical for a pop number. This is a tune about an old cat who is still taken aback by the beauty of a fine female, and a young man who is just beginning to understand what romance is all about. This is a song about sex for sure, but it's also about wisdom, understanding, and how somethings in life just never change.

Starting on Saturday, February 26, those interested in hearing some real soul, funk, rocksteady, ska, dub, jazz, and latin joints should make it down to Orbit Room on California Ave. in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood. The Fort Wellington Sound System will be starting a soulful residency in the space, and providing dusty hot classics for dancing and drinking.

CHICAGO FOOD

2011-02-15T20:13:00.000-08:00

IDEAL PASTRY : DELICIOUSLY CRUEL

The women who work at Ideal Pastry are mean, but then again, kindness is overrated. Nobody needs a pleasant 'hello' when indulging in pastry consumption. Sometimes a look of derision is well deserved when you’ve just purchased a bag overflowing with chocolate bismarks, danish, and kolaches. The Polish women who man the counter at Ideal Pastry in Jefferson Park might not be the most welcome hostesses in the donut game, but they get the job done. They’ll tell you all about the special croissants, pastries and breads for sale at the bakery, but they will never love you.

A Jefferson Park staple for decades, people have been flocking to Ideal for donuts, bread and coffee cake for generations. On weekend mornings the place is filled with plump old men in high wasted pants and fedoras ordering coffee cake and turnovers. The place still does a brisk business from new clientele and a dedicated contingent of regulars. The bakery has switched ownership a few times, and the once traditional American bakery, now has a strong Polish flavor. The new owners expanded the store front on Milwaukee Ave. to accommodate a Polish style deli and ethnic food shop. While these offerings are enjoyable and eclectic, Ideal’s baked goods are still the real stars. The unassuming shop makes some of the best European style bread in Chicago, and people have been rumored to travel far and wide for a loaf of their Lithuanian rye bread. The bakery also makes traditional rye, pumpernickel, rustic wheat and multi grain breads, as well as excellent croissants. Those seeking sweeter fair will enjoy Ideal's bismarks, which have a slightly chewy raised dough, rich dark chocolate, and a custard filling that can only be described as 'inappropriate'. The bakers use only the highest quality ingredients, and the attention to detail comes through in their work. The fruit in the kolaches, donuts and danishes is slightly tart and never saccharine or gummy, and the pastries are just buttery enough to drive someone completely mad with desire. People interested in American style bakery products, or chipper, overtly enthusiastic customer service, might be a little out of luck in this north side establishment. But make no mistake about it, what this bakery lacks in a kind "howdy do", it makes up for with some of the best baked goods in Chicago.

So when you arrive at Ideal Pastry and get painfully dismissive glances and shouts of “next!” from the elegant Polish lady behind the counter, just remember - you have a paper bag filled with chocolate, custard, and powered sugar, and in a few seconds, your day is going to get awesome.

Ideal Pastry
Chicago, Illinois
4765 N Milwaukee Ave
Chicago Illinois, 60630

1940's CHICAGO : ADS & STREET SCENES

2011-02-13T21:11:00.000-08:00

Even back in the 1940's Chicago was a bustling metropolis filled with working people, tycoons, and hustlers. The city also looked a little rough around the edges, and you can see the evidence of the city's rural past folding into the more industrialized corners. This was a city that still had farm houses and prairies in its vicinity.

This film, shot in color film, documents a city hustling around and wrapped up in day to day life. Adverts scream in vivid hues of vague racism, americana, and traditionalist ideas. This is a world where doctors recommend smoking Chesterfields and drinking Schlitz Beer. Much of this world no longer exists. It's interesting to see North Ave. and State Street with shoppers in three piece suits, mink coats and fedora hats. There are certain sequences in this film that look like they were taken in another reality, but there are the occasional, surprisingly familiar moments that look like they were captured yesterday.

THE LAST OF THE SOUND PROVIDERS

2011-02-11T16:30:00.000-08:00

The music industry is a fickle mistress. Making, selling, and promotion music in 2011 is at times a daunting pursuit. The accessibility of internet file sharing, cultural disinterest, and dispassionate consumers has decimated large swaths of the once thriving independent music industry. Chicago’s Thrill Jockey Records remains one of the few labels thriving in this difficult musical landscape. The label, founded in 1992 by owner, Bettina Richards, has been releasing well packaged, beautifully recorded, eclectic independent records since its inception. The label has never wavered in its commitment to musical innovation, and has always cultivated artists pushing the limits of sound.

In the early 1990’s independent music was booming all across the globe, with indie bands releasing a flurry of 7inch records, LPs, CDs and mix tapes. For a a while, it seemed like people everywhere were making and recording music. Chicago was a main cultural hub for artists looking to collaborate, meet other music makers, play out, and promote their recordings. People from all over the country were making the pilgrimage to Chicago to be a part of its thriving music scene. Cheap rent, a close knit community, and popular record labels were just a few of the reason artists made the trek to the city of big shoulders. Chicago bands of the period experimented with punk, jazz, funk, soul, dub, and it was not unusual for these bands to combine this multitude of influences in the music they were making. The city in the early 90’s was bubbling over with musical innovation and a jubilant creative spirit. Thrill Jockey Records came out of this time when it seemed like anything was possible in independent music. In an early release, such as the self titled debut by the Chicago band Tortoise, the label’s genre bending aesthetic and creative spirit are completely evident. Tortoise’s sound was revolutionary, and the band’s mix of soundtrack music, dub, jazz, and post punk was unlike anything being recorded at the time. Thrill Jockey packaged the band’s debut in hand silk screened covers on brown chipboard, beginning a hand made trend in music packaging that would continue for years to come. The label continued to release strikingly creative music throughout the 90’s by bands like The Sea and Cake, Sam Prekop, Eleventh Dream Day, Tortoise, Bobby Conn, Gastr Del Sol, Rome, Mouse on Mars, Freakwater, Califone, Oval and Trans Am.

Thrill Jockey still cultivates unusual artists from all over the musical map. The label has never had a definitive musical style, and the only connective thread between its artists is the consistent quality and innovative nature of the work. Releasing everything from the folk, psychedelic chug of a band like Arboretum, to the elegant African guitar minimalism of an artist such as Sidi Toure, there isn’t a style of music that Thrill Jockey hasn’t touched. The label has managed to stay ahead of the digital music malaise by providing digital downloads, purchasable on their website, alongside their CDs and LPs. Although digital downloads might be the future of music, it hasn’t stopped the label from releasing beautifully packaged recordings. Each recording put out by Thrill Jockey is a wonderfully considered piece of sonic art. Everything from the recording process, mixing, and packaging reinforces the label's strong aesthetic rationale.

In a world that sees independent music labels shutting down on an almost daily basis, it's nice to know that a Chicago treasure like Thrill Jockey Records is still sourcing great artists, and releasing some of the most consistently adventurous music around.

For information on Thrill Jockey artists, recordings, and merchandise, please visit their site at www.thrilljockey.com

Sidi Touré - "Taray Kongo" with Jambala Maiga from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

Tortoise - Prepare Your Coffin from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

LEE BALTERMAN : 1940's CHICAGO

2011-02-09T22:02:00.000-08:00

Lee Balterman is a photographer for such publications as Life, Fortune, Time, and Sports Illustrated. This short film captures his personal documentary work focusing on Chicago, its people and nightlife. The photos are hazy, immediate, and capture Chicago's working class ethos and eccentric spirit. Balterman's photos show a city filled with soldiers, factory workers, jazz clubs, taverns, and line cooks. They show a city that rolled up its sleeves, woke up early, and drank away the blues.

HOUSE ROCKIN' HOUND DOG TAYLOR

2011-02-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

Hound Dog Taylor illustration by Tom Vadakan

The first time I heard Hound Dog Taylor it felt like I got hit with a seventy pound hammer. I was in a downtown office sorting files and a coworker had placed the cassette tape into a cracked boom box. When the sound poured around the small space, I stood stunned, unable to place exactly what I was hearing. I stopped sorting for a few minutes and listened to the raw, see-saw swing of Hound Dog’s thunderous guitar boogie. The tune was “She’s Gone” off of the Alligator Record’s 1971 release entitled, Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers. The sincerity and passion of the tune smashed me in my face, and sat proudly in the pit of my stomach.

Growing up in Chicago in the 1980’s, blues music was something of an afterthought. The blues was no longer the siren’s song of the Southside, it was relegated to sports bars, and towny taverns filled with fat, white mustachioed men. Growing up I’d listened to Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf on late night radio programs and heavy vinyl records. I had always liked the blues, but as I got older and more cynical about music, the blues seemed to get placed on the back burner. As I grew older it seemed like the blues was more the music of beer drinking white guys, than prophetic black storytellers. Somewhere in my mind the blues had become a parody of itself, devoid of real feeling or expression. That was until I heard Hound Dog and his guitar that sounds like it’s being played through a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.

Born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1915, Taylor’s personal bio reads like an imaginative, American folkloric legend. Crazy stories buzz around Taylor like bumble bees in springtime. It has been said that he was born with six fingers on each hand, and that he was kicked out of his father’s house at gunpoint when he was only 9 years old. While these stories are speculative at best, he did go to live with his older sister when he was a young boy, God only knows if this was because of a shotgun toting father. He began learning guitar in his teens, but didn’t start playing seriously until he was in his twenties. As a young man he toured all across the Mississippi Delta, playing guitar and piano, and performing on notable programs like the King Biscuit Flour Radio Show. In 1942, Taylor found his way to Chicago after a brush with the Ku Klux Klan and an irascible white woman. While in Chicago he gave up the blues in favor of stable employment, and worked for the next 15 years in various odd jobs. In 1957, he decided to become a full time blues man and hone his unique slide guitar style. Known for his boisterous live performances, Taylor soon became a big hit on the burgeoning Chicago electric blues scene. Influenced by the raucous style of fellow bluesman, Elmore James, Taylor gigged religiously and was often said to play “all-nighters” in any number of smoky Chicago clubs. Taylor’s guitar tone was legendary, and it was said he could create distortion and feeling like no one else, partially due to the fact that he only played through cheap guitar amps. The combination of the crackly speakers with Taylor’s passionate style garnered the bluesman a dedicated following in a cutthroat scene. In 1969 Hound Dog met a record store clerk named, Bruce Iglauer while playing a gig at a Chicago blues bar. Iglauer would become Taylor’s manager and help him record and release his debut album.

That debut album was what I heard pouring put of those speakers. Hound Dog Taylor wasn’t just a bluesman, he was more of a blues alliteration. A man who soaked up music like a thirsty towel and lived in a world of his own creation. On that afternoon, after hearing Taylor rip through his bars with more passion than a loose bull, and more grit than an asphalt black top, I redefined the blues for myself, and I haven’t looked back.

SHOW STOPPERS : BLACK BIKER FUNK

2011-02-02T00:37:00.001-08:00

Chicago is a city known for its blue collar roots, its music, and its strangeness. It is also one of the most culturally divided cities in the United States, and because of its unfortunate divisions, it has given birth to some fairly eccentric musical combinations. In the late 60’s blues had turned into rock and roll, soul was either raunchy or polite, and funk was just beginning to bubble to the surface. Chicago had its share of soul and funk acts with artists like Curtis Mayfield and Alvin Cash shaking up things up across state lines. Chicago also had a healthy garage rock scene filled with white kids sporting page boy haircuts and new Fender guitars. These musical styles collide like a three car pile up on a little known Chicago funk compilation called Chains and Black Exhaust. Released on the Memphix label in 2002, this rare compilation captures an interesting time in midwestern music, and blazes through some of the deepest funk rock joints ever recorded.

The compilation is the work of record collector Dante Carfugna, and every track is taken from Carfugna’s deep 45 rpm record crates. Each track is a gem of strange fuzzed out psychedelic guitar, hard as nails drums, and vocals about wine, women, drugs, and tribulation. The mix of tunes highlights Chicago at its meanest, blackest, and funkiest. The tune “Yeah, Yeah” by the group Blackrock captures the compilation’s ethos perfectly, with its haunting introductory chant, menacing piano, soul guitar and pounding syncopated drums. Other tunes like, “Corruption’s the Thing”, by Creations Unlimited, highlight the vibrant psychedelic rock scene that was happening in Chicago’s far flung neighborhoods. More than a few of the tracks borrow from other midwestern bands like Grand Funk Railroad and The MC5, but the aggression and psychedelia is dipped in a thick soulful sauce that is pure Chicago. Some of the artists in this collection are not Chicago natives, but the sounds they produce represent Chicago's grimy, work a day shuffle perfectly.

