Post No Bills
Monday, March 15, 2010
Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 1:38 PM
The Minutemen have long been one of my favorite bands of all time, let alone the 80s hardcore scene. From their earliest days they took punk rock as a license to be themselves, creating a vibrant sound that strayed from hardcore orthodoxy (sometimes they even did away with choruses) and writing elliptical and profoundly personal lyrics when the status quo favored simplistic, heavy-handed political rants (Reagan sucks!) or nihilistic screeds (life sucks!).
Bassist Mike Watt, guitarist D. Boon, and drummer George Hurley got together as the Minutemen in January 1980 in their hometown of San Pedro, California, and though the band developed rapidly and restlessly until December 1985, when Boon was killed in an auto accident, they sounded fully formed right out of the gate. But a year before starting the Minutemen, those same three musicians formed the Reactionaries with singer Martin Tamburovich.
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Tags: Minutemen, Reactionaries, punk rock, hardcore, San Pedro, Mike Watt, D. Boon, George Hurley, Water Under the Bridge Records, Joe Carducci, Martin Tamburovich
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Thursday, March 11, 2010
Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Thu, Mar 11, 2010 at 12:43 PM
For the
Reader's new Photo Pit feature this week
Robert Loerzel shot the Scandinavian group Atomic killing it at
the Green Mill last weekend. The quintet also played a knockout set to a full house at the Chicago Cultural Center on Monday night.
Two of the group's Norwegian members—pianist Haavard Wiik and bassist Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten—are still in town, and tonight they play at Elastic with Free Fall, their long-running post-Jimmy Giuffre improvising trio with reedist Ken Vandermark.
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Tags: Atomic, Green Mill, Robert Loerzel, Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten, Haavard Wiik, Ken Vandermark, Free Fall, Gray Scale, Smalltown Superjazz, Elastic
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Wed, Mar 3, 2010 at 6:28 PM
- Still from "Untitled (Pink Dot)," 2007
Robert Beatty was supposed to play in Chicago last week with his long-running brutal noise group
Hair Police, but when tourmates and headliners Cold Cave canceled, so did Beatty and company. But Beatty, who's based in Lexington, Kentucky, is in town tomorrow night in an arguably more interesting and satisfying mode,
collaborating with experimental animator Takeshi Murata and performing a short solo set at the Gene Siskel Film Center. The event is part of the theater's superb
Conversations at the Edge series.
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Tags: Robert Beatty, Hair Police, Cold Cave, Three-Legged Race, Burning Star Core, Takeshi Murata, Conversations at the Edge, Gene Siskel Film Center, experimental music, experimental animation, Lampo, Video
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 2:00 PM
It wasn't until I read about it in the January/February issue of the British world-music magazine
Songlines that I learned that the latest installment of the invaluable
Rough Guide to World Music had recently been published. The
second volume of the book's third edition—focusing on Europe, Asia, and the Pacific—came out in the U.S. on December 21, perfect timing for getting lost in the holiday shuffle.
The first volume, on Africa and the Middle East, came out in October 2006, so the wait has been pretty long for the second.
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Tags: Rough Guide to World Music, Songlines, Simon Broughton, publishing, world music
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Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 2:25 PM
Charlie Hunter, the singular seven-string guitarist—meaning that I know of no one else who plays an instrument configured like his, and that no guitarist, period, sounds quite like him—returns to Chicago with
a trio gig Wednesday at the Beat Kitchen. He's touring with drummer Eric Kalb (Dap-Kings) and trombonist Curtis Fowlkes (Jazz Passengers), both of whom appear on his excellent new album,
Gentlemen, I Neglected to Inform You You Will Not Be Getting Paid (Spire Artist Media). Between the new album and his contributions to clarinetist
Ben Goldberg's recent
Go Home, Hunter has lately been creating some his most personable and concentrated music ever.
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Tags: Charlie Hunter, jazz, Beat Kitchen, acid jazz, Curtis Fowlkes, Eric Kalb
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Monday, February 22, 2010
Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 6:38 PM
Tomorrow night Canadian singer
Basia Bulat returns to Schubas, playing music from the terrific new
Heart of My Own (Rough Trade). A couple years ago, when I first heard her fine debut album,
Oh, My Darling, I was immediately hooked by her strong, distinctive voice, which shaped the pretty, delicate melodies with unassuming confidence. The arrangements were simple but effective: mostly acoustic guitar, piano, cello, violin, and sparse percussion.
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Tags: Basia Bulat, Schubas, Heart of My Own, Howard Bilerman, Rough Trade Records, Video
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Friday, February 19, 2010
Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 7:11 PM
Every year University of Chicago radio station
WHPK organizes a cool pairing of live music with film and video under the name
Pictures and Sounds, and this year's installment,
scheduled for 8 PM on Saturday, looks to be the best in a long while. Curated by WHPK program director Eric Hanss, the lineup places a greater emphasis than usual on experimental sounds and images.
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Tags: WHPK, Pictures and Sounds, Mist, Emeralds, Trauma, Nate Wooley, Graveyards, Dog Lady, Brett Naucke, Catholic Tapes, cassette underground, noise, experimental cinema, Bruce Nauman, Norman McLaren, Pizza Night, Nate Young, Alivia Zivich
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Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 2:10 PM
Bassist, composer, and former Chicagoan
Carl Testa, a member of
Anthony Braxton's Septet and 12 + 1tet, has been in town for the past week playing some low-key gigs, and he closes out his visit with a
performance tonight at Elastic. Testa, now based in New Haven, Connecticut, will play some pieces for solo bass and improvise with trombonist Nick Broste and bass clarinetist Jeff Kimmel. The main part of his set, however, will be a new piece (so far untitled) for three instrumentalists/vocalists and electronics, also featuring Broste and Kimmel. Opening the show is a trio led by violinist
Jonathan Chen, another former Chicagoan, with bassist Tatsu Aoki and cellist Jamie Kempkers.
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Tags: Carl Testa, Anthony Braxton, free jazz, contemporary classical music, Elastic, Uncertainty, Jonathan Chen, Nick Broste, Jeff Kimmel
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Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 1:29 PM
- Tree on Hill 2 (2009, ink and instant coffee on paper)
Starting this evening,
Corbett vs. Dempsey presents an exhibition of new visual art by iconic German free-jazz reedist
Peter Brötzmann. The show includes more than 30 pieces, most of which are either woodcut prints or watercolors. The gallery has presented art by Brötzmann before, but never a show of this magnitude featuring all-new work—though some of the art dates back to 2005, none of it's been on public display before.
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Tags: Peter Brotzmann, visual art, free jazz, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Hideout, A Night in Sana'a, Lost and Found, FMP Records, Not Two Records, Atavistic Records, Olof Bright, Up and Down the Lion—Revised, The Damage Is Done, Fred Lonberg-Holm, The Brain of the Dog in Section
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Thursday, February 18, 2010
Posted
by Peter Margasak
on Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 1:37 PM
You have to admire LA hip-hop group
People Under the Stairs for their perseverance. Active since 1997, the duo of Thes One and Double K came up at a time when underground hip-hop—which, once upon a time, was basically another way to "old-school"—had legs, and they've soldiered on even as their preferred sound has drifted to the extreme margins of the genre. As
Double K Thes One raps on "Step Off," the lead track from their seventh and latest album,
Carried Away (Om), "It's been ten years, our peers overrated / All faded, and they hated us most times / This is my last laugh, in the form of a dope rhyme."
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Tags: People Under the Stairs, hip-hop, Subterranean, Carried Away, Thes One, Double K
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