We've already covered quite a bit going on this weekend in Chicago, but if you're looking for something a little more literary-minded, we highly recommend the release party for Susannah Felt's new bookThis Will Go Down On Your Permanent Record, happening this Sunday at The Hideout. If Felt's name sounds familiar, that's because she spent several years writing for such publications as the Chicago Reader (pre-takeover) and Time Out Chicago. She now resides in sunny......

The listed events were chosen by the editors of Chicagoist and brought to you by the 2009 Toyota Corolla. Music Tonight's Gutter twins show at Metro tonight is easily our most anticipated concert so far this year. The paring of Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli was electrifying when they Lanegan toured with The Twilight Singers last year, but the time the two shared on-stage was far too brief. The group's long-awaited first disc, Saturnalia,......

Funny Ha-Ha is a guaranteed good time. Tonight's edition at The Hideout features a host of writers, but seems to be "headlined" by Eric Zorn. We love Zorn, but find it kind of funny his credit is "Chicago Tribune Columnist & Blogger" while Claire Zulkey's is "Blogger & TV Critic for The Onion & Los Angeles Times." Yeah, yeah, yeah, Zulkey rose to fame due to her blog, but even so, once she scored the......

Time to lock and load this week's list of hometown shows, SXSW style. Monday 3/3: Catfish Haven, Brighton, MA, Tall Dark Stranger at the Empty Bottle, 9:00 p.m., FREE! Catfish Haven have the distinction of being the subject of one of our great music debates here on Chicagoist, but offline one constant has always been the loyal following of their frenetic, stomp-along swamp folk throwdowns. Catch one of Chicago's most recognized indie acts for free......

That Obama, he's a total hipster. First it's Wilco, Cool Kids, and The Changes...now it's Andrew Bird and Dianogah. Despite the slightly weird combination of baroque chamber pop maestro and underground instrumental rock band, we'll take any opportunity to 'rock for Barack.' Also, as an added bonus -- at this event only -- all the folks willing to shell out the minimum $100 donation to gain entry will receive a super ultra-rare insanely limited-edition......

Like a scaled-down Tonight Show sans writer’s strike trauma, The Interview Show brings humorous, interesting and idiosyncratic folks to The Hideout’s couch. Tonight at 6:30, host and Red-Eye columnist Mark Bazer welcomes “Funniest Person in Chicago” Hannibal Buress (there is no one funnier…), Looking for Alaska author John Green, Lifeway Foods President Julie Smolyansky, and Schadenfreuder and troublemaker Justin Kaufmann. If you can’t change your plans on less than four hour’s notice, take heart. Bazer......

We were one of the few lucky enough to catch Jon Brion when he stopped by The Hideout earlier this year. His one-man band is truly an awesome spectacle top behold, and will seriously leave anyone withing earshot slack jawed. When we heard he was coming back to Chicago to play a New Year's Eve show at the Harris Theater in Millennium Park we immediately thought, "This is the show to beat." So far, no......

Remember Kid Million? That sort-of loud, sort-of anthemic, sort-of sloppy band from a few years back? Remember their singer, David, um Singer? We sure do. In Kid Million, we always liked Singer's penchant for crafting a slightly quirky hook, and his sweet and slightly strained tenor. After Kid million dissolved (did they ever actually break up?) Singer went on to release a number of solo albumsunder the guise of David Singer and the Sweet Science.......

Batman flew off to Hong Kong. Here's what he'll be missing: Coming up: As we’ve mentioned, Kumail Nanjiani is a funny, funny man. Now he’s ditching us for New York. Send him off Thursday night at The Hideout, where he’ll pay tribute to Jonathan Messinger and his new book. It’s your last chance to see Kumail before he gets mega-famous or chewed up by the Gotham comedy scene. The young performers at Thirteen Pocket Productions......

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......

The Hideout is one of Chicago's more curious rock venues, presenting live music in a space that’s one part Elks Lodge, one part Uncle Dan’s rec room. But the strangely homey, lived-in space lends depth to Walkabout Theater’s “site-specific” production of Mark Guarino’s “Overnight Lows,” an insomniac tale set in a seemingly familiar but subtly off-kilter world. Extracting drama from everyday locales is Walkabout’s bread-and-butter; the company previously examined mundane daily rituals in a laundromat......

Is there enough going on this weekend? We’re here to add to the list of places to go. Sunday is “A Day in the Country” at the Hideout. Get some BBQ, hear some country music, drink some whiskey. Sounds perfect to us. The whole dang thing begins at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday with a couple acoustic sets out front by Tangleweed and The Golden Horse Ranch Band before moving the music inside for the remainder......

The jaunts will be short this week as most of us get out and enjoy the sunshine. We were walking around this morning and people just seem happier. Which is all the more reason to get out tonight for some good music. We plan on getting intimate with Ambulette and Maura Davis' intensely mesmerizing voice at Schubas, 3159 N. Southport. Davis splits her time between Richmond and Charlotte and comes to Chicago to rehearse with......