Word on the street is Carfugna gave up record collecting a few years back, and has since gone down the proverbial straight and narrow path. Thankfully, he dug into his crates and gave the world Chains and Black Exhaust before he felt it was time to get out of the game - The world is better for it.

2011-01-30T23:38:00.000-08:00

MARIO'S BARBERSHOP

A barber shop is unlike any other social space. It is a business, but it’s also a gathering place, and a place where a man is allowed to extend his living room into the larger world. It’s a place where chairs are comfortable and history bounds from the walls like sound. It’s a place that feels like an old shoe, its leather tarnished but strong, and its soles marred but comfortable. In 2011, most men go to chain hair cutteries with their disaffected beauty school graduates and minor hair felons, or upscale salons with their disaffected models and aloof trendsetters. The comfort and familiarity of the barbershop is lost on most men in Chicago. There are some neo-retro barbershops that have opened up in Chicago’s hipper neighborhoods, but they try a little too hard with luke warm Pabst Blue Ribbon beer in mini-fridges and halfhearted straight razor shaves. Those who understand know that a real barber shop can’t be forced. Like a decent pair of jeans, or a good woman, it just exists. Those looking for a real barbershop experience in Chicago, should hike up to a quiet little suburb Northwest of the city called Park Ridge.

Mario’s hair salon has been in Park Ridge for years and it still caters to a dedicated clientele of men looking for the perfect proportioned haircut. The small store front location off of Northwest Highway is easy to miss, but once inside, the shop’s uniqueness is hard to deny. The men cutting hair at Mario’s will smile at you when you enter, but only after the bell rings and makes your presence known. The air in the shop is filled with the scent of shave cream, powder and hairspray, and a small television fills the room with sound. There’s usually a few men of varying ages sitting in the vinyl chairs along the wall. They pitch stories back and forth to the barbers, and trade jokes, political debates, and familial stories. The walls at Mario’s are lined with memorabilia, family photos, news clippings, VFW flags and large mirrors. The sound of scissors dances lightly behind the boisterous voices and laughing. Some god somewhere knew that conversation goes well with haircuts, like wine and cheese, or smoking and sex. There isn’t any pretentious music, free whiskey or beer, and nobody there is wearing designer anything, but somehow it all holds together. Somehow Mario’s manages to feel like home, both nostalgic and relevant, and never ashamed of its flaws.

Once in the chair, the barbers at Mario’s move like dancers. They ask you what you want, but once you’re in the chair they already know what to do. Powder puffs about your head, a paper collar is placed around your neck and the striped apron goes around the whole chair. In an instant, a foot goes on a squeaky leaver and you’re hiked up or down in an ancient chair with ashtrays in the armrests, and turned toward the television. You do some talking, some story telling, some laughing, watch your favorite Chicago team lose, and close your eyes for a few minutes. When the barber’s done, you’re a little rested, and your hair looks better than it did when you walked in and the bell rang.

Mario’s is a place for guys who know that beer is best served cold inside of a darkened bar, beautiful girls are everywhere, conversations should be hilarious, and haircuts should be about the scissors and the company.

Do your hair a favor and go see Mario.

Mario’s Barber Shop
1017 North Northwest Highway
Park Ridge, Illinois
847.825.9855

CHICAGO GARAGE ROCK BREAK

2010-03-15T18:42:00.000-07:00

Chicago is a city filled with beer, blues, and suburbs. In the 1960s, Chicago's garage music scene exploded with a plethora of blues influenced, pot laden, beer fueled rock and roll. The kids in these bands grew their hair long to piss off their church going Ozzy and Harriet families. They went down to the South side and listened to blues musicians spill their whiskey soaked guts across the strings of misshapen guitars, and they channeled rebellion into three minute songs about girls. Chicago garage rock from the 1960s postures and snarls in a very blue collar, matter of fact way. Listen to a band like The Shadows of Night fight their way through three chords, and you can hear the sound of youthful discovery that is powerfully raw and uniquely Chicago. These kids were growing up in the most segregated city in the United States, home to the stockyards, riots, and quiet ranch house hamlets; these were kids born of absurdity, middle class ethics, and impending violence. This isn't the music of the streets, this is the music of observation, of white kids on the fringes of suburbia, mimicking squalor, and trying to understand the foreignness of the black man's blues.

2009-07-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

THE PHOTOGRAPHY OFRAY METZKER

Ray Metzker's Chicago photos,taken during the mid-20th Century, capture a grey, dusty city, haunting in its geometry. Metzker's Chicago is place of secret loneliness, dreary urbanity and action. His black and white images are odes to post-war Chicago, before the city got fancy.

See Ray Metzker's work at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

2009-07-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO HOUSE BREAK

These tracks are a slice of Chicago house music from 1980-1995. House music was born in Chicago and these early tracks by artists like Larry Heard, Ron Trent, Fast Eddie, and Farley "Jack Master Funk" gave birth to a music phenomenon that took the world by storm. These early tracks are raw, experimental, and funky. Check the way artists combine the James Brown sample-crazy breaks of late 80s hip hop with the beats of house music to create something called 'hip house'. Hip house was the life-blood of Chicago house parties and school dances in the late 80s and early 90s. House music was also a staple of Chicago top 40 radio, and every night the music's jacking rhythm could be heard pouring out of apartment windows and car stereos. This music is the foundation for all modern dance music, and like it or hate it, it all began in Chicago.

2009-07-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO FOOD

SOUTHSIDE CANDY DILL PICKLES

Food in Chicago is specific - There is a correct way to eat a hot dog, a special kind of dough for deep dish pizza, and hundreds of ethnic food traditions that slam into each other like an elegant wrestling match. Food in Chicago is a crazy quilt, a hodge-podge of style and substance. And in some cases, Chicago food offers up ideas so radical in their awkwardness, so unique in their flavors that they must be illuminated.

It’s time to discuss the Southside pickle phenomenon.

Chicago is the most segregated city in the country. Unlike New York City and LA where cultures seem to jump into a blender and coagulate, Chicago is tribal in the purest sense of the word. Immigrants have been migrating to the Midwestern hub for a few hundred years. Dozens of ethnic groups from Europe, South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, have all carved out little hamlets within the city walls. Before the 1960s, Chicago was essentially a black and white city with a strong working class immigrant aesthetic. Most middle class immigrants sought work in Chicago’s stockyards or hundreds of factories that created everything from cookies to football helmets. Chicago now contains immigrants from every country on the planet, and this diversity is what makes Chicago so interesting. That being said, Chicago is still segregated on racial lines, with the Northside remaining a bastion of whiteness and the Southside an enclave of blackness. These lines, while invisible, are very real when talking about culture, lifestyle and snack food.

Enter the pickle and its friends Kool-Aid, Now and Later, Jolly Rancher, and peppermint stick. The pickle, while nothing more than a small cucumber soaked in vinegar brine, has achieved legendary status within the invisible boundary of Chicago’s Southside African American community.In Chicago, a pickle is not just something eaten with a pastrami sandwich; it is a briny vehicle for youthful experimentation and hilarious creativity. For decades young people on Chicago’s Southside have been combining pickles with candy, Kool-Aid, and other snack foods to create tastes and flavors that are uniquely Chicago. This pickle experimentation can be traced to the great migration of southern black workers in the middle of the 20th Century. Pickling in the South has long been an easy and delicious way to preserve perishable food items. People in the Southern United States pickle everything from peaches to pigs-feet. What differentiates Chicago pickle enthusiasts from their southern brethren is the youthful insanity of the flavor combinations.

One such combination is the peppermint-pickle. One of the longest standing pickle experiments, this delicacy has its roots in Chicago, and continues to be a popular treat for kids and adults on Chicago’s Southside.The peppermint pickle is made by removing the top off of a large kosher dill pickle and inserting a candy-cane sized peppermint stick into the pickle's cavity. The result is a salty, sweet, mint flavored, crunchy treat that is both funky and delicious. The acid from the vinegar in the pickle brine melts the peppermint stick, and allows the astringent peppermint flavor to soak deep into the pickle.There are variations of this treat that include placing a Jolly Rancher hard candy, or Now and Later taffy within a large pickle. These candy pickles reached fever pitch during the mid-1990s when Kool-Aid pickles began making the scene on Chicago’s Southside. These pickles, again having roots in the deep-south, combine kosher dill pickles with packets of strawberry, cherry, or fruit punch Kool-Aid. The pickles are placed in a large jar filled with extra sweet Kool-Aid and left to soak for up to a week. The candied pickles were invented by African American school kids in southern states like Georgia and Mississippi, and as their popularity grew, they made their way to Chicago. In Chicago, these candy colored, sweet-tart pickles can be found in candy houses, corner stores and neighborhood shops all over the Southside. This childhood delicacy has now become so popular that Kool-Aid pickles have been used in gourmet BBQ joints from Los Angeles to New York City, and were even featured in the food section of the New York Times.

Chicago is still a town where childhood experimentation and cultural gastronomy can slow dance together and concoct something as wonderfully tasty as the candy pickle.

CHICAGO MUSIC

2009-07-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

STATIC DISCOS - ESTADO FUTURO

On August 27-29, 2009, get a taste of the future at the Festival of Latin Electronic Music in Chicago. The festival will feature live music, DJ sets, workshops and speakers focused on the Latin electronic music scene. The three day event celebrates a diverse range of electronic music and showcases modern Latin culture in all of its eccentric glory.

Artists from Mexico’s Static Discos label will be featured at this annual Chicago music fest. Static Discos is a contemporary Mexican music label committed to melting headphones and minds with its wide spectrum of electronic music. When discussing electronic music and its multitude of sub-genres, Mexico rarely comes up in conversation. Contrary to popular belief, Mexico is not just awash in chicken dances, cowboy suit Norteno and nostalgic Mariachi. Mexico has long been an exporter of progressive pop and indie-music, and it should be no surprise that Static Discos’ catalog is deep with sonically adventurous concoctions. The music on the label ranges from improvisational electronic jazz, glitch pop, minimal Detroit style techno, and deep house. The artists on the Static Discos label have a deep understanding of music history, and they are brazen in their desire to take Latin music into the 21st Century.

The Festival of Latin Electronic Music will be a wonderful opportunity to hear what Latin musicians think the future will sound like. Judging from the work on Static Discos, the future will be delicious, like an elotes plugged into a modular synth.

For more information on Static Discos or the Festival of Latin Electronic Music, visit staticdiscos.com.or www.myspace.com/fmelchicago.

2009-07-05T21:21:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO JAZZ BREAKS

Here are some tasty Chicago jazz flavored breaks from a time when music still had soul.

Chicago soul-jazz, recorded in the 1960s and 1970s, sounds undeniably Midwestern, but it also has a global perspective where its rhythm and feel are concerned. The musicians who were laying down these tracks respected Chicago's blue collar, blues roots, but they also aspired towards the melting pot of the great metropolis.

These are the sounds of the city.

DESIGN IN CHICAGO

2009-07-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

CODY HUDSON& Struggle Inc.

In the early 1990s, every teenager in Chicago was skateboarding and writing graffiti. High schools all across the stinking onion were filled with young hearts of every economic strata and race, all scrawling color and pushing boards across the gray city streets. Urban culture connected kids to their environment, and for these Chicago dwellers, graffiti and skating was a way of celebrating the city. Curbs, run down parks, and parking garages were skateboard arenas, and old rusted milk trucks and subway tunnel walls were galleries to be painted. The skateboarding graffiti kids were not destroyers of the city, they were some of its greatest advocates.

