X Plays "Wild Gift" at City Winery

Night two of four.

Not in the Face from Austin opened again. Exene sang one song with them again, and was great. And they finished their set with false endings on four of their last five songs, demolishing some unwritten rule for opening bands.

While Los Angeles will always be my favorite X album, tonight was a much better show. The house sound was great and the stage sound seemed to be less bothersome for the band, especially Exene. They were again augmented by multi-instrumentalist Michael Kilpatrick, who first joined on maracas during "Adult Books" and later played a lot of spirited rhythm guitar. They ripped through Wild Gift–"Universal Corner" and "White Girl" oh my–and then took a short break.

A highlight of the second set for me was the lovely and forlorn, downtempo "Dancing with Tears in my Eyes." After that, the set ramped up and took off, and for the first time I've seen, people were dancing at City Winery. A black shirted employee tried to put a damper on it, but these old people would not be denied their twenty square feet of dancing space stage right. By the end of the set, Exene had turned her mic to that corner and was singing just to them. It occurred to me last night that maybe X were doing these seated gigs to protect their aging fans, and themselves from liability, from broken hips. I think everyone made it out in one piece.

The set really exploded with last night's closer, their cover of The Doors' "Soul Kitchen.". They received a raucous standing ovation, as opposed to Tuesday's polite standing ovation. They returned and attacked "Drunk in My Past," "Blue Spark," and "Because I Do," and I thought the yelling was loud enough to get them back out, but it was not to be.

Ready for tonight's Under the Big Black Sun.

Setlist:

Wild Gift
---
Your Phone’s Off the Hook But You’re Not
We're Having Much More Fun
Breathless
Dancing with Tears in My Eyes
I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
How I Learned My Lesson
Nausea
Sugarlight
Motel Room in My Bed
Soul Kitchen
---
Drunk in My Past
Blue Spark
Because I Do

X Plays "Los Angeles" at City Winery

On the first of four incongruous nights at City Winery, X played the album that got me through high school, the album that I could always latch onto no matter how bad things felt like they were going for me, especially when I felt like they were going bad. Los Angeles is 1,100 miles west of Midland, and culturally a lot further than that, but something about this record, and the tales of youth alienated from the larger culture ("Unheard Music"), spoke to teenage me in a way that nothing else had, and I had something to latch onto.

I can't think of a more un-punk place to see my favorite punk band play my favorite punk album, but the show was very good. They fought the sound for most of Los Angeles, but Exene managed to recenter herself and they soldiered through just fine.

Setlist*

“Los Angeles”
—
The Hungry Wolf
Year 1
Dancing with Tears in My Eyes
I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts
Breathless
Poor Girl
How I (Learned My Lesson)
I'm Coming Over
Make the Music Go Bang
Beyond and Back
Motel Room in My Bed
Devil Doll
---
Drunk in My Past
Adult Books
Because I Do

*(if you were there and think it was different, please send me a note. I got carried away a few times.)

Daniel Knox and Andrew Bird at Chicago Theatre

I needed this night so badly after the horrible week last week. I needed some hope. I needed to remember that people can be good, and that they can create beauty as well as destroy. I needed to remember that art and music can heal, even if only a little and even if only temporarily.

Photo by pmonaghan on Flickr

On top of all of that, I was incredibly nervous for Daniel and his band. I wasn't nervous because I was afraid they couldn't handle it or that their music wasn't worthy. I was nervous because a group of people that large can easily dismiss the opening act, especially an unknown one. I've seen already famous Jeff Tweedy ignored opening for Patti Smith at The Riviera. I've even recently seen the Chicago Theatre audience turn on Willie Nelson, with about a third of the floor standing and talking through much of his set. I so wanted Daniel to have a good experience, and I so wanted Andrew's audience to give him a chance and get him, because on a good night, I don't think he could ask for a better group. Andrew's music demands active listening for it to unfold into full blossom. On Saturday night, Daniel and his band were about as good as I have ever seen them, and Andrew's audience gave them the best reception for a largely unknown opener I think I have ever seen in thirty seven years of concert going. Daniel's set was beautifully crafted, and the quiet Chicago Theatre space embraced his baritone and falsetto like they were made for each other. Andrew's audience responded in kind. His rolling songs and voice from another era grabbed the crowd, and his tales of eye-gouging ghosts, creepy hand lotion, loves past, and the Springfield of his childhood were more than enough to keep it.