It's true, hot on the heels of his super-sold out Steppenwolf appearance, we've been told Jon Brion will be performing at The Hideout a few days later on March 11. And tickets are already on sale. Get 'em while you can! Brion is best known for his collaborations with Fiona Apple, his stunning film soundtracks, and his just all-around genius-itude. This is even more exciting than that Andrew Bird show The Hideout snagged a while......

Is anyone else all disappointed in how short a two-day weekend seems now? Chicagoist is. Schuba’s is making sure that by mid-week their mid-winter fest will be keeping us out of the cold. The Tomorrow Never Knows fest brings together indie acts during the worst (in theory) weather of the year. A couple of our faves from the TNK line-up this week hail from Brooklyn and Indiana, respectively. Let us get to Wednesday’s possibilities with......

What a great week for indie-pop. We are seriously psyched to revisit some old favorites while experiencing some newer friends for the first time. Robbers on High Street have garnered a lot of buzz, and while their latest digital-only EP is not an entirely convincing justification for their acclaim, it’s certainly strong enough to pique our curiosity. Expect Subterranean to be pretty crowded as everyone tries to discern whether these cats have the legs to......

This weekend is really just too jam-packed with music we want to check out. We mean, WAY too jam-packed. We’ve already mentioned Veruca Salt tonight, but that’s sort of a high-profile show that most folks probably already know about. There are a couple bands coming through town this weekend that you’ve a) probably never heard of and b) are well worth your time. Early tonight, Thunderbirds Are Now! fly into the Beat Kitchen with a......

A scene of warehouses and industrial grit served as the stage backdrop during this weekend’s Touch & Go 25th Birthday Party and we can’t think of a better visual fit for the label’s aural aesthetic. Many of the bands performing over the weekend fit perfectly within the visual suggestion set about by the mega-urban “City That Works” setting, thus setting this festival apart from the lush environs experienced during Intonation / Pitchfork / Lollapalooza earlier......

Thax is leaving us, and he needs your help. We received a rather cryptic bulletin from the poet laureate of Chicago rock and/or roll informing us of a series of farewell shows he was planning. Farewell to what, you might ask? Thax had said he was going to “retire” from public readings for a while so we reckoned that might be what he was talking about. But oh no. Thax is ditching us for the......

Procrastinating indie kids and drunken Dads throughout the city will look a little down in the mouth this weekend as both the Boy Least Likely To and Jimmy Buffet shows are sold out this weekend. Plus, the lead singer of Snow Patrol lost his voice so their show is postponed as well. But there are still plenty of good shows going on over the next couple of days. But did we miss a memo or......

Any best-of list is subject to extreme reactions – those of total agreement, as well as complete disapproval. But, in Esquire’s June issue, its list of the Best Bars in the Midwest included a handful from Chicago. And, our reaction? A resounding “Yeah, OK, why not” and a shrug of the shoulders. Certainly, some of the picks seemed more worthy of “best” status than others, but nothing was so off-the-charts wrong that we needed to......

You know what we love? Music. We absolutely love music. What's that? You love music too? Oh wow, that's such a coincidence! You know what else we love? Politics. Yeah, we really love politics. You like politics too? You're kidding! We are so made for each other. Since you love politics and music just as much as we do, we thought we'd let you know about a great event going down tonight. Political magazine In......

Yesterday local record label Touch and Go announced its plans for a "This Is Your Life"-style 25th Anniversary show that will coincide with the Hideout’s tenth anniversary and its annual block party in September. From September 8th through September 10th, 25 past and present Touch and Go artists will play at the Hideout. So far, nine artists have been announced including Didjits and Scratch Acid (each with all their original members), Enon, Shellac, Calexico and......

Okay, we’re having fun with reading and writing this week, ‘member? So let us not waste any time and move on to The Dollar Store. The Dollar Store is the brain child of Jonathan Messinger of ThisIsGrand.org fame. He gets writers from all over the city, gives them a suggestion (something from a dollar store, get it?), then the first Friday of the month the writers read what they wrote and everyone has a beer......

The gallery closes, now what? Drinks are in order, but where? The Hideout gets offered up, we jump in a cab and head over there. The front bar is packed, but we snag a table in the back near the stage. People with trombones, trumpets, guitars and violins start filing in and putting their instruments on the stage. This keeps going on and on and on. The instruments are piling up everywhere. Percussion all......

There happen to be dueling reports of when the tickets actually go on sale for this – it’s either tonight at 9 pm or tomorrow at the same time. We thought we’d give advance warning either way. Bobby Bare Jr’s Young Criminal Starvation League will be shooting a video on Monday the 21st at The Hideout ($10, 9 pm). Finding the perfect hipster/non-hipster outfit for this should be an adventure. Chicagoist first stumbled upon......

PISTIL magazine is a Chicago-based independent publication that features emerging talent and "high-concept fashion with progressive feminism." Chicagoist met some of the editors at a record fair last summer, and they were incredibly gracious and interesting�instant bonus points. You can catch previews of the August issue tonight at The Hideout at 7 p.m. with senior copy editor Jonathan Messinger. Messinger, who just kicked This Is Grand into gear, says "he'll trade you a drink for......