Chicago's urban culture figures prominently in the work of artist and designer Cody Hudson. For years Hudson has created groundbreaking post modern designs for companies such as Burton, Chocolate Industries, Gravis, and Stussy. His design work combines his love for graffiti and skate aesthetics, with a ravenous understanding of late 20th Century pop culture ephemera. Hudson also celebrates Chicago in his work, with architectural iconography and Midwest themes cropping up in many of his pieces. As owner and art director for Struggle IncHudson continues to develop a design language of unquestionable originality and style. Cody Hudson’s work is a tasteful eyegasm.

Flipping through the Struggle Inc. design website is the graphic equivalent of shaking candy out of a Christmas stocking. The work flows, postures, and shimmers on both the screen and the page. Hudson’s typography is narrative, his palate is mack truck bold, and his text is filled with in-jokes and obtuse humor. He comes from the post modern school of design, where irony fondles earnestness, and mixtape graphics are as aesthetically relevant as Bauhaus design principles. In Hudson's world, skateboard decks are meant to hang on gallery walls, and paintings are things to be displayed on city street corners.

When not working on pieces for worldwide solo exhibitions, group shows, clothing graphics, or print design, the artist can be found enjoying the occasional can of Old Style. By no means a recluse, Hudson is an avid collaborator, and has worked with like minded artists such as Juan Angel Chavez, Evan Hecox , and Mike Genovese.

Chicago is not a town famous for its graphic design, or its graffiti, but artists like Cody Hudson, with Old Style in hand, are helping to change perceptions.

CHICAGO MUSIC

2009-07-03T14:33:00.001-07:00

THE SUBTLE LION : JEFF PARKER

Jazz in Chicago was at one time a life blood, a force of unrepentant innovation and creative spirit. Louis Armstrong cut Chicagoan’s domes in half with blazing solos, Miles Davis plugged the nickel with post bop madness, and Maurice White slapped the tubs in the Ramsey Louis Trio before going on to form Earth Wind and Fire. Chicago is a town of improvisation. One has to improvise in a city so diverse, yet so culturally segregated. In 2009, there is a new breed of young lions firmly placing Chicago jazz on the map.

Jeff Parker, a Berkley School of Music graduate, and one time record store clerk, has been slugging through the Chicago jazz and improvised music scene for well over a decade. The guitarist has worked as a sideman in countless jazz groups, and in the late 90s he helped introduced a generation of indie-rockers to jazz via his tenure in the super-group Tortoise. Parker is a guitarist of incredible tone, skill and feel. He sites A Tribe Called Quest, Charlie Parker, Harold Land, Sun-Ra, Sonny Clark, and Hank Williams as some of his favorite artists. Parker’s guitar playing is not filled with the pompous solos, or smooth jazz goo found in many jazz guitarist’s play books. To watch Jeff Parker solo is to watch a process of organic self discovery. Each note is new, exciting, frightening and unexpected. Parker remains one of the least virtuosic virtuosos in Chicago jazz. Chicago's Thrill Jockey Records has released a handful of Parker's recordings, including The Relatives and Like Coping. When not playing jazz or improvising, Parker often experiments with beat making and instrumental hip hop. His beats are playful, jazzy and childlike in their funkiness. There is a definite nod to modern beat masters like Madlib and J-Dilla in his unique instrumental pastiche.

Parker continues to perform with artists such as Scott Amendola, Charlie Hunter, Chad Taylor, Rob Mazurek, and Tortoise. Those unfamiliar with Parker's playing will have the opportunity to see him at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago, where he will join Tortoise for a rare live performance. Parker and Tortoise perform at the Pitchfork Music Festival on July 17 at 8pm.

For information on Jeff Parker and his music, visit
http://www.myspace.com/peffjarker.

PUNK ROCK DIVES

2009-07-02T18:02:00.001-07:00

Ronny's Bar

Chicago has its share of music venues. Some are grand, palatial theaters, with sconces and chandeliers, and some are back alley dives with Pabst Blue Ribbon and sweaty walls. The rock and punk scene in Chicago is as vibrant and colorful as ever, with a host of young, angry, punk rockers ready to blow you right out of your stove-pipe Levis. These youngsters, looking for venues to showcase their latent hormonal compunctions, thrive in the underworld of house parties, art school lofts, and seedy dive joints.

One such dive joint is Ronny’s Bar on California Ave. in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood. For a few years now, Ronny’s Bar has been hosting local talent in its backroom, which is really nothing more than a transmogrified garage with drywall and a concrete floor. If you find yourself engaging in a little pre-show inebriation, Ronny’s Bar is easy to miss. If it wasn’t for the handful of young gents with Conan the Barbarian haircuts smoking outside, Ronny’s would be completely hidden among the weeds and car repair shops that line the dank street.

Upon entering Ronny’s you're struck with the sense that something is terribly wrong. The local patrons, if not fixated by the blurry TV screen or a deadly game of pool, will often give the rock and roll punks a good once over upon entering. The dim, yellow-green lighting gives everyone in the bar a sickly glow, reminiscent of a George A. Romero film. There is also the pungent odor of cigarette smoke, whisky, and hot dogs that permeates everything in the bar. That being said, the bar at Ronny’s is merely a gauntlet to the backroom’s musical delights. Ronny’s ‘music room’ consists of drywall, a carpet, a recycled tiki-bar, a few stools, a card table and a junior high school PA system. The room has a real Lost Highway meets the Olsen Twins vibe that some music lovers might find appealing. There is no sound system at Ronny’s. All the bands play through their amps and vocals are played through the PA system. The crowd is a mixed bag of hipster kids, frightening locals, drunken suburban girls, and a smattering of music lovers. The men’s room is reminiscent of Satan’s arm pit, and the walls of the cramped room are lined with urine stains and flattened Pabst cans. The men's room has very little running water and there is often a roach floating in the sink, as if it had killed itself rather than listen to another handkerchief sporting gutter punk band blather on about ‘corporate America’. The bar tenders are of the bastard variety, and even though they post adorable pictures of their moon faced kids behind the bar, they would just as soon shank you and leave you bleeding in the alley as they would serve you a Heineken.

If angst filled punk, roaches, maladjusted bartenders, and pissing on the floor are what you crave, maybe it's time to visit the musical Hieronymus Bosch painting that is Ronny’s Bar and Center for the Performing Arts.

Welcome to Hell.

Ronny's Bar
2101 N. California Ave
Chicago

CHICAGO SUBURBAN : Park Ridge, Illinois

2009-07-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

City dwellers hate the suburbs. It’s in the DNA of the city dweller to look down upon the sprawling subdivisions, ranch homes, and materialistic gluttony that is much of suburbia. Thanks to real-estate developers with no aesthetic design sense, and multi-national corporations with homogenizing malls, most of America’s suburbs look and act the same. Chicago suburbs might as well be Houston suburbs, or Baltimore suburbs-the people might have different accents, but the song remains the same.

In the post war years of the early 1950s, suburbs were a place where young service men and women could afford homes and raise young families. Many of these home owners were the sons and daughters of immigrant families, and grew up in a rural agrarian environment or in the tenements of the major American cities. The suburbs represented a new America, an America based around upward mobility, conservative values, safety, and economic prosperity. It’s doubtful that these veterans of the great war would recognize the alienation and mass-consumerism that has engulfed much of suburban America. The City of Chicago is surrounded by suburbs on the north, south, and west sides of the city. The only thing preventing suburban sprawl to the east of the city of big shoulders is Lake Michigan. The Chicago suburbs, some of which were founded in the 1860s, represent the struggle of the suburban identity. It’s the struggle between segregation, history, intimacy, and corporate homogenization. One suburb that is reclaiming its identity is Park Ridge, Illinois.The small town, 15 miles north of Chicago, is a unique hamlet that is fighting for the ability to remain independent in the face of ever encroaching big-business influence. The town is meticulously cared for, and while not culturally diverse, it remains true to its history and small business aesthetic.

The town is intimate without being corny, and friendly while maintaining a fair amount of Chicago cynicism and paranoia. The suburb is only about a 20 minute drive from the heart of Chicago, and it is also easily accessible by train via the Northwest Metra line. The train drops visitors off in the heart of sleepy small town America, and the streets and people couldn’t be any more different from the hustle of Chicago. In the summer, the town is overrun with teenagers and families with sun soaked smiles, covered in ice cream. Everyone walks in Park Ridge. The town center is an easy stroll from any of the residential areas, and people take advantage of the local shops and restaurants. The focus on local business is evident, and some local shops even place signs in their windows encouraging sustainable commerce.

The breadth and history of local businesses in the town is staggering. Family run butcher shops, men’s clothing stores dating back to the 1960s, Card shops, bakeries, and a grand theater still thrive in this town. The Pickwick Theater and Restaurant has been entertaining movie goers and patrons in Park Ridge since its debut in 1928. The theater was recently given historical monument status and it is not hard to see why this bold, art deco masterpiece is considered a local treasure. The Theater’s façade remains a symbol of roaring twenties era-America, and on a dusky evening, you can picture a sea of fedoras and mink stoles waiting to get in to the grand movie house. The Pickwick Restaurant also continues to serve breakfast, lunch and dinner to regulars and new comers. The Pickwick offers a no-nonsense diner-style menu that is perfect for an evening bite or a cup of coffee on a cold night.

Park Ridge is also host to a crop of new businesses. These businesses are owned by people with a love of the American culture and the desire to keep mom and pop on main street. On Fairview Ave., across from the town train station, there is an interesting bundle of shops. The Shaker Furniture Store has been on Fairview since 1991, and sells its handcrafted, traditional furniture to collectors and those wanting a unique piece for their home. The shop makes traditional Shaker reproductions as well as custom design pieces. The shop uses reclaimed, old growth forest timer, when it is available, and the shop's owners believe strongly in sustainable craftsmanship.

The street also is home to Tea Lula, a charming tea based shop, with outdoor seating and a tea sampling bar inside. The owner, Shelia Duda, is a tea fanatic and is more than happy to help with any tea related questions. The shop also stocks tea books, pots, cups and other brewing accessories.

On Main Street resides All on the Road Catering. This gourmet food shop serves up some of the best sandwiches and salads in the area, and its expansive to-go menu has made it a favorite with locals in the town. Some fairly insane sandwiches come out of this vintage store front shop. On any given day, customers order up selections like, London Broil with Crab and Avocado, Crab Cake with Corn Relish, Poached Salmon with Wasabi Orange Mustard, or Portobello Mushroom Wrap with Goat Cheese and Roasted Red Peppers. The shop also has an extensive catering menu and bakery, and the owners always try and use locally grown, fresh ingredients in every dish they make.

Suburbs get a bad rap most of the time, and some of the time the rap is justified. Nobody living in a major city like Chicago needs to drive 20 minutes to get a burrito, or a pair of trainers, or take their bed and bath to the great beyond. Chicago is a metropolis of possibilities, but sometimes it's nice to venture into the suburbs and support businesses that continue the traditions of mom and pop shopping. Park Ridge, with its shop local aesthetic, is on the right path towards economic sustainability. In the era of corporate malfeasance, it's good to know mom and pop are still making it happen in middle America.

There are more than a few national chain stores in Park Ridge, with thier bright lights, big deals, and huge parking lots - but in this suburb, with such a vibrant local economy, they are easy to ignore.

2009-04-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

LET'S MAKE IT RIGHT CHICAGO

As Chicago swirls slowly around the drain, many of us sit idly by feeling helpless. We are overwhelmed by reports of ever increasing gang violence in our schools, drug abuse, political corruption, rampant racism, classism, and crippling poverty that only leads to more and more crime. We look helplessly out on the encroaching chaos, all the while asking “Won’t someone please do something?”

While the rest of us hide in our apartments, acting the victim, wishing these ever worsening social problems would just go away, an ever increasing number of Chicagoans are saying “I’m not going to take it anymore!” A new breed of vigilantism is on the rise in Chicago, and it should give pause to those of us who feel content simply sitting on our couches complaining about the woeful state of our society. In the tradition of New York’s Guardian Angels, a local group of Chicago heroes recently harnessed their righteous anger and empowered themselves to take on the numerous problems facing Chicago. These brave men and women, armed with pails of gravel and tiny shovels, patrol our vulnerable neighborhood streets- often for up to an hour at a time. With unwavering vigilance, they seek out their foe: Potholes. When a pothole is finally located, they spring into action. Not content to twiddle their thumbs and wait for the wheels of Streets and Sanitation to turn, they pour gravel from their pails into to the pothole. Once the pothole is filled with gravel, they pack it down with their tiny shovels and smooth it out as much as they can. In a world of ever increasing apathy, it is inspiring to see a group of individuals stand up and take responsibility for one of our most pressing social dilemmas.

