CHICAGO LIVE REPORT
There sure are a lot more shows to go see in Chicago than there are in Lincoln, Nebraska. In two months, I've already missed probably 10 shows that would've been the event of the year in Lincoln. In this week's Chicago Reader, there's shows advertised for George Thorogood, Ted Nugent, Ani DiFranco, that guy Maxwell, Ray Davies, Jonathan Richman, Built to Spill, DJ Krush, Joe Strummer, Lucinda Williams, Tricky, Megadeth, that guy Ben Folds, Weezer, The Black Crowes, that guy Ryan Adams, Erykah Badu, Medeski Martin & Wood, David Byrne, Judas Priest, Anthrax, P.J. Harvey, 311, Tenacious D, Midnight Oil, Eleventh Dream Day, Chic (actually "Nile Rodgers & Chic"), Melissa Etheridge, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Earth Wind & Fire with Rufus & Chaka Khan, Slipknot, Doug E. Fresh, Ken Nordine, Roscoe Mitchell, Pharaoh Sanders....sheezuz, can I stop yet?? I actually don't wanna see ANY of those acts (although I would consider the last four, especially Roscoe Mitchell, but it was a couple days ago and I missed him 'cause I had to work), but here's some shows I have made it to.

         First things first, last night a pretty stacked bill went down at the Empty Bottle. This band from San Francisco called Sleepytime Gorilla Museum played and were pretty exciting. They started out with that creaky monster-uncle lullaby sound that you've heard before from Caroliner and the Sun City Girls. The bar phone was louder than the spooky chiming music they were playing, but the entire crowd was more or less rapt. Inevitably it got loud, and when it did it actually reminded me of Magma, same sort of male/female operatic vocals and twisted prog rocking. Their outfits were also prog, although in that California modern primitive-with-a-gym-membership way. The bass player had an immaculate quasi-Peter Gabriel circa 1974 look (triple mohawk with head-and-face painting). They were also aided considerably by a 'utility' percussionist who ran around a little 'room' of cymbals and wood drums and who knows what else -- hmm, SGM is from Oakland, and William Winant is from Oakland....I doubt that's a coincidence.
         The All-Scars from Washington, D.C. were next. I was interested in them because they were interviewed in the Sound Collector magazine, and they record for the Slowdime label. They had a drummer, a cellist, and a guy who played a recorder flute, a trumpet, danced madly for a minute or two, and read some poetry from a music stand. The poetry thing just wasn't really happening -- I'm sorry, but I no longer want to hear anything that reminds me of a poetry slam. The cellist and drummer were happening, though -- the drummer is the same guy who has joined Fugazi (as a touring member anyway) and he was laying down the same intense avant-gogo beat while the cellist showed both nuance and power. (Yep, Fugazi has two drummers now, and it works very well.)
         Then, after all that, Chicago's own Cheer-Accident took the stage, and convinced me that they are the best band that lives in this city, without a doubt. (Yes, including Tortoise and Eleventh Dream Day and all that stuff.) These guys played over an hour and I, who usually don't like a band going over forty minutes, never wanted them to stop. (More like two hours if you include Dylan Posa's show-concluding two-chord dada joke, and I think you should.) The whole thing was perfectly structured, one progstrumental blitzing into the next, with their brilliant ability to get quiet making for some particularly thrilling segues. It was at least a half hour before any vocals entered the picture, and that was with Posa beat-boxing while Thymme Jones sang, in his lovely pop-music voice, a love ballad that went "You are my profession...you are my profession..." And, late in the show they were joined by their bewitching friends Eleanor and Virginia on vocals for a truly stunning rendition of the epic song "Dismantling the Berlin Waltz" from the highly recommended Enduring the American Dream. Jeez, can you tell I like Cheer-Accident???
          Another fine act from this town is Magas, a/k/a Marlon Magas, who used to be in that Ann Arbor no wave band Couch and that Chicago no wave band Lake of Dracula, who I think were the best thing to come out of the whole scene full stop. Now Magas has taken an interesting Forced Exposure-style change of interest -- he runs his own underground techno record shop and puts on solo performances where he lays down kick-ass beats, funky synth textures, and new wave vocals. It's great and he ALWAYS gets the crowd dancing, which in the Chicago indie-rock scene is VERY hard to do.
           I've seen Magas play on two great bills. One was with Kitty-Yo artists Peaches and Taylor Savvy, and in fact, that night all three acts were one person-and-backing-music, clearly a new performance style in this post-karaoke world. Taylor Savvy was utterly charming, just a cute boho shemp strutting the stage singing about how much he loves the ladies. He even went into the audience and had one cute suburban kid sing to his cute pierced-nose girlfriend "I wanna take you home....I wanna take you home..." etc. Peaches came next and was of course more hardcore, rapping more about the nasty/ugly/freaky side of taking people home. Her act was a weird but really exhiliarating mix of chilling and sexy, with her spaced-out anarchic dancing, naughty lyrics, and strip show routine, all set to very funky electro music. (She even announced one song as a bridge between electro and Z.Z. Top, to which I can only say "Fuck yes.") Most exhiliarating was when she just freaked it over a loop of Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation." Joan went "I don't give a damn about a bad reputation..." over and over again while Peaches screamed "I don't give a fuck!!!" and asked the audience if they did either. (They didn't.)
           Magas also played on a Bulb Records showcase night. Quintron and MIss Pussycat were supposed to headline, but they actually were hit by a drunk driver earlier in the day! They're okay, but had to spend the night in the hospital and couldn't play. Local post-Duotron project X27 were drafted to replace them, and displayed a basic but still very excellent no wave blues chug. The female rhythm section really locks it in, detuned bass and detuned floor toms sounding like one big stupid drum, while the guitarist sprays noise and klangs over the top. Misty Martinez did another karaoke-style solo performance, a sort of naughty prom date princess routine, coming out in a ball gown and then taking it off after about ten seconds while singing strange and not-exactly-gripping Ralph Records-ish avant-synth songs. The only Bulb act to actually play was 25 Suaves, who I knew nothing about before the show. Turns out their guitarist/vocalist is Bulb head honcho/no wave legend Mr. Velocity Hopkins himself. The band is kind of a new direction for him -- crazed primal rock'n'roll influenced by the MC5 and especially by the whole Japan biker-music-to-the-eleventh-power scene (Guitar Wolf, the King Bros). They did it very well, they being Hopkins and an amazing Japanese woman on drums. About thirty seconds in I was like "Holy shit, these guys are a fucking force." You know how that goes. I bought a seven-inch.
            Who else have I seen? Well, shit, I saw Lightning Bolt and they absolutely blew my mind. Before them was the Flying Luttenbachers, who displayed their new two-basses-and-drums hyper-complicated prog direction to very entrancing effect. Entrancing, but it was so damn hot at the Fireside Bowl, and I found myself drifting towards the back of the packed house, and then they got done and Weasel Walter went up to the mic to introduce the band and hawk some records, and before he was done talking some yay-hoo stands up right behind me and starts saying something, and I realize, waitaminnit, his voice is amplified, and he's turning a volume knob on an amp, and he's standing on a drum stool, next to a bass player...in other words, Lightning Bolt had set up their stuff at the back of the room and were ready to tear into their set less than 30 seconds after the finish of the last one! I went from being in the back of the crowd to being in the front of the crowd and when I say "tear" into their set that's exactly what they did. It was blastitude.
          Speaking of "Load Records Providence Rhode Island Blah Blah Blah", I also saw Arab on Radar at the Fireside, again with the Luttenbachers on the bill. The Lutts weren't quite as on this night, which refreshingly proved that they weren't infallible. As for Arab on Radar, they have been so highly praised that it was inevitable that they would disappoint me, and sure enough, they kinda did. I'll admit that the guitarist on the left had a gloriously flabby noise-skronk tone like I haven't heard since Thor Eisentrager of the Cows, and that the guitarist on his left's interplay was pretty reet, and that the drummer gave it all a fairly sexy Bonzo-groove that put it all back in the hips where rock'n'roll belongs, but as far as skronk-groove psychopath rock goes, I really don't see them innovating beyond the Jesus Lizard template. The singer just has a higher voice and lyrics that are more potty-mouthed. Sure, they all wear black, but so do The Faint.
          I've seen more stuff, like Chicago band My Name Is Rar Rar, featuring ex-Luttenbacher/no wave guitarist supremo Chuck Falzone and bandmates wearing some truly amazing costumes. Chicago band Absorb, featuring Pancisville guy Andy Ortmann wearing bondage gear and hilarious rubber gardening gloves while he tweaks synth-noise. Does anyone not wear costumes anymore? Well, Cheer-Accident doesn't. I've seen more than that, and there's more to come...hell, James Brown is playing in town for 8 measly bucks at an African Arts Festival here in a couple days. Too bad he's like 80 years old now....anyway, look for another live music report next ish!
           

