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October 10, 2008
Inchworm has been kicking around the Chicago club scene for a few years, honing their brand of comfortably free-form rock and pop and showing off the considerable chops among the band's five members. Our fine city has a long tradition of melding cozy Americana roots music with elements of electronic orchestration (Summerteeth, anyone?), and Inchworm's latest offering, Sheep In Wolf's Clothing, falls right into line. There's plenty of warm tones and meandering, heartland rock with...
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As Duke Ellington might have said, Arthur Russell was a musician and composer "beyond category." In his short life (he died of complications from AIDS at the age of 40) he composed and recorded music that could be classified as folk, disco, ambient, classical, pop and even country. He was born in Iowa and followed in his mother's footsteps by taking up the cello as a child. Later he moved to San Francisco (befriending...
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Piano pop-rocker Ben Folds will be rocking Chicago's Apple Store at 3 p.m. in a special performance to help promote his new LP Way To Normal. Folds will be performing a 30-minute set followed by a 30-minute signing opportunity for fans. If you want to get in, you'd better start lining up now. If you can't make it, though, Ben is performing tonight at the Congress Theater and last we checked, tickets are still available...for...
Continue Reading "Ben Folds Rockin' The Apple Store"October 9, 2008
Mark your calendars: August 7 through 9 will be the dates of next year's Lollapalooza at Grant Park. Maybe it'll bring in even more money than this year's!...
Continue Reading "Lollapalooza 2009 Dates Announced"We mentioned earlier this week the potential mind-blowing Tina Fey/Sarah Palin appearance tonight on the premiere of Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update Thursday. SNL's audience has increased almost 50% since last year, in part due to Fey's uncanny Palin. Fey + Palin + Thursday night = ratings gold. So we thought we'd bust out our Great Detective Kit, try our hand at being sleuth-y, and see if there is any weight to the rumors......
Continue Reading "Speculation-ist: Will Palin Appear on SNL's Thursday Special? "Advertisement: Chicagoist Continues Below!
October 9, 2008
Tickets for the Smashing Pumpkins' 20th Anniversary tour Chicago shows go on sale to the general public this Monday, October 13 at 10:00 a.m. They are: November 18 and November 19 at The Chicago Theatre ($47 - $62) November 21 and November 22 at The Auditorium Theatre ($48 - $63) But there are plenty of presales, including the one happening tomorrow at 10 a.m. for the Chicago Theatre shows. We're conflicted on how we feel...
Continue Reading "Empty Out Your Wallet: Smashing Pumpkins Edition"That's not a reference to Sarah Palin shooting at defenseless creatures in the Alaskan wilderness, but to the October 10 outdoor premiere of re:edit -- a video by Chicago artist Kim Alpert that explores the Internet's impact on sexual and gender identity. Alpert believes that the Internet has both sped up the process of achieving equality between the sexes and produced a backlash among folks who cling to more traditional views on gender. Her video...
Continue Reading "Exploring Gender in the Great Outdoors"We admit we're still having a hard time forming a singular opinion about Jamie Lidell's show last night at Metro. We're justifiably cautious when it comes to British neo-soul singers -- hello Jamiroquai -- and what we say of Lidell's Lollapalooza set didn't exactly bowl us over. The advice of a trusted friend urging us to give him another chance in a smaller room led us to last night's show despite our reservations....
Continue Reading "Photos: Jamie Lidell at Metro"
Just when you thought the outdoor drinking season was over, the Chicago Country Music Festival makes a late entry. Once part of the Taste of Chicago, the fest declares its independence with a new date and location this weekend at the Soldier Field "parkland." (Which is pretty much a fancy way to say parking lot.) We're not gonna lie, we don't know a ton about the opening acts, but we can tell you they look...
Continue Reading "Country Music Festival Stands on its Own"October 8, 2008
The fine folks at North Shore Distillery (by the way, their Distiller's Gin No. 11, the second highest-rated American made gin— their Distiller's No. 6 is the highest rated) are looking for some good local artists to help them design some artwork for future advertising campaigns. To that end, they've decided to hold a contest to choose a winning design and want local artists to enter their best submissions. A cash prize is involved. For...
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Head on over to Woman Made Gallery on Friday, Oct. 10 for Object of Desire, a 34-artist show juried by art critic/curator Claire Wolf Krantz that explores lust (hey!) and the creative process. Featured artists work in all types of media, from clay to beads. Also opening is Divided Beauty, a solo show of works on paper by Chicago artist and educator Ginny Sykes that examines gendered archetypes and symbols from a feminist perspective. Both...
Continue Reading "Things of Desire and Beauty"October 7, 2008
Take On Me. Literally....
Continue Reading "Tuesday Afternoon Diversion"We heard that last Thursday's Beck show at Aragon was the pits, so we went into Friday's appearance in the same room with great trepidation. Well, whatever went wrong Thursday went incredibly right Friday since it was by far the strongest set we've ever seen the blonde lanky folkie / hip-hop / troubadour / experimentalist / punk / musical dumpster diver turn in. Yes, it was even better than that time we saw him backed...
Continue Reading "Photos: Beck at Aragon Ballroom"MSTRKRFT at Double Door. We're so happy they moved this banger of a show from Metro since it means a) no little kids and b) the fucking monstrous beats of MSTRKRFT will be demolishing a room as small as Double Door! Wahoo! It's bound to be absolutely insane. If you like either dance music or rock music, you do not want to miss this. Getcher tickets now, because it will sell out....