Perhaps this is the new normal. Maybe a trend of grass-roots social change will finally take root. Maybe, one day, our children will be able to go to school without fear of gang violence or drugs. If everything goes as planned, our shining stars of tomorrow will not have to pass metal detectors on the way to class, or be hobbled by an ineffective educational paradigm-because thanks to a select group of hometown heroes, the streets of Chicago are once again somewhat less bumpy.

Way to get your priorities straight douchebags.

-Gabriel Stutz

ART IN CHICAGO

2009-04-19T18:50:00.000-07:00

Mayumi Lake

Japan: Home of the Whopper, and home to Chicago based photographer Mayumi Lake. Lake is an ex-patriot of sorts, teaching at Chicago's School of the Art Institute and finding love with a Midwestern pedal steel guitar player, she is hung-up on the windy city. The photographer currently resides in Chicago’s Northwest side, but the magical realism of her photos place her somewhere between an island of sexy unicorns, and a lunar landscape filled with nationalist history and candy coated autobiography.

In 1995, Lake unleashed her MFA thesis project entitled Poo-Chi onto an unsuspecting public. The mildly erotic, microcosmic photos appear to be a series of youthful genitalia encased in lacy, childlike clothing. Those ‘art-lovers’ who felt a tingle as they peered at Lake’s project were rudely awakened by the reality that the ‘genitals’ in question were actually male armpits encased in lacy, childlike clothing. Suffice it to say, the controversially subversive, yet elegantly cynical photographs were turned into a book, also entitled Poo-Chi. The book received some publicity in 2005 when it was confiscated from the home of Michael Jackson and used as evidence in his trial for child abuse. The book, according to the police record, was found in the king of pop’s bathroom along with other photography and art literature.
Lake continues to be a prolific photographer, and her impressive body of work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions all across the globe. Lake’s sexually subversive, personal work stays with the viewer like a pleasant nightmare. Her visions of sexuality, cultural history and biography etch themselves into the viewer’s memory, and her personal essays become living critiques that go on into the infinite.

Mayumi Lake currently teaches Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives in Chicago with her boyfriend and her cat Jeff. Visit www.mayumilake.com for exhibition updates, traditional Japanese clothing, cats, sex, innocence, loss of innocence, dreamscapes, and armpits.

CHICAGO MUSIC

2009-04-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

Jim O'Rourke

For a modestly proportioned man, Jim O’Rourke casts a mighty big shadow. A musical ninja of sorts, O’Rourke has influenced ideologies, mixed countless indie-recordings, played with ensembles the world over, and recorded music for both film and dance. He is superhuman in his ability to colorfully slide between the radar.

Chicago in the early 1990s was a musically rich place. It was a place of purpose and home to a thriving music community. There was not a dominant sound, but rather a collection of divergent sounds all happening at once. Free jazz saxophone players were playing in soul bands, punks were discovering George Jones, indie-rockers were forming Jamaican dub projects, and Jim O’Rourke was in the thick of it all. Already an accomplished improviser and guitarist, O’Rourke first came to the public’s attention as a member of the avant-pop group Gastr Del Sol. The Chicago based band was comprised of O’Rourke, multi-instrumentalist David Grubbs, and a host of talented Chicago area musicians. The band borrowed from a cornucopia of influences and developed a sound that was concise, challenging and expressive. Releasing the majority of their albums on noted Chicago label Drag City, the band separated in 1998. O’Rourke continued to release music under his own name, including the albums Bad Timing, Eureka, and Insignificance. These recordings, capturing O'Rourke's penchant for finger picked guitar lines, atmosphere, and absurdest lyrics, would be an influence on countless musicians.

In 2002, Chicago area super-group Wilco released their critically acclaimed album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The release was an unusual blend of roots country, pop candy, musique concrete, and surreal ambiance. The recording was named Album of the Year by Rolling Stone Magazine. O’Rourke, known throughout Chicago as an accomplished guitarist and producer, was credited with helping mix the final version of the recording. His blend of warped pop and rainbow colored playfulness can be felt throughout the entire album. O'Rourke also joined Wilco members Jeff Tweedy and Glen Kotche for a side project entitled Loose Fur. According to Tweedy, the group was going to be named Lucifer after everyone’s favorite anti-Christ, but the name had already been taken by countless metal bands. Loose Fur released the albums Loose Fur in 2003 and Born Again in the USA in 2006. O’Rourke also produced Wilco’s second foray into experimental pop, A Ghost is Born. In 2004, this adventurous, sprawling effort was awarded a Grammy for Alternative Album of the Year.
From 2000 to 2005, O’Rourke joined the band Sonic Youth as a multi-instrumentalist. Shortly after joining the group, O’Rourke left Chicago and planted roots in New York City. In 2005, he departed from the group to pursue a diverse set of film and theater work. Currently, O'Rourke lives in Japan and continues to create soundtrack compositions and short film projects.

An under-appreciated hero of both the avant garde and pop music, Jim O’Rourke continues to create sound for those who are lucky enough to listen.

Easter in Pilsen

2009-04-10T15:59:00.000-07:00

NAIL EM' UP CABALLEROS

It’s Easter in Chicago, and it's time to break out the hammers and nails. What better way to celebrate the sacrifice and the suffering of Jesus Christ than to painfully reenact the whole crazy day of crucifixion with your cousin Juan starring in the lead role.

I love Mexican-Americans. Their culture is rich, their food is delicious, their women wear very tight pants, their men have moustaches, and their children cry like the sound of an accordion in a romantic ranchero ballad. Their unique take on Easter, however, is a little out to lunch. On Good Friday, Mexican-Americans from Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood gather together to celebrate Easter with a reenactment of Christ’s brutal crucifixion. Like Mel Gibson’s much overwrought film Passion of the Christ, the crucifixion features prepubescent boys dressed up as Roman soldiers, girls in blue eye shadow as weeping mourners, and various mustachioed men as the unforgiving populace tossing aspersions at Jesus. There is blood, crying, religiosity and I am guessing, cases of Tecate. One would have to be drunk to watch a guy in a fake beard get faux nailed to a precariously built cross. Even on a slow day, I’d rather organize my socks.

If you find yourself on the Southside of Chicago and want to know what Catholicism is all about, go check out the crucifixion reenactment in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. I recommend brining a six pack of Modelo Negro. If Jesus really is everywhere, he is going to need a few beers in order to sit through this crap.

Chicago Print Maker/Musician Jay Ryan

2009-04-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

Chicago screen print artist and musician Jay Ryan is a man of many talents and a true Chicago treasure. Back in 1995, when every indie rock band was screen printing posters and album sleeves on uncoated chip-board, Jay Ryan changed the game up. His youthful images for bands like Andrew Bird, Shellac, June of 44, Tortoise, and Modest Mouse are still jubilant and beautiful today. If you need silkscreen work done for your band's design project, peep him out. Jay's company is known as The Bird Machine. Brilliant!

Comedy Slip Ups 101: The Man Who Filmed Too Much

2009-04-05T18:10:00.000-07:00

Comedy in Chicago is like cheese steak in Philadelphia, or crime in Detroit. Chicagoans have perfected the art of self loathing and comic timing into to a profound stew of improv and stand-up. On any given night, drunken patrons can go out and watch people flinch, murmur, and dick joke their way through an endless cavalcade of sets.

Stand up comedy in Chicago, while not as prolific as improv, still has a grand comedic foothold in the stinking onion. The deal with stand up is there are very few stand up comedians, there are however, thousands of Def Comedy Jam copy-cats, retail employees, jilted lovers, and men with under-rated genitalia. These folks are the foot soldiers who populate the world of stand-up in Chicago.

A great place to catch an angry twenty something prattle on about his 'hot' but 'crazy' ex-girlfriend is The Edge Comedy Club, located in the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts in Chicago's River North area. The club is housed within an impressive theater space and the organization hosts sets all week long. On a cold Saturday evening, I was lucky enough to catch The Handsome Bastards stand up review. The review was a mixed bag of horrendous amateurs, weirdly over seasoned vets, conceptual drunks and frat boy idiots.

One particular comic caught my attention and brought to light something no young comedian should ever do: Bring your own Sony handi-cam with an accompanying tri-pod and film your own set. I watched helplessly as the young acerbically awkward comedian finished his set about masturbating and slowly began dismantling his own handi-cam - like an Italian grandmother at a first communion . It instantly made him unfunny and it made me sad. After this event, I could not keep my eyes off of this ego-centric nut bag, and I watched him pack up his handi-cam and text message his friends as he pretended to watch the other comics. I felt sorry for this youthful moron in all of his self centred glory. When the ancient Israelites escaped the tyranny of the Egyptians and invented comedy, I doubt they pictured it would all come down to this.

A Lesson for Young Comics:

If you want to know how good your set is, have a friend film you. If you don't have any friends, you're going to be a great stand-up comedian.

The Edge Comedy Club
http://www.theedgecomedyclub.com/

A FLIPPITY FLOPPITY F#CK YOU TO THE WORLD

2009-03-29T19:21:00.001-07:00

Soon the warm summer breeze will be floating into Chicago and caressing bare midriffs, clear bra straps, and uncovered knees. The warm weather brings with it a host of interesting fashion possibilities. The flip flop, or the ‘foot fuck you’, will once again make its presence known as the days draw longer and the sun’s rays cascade across the Midwestern landscape.

I enjoy footwear. I appreciate the Nike high-top, the Frye boot, a high heel, or even an occasional wingtip. The flip flop, on the other hand, is by far the most pugnacious of the foot covering devices. It’s an arrogant little piece of compressed rubber and plastic. I must be honest and state I have a profound dislike for this piece of footwear when worn by bros rather than hoes. The flip flop's purpose as a functional beach sandal, or shower accessory has recently been over shadowed by its ever increasing popularity among those involved with high minded douchebaggery. Maybe it’s my aversion to the sight of another man’s toes. Maybe it’s because the flip flop’s casual fippity floppity sound reminds me that I live in a city filled with idiots. Maybe I don’t think the world needs casual, semi-nude, foot wear on men. I know there are quite a few flip flop enthusiasts out there, flipping and flopping into dank night clubs, punk shows, IKEA, and the local Trader Joes. It pains me that I can’t really defend my opinions about a shoe that is so comfortable and so easy going, but for some reason, makes me feel like I’m receiving a ‘foot fuck you’ every time I see one flopping down the street. It’s quite a conundrum for sure, and yet another reason to look forward to Christmas.

FANTASY MODEL CHICKS AND MUSIC VIDEOS / WHY MUST IT CONTINUE ? THE CATFISH HAVEN BONER

2009-03-28T14:15:00.001-07:00

Catfish Haven is a good Chicago band. They play a nice concoction of gritty rock and dork-soul, all rubbed with a southern fried hipster grease. It's a nice party. The band created a simple music video for their track "Tell Me" from a recent release on indie label Secretly Canadian Records. It's not a bad video, but notice if you will the model looking co-ed chatting it up with Catfish Haven's vocalist. He is a drunk, chubby, disheveled, apostle looking dude, making breakfast cereal at what seems to be three o'clock in the afternoon. I'm not one to cast aspersions on the validity of a fictional relationship, but Jesus, am I supposed to believe that this John Belushi looking dude is lousy with Malibu Barbie action? I mean the chick looks like she lives on Virginia Slims and coconut milk.

Catfish Haven in their video, pretending to bone models.

I would bet dollars to doughnuts that models aren't rushing out to a Catfish Haven show. I know a thing or two about all the sexpot girls involved with indie-rock in Chicago. Don't get me wrong, there are quite a few bespectacled cuties out there, bobbing their side swept bangs, and rubbing their alabaster hams together on the dance floor. It just gets my blood boiling that an indie rock band like Catfish Haven, when pushed to make a music video, pulls a Brian McKnight boner and gets some 'model' to play the lead singer's love interest. It's corny, and it makes me mad for all the short, stocky, indie rock loving girls out there who can't get work in music videos. Let's all raise a Pabst to music video realism and stop this charade of Hollywood craptaculation.

