Results tagged “theroots”

             

Usually we avoid corporate sponsored music events since they tend to be stacked with B-list acts, but when we heard Hennessy was bringing Common to a small South Loop club, and The Roots would be his backing band, we couldn't resist showing up. (Side story: We ran into ?uestlove in the alley pre-show and made sure to let him know that, in our opinion, he's the Twitter master. The dude's tweets alone make Late Night with Jimmy Fallon worth watching.) Opening act Elevator Fight warmed the crowd up with some middle of the road rock sung by Zoë Kravitz, the daughter of Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz. It was the kind of act that usually causes us to avoid these events, but once The Roots hit the stage for a solo set the dull tghrob that preceded them washed away in a burst of bliss. And once Common hit the stage to join them for his own set? It was all over. The room erupted and the assembled coterie of musicians onstage took that energy and threw it right back out to the people. We were on such a high we even found ourselves singing along to Heavy D when he suddenly appeared onstage and we hated his tunes back in the day! It was just a big ol' party, with ace talent packed into a small room giving it their all.

Charles Hamilton's cancellation at the upcoming Pitchfork Festival has fans disgruntled and calling foul on the now almost nonexistent hip-hop offerings. Even Lollapalooza, a festival that just last year toted the likes of Lupe and Kanye feels sparse on the hip-hop booking this summer. Last weekend, for the fourth consecutive year, Rock The Bells took over First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park. For those willing to make the trek, a day full of both up-and-coming talent and The Greats delivered.

It's May 1st and we hope you got paid today because your wallet is about to be REALLY empty.

Does anyone besides us remember Wolcott? That band had so much energy, combining Springsteenian grandeur with indie-rock passion. The only downside was that you HAD to see them live to get it. Their single album never did the group justice.

There's so much going on across the Ist-a-Verse that it's almost impossible to keep track these days. Fortunately, we do it so you don't have to! Londonist took a walk through Oliver Twist's London, thanks to a gorgeous map layer for Google Earth. They also caught up with modern-day fictional London, with the Fantastic Four and 28 Weeks Later. It was a week of insanity over at DCist. They started the week off with...

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 –...

Chicagoist keeps hearing rumblings about declining national box office numbers yet we refuse to think that people aren’t going to the movies as often. Sure, they’re not rushing to see whatever cinematic middle finger John Cusack is flipping at you these days but with so many movie events happening around Chicago, we think there’s something for everyone in theaters this week.

Release your inner Tito Puente or your inner Turiya Mareya because the Jazz En Clave Festival, Chicago’s First Annual Latin Jazz Festival, starts tonight. “Jazz In Key” features performances at HotHouse, the South Loop’s best live music venue, and continues through Sunday with additional events at the Chicago Historical Society and the Ruis Belvis Cultural Center. Since Latin jazz has only been a Grammy category since 1994, it’s no surprise that it’s taken this long for Chicago to have it’s own celebration of an art form that explores the African and Caribbean influences of a genre often overshadowed by American influences.