Continue Reading " Tonight's rilly big shoe?"Music It's gettin' hot in herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrre. Nelly hits up the House of Blues for a later-than-standard show to support his new record, TITLE. 11:30 p.m. House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, 17+, $40 via Ticketmaster Lit If you're Tivo-ing the debate, Foreign Affairs writer Stepehn Kinzer makes a stop at Dominican University tonight to present a lecture, "History, Journalism, and the Core of a College Education." 8 p.m., Dominican University, Eloise Martin Recital Hall, 7900...
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October 7, 2008
Single tickets for the 44th Chicago International Film Festival, which runs October 16-29, are now on sale. You can buy them online, by phone (312-332-FILM), or in person at several venues around town. And of course the entire festival schedule is online. Your best value is still one of the festival passes; and there are so many great movies to see this year it'd be shame to limit yourself to only one or two....
Continue Reading "Chicago International Film Festival Tickets Now on Sale"October 6, 2008
Did you know that Chicago's an ecotourism destination? Neither did we, until we noticed that the Chicago Tourism Office's Website includes a page geared toward "ecotourists." We always thought ecotourism involved rain forests and other undeveloped habitats, not Donald Trump-made skyscrapers and potholes galore. Go figure! Or maybe "Go greenwashers" is more like it. According to the International Ecotourism Society, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that purports to be the world's oldest and largest ecotourism association,...
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Get your rock in early with free shows this week, kids... Monday, Oct. 6 Brilliant Pebbles @ Empty Bottle w/ The Chinese Stars, Dead Gods, and Awesome Brothers, 9:00 p.m., FREE - With roots in psych punk, electronica, and the calculated sonic freakouts of a band on the brink of forging a new path, Brilliant Pebbles are an assault on the bland predictability of today's "indie" music that wouldn't have been out of place on...
Continue Reading "Local Options"With the rain holding off until twenty minutes before start time, the weather didn't deter the several hundred folks donning their iPods at precisely 2:00 p.m. on Sunday to receive direction from an omnipotent voice as part of Improv Everywhere's Mp3 Experiment. It did, however, cut down on the number of people wandering through Lincoln Park wondering what the hell was going on -- part of the fun -- but that didn't dampen (heh) the...
Continue Reading "Photos: The Mp3 Experiment"Survival of the Fittest: Fend off the weeknight doldrums with a very special evening of stiff drinks and equally stiff competition as Krem bar hosts the 11th Finlandia Cup tonight; area bartenders will compete against each other in cocktail concoction, and you will consume the mixological fruits of their labor. Abundant appetizers will temper the booze in your belly, to be sure. 7 p.m., 1750 N Clark, FREE! Survival of the Funniest: If you’re not...
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Over the past few months we've seen OFFICE undergo some surprising changes that included personnel overhauls and a more adventurous sonic direction. They've played a handful of local shows over the past few months -- including another appearance at Lollapalooza -- but this month they are reemerging in force with a monthly residency at Schubas on Monday nights through the entire month of October. (O.K., we'll say it, Rocktober!) In following with the bands...
Continue Reading "Free OFFICE!"October 5, 2008
A movie we saw at last year's Chicago International Film Festival has a return engagement at the Midwest Independent Film Festival this Tuesday, and it's got our seal of approval. Home of the Giants was one of our surprise favorites last year, partially because going in we weren't expecting much from a high school crime thriller starring Haley Joel Osment. But we were impressed: Osment plays Gar, a journalist on the school paper who...
Continue Reading "Second Chance Theater: Home of the Giants"October 4, 2008
Just a reminder, the Mp3 Experiment we mentioned a few weeks ago is happening tomorrow, October 5th at 2:00 in Lincoln Park, Grove #3 (just south of South Pond). This seems like a fun way to get your kids involved in performance art, unlike say, their previous "No Pants" mission. The event will happen rain or shine, so let's hope the rain predicted holds off until later in the day. Go here for all the...
Continue Reading "Mp3 Experiment Tomorrow"October 3, 2008
Starting Monday, Lyric’s 13th annual Opera in the Neighborhoods program will kick off once again, bringing kiddie-friendly opera directly to young students throughout the Chicagoland area. This year’s program will present a version of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, staging approximately 30 performances at different local schools and auditoriums through the beginning of November. We were glad to learn that Lyric’s education department doesn’t think that squirmy schoolchildren can be expected to sit through a long,...
Continue Reading "Field Trip!"It seems Kanye's proposed show for HBO, produced by Larry Charles, may not make it to air. At least, anytime soon. Said Charles: It was really good, but ... I think it was too hard-core for HBO. Also, HBO's management shifted. HBO doesn't have a good track record when it comes to black shows, and I felt like that may have had something to do with it also. I don't see a lot of shows...
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October 3, 2008
Oprah brought out the big guns early again this week as Monday’s show tackled the little known epidemic of heroin addiction in middle America. A rural Ohio family joined Oprah and Lisa Ling via satellite: a mother, father and two teenage boys all addicted to the drug. Once a six-figure family, now without a home, without jobs, and with no possessions left to sell to pay for their habit, this family appeared a muted, glazed-over...
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