Next up: Who the fuck makes music videos anymore? Unless your name is Peter Gabriel and it's 1985, it's a fucking waste of time. Go write a song!

Tony Fitzpatrick : Fat, Pissed, Beautiful

2009-03-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

Chicago artist, Tony Fitzpatrick, is a bit of a controversial fellow. He is a large stomached genius to some, a scene hogging, Nelson Algren suckling jerk to others. Whatever side of the fence you are on, there is no doubt that Mr. Fitzpatrick is a formidable Chicago artist, and his work serves as a weird window into Chicago’s rather stark nooks and crannies.

Word on the street is Fitzpatrick was a boxer, a bouncer, and a hard living, gut punching dude who made easy enemies and loyal friends. Whether part of a folkloric identity marketing scheme, or the personal history of an artist living in blue collar Camelot, Fitzpatrick’s wacky past lives on in his impressive body of work. The artist’s work is quilt like in its ability to combine multiple images and narratives. Fitzpatrick slams old-school pop culture imagery alongside images about love and loss, urban blight, religion, and personal memories. His colorful images are intimate without being nostalgic and detailed without being overwrought. The artist recently exhibited a series of paintings based on New Orleans entitled, Prospect New Orleans.The project gave Fitzpatrick the chance to spend time in the Big Easy and delve into the city's eccentric culture and history.

New Orleans is a wonderful place for great jazz, fast women and strong coffee, but Chicago is Fitzpatrick's hometown. Chicago's lard rich, beer drunken craziness, and rust-filled, transient sensuality is ingrained into much of Tony Fitzpatrick’s work. For non-Chicagoans, Fitzpatrick’s images may be a bit confounding. What does a skull, a dead butterfly, a whiskey bottle and a Catholic priest have to do with Chicago? With Fitzpatrick's creations, sometimes the joy is in the finding out.

CHICAGO BREAK BREAK

2009-03-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

Chicago breakbeats from the city of big shoulders. Put some Midwestern swag in your bag. Enjoy!

Honky Tonk Happy Hour

2009-03-24T19:52:00.000-07:00

Country music in Chicago has a long standing tradition. Back in the 50s and 60s ‘honky tonks’ were found up and down Clark Street on Chicago’s Northwest side. Like the southern blacks that migrated to Chicago for factory work during the World War Two, southern whites also migrated north for work and stability. With this migration came an influx of southern blues music, as well as country and western influences. Although not known for its country music legacy, Chicago was once a hot bed of redneck bars and two step night spots. A bar like Carol’s on Clark street, in Chicago’s Andersonville neighborhood, harkens back to the days when Old Style was Lone Star, and black eyes flowed like the Chicago River’s dirty water.

Those wanting to live it up honky tonk style need look no further than Chicago’s hipster haunt, the Empty Bottle. Patrons have been dancing the afternoon away for years at the venue’s weekly ‘Honky Tonk Happy Hour.’ The Friday afternoon ritual features the music of Chicago’s own Hoyle Brothers, and for those wanting a little dance in their pants, the band never disappoints. The vibe at the bar is laid back and drunk with a focus on the music and the traditional country dancing. The event is free of charge, and with beer on the low end clocking in at $2, it’s easy to live out some Hank Williams fantasies while politely scoping out a little southern style action.

Country music enthusiasts will be floored with the Hoyle’s covers of Hank Williams, Merle Haggard, Johnny Paycheck, and George Jones tunes. For those extreme country fetishists, check out the pedal steel mastery of Mr. Brian Wilke. The man sits with more power than a hundred mules, and with a slide bar in his hand on a double neck steel, happy hour is happy indeed.

The Hoyle Brothers
Every Friday, 5:00 pm until 7:30 pm
The Empty Bottle
1035 N. Western Ave.
Chicago, Illinois

SUPPORT LOCALBEER

2009-03-23T22:17:00.000-07:00

Half Acre is Local Chicago Brewery that produces Ales, Lagers, Stouts and various artisanal beers. Is artisinal beer a little fruity? As a concept, yes, as a beverage, no. Scope them out and raise a pint to hometown drunkenness.

Styx : Chicago Crap City

2009-03-23T20:58:00.001-07:00

Background:Styx formed in Chicago. Twin brothers Chuck and John Panozzo first got together with their neighbor Dennis DeYoung in 1961 in the Roseland section of the south side of Chicago, eventually taking the band name "The Tradewinds". In 1965, the name "Tradewinds" was changed to TW4 after another band called Trade Winds broke through nationally. In 1969, they added a college buddy, John Curulewski, on guitar after Nardini departed. Guitarist James "J.Y." Young came aboard in 1970 making TW4 a quintet.

In 1972, the band members decided to choose a new name when they signed to Wooden Nickel Records; several suggestions were made and, says DeYoung, Styx was chosen because it was "the only one that none of us hated". - Wikipedia
Fucking brilliant!

I never really knew much about Styx. I knew the band was from Chicago and they were really popular during the AM radio craze in the 1970s, but I never really could place their unique sound. Styx's music is kind of like the sound of two teenagers being set on fire, in a kayak, floating down a river filled with cotton candy and pig shit. When a person listens to Styx, a few questions come to mind: Why did anyone decide to make this crap, and what exactly is the point? Did Styx make their music in the hopes of getting laid? You can't really screw to Styx. If there ever was something that induced limpness, it's the soft scream of Dennis DeYoung. I would rather screw to the sound of a lawn mower.

Is Styx some kind of drug-induced, eardrum trance-hell that can only be explained after smoking something dipped in formaldehyde? Is Styx what Chicago sounded like in the 70s? It is quite plausible that Styx captured Chicago in its Polish sausage, Old Style, Blues Brothers, velour pants golden years. It is also plausible that Styx is a rare Chicago anomaly, born out of gallons of shitty beer and Chicago's tendency for incestuous musical inbreeding.

One thing is for sure, the band Styx poses more questions than answers. Something we can be certain of is that Styx introduced the creative phenomenon known as the vanity band name spelling. Without Styx, there would be no Korn, Limp Bizkit,or Boyz II Men. Dennis DeYoung and his band of merry mischief makers didn't just give us creative spelling, they have given us decades worth of Midwestern, operatic, prog-pop that will continue to disgust us far into the future.

If there is a jukebox in Guantanamo Bay, it has "Lady" on its playlist.

Chicago Meets Texas and Lays it Down

2009-03-14T21:21:00.000-07:00

Legendary Chicago blues statesman Buddy Guy and Texas' own Big Mama Thornton lay down the original version of "Hound Dog". This Chicago blues style version of the classic early rock and roll hit smothers itself in greasy sophistication. I'm sorry, Elvis might have a nice haircut, but he ain't got a thing on these cats. Check the dude with the shades playing the spinet piano. That's just plain old mean.

CHICAGO FOOD CITY

2009-03-14T20:11:00.000-07:00

La Palapita :A $15 Hooker of Delicious

La Palapita is a drunk on a street corner. It’s a shabby, over-painted, confusing mess of a structure. The restaurant’s tin shack, tempera painted exterior, looks like it fell from the sky in a transcontinental hurricane. The little Mexican restaurant is a nightmare of Chicago style, haphazard architecture and hidden wonder. Every night, like clockwork, Polish teenagers, people in sweatpants, punks in pick-up trucks, and Mexican couples, come pouring in and out of the multi-colored building searching for tacos. Mexican restaurants are a dime a dozen in Chicago. Chicago is one of the many cities across the United States facing an influx of Mexican immigration. The new immigrants bring with them a host of traditional cultural values and traditions. Some people might think it a stretch to say the taco is a cultural tradition, but those people haven’t had a taco from La Palapita.

The taco is the Mexican kanish, or the Latino hot dog. Sold by street vendors and in run down shacks, tacos are a quick fix for mid-day hunger and late night hangovers. When I worked in the food service industry, my Mexican co-workers would stop the world at noon and lay out a taco spread of epic proportions. Whole roasted chicken, stewed goat meat, various chopped up innards, cheeses, cilantro leaves, salsa and fresh corn tortillas were strewn about buffet style. Among the discussions about penis size, prostitutes, and family life, everyone made their own taco and mixed the fresh, sometimes strange, ingredients together. It was a weirdly communal and delicious experience.

La Palapita in Portage Park is part of that Mexican taco tradition. What makes the tacos at La Palapita so wonderful is their simplicity and freshness. Their tacos are served with sautéed meat, cilantro, onion, and Chihuahua cheese on two fresh corn tortillas. No lettuce, no tomato and no guacamole. The simple ingredients meld together for an experience that is as elegant as a cucumber sandwich and as powerful as a menage a trois. Freshness is not something you’d expect at a Mexican taco shack on a dank Chicago street, but that is the strange beauty of La Palapita. It’s a refuge from elitist Mexican restaurants with something to prove, and it adds both danger and cilantro to an otherwise overcrowded taco city.

ART IN CHICAGO

2009-03-01T10:51:00.000-08:00

HEAVEN GALLERY

Heaven Gallery owner and curator Dave Dobie and an attractive Asian woman stand next to an art exhibit of decorated pie tins and blank skateboard decks.

Heaven Gallery hosts visual artists, free jazz and experimental folk music, ironic roof-top movie events, drunken trust fund gladiatorial fights to the death, and performance art.

Heaven is located at 1550 North Milwaukee, 2nd floor, Chicago Illinois 60622

I’ll have a Polish and a Samba, Sex on the Side

2009-02-28T22:56:00.000-08:00

Elston Ave. in Chicago is a long, secretive street. It spans blue collar neighborhoods along the city’s Northwest Side, and cuts a soft diagonal through some rather stark manufacturing corridors. If there is a street that looks, smells, and sulks like Chicago, Elston is it. Resting among the street’s Polish sausage stands, Irish drunkard haunts, and muffler repair shops is the Latin flavored bar N (en-ye). The small, dark, overtly romantic spot hosts some of the most interesting nightlife in Chicago.

N resides in a pewter colored brick building, hidden on the corner of Elston and Wellington. The bar's only identifying features are a wooden sign hanging above the sidewalk and some candle glow from the building's small windows. Once you walk through the door, you’re hit with an undeniable atmosphere that is both welcoming and exotic. The affordable, minimalist tapas menu at N contains dozens of spicy dishes that are perfect for sharing. To soften the blow from the the gallons of rum you will consume at N, try the chorizo (two homemade sausages served with chimichurri), empanadas (beef, chicken, ham and cheese, spinach) or a tortilla (mix of egg, onion, potato). Drinks include various South American beer varieties, domestic brews, wine, and tropical drink standards like Mojitos and Margaritas. N's menu, while elegant and delicious, is merely a prop for the establishment's sultry mood and music.

The sounds at N are pulsating and provocative. The Djs play a genital thumping mix of samba, salsa, and reggae that sends pheromones bounding off the small tables and candle-lit walls. The vibe at N is unpretentious and the bar is sexy without being sleazy. Young couples come to the bar to dance in the flattering light, sample sea food tapas and get blitzed on mojitos. The crowd at N is a pleasant mix of music lovers, potential nudists, foodies, and club hoppers. Tuesday nights feature a live samba band, and as the evening progresses, people get increasingly free with the dance moves and affection. This is the kind of steamy, haunting place that a pirate would visit to pick up a sea bride. N is also one of the best Latin infused bars in Chicago, and in a city that is almost ¾ Latin, that’s saying something.

N
2977 N Elston Ave
Chicago, IL 60618
Phone: (773) 866-9898

THE PERFECT CAKE...IN HELL

2009-02-26T00:39:00.000-08:00

Embedded in this post is the most disturbing video you will every see in your life. It has nothing to do with Chicago, or culture, but it scared the hell out of me as I watched it. It involves cakes and a man with the desire to end an instructional cake video with a boisterous musical ode to New York City.

For a brief period of time I worked as a cake decorator. I was paying for a higher education and I was also very confused about the direction of my life. As I watched this video, I became aware of the obvious pitfalls of being really good at something. If the guy in this video ever decides to take his frosting covered wrath out on the general population, god help us all. Click on the 'cake' photo and melt your brain.

