A few weeks back, we told you about the pretty stellar Rock The Bells Festival tour, which kicks off here in Chicago on Saturday, July 19, sans popular local acts The Cool Kids and Kid Sister. We now have some more details, like, say, venue and ticket info, that may help you make your plans. The festival, featuring a reunited Pharcyde (pictured at left), has been set for the First Midwest Bank Amphiteatre in Tinley......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Chicagoist. The 2009 Toyota Corolla, which encourages you to "Live the Dream for Less Coin." Rothbury Music Festival, where you can see acts like the Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, Snoop Dogg, and many, many more. Busted Tees, which introduces three new designs a week. If you're interested in advertising on Chicagoist or any other site in our network, check out our......

We would like to take a moment to thank this week's advertisers on Chicagoist. The 2009 Toyota Corolla, which encourages you to "Live the Dream for Less Coin." Rothbury Music Festival, where you can see acts like the Dave Matthews Band, John Mayer, Snoop Dogg, and many, many more. Missy Higgins, with an album that is available now. Busted Tees, which introduces three new designs a week. If you're interested in advertising on Chicagoist or......

It may be too cold for 70's gym shorts (a la the Pitchfork Music Festival), but you can bet that tonight's Vampire Weekend show at Schubas will double as a winter fashion show/breeding ground for Chicago's hipsterati. The NYC quartet's kinda creepy, kinda awesome take on indie rock "world music" has earned them plenty of blog love, packed houses, and a contract for their first full length release with powerhouse XL Recordings. Eighteen months of......

Girl Talk, aka one Greg Gillis, has been wowing audiences from the Empty Bottle to the Pitchfork Music Festival with his wildly popular brand of mash-up wizardry. Just try to hold a stoic cool-kid pose when Gillis brings his one-man jammin' train through town in January, with newly minted prince of the hipster dance party Dan Deacon in tow. Metro, January 26, 7:30 p.m. (all ages) and 11:30 p.m. (18+), $16. On sale Saturday.......

The Empty Bottle, in conjunction with Britain's The Wire magazine, will host this weekend's fifth annual Adventures in Modern Music festival, a self-described "celebration of 'outsider sounds.'" The festival promises to pack 'em into the Bottle for sets by groundbreaking artists both new and historic. Daily lineups, with highlights: TONIGHT (Wednesday): White Magic, Badawi, Holy Fuck, and Graveyards & Zac Davis Drag City's White Magic is fronted by the smoky-voiced Mira Bilotte, who channels a......

While the fish-taco revolution is swimming across the area, there are plenty of other events happening this week. Before we list them, however, we should let you know that the cockroaches are taking over our downtown restaurants. This week's victim of the ultimate survivor, Bice. Cockroaches were the least of their problems, however. A Health Department inspection also found no hot running water in a kitchen sink and fruit flies in the bar. If you......

Of all the city-sponsored music festivals, few utilize as much of the city limits like the World Music Festival (check out the festival's Myspace page, also). In its nine years, World Music Fest has become a showcase event, even though it lacks the resources the city pours into Blues Fest, Jazz Fest, and Viva! Chicago. Its drawn visitors to the city from around the world, done a remarkable job in shining a much-needed spotlight on......

If you’re not totally familiar with The Hideout, you’re not alone. It’s not called “The Hideout” for no reason – it’s tucked away amidst warehouses and a U.S.P.S. processing center in the gritty industrial neighborhood just south of the North Branch of the Chicago River. A hand-painted “Hideout Block Party, an unpretentious celebration of local, national, and international talent that ends in a nice donation to charity, and this year’s lineup challenges Pitchfork for the......

September is one of our favorite months of the year, in that there are so many things still happening for the benefit of those of us who refuse to accept our parents' notion that summer in Chicago ends on Labor Day. September brings us the Hideout Block Party, World Music Festival, and the beginning of many Oktoberfest celebrations. September is also Illinois Wine Month. Since its inaugural designation in 2005, the Illinois wine industry has......

Happy first weekend of September - and happy Labor Day weekend, too, for our American cities! Let's take a look at what's been happening around the Ist-a-verse. The deaths of two firefighters shook Bostonist this week. Boston's firefighters bent over backwards all week long - first, they fought flames pouring from the Boston Tea Party museum, and then a restaurant fire killed two and injured many more. Their efforts make everything else - like Tom......

We've been hearing about director Kevin McAlester's disturbingly intimate look at Roky Erickson's life for quite some time, anticipating the documentary's arrival in the Midwest. And tonight we don't have to wait any longer. "You're Gonna Miss Me," is a documentary that outlines the story of Erickson, who made his name as lead singer from the 13th Floor Elevators. As the story goes, Roky was arrested in 1969 for carrying one joint. He entered an......

Well, you really couldn't ask for a better weekend to get your keister out there and enjoy the weather. There's also so much going on, you have no excuse. Here are a few samplings: - We know some of you are going to the World's Largest Block Party this weekend. It ain't our speed, but we know there are some of you who still like to party like it's 1994 with Rusted Root and Big......

Day three of the Pitchfork Music Festival got off to a slow start, with a smaller crowd, but we chalk that up to stronger headliners and more folks electing to arrive later in the day. Since one of our other writers was already covering the earlier bands, we elected to begin our coverage with Stephen Malkmus' main stage appearance. Malkmus' set was one of the ones with the most buzz, since it could be argued......