AND, FINALLY, SOME LINKS AND STUFF

Here's BECK imparting some wisdom about touring: "Once you've played that same gig in Cleveland for the fourth time, or you're in Scandinavia, and it's snowing, and you're in some hotel with three channels on the TV and a view of an industrial development, it feels like you're in jail. You do the things people in jail do, too. I'm doing a series of drawings of my hotel rooms, so I'll draw, write a letter, meditate or do push-ups."

From the L.A. Weekly, article by Kristine McKenna

The First Church of Holy Rock and Roll is a zine I stumbled across out there on the web, and when the home page has a url like http://www.fortunecity.
com/meltingpot/lebanon/115/index.htm, well, you know you've gotta stumble pretty far off the beaten path to find it. (Their new popup-free url, http://
mypeoplepc.com/members/povereem/, isn't a whole lot better.) It's a full-fledged magazine about the kind of non-commercial but non-avant rock and roll that exists in nicotine-and-booze dens in college towns where drunks rouse 30-50 drunks at a time. The 30-50 know about the Stooges and Television but Elvis Costello always wins in the end. Oh well, they still dig the Elevators and Nuggets and it's not completely generic. And the zinemaster, one Reverend Wayne Coomer of Columbia, MO, writes like a man possessed, definitely like Lester, and shit, a little bit like me too. (Or granted, vice versa.) In fact, it makes me wonder if I should take more pains to hang up the whole Lester hat, there was only one, etc. etc. I mean, Rev. Coomer can write, and he hits most of his nails right on the head, but the whole time I'm goin', "yep, Lester, Lester, ooh, pinch o' Meltzer, yep, Lester" and I know people probably do the same thing when they read Blastitude, so, shit, I don't know, ya know?

A great web site all about "The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit."

'The topic of Miles Davis somehow came up, and Jerry told us a story of one of his old college professors who was living in Paris around the time Miles was there. The professor had gone to see Miles play one night at, and the next day ran into him at a cafe. He nervously walked up to him and said, "Hi, I saw your show last night and it was great..." Miles turned his head slowly until one eye rested on him and said in his raspy voice "Get....the fuck....away....from me..."'
For more anecdotes from Eric Johnson, see the Califone 2001 tour diary at perishablerecords.com