CHICAGO FOOD CITY

2009-02-25T17:21:00.000-08:00

C.W. Napkin / Its Got Things In It

Today we feature C.W. Napkin. We don't know much about this place, and we haven't eaten their food, but we are all huge fans of C.W. Napkin’s marketing. All the pictures featured here are from the C.W. Napkin website, and these mouthwatering digital photos speak louder than a thousand words ever could.

We’re guessing that the folks over at C.W. Napkin are such a bunch of bad-asses that they just don’t give two sh!ts about lighting, arrangements and composition. Leave that crap for the fags over at TGI Fridays. Visit the C.W. Napkin website and go on a culinary tour of your own. Check out the photo of the Chicken Caesar Salad Wrap (pictured bellow), it looks like it’s going to mug you and kick that shit eating grin off your face.

If you are in the Chicago area, visit C.W. Napkin and pick up a Chicken that Ate Cleveland Sandwich, or a plate of ravioli. C.W. Napkin describes their marinara sauce as "a great marinara (meatless) sauce. It's rich and thick and has lots of things in it."

Who doesn't like a few 'things' in the old marinara? Visit this place today and experience a culinary kick in the groin. The Napkin, it's like getting hit in the head with a whiskey bottle full of comfort food.

CHICAGO'S HYPNOTIC BRASS BAND IN NYC

2009-02-25T13:15:00.000-08:00

Chicago brass band Hypnotic is the subject of this elegant web-documentary. The group is filmed as they entertain commuters in the NYC subway. The Hypnotic ensemble includes the sons of the great Chicago jazz musician Phil Cohran. Hypnotic has never sounded better. Enjoy.

Hypnotic Underground from moriza on Vimeo.

Porter Records / Eclectic Sounds

2009-02-25T11:42:00.000-08:00

Music is a diverse and dense universe, crowded with divergent sounds and artistic interpretations. It takes a good record label to sift through the plethora of sounds and give life to important works of art. Porter Records, a small upstart created in 2007 by a record collector with a passion for sound, is turning out to be one of the most unusual and creative labels running. The label's variety of music is staggering, and label owner, Luke Mosling, is dedicated to keeping the variety flowing in the years to come. Currently, the label releases everything from hip hop, reggae, free jazz, soul, and experimental electronic. While eclectic, the music on Porter records is never elitist or confounding. If anything, Porter gives listeners the unique chance to experience a wide variety of sound in a context that is accessible and understated. The label also has a unique design aesthetic, reminiscent of the well branded packaging from labels like Blue Note and Impulse in the 1960s. Each Porter Records release has a distinct visual presentation, which helps the label stand out in a saturated market.

Mosling runs Porter Records as a one-man-band, and he views the label as an extension of his diverse record collection. In the next year, Mosling plans on putting out a host of rare-reissues and new releases featuring everything from organic hip hop groups to ambient electronic artists. The label also plans to reach into the global music community and release jazz and experimental music from Europe and Australia.

For information on Porter Records and its upcoming releases, visit http://www.myspace.com/porterrecords.

When Porter Records artist The Misled Children remix Dr. Dre and Snoop- it's a wacky affair.

WTF AMERICA?

2009-02-24T19:53:00.000-08:00

Alexandra Pelosi, filmmaker, trouble maker and daughter of Nancy Pelosi, has made a new documentary film detailing the opinions of those who consider themselves part of red state America. The film, entitled Right America: Feeling Wronged is a depressingly raw view into the bizarrely undereducated masses that occupy the hamlets of the sprawling 50 states.

This is a brutal piece of work and a film of uncompromising reality. The characters in Pelosi’s film are not cartoons; they are normal, hard working stiffs with American flag t-shits and pickup trucks. It is disturbing to imagine that the wealthiest country in the industrialized world can still have a large segment of its population dwelling in ignorance and blatant stupidity regarding culture, religion, and foreign policy.

As we turn the corner into the 21st century, America has some heavy lifting to do with a portion of the population so willfully ignorant and stubborn. Alexandra Pelosi deserves credit for making a good film, but sometimes the process of making political sausage is better left mysterious.

Hipster Death Warrant

2009-02-24T14:48:00.000-08:00

"Fashion designer Doron Braunshtein, aka Apollo Braun, whose store on Orchard Street has been selling T-shirts and hoodies emblazoned with the question 'Who Killed Obama?' says the people leaving him angry messages and death threats just don't get hipster irony. See, he loves Obama, that's why he's selling products that invoke his murder!

"I'm very punk rock," Braunshtein explains to the NY Press's fashion blogger, smugly aware that our primitive 2008 technology prevents you from reaching through your computer screen and slapping that smirk off his face. He goes on: "They don't understand what I'm doing. They think I'm spreading hate. Could you imagine if Obama were killed? They might blame me. Then I'd be taken to jail and have to have prison sex."

- Gothamist 2008

The Gothamist blog deserves a big thank you for bringing this first rate douchebag to the world's attention. Where to begin? The side-swept, grease-filled haircut, his Connecticut smirk, his self aggrandizing allegiance to punk rock, his irrelevant hipster posturing, his complete lack of creativity, or maybe we can hate him for his dead, soulless eyes? This ass-hole is a designer living in New York, and after drinking his fill of Pabst Blue Ribbon and Jameson, this greasy weasel thought of a sweatshirt that would act as a giant ‘fuck you’ to the world. To combine the potential assassination of the first black president with the hipster ironic t-shirt phenomenon is a new low for modern culture. Guys like the “Who killed Obama?” idiot are what’s wrong with art schools, Williamsburg, and trust funds.

If I'm at a Sufjan Stevens show, trying to look sensitive, and I see this idiot and his moronic sweatshirt, the question will be, “Who killed the jackass in the 'Who killed Obama' sweatshirt?”

BREAK BREAK

2009-02-22T15:56:00.000-08:00

The first cut is entitled "Tramp" by Lowell Folsom. This funk-blues joint first appeared on a 45" single in 1965 on the Kent record label. The track was a hit on the R&B charts and was later recorded by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas. This track has been sampled numerous times, and the staccato guitar and drum intro still sounds fresh today. Yes, Cypress Hill sampled this song, but screw it, it's a great hook. Kill a man if you must.

The second track, EJI, was recorded by the Whitefield Brothers and appeared on a 45" single released by Soul Fire Records in 2002. This tracked can also be found on the LP In the Raw. The Whitefield Brothers are the J.D. Salingers of raw funk. Don't expect to see them play live or conduct interviews, they are a band of funky vapors.

The third track in this trio is something a little bit rare, strange, and yes, French. The track is called Troupeau Bleu by the French jazz/funk band Cortex. Yes, the French can pull off some serious Brazilian flavored jazz/funk. I'm not familiar with Cortex, except for the fact that they make me want to throw out my underwear and refrain from showering. Funky.

COCONUT RECORDS AND SCARLET JOHANNSON: WHY MUST THIS CONTINUE?

2009-02-22T13:36:00.000-08:00

“My Echo Park bedroom was filled with the soft orange glow of mid morning sunlight, and part of my being was still drunk from the previous night’s soirée at yet another young starlet’s condo. The silk sheets were so inconceivably soft that it was pure torture to get out of bed. I searched around the lavender softness for my Gucci boxer briefs and brushed my luxurious hair out of my eyes. I leaned over grabbed the glass bottle of Pellegrino and my pack of Dunhill Lights and sat back against an over stuffed pillow. I lit the square and let the smoke cascade into my lungs. I took a swig from the fizzy Italian water and noticed a rustling under my pale blue, down comforter. It was Mia Trang and her friend Ivana Yerkova. I had invited the two aspiring models over to read a Wes Anderson script, but I must have passed out before we had the chance to get into character. They were completely nude. Their youthfully golden, firm bodies shimmering in the morning sun. Mia grazed her long fingers across my Gucci encased manhood and gestured for a Dunhill. I tossed her the pack and lit one up. She smiled, her full, mango lips wet like early morning flower petals…”

That is what I imagine actor Jason Schwartzman’s life to be like. Granted, I’m sure the guy has a few problems. Being mildly introverted, with a penchant for independent film can have its downside in tinsel town. I’m sure he has family issues or girl troubles like any moderately short man trying to make it in the modern world. Life is difficult even for a king among men like Schwartzman. He is, by any stretch of the imagination, a lucky bastard. His movies are genuinely well received; he is a great comedic actor, and a decent screen writer. So, my question to Mr. Schwartzman is: why the hell are you making music? Is it the accessibility of modern recording equipment? Is being a dilettante suddenly the thing to do if you are one of the beautiful people in Hollywood?

Schwartzman’s Coconut Records project comes on the heels of failed music projects by the likes of Scarlet Johansson and Kevin Bacon. Schwartzman’s project isn’t as sad and droopy as the Johansson and Bacon fiascos, but it still is a hard pill to swallow. Even as you listen to Schwartzman’s French pop meets Pavement musical sweet tarts, you can’t stop picturing that kid in Rushmore jacking around with Bill Murray. The concept of the actor/musician remains one of the hardest bridges to cross in modern pop culture. French beach blanket tunes and introspective pop are all well and good, but if Max Fisher is doing this, who the hell is jacking around with Bill Murray?…

JOHANSSON AND OLD RUSTY NAILS

Scarlet Johansson, why did you take my two favorite things and kill them with your foray into music? I love Tom Waits. My father owned a few of his early records like Night Hawks at the Dinner, and I would often sit at the hi-fi and listen to Tom’s crazy vaudevillian voice and back alley jazz instrumentation. I had no idea what I was listening to, but I knew it was good. I also love book smart blondes with porcelain skin and perfectly proportioned breasts.

Remember when Scarlet Johansson put on that crazy, pink wig and seduced Bill Murray with some seriously drunken karaoke in Lost in Translation? Most men would have killed to be in that room with Scarlet drunkenly moaning into the microphone. That brief scene was cute, charming, tender, and sexy. So why is Scarlet Johansson’s new record of Tom Waits covers, entitled Anywhere I Lay My Head, so horrid? Some might say it’s the brutal fact that Scarlet Johansson can’t sing. It’s true, she really can’t sing. She is on par with Val Kilmer or William Shatner in her ability to Friday the 13th a pop song. That being said, I think what makes her project so uniquely stank-tastic is that nobody wants to hear a gorgeous, youthful, wealthy starlet sing the songs of a whiskey cured, bohemian hobo, with a voice like a bag of rusty nails. It provokes even the most gracious music listener to ask, “Are you f#cking kidding me?”

Maybe it’s sexist to say that a beautiful woman can’t make an emotional record about hard times and film noir style suffering, but if Scarlet Johansson wants to pull off another album of Tom Waits covers, she better bust out the whiskey and rusty nails.

Suicide Girls:The Cool Jerk

2009-02-21T20:44:00.000-08:00

Pornography has been around since people discovered nudity. I suppose there was a time, shortly after clothes were invented, where a Cro-Magnon caught a glimpse of his wife’s cleavage as she bent over a hot pot of mammoth stew and said, “I’m going to paint these beauties on a cave wall and look at them later.” Recently, while visiting the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, I stumbled across a small clay tablet carved by ancient Assyrian people who lived in what today is Iran. The tablet featured a rendering of an Assyrian couple enjoying a little rear-entry action. On a card next to the pornographic tablet I learned that the Assyrians also invented beer brewing. This region of the Middle East really was the cornerstone of modern civilization. Living in a such porn filled society, it is interesting to see that modern humanity is the result of thousands of years of tradition. The ancient Assyrians had fermented barley wine and clay tablets; we have Schlitz and Suicide Girls.

Suicide Girls is an interesting phenomenon. It's a porn site, run by women, featuring pictures of nude women who see their bodies as expressive canvases for artistic interpretation. The tattooed ladies of Suicide Girls hearken back to the pro-women’s rights era of the 1950s when strippers were ‘burlesque dancers’ and prostitutes were ‘secretaries.’ It is a little funny that burlesque, a somewhat raunchy, mildly immoral vestige of mid-century America, is now seen as a liberating art form for women. Suicide Girls is a well designed porn website and an expansive forum for punk rock nudity. That being said, I see the tattoos and piercings as frosting on the proverbial T and A donut. I suppose the website is empowering, in that the models aren’t teen runaways and the photographers aren’t middle aged coke-heads with rum stained t-shirts. At the end of the day, Suicide Girls is a beautifully conceived vehicle for the male gaze and an erection enticing piece of internet fantasia. I'm sure the women that run Suicide Girls would be happy to know, that when I look at their website, my erection feels as if it might punch right through my American Apparel jogging pants. For Suicide Girls is not porn, in that disgusting Assyrian sense, it is modernist art in the cheap internet sense.