Chicagoist had the foresight to divide the days of the Pitchfork Music Festival amongst ourselves, so as to offer you, the reader, consistent, non-sunburned coverage of as much of the weekend as possible. Without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the breakfast-slot hits and misses from the past two days: SATURDAY Voxtrot surprised with a buoyant set of danceable candy on Saturday afternoon. On record their synth-pop is passable but not extraordinary,......

We entered the Pitchfork Music Festival grounds a little late Saturday, since the CTA saw fit to make sure all the buses we needed to take were running extra slow, while suspending Blue Line service between Western and Clark/State. They picked a bang-up weekend to make sure they removed the primary vein of public travel right from the heart of the hipster corridor. As we arrived though, we were dually serenaded by the noise of......

The first day of the Pitchfork Music Festival showcased three classic acts, performing their classic albums. Slint re-created their seminal Spiderland, and while watching their set we realized that they are definitely one of those bands everyone name-checks, but almost no one has actually heard. Kind of like how dudes in the '90s would talk about how awesome Patti Smith's Horses was because that was just the sort of thing you were supposed to say.......

The air couldn't have felt better in Union Park for the first day of the Pitchfork Music Festival. The format of not having bands play all day the first day was perfect, it's nice to see the headliners sans really full porto-o-potties and there were far less people passed out for you to trip on. Seriously, those people are like land mines. Anyway, we will, of course, be bringing you in depth coverage and reviews......

It seems sort of cruel to make everyone get up so early tomorrow after a night rockin’ out to Spiderland, but we’re gonna give some reasons why it may be advisable to set that alarm and crawl out of bed for a few minutes to spend money. The Cure has been one of our favorites since we picked up that Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me album at the mall with our allowance money. We......

Everybody and their brother are listing out their day-to-day, act-by-act rundowns of this weekend's Pitchfork Music Festival. The thing all these folks seem to be missing, as they get dragged into the "do-as-everyone-else-does" pool, is that the festival has been sold-out for weeks so it's safe to assume that the folks that are going know what they're in for. We realize you've got to fill posts / columns / traffic-quotas, but c'mon, enough with the......

While most Pitchfork Music Festival coverage will undoubtedly focus on the headliners, we think it would be a shame to not mention our favorite part of the festival: the side stage. The Balance Stage, aka “the tent,” has been our escape at the past two Pitchfork-involved festivals. During the afternoon, much of the Union Park field is full of immobile patrons only half-interested in who’s on the stage, making walking around the festival a mile-long......

Last night Chicagoist was among a few hundred people who attended the Goose Island brewing facilities on West Fulton. The occasion was to celebrate the official launch of their new "312unes" music sponsorship program. The concept behind 312unes is to show continued support of the local rock music scene while simultaneously promoting one of Goose Island's two flagship brands, according to Goose Island marketing director Darrell Jursa. "Goose Island has been supporting local acts for......

In the blog age of the hyper (and overhyped) search for the Next Big Thing, an artist’s shelf life as a “big deal “in the independent music world is dwindling to little more than one sold out tour and a trackback in year-end review posts. Gone are the days when one band set the bar for a genre and then completely redefined it, all to the great satisfaction of its fans and its critics alike.......

When last year’s Pitchfork Music Festival rolled around, we were psyched to see most of the headliners, but Os Mutantes (“The Mutants”) threw us for a loop. While we’d long been interested in Cuban jazz, Brazilian Tropicalia was a new frontier for our musical palate. We weren’t disappointed in the reunion of the revolutionary band that had influenced such diverse Chicagoist favs as David Byrne and Kurt Cobain. It’s really no surprise that Tropicalia’s influence......

As of 3 p.m. today, the Pitchfork Music Festival is completely sold-out. Time to start wining and dining those friends of yours smart enough to buy an extra ticket, huh? UPDATE: Pitchfork has also released set-times for the entire weekend so you can start honing your schedule NOW.......

We don't mean to be alarmist, but if you were still dithering over whether to attend the Pitchfork Music Festival this year, you're running out of time. Friday tickets and three-day passes sold out a while ago, and today we received word that the two-day passes are gone too. That leaves you with buying single day entry for Saturday and/or Sunday. Even at the single day pass prices, this is still the most affordable festival......

We alluded to it earlier, but this is one hell of a weekend for music in our fair city. One of the upswings of the indiefication of America has been the steadily improving street festival bills, so we can at least enjoy good tunes with our processed meats and flat beer, and this weekend sees two of the best line-ups all summer unfortunately going head to head with each other. The inaugural Switchyard Festival is......

Summer officially began yesterday, so we're gonna dedicate this edition of the Buffet to that staple of summertime in Chicago, the block party. Being born and raised in Chicago, we've certainly seen the evolution of the block party from something that brings neighbors together to, well, the monstrosities some of them are today. However, even in this day and age they're great ways to explore the city's neighborhoods, after you finish haranguing with the festivals'......

Last year when Chicagoist spoke with the ladies from Girls Rock! Chicago, the camp was in its first year and had been mildly successful, even though they were finding the camp difficult to publicize. This year they are in full force months ahead of the week-long workshop in August, and they'll be holding their second fundraiser of the year at The Empty Bottle on Saturday. The bill is full of bands that include strong female......

Sanjaya’s coming! Sanjaya’s coming! Time to let your freak flag fly with some help from bobby pins, of course. And, a few more shows that aren’t so mainstream to pass the time until your favorite Idols come to town. Modern Finnish psychedelia - a genre that we have to admit has never crossed our minds - comes to town. Avarus’ sound has been mysteriously likened in several reviews to the feeling of being in the......