And then Andrew came out.

Photo by pmonaghan on Flickr

And good lord. I'm not a good enough writer with enough adjectives or finesse to describe his set that was at times luscious and at others stripped down to gather-round-a-mic-and-belt-it-out essentials. A single apparition with a violin backlit by a single large stage light started the set, which slowly built to a full band crescendo over the next few songs. Tift Merritt's presence only added to the gravitas and lent a slight grounded, country twang to music that Andrew's ghostly visions could sometimes use but that he just doesn't possess. (I have heard Rennie Sparks describe playing with Andrew as "like playing with a spectre about to disappear.")

Tift and the rest of Hands of Glory were an invigorating change from Andrew's normal band. I love that band, but there was something stripped down and a little more raw with this group, almost kinda sorta punk rock, that really pushed through all night. They played at least five Handsome Family songs, though in my reverie, I sorta stopped being able to think clearly enough to count.

My eyes welled up with tears at the sheer beauty of it all three or four times. I think I was overwhelmed by the fact that I can't comprehend how this all comes out of a human being's brain, how Andrew can even conceive of it and then have the talent to make it real, to put his musical and artistic vision into a concrete form that allows us mortals a tiny peek inside. And yet here it was. An accidental tour that had become this fully formed piece of breathing art of the...how many synonyms are there for the word beauty?

Poetry exists to allow words to point to ideas larger than themselves, to act as symbols, and I'm no poet. I think to describe what I'm trying to say here, I really need to be, so I'll stop.

Thank you Daniel. Thank you Andrew. Thank you Andrew Bird's amazing audience. Thank you incredible musicians.

If there was not beauty, there would be no beauty to destroy.





You can click through the entire set using the side arrows or go here to open in a new window and see larger shots.

Northern Lights: Grant Park Music Festival

See the world premiere of "The Legend of the Northern Lights" by Grammy-nominated composer Christopher Theofanidis, inspired by the children's story on the origins of the aurora borealis. Journey to the arctic with awe-inspiring images by astronomer Dr. José Francisco Salgado shown on a state-of-the-art screen.

Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Friday, August 8, 2014, 7:30pm – 9:30pm
Saturday, August 9, 2014, 7:30pm – 9:30pm

Grant Park Orchestra
Carlos Kalmar, Conductor

Rachmaninov: Symphony No.2
Theofanidis: The Legend of the Northern Lights (World Premiere)
Program Notes PDF
Friday's concert will be broadcast live on 98.7WFMT and streamed online at wfmt.com.

Adler Planetarium staff will be on hand in the SE corner of the Great Lawn each night with fun activities for the whole family. Learn more at adlerplanetarium.org!

Califone in Chicago

After missing their last few Chicago shows, I finally got to see a stripped down Califone on Sunday with Tim and Ben in somebody's cool attic space. Tim broke a lot of guitar strings and Ben did an admirable job keeping up with Tim's unexpected left turns.

Here's the link to the entire set.

 

The Elephant In The Music Room * Consequence of Sound

The Elephant In The Music Room

from http://neurotica-.tumblr.com/post/15916100691

In 1991, I was working at Cargo Records, a nascent Chicago music distributor that we were running out of the un-airconditioned garage of an empty gas station at Clybourn and Greenview. (Like everything else, it's now condos.) Every day was an exciting, but exhausting, new scramble to stay on top of what was out there. We read every line of every zine we could get ahold of. We sent and received tons of US Mail inquiries every day. We sent and received reams of faxes. And we burned the hell of out our phone lines trying desperately to track down that kid that put out that one vegan hard core single that we needed 300 copies of to ship to Southern California (Hi Lou's! Hi Vinyl Solution!), Manhattan (Later Bleeker Bob's!), and London (Hi Rough Trade!). We could barely keep up with the flow of new music coming out, and sometimes we just couldn't.