BREAK BREAK

2009-02-21T15:57:00.000-08:00

On a cold Saturday afternoon, sometimes it's nice to sit back and listen to some classic breakbeats. Those interested to know what a breakbeat is can Wikipedia it up.

La Petit Mort/ The Internet Has Gone Too Far

2009-02-21T14:04:00.000-08:00

I’m a curious guy, and I like to investigate interesting subjects in the arts, culture, music, politics, and history. I am also a heterosexual man, and as such, I investigate nudity. On a recent investigation, I discovered a website entitled Beautiful Agony: La Petit Mort. The innovative site, featuring the faces of various young hip people as they achieve orgasmic climax, was confounding. The site was both interesting conceptually, a bit intriguing, and mundane. It also brought up a few interesting issues about internet porn, and the act of boiling down sex to a demi glace of various faces writhing in awkward ecstasy.

I discovered masturbation in a rather happenstance sort of way. As a preteen, I did not have the benefit of an older brother or sister to tell me about “self love” or the diverse range of potential lubrication substances. I was twelve, in a bathroom, bored on a cold Sunday afternoon, and for one reason or another I had a hand full of hair conditioner. The only familiarity I had with the female anatomy was the triangle of hair that adorned every Playboy centerfold’s nether regions from 1955 through 1990. In my twelve-year-old mind, sex was nothing more than a brief relationship with a hair triangle. I had figured it all happened inside of the triangle. That afternoon, for the first time, I came. My small, pale body dropped to the floor, convulsing in a shower of violent synapses, and my eyes snapped shut with a sudden flop of joy. My first orgasm flopped out of my body like a tired bus driver after a long day, as if to say “what took you so long?”

As I fondled puberty, I became increasingly interested in inspirational material. I scoured Sunday advertising sections in hopes of discovering a nipple in the Sears women’s underwear section. It was the late eighties and photoshopping stray nipples wasn’t yet advertising protocol. To be honest, Sunday supplements were often rather rich in nipples. One of my fantasies was to be locked in an adult bookstore alone, all the shelves free to peruse, without the prying eyes of the middle aged clerk. In the dream, which was reoccurring throughout my teen years, my soul would fill with the infinite possibility of a veritable nipple cornucopia. This teen dream was realized by a group of computer scientists in the 1960s. These brave men gave the world the never ending adult bookstore, the teenage fantasy land filled with an endless supply of nudity - these men gave us: the internet.

The creators of La Petit Mort, in their quest for an artful approach to nipples in the Sears Sunday supplement, have created an interesting, if strangely disconnected take on standard internet pornography. It seems that in this real life teenage boy fantasy of infinitesimal nipples, people are at their wits end trying to figure out what will be the next craze in masturbation material. To be honest, La Petit Mort would have scared the crap out of me as a teenager. Watching a lesbian from Berlin shout out in ecstasy, filmed at close range, would have given me more questions than answers. Is the world ready for sexuality this basic, this repetitiously human? Even in this golden age of digital sexuality, part of me would prefer a hidden nipple buried in the Sunday newspaper.

Chicago Music Spotlight: The King of Deep / Larry Heard

2009-02-07T21:17:00.000-08:00

Larry Heard, born May 31, 1960, is a Memphis, Tennessee-based musician widely known for the Chicago-based house music he produced in the mid-1980s. Born on the South Side of Chicago, Heard grew up hearing jazz and soul music at home, and could play several instruments from a very young age. Before beginning his solo musical career in 1983, he played in various jazz and fusion cover groups. Heard was the leader of the influential group Fingers Inc. and has recorded solo under various names, most notably Mr. Fingers. Heard’s music, with its elegant, funky style and lush production, set the pace for Chicago’s ‘deep house’ sound in the late 1980s and early 1990s. As of 2009, Heard is still performing, recording and producing music.

www.myspace.com/larryheardakamrfingers

Where in Chicago is Sam Prekop?

2009-02-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

Sam Prekop is an elusive individual. A bus traveler, prone to introspective, beautiful ramblings about 'fox-glove eyes' and 'the sporting life.'' He also seems to have disappeared. The pop singer/songwriter, responsible for a legacy of notable Chicago bands such as The Sea and Cake and Shrimp Boat, seems to have vanished. The Sea and Cake just released a rollicking record entitled Car Alarm, and Mr. Prekop has released a book of black and white photographs, both projects to critical acclaim. To add insult to injury, and to complete the hip triumvirate, Prekop also makes beautiful abstract paintings based on architectural elements. So where the hell is this creative dilettante? Where does he drink his Shlitz and have his morning coffee? I would like to know.

Sam Prekop's music is worth seeking out. His tunes are a mixture of bossa nova, English pop sensibilities, and jazzy phrasing. The music is also painfully introspective in a way that feels completely wonderful. Those seeking sounds for a romantic evening with an art student should pick up a Sea and Cake record and dim the lights. Prekop's solo records are also worth checking out. Visit Thrill Jockey Records and pick up a few of his uniquely Chicago sides.

THE SEA AND CAKE / COCONUT

-C-

Closed: EndlessBassic Photography C. Arthur / Chicago, Illinois / 2008-2009

The Art Gallery Cabaret : Free Music, Cheap Beer

2009-02-06T12:44:00.000-08:00

Hidden away down a nondescript side street is one of Chicago's secret pleasures. The Art Gallery Cabaret, a local Bucktown haunt for a few decades, is now one of the most unique spots to listen to undiscovered music in Chicago. The long narrow establishment is reminiscent of many Chicago corner taverns dotted across the city. In decades past, these after-work gathering spots served as a place of refuge and camaraderie for Chicago's blue collar working class. It's the kind of place where 60 year old men come to drink, after a meatloaf dinner, wearing fishing flannel and slippers. It's the kind of place where the Midwest is the whole world encapsulated in a snow globe of tap beer and brown liquor. The Cabaret's washrooms are dim, musty, and covered in phone numbers and show bills, but this only adds to the charm. The long bar is perfect for accommodating a group of drinkers, and if you are lucky, you might be able to strike up an interesting conversation with one of the Cabaret's regulars. The majority of the Cabaret's seating consists of cocktail tables strewn about as if a tornado had discharged them from its inner core.

What separates the Cabaret from the rest of the corner taverns in Chicago is the music. Acts of diverse aptitude perform almost every night and the sheer variety can be staggering. Country musicians open sets, only to be followed by middle age, jazz session cats reliving their glory days. Youthful big bands test out their chops on the small stage, and even more youthful punk bands test the limits of the room's PA system. I have been to the Gallery Cabaret on numerous nights and at first I was a skeptic. "Does Chicago really need a continuous amateur hour bar?" After going back again and again, I began to realize that the Art Gallery Cabaret does not offer a pristine musical experience, but an experience based on pure human expression. On a cold January night, I sat at one of the small cocktail tables, drinking a cheap glass of beer and watching a band of elderly jazz musicians, when it occurred to me that we could all be watching television instead of participating in this collective experience. Don't get me wrong, I like television, but there was something special about watching music happen with such a raw veneer and so little pretense. Suddenly, music was just a beautiful mood, and I didn't want to be sitting anywhere else in the whole god dammed world.

For those not overtly motivated by music, the Cabaret offers $4 pitchers of decent local beer, and some might say that cheap brew is more "Chicago" than good music.

The Art Gallery Cabaret
2020 N Oakley Ave Chicago, IL 60647
(773) 489-5471

A Piece of Plastic with a Hole

2009-02-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

What the hell is genius? “A little piece of plastic with a hole?”
If you are unfamiliar with the production work of J-Dilla, you are missing out on a legacy that is both insane and brilliant. This is a man who could create musical soundtracks with layers of simplicity and unusually crunchy funkiness. His work is revered by most modern day hip hop producers, and I have even heard the notoriously bombastic Busta Rhymes get choked up when discussing the man’s talents. The interesting thing about Dilla is that he liked to play around. He was a prolific experimenter and his sketches are still out there, in the world, waiting to be put to vinyl. One of these sketch collections, released by Stones Throw Records in 2006, entitled Donuts, exemplifies Dilla’s penchant for insane creativity. Donuts is really just a collection of digitally chopped up soul, funk, doo-wop, and rock records, with a limited amount of sound effects and tampering. The record illustrates the genius of a man having a love affair with music history and the possibilities of a sampling.

A perfect example of Dilla’s production style and sketch technique resides within the tune “Workinonit.” The tune is a re-contextualized version of the British pop band 10cc’s song “Worst Band in the World.” The tune is a funny, sardonic, minimal attack on the modern music industry. For Dilla, the tune is sample rich, with tough funk drums, an echo filled bass groove and vocal stabs ready for the plucking. Dilla’s genius is the fact he identified the song as being great sample material. Anyone can hear a sample in a Roy Ayers groove, or a James Brown vamp, but to find a potential banger in a goofy, one off single, by a fluffy British pop band- that is quite another thing altogether. Dilla’s ears were golden and if more of his uniquely off the wall sketches see the light of day, the game will be better for it.

Between Motown and a Hard Place : Recession Era Hip Hop from the Midwest

2009-02-03T15:18:00.000-08:00

It’s all over the news, we hear it on almost all channels of communication: This is the worst economic period since the great depression. Once lucrative business are laying off hard working stiffs left and right, the auto industry is seeking bailout money, and unemployment numbers continue to grow. Living in Chicago, there are numerous signs of a downward economic spiral. It doesn’t take a sociologist to notice there are more rust covered cars on the road, young kids in dusty coats, stores boarded up, and more forlorn faces on the cold Chicago streets. This recession has affected Chicago in a very unique way. Chicago was experiencing a boom at the millennium. The culturally rich city was experiencing unprecedented real-estate growth and business development, and for better or worse, gentrification was awkwardly revitalizing parts of the Midwestern metropolis. Over the last eight years, Chicago has not been protected from the credit crises and the all encompassing national recession. Chicago, like many a Midwestern city, has succumb to a national gloom.

Detroit is a city familiar with depression. A city built on the dreams of auto manufacturing and industrial prowess. A modern city filled with progressive ideals and cursed by corruption. The recession has turned most Midwestern cities into a collection of micro- and macro- versions of Detroit. That being said, Detroit is one of the few cities that has built a cottage industry on struggling and surviving. Detroit’s music exemplifies the very middle class ideals of work, struggle and redemption. In the 1960s, the Motown label produced music born out of the civil rights struggle and the materialistic opulence of an auto industry at peak performance. The music on the Motown label was at once soulful, spiritual, and elegantly acceptable to a mass audience. Somewhere between Motown and Reaganomics Detroit city lost its zeal for elegance and began embracing its more bare-knuckled aesthetics. The global economic transitions of the 1970s and 80s proved to be fatal for the city built on the singular dream of dominating global auto manufacturing. After Motown, Detroit gave birth to burgeoning hardcore punk, techno, and garage rock music scenes. The music coming from the motorized city in the 70s and 80s was anything but polished. It was raw, masculine, and industrial. Whether the pounding drums from punk bands like the Meatmen or the unforgiving motor beats of producers like Juan Adkins, in the years following Reaganomics, Detroit music was trying like the devil to break free. Through music, Detroit was crushing its economic failures, while celebrating its hard fought work ethic and creative soul.

Detroit has been living the death of the American dream for decades, beginning with the race riots in 1967, up to its induction as the “murder capital of America” at the dawn of the 21st century. This story of boom and blight is a story being repeated throughout America’s Midwestern cities. It’s a tale being told in the back alleys of Chicago, and the streets of Minneapolis. Detroit has suddenly set the tone for the entire Midwest, and its music speaks loudly to an audience with active, open ears.

