Results tagged “houseofblues”

A quick head's up: the language in the below video is NSFW.

The great part of Lollapalooza is the music. The not-so-great part is the crowds. For those of you who love the music but hate the festival scene, Lollapalooza weekend provides the city with plenty of preshows and after shows. For more, check out the list of all of the so-far-announced post-Lolla shows.

Butch Walker is best known as a hot-shot producer to the stars. He's worked with Avril Lavigne, Katy Perry, Pink, Lindsay Lohan ... and so on. So you might be forgiven if you're a tad shocked to find out that the man also has a solo career fronting a decidedly backward looking glam-rock combo whose previous releases include an album that is actually titled The Rise and Fall of Butch Walker and the Let's-Go-Out-Tonites.

We gave a shout out earlier this year to Minds Matter – a great non-profit college-prep program for inner-city high school kids. Their big fall fundraiser [PDF] is taking place tomorrow night and Minds Matter is hosting a three-hour all you can drink shindig at Sully’s House Tap Room & Grill, with proceeds going directly back to the organization.

Friday, April 25:

We don't know about you, but if we managed to escape 63 counts of involuntary manslaughter after being hanged in the court of public opinion, we might try to go back to our lives, shut the hell up, and count our lucky stars.

If you saw a haze hanging over downtown this morning...nevermind, that joke's too easy. The Doggfather kicked off a two-night stand at the House of Blues last night on his current tour promoting his new record, Ego Trippin' (due out March 11th), and left our ears ringing.

Common is playing a benefit at House Of Blues tomorrow night (along with OFFICE), and another Chicagoist turned us onto this sweet remix to help us get in the mood.*

Lucky enough to get a few days off for the Chrismukkah holidays? Several Chicago area music entities have been kind enough to give you time-filling options.

Man is there a lot going on tonight. Are you sure it's only Wednesday? Because it sure feels like the party is already kicking into high Friday mode. The last few weeks have been a tad lackluster, music-wise, but December is taking this year out with a bang! Here are just a few of tonight's options. Evan Dando resurrects The Lemonheads tonight at Double Door. We caught him last time he came through town and...

We HATE the term Black Wednesday.

Ah, it's like shootin' fish in a barrel over at Chicagoist EOYW headquarters. We know how passionate you guys can get about these things, so we'll cut right to the chase:

We're always skeptical of the "farewell tour" phenomenon, but Ministry seems to mean it. On the heels of their surprisingly good swan-song The Last Sucker, the band has announced the final North American tour dates of its loooong career.

Got the itch to do something fun tonight, given the unseasonably warm weather? We feel you. Options: One of Chicagoist's favorite charities, Mustaches for Kids, has its kick-off get together tonight at Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap, 41 East Superior St. The "growing season" starts Nov 19, so tonight's get-together is all about planning and making pals. 'Stachey! The International Interior Design Association has its Bizarre Bazaar in the Teknion Showroom on the 10th floor of...

Each morning we're going to highlight five bands playing at Lollapalooza that we think are worth seeing. Some will be popular, some less known, but we believe they're all worth your time. And for those not making it to the festival itself, we'll round it out with an additional show going on after the grounds close down for the evening. The Switches We are sure we'll be cursing this band from England throughout the day....

There is nothing more that we want to get done than this installment of Empty Out Your Wallet, so we can get outside and enjoy this day. Leave it to the Ticketmaster gods to curse us once again with numerous great shows making our job harder. The show that our readers were looking forward to last week, The Flaming Lips at the Aragon, goes on sale at 11 a.m. on Saturday. This should be a...

We have a huge case of the giggles today. It all started when we tried to type “jagoff” and it came out “jagoof” and we could not stop laughing at ourselves for five minutes. Then we decided to be productive and write up this edition of EOYW, which only proved that the Ticketmaster gods were laughing along with us with their offerings for this week’s ticket sales.

It’s time to prove that Chicago has the best bands to fill those two early slots at Lollapalooza. Sure, playing at 11:00 a.m. isn’t the most rocking of hours, but it is a great way to have your sound heard by the masses and earn a few converts. Submit songs in mp3 format and then work those MySpace friends, email lists, and phone trees to get people loving your songs and voting online.

