Chicago -
By Don Jacobson
1. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to be a “famous rocker.” You know, like Gunnar Nelson and his wonderful, flowing hair (Matthew, too, though maybe not quite as famous). And that one guy from Night Ranger (mmmmm . . . motorin‘.) I’m talking about NR’s Kelly Keagy. As everyone, and I mean everyone, knows, Kelly was NR’s singing drummer. What a famous rockin’ role model he is!
Posted on October 29, 2007
By Don Jacobson
Adriana from The Sopranos loves him, but radio programmers don’t. Personally, I’d take that trade-off anytime, but then again, I’m not carrying a name like Waylon Albright Jennings, and all the baggage that comes with it. As it is, “Shooter” Jennings, like his famous late father, is paying the price for daring to tread the still-unforgiving no-man’s land between rock and country. It’s really unbelievable, a generation after the genre first appeared in all its greasy-haired glory, that the transcendent, big-ass Southern rock of artists like Shooter Jennings still can’t catch a break from the music industry gatekeepers.
Posted on October 24, 2007
By Leigh Novak
Oh my god oh my god oh my god.
I never knew a Monday could get so good.
As part of my daily morning routine – you know, the first hour or so at work devoted to catching up on news, e-mails, and YouTube – I check the unofficial Radiohead website as ritualistically as downing my morning coffee.
I did so recently knowing that any glorious day could be the day that The Announcement would dance off the computer screen with a special glow and the angels would sound the release date of Radiohead’s new album.
Posted on October 22, 2007
By Courey Gruszauskas
I compiled this mixtape for myself to play during the last week of my stay in Champaign-Urbana. It served as a summation of my three-and-a-half years of mass book-reading and paper-writing, espresso-serving and ass-kicking (at the coffee and community womb that is Caffe Paradiso), bike-riding and chili-cooking, and beer-drinking throughout the fraternal twin towns. It also served as a way to sever the cord from a place that tends to strangle its young in cheap rent, even cheaper beer, and a lifestyle that is too comfortable for one’s own good.
While my graduate school aspirations have me again looking to Champaign-Urbana’s vast landscape of golden grains and pajama-clad youth, I realize the futile attempt to capture those same feelings and experiences of my undergraduate years. The songs may sound the same, but the words have changed their meaning.
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1. Tally Ho!/The Clean
Innocent organs mimic the bouncing curls of some pre-pubescent girl, latching onto her lollipop as she skips with the beat. While my Freudian Psychology class would suggest eroticism and pedophilia in regards to this image, I will shimmy proudly alongside that little girl, smiling with the simple joy found in those snotty vocals. “Tally Ho!” takes you by the hand, no worries about where it will lead you.
2. I Put a Spell on You/Arthur Brown
With the first hit of those drums, you feel this one in your knees. Gravy-thick organs melt into Arthur Brown’s howl and take you down to the floor. His vibrato brings you back up, anxious and scared with his repetitious “I can’t stand it!” The song stops as hard as it starts, and you wonder why you feel this way. The man’s put a spell on you, for Christ’s sake.
Posted on October 17, 2007
By Don Jacobson
They’re the world’s biggest and coolest street performers. They set up their primo gear on the sidewalk at the corner of OK Computer Street and Electric Avenue, throw down their PayPal hat on the virtual concrete and just start playing, letting all passers-by on the information superhighway get an earful for free but asking them to reach into their hearts and wallets to contribute to the cause.
Radiohead’s much-discussed Internet business model for its new album In Rainbows is one that has a lot of appeal because, if it works, it would make street buskers out of the most arrogant of rock stars and, oh please let it be so, consign the whole rapacious record industry to the cut-out bin of history.
Posted on October 15, 2007
By Don Jacobson
Kid Rock: Not just a “lap-dance soundtrack” anymore?
Supposedly not, according to the Los Angeles Times, which says Kid’s new LP, Rock ‘n’ Roll Jesus, is more of a classic rock 8-track ride, along the lines of Bob Seger and, oh my, Skynyrd, than Kid’s usual “lap-dance soundtrack,” the rap metal so beloved of strippers and their fans everywhere. You know, I wish that, rather than at some fancy awards show, Kid Rock and Tommy Lee could have run into to each other at, say, Thee Dollhouse in Tampa. Man, then they could have really settled the whole Pam thing for good right then and there – with a dance-off.
Posted on October 8, 2007
By Dan Zapruder Phillips
Buried in the lousy/loud graphic design he’d sadly champion for the next few years, we see a message from the man himself, presented in a splotchy typewriter font on crumpled white paper. Amid the surreal-yet-none-too-subtle images of a hypodermic needle bleeding money onto a recording console (!!!) and a heart being flushed down a toilet, it reads: “Originally intended for private use only, this compilation serves as the last original material recorded by (Prince) 4 Warner Brothers Records.”
I like to imagine a more honest rewrite that goes a little something like this: “If U end up not liking Chaos and Disorder, keep in mind that it was never supposed 2 B heard outside of my very large and sparkly living room in the 1st place. But if U love it, that’s because it’s made out of super-secret UNDERGROUND jams I pulled from my highly sexy Vault. Just so we have that str8. Rave Un2 the Ecstatic Whatever. –P.”
Posted on October 5, 2007
By Don Jacobson
In this edition of Chicago In Song, we have no trouble finding songwriters who say they’d rather be somewhere else but are stuck here, more or less against their will. Some cope by getting drunk and eating donuts while in Lakeview, others by complaining about O’Hare. Some even take midnight swims in el lago.
Anything, I guess, that helps you work out the scars you inevitably get from your Chicago experience.
Posted on October 1, 2007