In 2009, it’s not New York, LA or the dirty south that is setting the musical backdrop for the blighted economy and the hopeful optimism of a new president- it’s the Midwest. The raw, soulful sounds born out of cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, and Detroit seem to be pushing forth a generation of beat makers and lyricists not concerned with stylistic convention or ashamed of hard times. Artists such as J-Dee Yancey and Black Milk in Detroit, as well as Brother Ali in Minneapolis, and Qwel in Chicago, continue to make music with a very Midwestern aesthetic. It’s an aesthetic that resonates over the sound of closed factories and foreclosed homes. These Midwestern music makers owe a thing or two to Detroit, a city that has been making art in the face of hard times for decades. The duality of art and struggle echoes loudly in the music of revered producer J-Dee Yancey. The producer, who worked with everyone from Common, Erika Badu, and Tribe Called Quest, gave his beats a rough hewn, collage feel. In a J-Dilla beat, it is as if each track had been compiled from rusted Motown studios, discarded Cadillac grills, and shoes wrapped around telephone lines. His music was not only sonically well crafted; it was music that was directly taken from the Midwestern streets on which he was raised. It could be argued that J-Dilla made music that described his city better than a thousand news broadcasts or documentaries. His legacy of local appreciation, home grown soul and acknowledgment of the daily grind is being continued by Detroit artists like Black Milk and Invincible.

This Detroit Aesthetic isn’t just held within Michigan state lines. In 2008, Washington bred producer Jake One collaborated with a host of divergent MCs for his eponymous debut LP entitled White Van Music. The LP featured numerous Midwest MCs and had an overt nod to blue collar roots and the raw, unvarnished style so loved in the bread basket of the free world. Midwest MCs Brother Ali and Freeway provided the album’s introductory single “The Truth.” The track, while overtly earnest and completely ‘un-hip’ lets both MCs showcase their Midwest values and speak to the problems that face middle America at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. What is so striking about this track, found on an underground hip hop record, is how unselfconscious the track sounds. On “The Truth” Brother Ali breaks into a sing-song verse more reminiscent of a Baptist sermon than the flow of an underground MC. On this track, Ali is blowing not in a palace, but a studio apartment in a Midwestern city, eating ramen noodles with a pregnant wife, and he’s letting the struggle pour out through every lyric. This aesthetic isn’t atypical in the Midwest. A few hundred miles underneath Minneapolis is the Chicago, home of Qwel. Like Brother Ali, Qwel has a flow partially borrowed from the African American Blues and Gospel spoken word traditions. On his 2005 LP, If It Aint Been In A Pawn Shop, Then It Cant Play The Blues, the MC fully embraces the role of a world weary sage speaking about blue collar hard times and survival within the maze of the city. On this recording, Qwel becomes something of a hip hop Nelson Algren and uses his mic to weave intricate stories about blue collar survival.

There is a workman like quality to Midwestern hip hop, and whether born out of Detroit or just influenced by its plight, hip hop in the middle of America is more relevant now that it has ever been. It’s the sound of factory fathers, bus riders, and tarnished silver chains. It’s the sound of aspirations, realized or not. It’s the wail of tarnished hope, untapped potential, and without a doubt, it’s a sound that deserves our attention.

What the F*$k is the Lowdown?

2009-02-02T23:27:00.000-08:00

In 1976, at the peak of disco's cross-over success, pop-r&b vocalist Boz Skaggs recorded '"Lowdown" for his album Silk Degrees. The tune is an elegant proto-disco vamp with a thumping bass line and locked groove that highlights a lovely flute melody and Skagg's weird wedding singer/blue eyed soul vocals. The track was widely acclaimed on the disco infused pop charts of the late 70s and won a grammy for the best R&B song of 1976.

Anyone who has heard "Lowdown" knows that it is a strange, rare piece of American pop music. I recently djed a cocktail party filled with thirty something intellectuals, and when the opening bass-drum-keyboard intro came coursing through the speakers, a few stiff necks began nodding to the beat. Everyone at this strange party had a different taste in music, but this one song connected each person to a very weird moment in time. A time when disco and classic rock were making out in the panel van of pop music. It was a time when a guy, looking like a cross between a mailman and one of your dad's bowling buddies, could croon about a loose woman over a terse funk groove and create a timeles track of pure swagger. I have never been able to put my finger on why this tune is so universally accepted and enjoyed. I have played it at parties filled with trendy hip hop kids, metal heads, disco snobs, and jaded hipsters, and I've never heard a complaint. The strange thing about "Lowdown" is how it comes so close to failure, yet succeeds. Mixing disco, with blue-eyed soul, Phillie-strut, synth strings, and classic rock guitars sounds like something I would play to get a terrorist out of a cave. When all these insane elements are combined, what you're left with is a musical anomaly- the universally appealing tune.

Pull the "Lowdown" out at your next soiree and see if there is a sad face among the dancing horde. Not since Michael Jackson had skin the color of Swiss Miss has a piece of music caused so many heads to nod.

Peace, Love, Weed, 3D: Out of the Bush and into the Weeds

2009-01-31T14:44:00.001-08:00

Eliot Lipp, beat producer, smoker and world traveler, has just released an epic piece of 21st century electronic song bliss. I've known Mr. Lipp for quite a few years, even living with him briefly in 2003. We shared a two-flat, walk up apartment in an insanely diverse Chicago neighborhood. The apartment was a long train ride away from the hip and pretentious parts of Chicago. The closest thing we had to a record store was the Arabic grocery that sold Jordanian pop cassettes along with candied almonds, hookahs, and fruit juice. Eliot has since moved to North Hollywood, and the producer currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

We shared the apartment/music studio with two other music makers, and suffice it to say I learned a thing or two about making beats, italo-disco, Georgio Moroder, and jazz fusion. Lipp has always been a prolific music maker and a man of immense intuitive creativity. His beat making catalog is sprawling for a kid who has yet to french kiss thirty. Eliot is a rare breed. He is a music maker that is at once cynical about his own abilities and completely optimistic about the world of music. The kid loves sound. On his new record, Peace Love Weed 3D, Lipp intertwines cynicism with sensitivity and a willingness to suspend his own musical disbelief. The product is a joyous, naked, corny, strong, and completely innovative piece of unpretentious sound. I will refrain from the standard music review and just simply say that PLW3D invites Lil' John, Timbaland, Prefuse 73, George Duke, Georgio Moroder, Luke Vibert, and Herbie Hancock to a cocktail party, gets them drunk on punch, and then forces them to skinny dip at the synth pool. What surprises me about PLW3D is how un-hip it sounds. Lipp made this record for himself and that is to his credit. It is a record he would enjoy listening to, and he isn't concerned with how this beat cake will taste in the mouths of hipsters in his Brooklyn neighborhood. Lipp is also collaborating with other musicians these days, namely Guitar Ron and members of the Pnuma Trio. This collaborative spirit has had a maturing affect on his beats. His synth lines are more considered, and his melodic phrasing is elegant and restrained. PLW3D is the product of many divergent factors, but it is without a doubt, one of the most accomplished releases from a producer who is searching through the crates and the weeds.

http://www.myspace.com/eliotlipp

Unemployment and the Joy of Chicago

2009-01-30T20:17:00.000-08:00

Chicago can be a bleak place. It is also a city of unimaginable beauty and roughed up charm. It is, if you look hard enough, a city of secrets, lies, and triumph. Chicago, in its rusty, dusty guts is a city with a perpetual hangover. Never is this more apparent then in the dirty, snow crushed January winters. January in Chicago is filled with the perfume of car exhaust and chimney smoke. The city is never silent in the winter. Boots or shoes pulverize the crystalline snow underneath even the most fleet foot. The wind whirls around alleys, between bare branches and through pant legs. The daylight in winter is brief and flirtatious.

Being unemployed in the winter is epic in its classic bit of tragedy. The salt stained pants, damaged leather shoes and lint covered coat bolster the already dire mindset of the job seeker. I have been unemployed now for almost a week. I have been putting off going to the unemployment office, mainly because the psychology of the place has the power to soak all round your being. On Monday I decided to brave the elements and head over to the office and fill out the required forms. I stood in line behind a man in his 40's and his elderly mother. They were Italian, or Polish, or Romanian. In Chicago, ethnicities weave together like Persian tapestry. The man in the faded, over-sized, dim yellow coat, and his tiny thimble of a mother stood in front of me in line. I tried not to pay attention to every second of their uniquely Chicago conversation. I read an article about George W. Bush in Newsweek. The man kept talking to his mother like she was his only friend in the world. He spoke to her like she was his wife, pool hall acquaintance, girlfriend, and work buddy. I could tell his mother was his main point of contact with the world. He talked jive to her in a very Chicago way and discussed conspiracy theories, porno, the economy, politics, and the ins and outs of unemployment. I instantly pictured this man living with his mom, eating her stuffed pork chops every night and dipping out of the house,after she goes to bed, to get erotic massages and play pool at the dank neighborhood bar. He was the kind of guy who never left the neighborhood and purchased grocery store socks.

As I stood there, I felt as if I were watching a play on reality. A curtain free one act featuring this Chicago man and his mom. A character study, or a warning shot, I wasn't sure. Was he the ghost of Christmas future? I felt as if I could relate to the guy's situation, but not his relationship to his mom. She was everything to him and it showed. He had not developed the kind of relationships adults use to move forward in life. His whole world started and stopped with what his mom was having for lunch. He was wearing a headset. I wondered what AM news station he was listening to.

2009-01-28T20:19:00.000-08:00

The True Eccentric = Cornet (Tiny Trumpet)

The true eccentric. The man in the big band, full of big men, holding the tiniest of trumpets. I know, the item in the photograph hovering above this paragraph is actually the very respectable cornet, an instrument of impressive sound quality if played correctly. We must admit however, there is something of the eccentric about it. After all, I still see a tiny trumpet when I glance at it. It takes a man or woman with a fair amount of self confidence to place their lips on this little trumpet and blow. The tuba is such an all encompassing status quo of an instrument. And let’s be honest, tuba players are the Porsche drivers of the jazz world, and let’s face it; they all have extremely inadequate genitalia. Sorry Germany.

Some find eccentricity in excess. The Hindus for instance, or Donald Trump, or Devendra Banheart- they are all hedonistic eccentrics. I would also put the hilariously enthusiastic chef Mario Bitali in the camp with the hedonistic eccentrics. In fact, I would like nothing more than to see Devendra Banheart and Mario Bitali being heroically, hedonistic and eccentric together. If it were a TV show, and free, and both characters were in various stages of undress, I would watch it with bliss painted across my face. An excessively hedonistic, eccentric, adjective filled bliss. Both of these entertainers, one an indie-rock folk singer and the other a world traveling chef, seem to exhibit their eccentricity through every aspect of their lifestyles. Even their beards and haircuts flaunt convention.

In Catholic school I would wear the same pale blue polo shirt and faded black chords every single day. It was my grade school uniform and eliminated eccentricity. I was cajoled into conforming to both imposed theocracy and traditional education. I found out later that eccentricity was in fact resting dormant inside of being, and would soon creep its way out in the form of neon skull adorned pedal-pushers and a series of unfortunately rebellious mullets. I was 12, it was 1990, Milli Vanilli had just been exposed for being horrid frauds, and George Bush's father was leading the nation in a sterile techno-war with Iraq. In the midst of all of this action, my eccentricity furrowed its way out, covered in awkward acne patterns and arm-pit hair. In Catholic school eccentricity is something to be buried under a Family Circle cartoon book, a game of red rover, or a clergyman’s robe. It is in Catholic grade school where I learned that eccentricity, at least of the Devandra Banheart haircut and beard variety, will get you relegated to long lonely bus rides, and bouts of Greco Roman wrestling.

Sometimes it’s better to refrain from the cool haircuts, but then again, sometimes a cool haircut can lead to an unfortunate sexual experience. If there is anything that has the potential to define a potentially eccentric man or woman, it’s a backlog of unfortunate sexual experiences. There is something very eccentric about mounting another human being at 3am with a bottle of rum coursing through your system, and trying, without hesitation to muster some default satisfaction . Maybe that is what keeps the Devendra Banhearts eccentric. Maybe eccentricity is the result of multiple failures, turned brilliantly into success.