I still remember the day that our order from the industrious indie pop punks (pop punk was not what it became) at Simple Machines turned up, and with it, an extra box of stuff we didn't order. In that box was

Redgrave at The Hideout, March 29, 2014

Click edges to see all the photos. Full set here: Redgrave, Hideout Chicago, Mar 29, 2014 (set).
Photos by pmonaghan

Thoughts on Music as Magic, The Handsome Family and True Detective

Update:
Here's Lin's on the air intro which was later posted on the WXRT blog:

The HBO series True Detective did not take us completely by surprise. It came to us with the dynamic acting pedigrees of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. Set in Southern Louisiana, True Detective follows the investigation of an unspeakable ritualistic murder of a young woman. The images are haunting. They linger long after we’ve moved on from our television watching. Steeped in the mystery and menace of bayou country, this story unfolds through a series of flashbacks as contemporary detectives question Marty Hart (Harrelson) and Rust Cohle (McConaughey) about what was once thought to be a closed case. Rust Cohle shines as one of the more intriguing characters to ever grace a television screen. A vice squad burn-out with an elevated sense of justice, Rust is disarmingly intellectual. He speaks of phenomenology and parallel universes. As we all race towards the series conclusion, we are becoming aware of collusion, corruption, and a killer whose sickness we will never unsee. A show like this is all about tone and that tone is set by an opening song, a song that transports us to a nightmare.

Well said, sir. Well said.

-----------------------------

Thanks to WXRT for Handsome Family Drive Time Spin

This morning, Lin Brehmer, WXRT's morning guy—the guy everybody in this divided, segregated town loves—played The Handsome Family's "Far from Any Road" at 8:45—prime morning drive time. Not only that, but he teased it, and then front and back announced it, talking about the Handsome Family's Chicago roots and how important their theme music is for setting the tone for this special television show. He's been a long time fan of The Handsome Family, and he finally had the chance to play them on the show with the tightest playlist on the station.

Here's the letter I wrote to DJ Lin Brehmer and assistant program director Marty Lennartz, who recently made the song available in the XRT library for spins. I'm posting this because working in this business, being assaulted by the Internet's Worst Thing Ever every five minutes, or just living life can make it easy to forget why we fell in love with music in the first place and why it still matters. Hell, it saved my life in high school. Music saved my life.

-------------

March 5, 2014

Lin and Marty,

That was really special this morning. With instant access to every damned song ever recorded, there is still something special about hearing "your song" chosen by a DJ and blasting out of the radio speakers...I always get chills. I'm not just talking about CTR stuff, but any music that has a place in your heart. Those times when it's always the absolute perfect time for Cheap Trick or Big Star or Black Dog, but you just hadn't realized it yet, and somehow the DJ just knew, and now it's pouring out of your speakers and filling the living room or the car and time stops for a few minutes and all is right with the world.

I remember lying in bed with Julia in our old apartment, having just purchased a shortwave radio so I would finally listen to John Peel on the BBC World Service. We always sent our stuff over there, and I'd hear back through the grapevine that he'd occasionally play it on his show. I didn't buy the little radio for that, though. I just wanted to hear his legendary show, and this was pre-Internet broadcasting. I could get the schedule but streaming was a distant dream. So Julia's reading next to me, and I'm about 30 minutes into that week's show, and Peel is rambling charmingly about I don't know what, and he suddenly says, "Oh well. Time for music. This is Flowchart on Carrot Top Records out of Chicago," and *BANG* the analog synths hit, and I get chills all over and shout out loud, and I'll never forget that moment. Part of me even imagines that I'll think of it as my life is finally slipping away.

This morning was like that.

So thanks.

Superchunk at saki 1/24/14

Superchunk at saki 1/24/14, a set on Flickr.

Our latest "best in-store ever." Were you here?

Jeff Tweedy, Vic Theatre, 2/15/14

Jeff Tweedy, Vic Theatre, 2/15/14, a set on Flickr.

Jeff's annual solo education benefit show. A talented and funny man.