We always get a little suspicious when female R&B wunderkinden announce that their latest effort is the first release to feature their "actual" grown-up selves. Often that merely indicates that artists the public grew to know as adolescents are now comfortable wearing next to nothing whilst singing about just how much they like sex. What these starlets often miss is that heavy breathing and lots of skin are rarely any sort of actual window into the world of mature artistry.

We’ve divided this week into the old, the in-between, and the young because we felt that the myriad of choices out there this weekend needed some sort of random pronouncement that really means nothing at all. Sorry ‘bout that, we may have just watched too much CSPAN yesterday and lapsed into nothing speak. The Old Psychedelic Furs June 29, House of Blues, $24.50-$26.50, 18+, on sale Friday at 10:00 a.m. Def Leppard, Styx, Foreigner –...

Tonight is AMPED! Columbia College’s Third Annual Battle of the Bands which is part of an ongoing series that invites participation from area high school students interested in arts and communications majors. Six bands comprised of local students will be competing at Hothouse for the princely sum of a $50 gift certificate per band member and, of course, the bragging rights of being Chicago’s best band! Chicagoist will be there as a “celebrity judge” to...

The main tickets going on sale are Cubs tickets, but for those of us who prefer our activities in smaller bars than Wrigley and usually during the night time so our precious flesh doesn’t burn, here are a few choices for dropping some Benjamins.

At some point today, Fall Out Boy will be playing an invite-only show at House Of Blues to celebrate the release of their new album, Infinity on High. Okay, stop your laughing. To folks with asymmetrical haircuts and teenagers whose composition books are dripping with despondently poetic ink, this is a big deal. And, to a certain extent, it’s sort of a big deal for Chicago as well. Sure, the new disc is probably not...

Oh. My. God. It. Is. Cold. Outside. Here’s what’s gonna motivate us to don seventeen layers of protective cold-weather gear and frequent the local clubs. Tonight the seventy-eight person (okay, we exaggerate slightly) orch-pop outfit The 1900’s begin their Practice Space residency at Schuba’s. We’re expecting to hear them work through new material over the next few weeks, so it should be interesting to see how each Monday’s set-list differs from the last. This is...

This week we have some bands in town to do good, make us take our panties off, and give us a reason to get out from under our blankie in this cold weather. Buck up, Chicago – it’s only January!

Diggin’ that warm weather? Yeah, we are too. Honestly, though, it kind of scares us too. Whenever we start to think too hard about that (or that whole “infinity” concept) we like to distract ourselves with live music. Here’s the notable stuff going on sale this week. Bloc Party’s A Weekend In The City isn’t quite knocking us the fuck out as hard as their debut did, but by the time they roll through town...

This week there isn’t much out there to go on a spending spree and use up that Ticketmaster gift card we received for Christmas. If it’s necessary for us to buy tickets before we watch Iowa get their asses handed to them by Texas on Saturday afternoon at the Alamo Bowl, these are a couple shows that piqued our interest.

This week it seems almost impossible, but we're looking ahead to even more holidays for the shows that went on sale today. First of all, and also on the 1st, The Hold Steady just aren't playing New Year's Eve at the House of Blues, they're gonna stay around for the first day of the year and do it all over again. Boys and Girls in America made 2006 a lot of fun. We think this...

With visions of sugar plum fairies dancing through their heads, the -Ists began to get into that holiday mood. Well, some did. Austinist wasn't as the NY Times dissed them and a local Tex-Mex institution sold out. Making them feel better was music, sweet music and the local theater getting name checked on "Heroes." Chicagoist tried to wrap their heads around a religious movie being banned from a Christmas themed park. To wash that...

For those of you who keep tabs on architectural goings-on around town, the Uptown Theater saga has become old hat. Supporters of the 1925 theater first lobbied to save it in the '80s and got it registered as a Chicago Landmark in 1991. Technically it can't be torn down ... but so far no one has successfully picked up the challenge of rehabbing the severely delapidated nightspot. Enter not one, but two major entertainment companies...