Back in the day, Martin Atkins was a drummer on the front line of the British punk invasion of America, playing with some of the genre’s seminal figures, including Johnny Rotten.
After living in New York and Los Angeles, Atkins settled in Chicago in the late 1980s just as the industrial music scene was in its infancy. His first place was a 14th-floor crib with a rooftop view of Lake Michigan.
Now, Atkins, with the Windy City as his adopted hometown, is in his early 50s and he continues to add eggs to his basket. From punk drummer to record-label owner to worldwide lecturer, Atkins is a man with a wide tool belt with many loops. With his newest project Revolution Number Three staging one of its three-day educational weekends starting Friday, Atkins took some time from his Bridgeport base camp to talk to the Beachwood Music department about the road he’s traveled so far.

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Posted on January 29, 2010

By The Beachwood Oughts Affairs Desk
A comparison.
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Pitchfork’s Top 20 Albums of the Oughts.
20. Turn on the Bright Lights, Interpol
19. Kill the Moonlight, Spoon
18. Late Registration, Kanye West
17. Sound of Silver, LCD Soundsystem
16. Illinois, Sufjan Stevens

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Posted on January 26, 2010

By The Beachwood Zoo Affairs Desk
The Scorpions – a band that has truly seen a million faces and rocked them all – are supposedly calling it quits. Supposedly because they are planning to release an album in March and then tour “for the next few years.” Still, here are some highlights from their show in August 2008 on Northerly Island.
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1. Another boring day.

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Posted on January 25, 2010

By Don Jacobson

I never really thought of ’60s country music icon Dave Dudley as a sensitive kind of guy. Most of his songs were rollicking odes to gear jammin’ truckers and, as the decade progressed, turned awfully heavy on the pro-war flag-waving. I just assumed it was pretty hard to get in touch with your feelings when you’re popping “little white pills” and constantly rhapsodizing about Ol’ Glory.
So imagine my surprise when I found Lonelyville in the bargain bin. Dave Dudley’s 1966 LP veers right off the turnpike from his usual formula of truck stops and hippie-bashing and gives us 12 songs of mostly crying-in-your-beer laments about, as the title suggests, loneliness. It’s the achy-breaky Dave that I never knew even existed, so it’s really cool to find this – but how well does it work?

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Posted on January 20, 2010

By The Beachwood Music Desk
“Dannie Flesher, who oversaw the internationally acclaimed Wax Trax record store and label in Chicago during the ’80s and ’90s, has died at age 58,” Greg Kot of the Tribune reported last week.
“Flesher died [January 10th] in his home town of Hope, Ark., of pneumonia. He had dropped out of the music business after Wax Trax folded and his life and label partner Jim Nash died in 1995. Flesher had returned to Arkansas in 2005 to live with family members.
“Nash and Flesher opened a Wax Trax store in Denver in the ’70s, then moved their operation to Lincoln Avenue in 1978. Their store, stocked with imported punk and electronic music, defined the cutting edge and was like the city’s island of misfit toys, where punks, freaks and outsiders gathered to buy music, advertise shows and plot their futures.
“In the ’80s, the store expanded into a label that became the world headquarters for boundary-pushing artists who bridged disco, electronic music, rock, and the avant-garde. Some dubbed the sound ‘industrial disco,’ an umbrella term that included Ministry, Front 242, Underworld, KMFDM, and My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, underground acts who went on to sell millions of records.”

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Posted on January 19, 2010

By Matt Harness
Let’s take a look back at Bloodshot’s nine releases in 2009. Ten in 2010?
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Artist: Ha Ha Tonka
Album: Novel Sounds of the Nouveau South
Review: “Ha Ha Tonka, meet Kings of Leon,” Blurt Online wrote. “Kings of Leon, meet your competition. While the latter band’s Southern-rock mix has helped them break big after years of meandering in obscurity, Ha Ha Tonka is banking on a similar musical sound and a healthy shot of charisma to mimic Kings of Leon’s success. And with the follow-up to 2007’s Buckle in the Belt, they may do it.”

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Posted on January 14, 2010

By The Beachwood Buzz Desk
Chicago’s Kid Sister hit it big in 2009, landing on many critics’ best-of lists as well as the radio and TV. Let’s take a look.
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“In three years, Melisa Young went from public aid to rapping with Kanye West,” Chicago Public Radio reports. “From growing up on the southside, to gracing stages at Pitchfork, Lollapalooza and Coachella, ‘Kid Sister’ as she’s known in the music world, achieved serious cred before she ever released an album.”
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“So, there she was during a recent interview with 77 Square, pulling out of a car wash in Chicago’s Logan Square juggling dog, purse, coffee, cell phone and driving (“People who make bad traffic decisions, I don’t criticize them for it – but if they’re going to do it, they need to get it done with!”),” Madison.com reports.
“Kid Sister, aka Melisa Young, also never set out to be a rapper. She studied film in college and spent years working low-pay jobs in retail. Her music career – at first a hobby that percolated up from her deep involvement in the Chicago club scene – just seemed to happen organically.
“About four years ago, she started hosting dance parties with her younger brother Josh, aka J2K, and Autobot of the DJ duo Flosstradamus. Her popularity mushroomed beyond Chicago after a single with Kanye West in 2007 (‘Pro Nails’); she released her debut album Ultraviolet last month.”

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Posted on January 14, 2010

By Drew Adamek

I can tell you almost exactly to the minute when I experienced the coolest moment of my life.
My absolute zenith of cool isn’t my mountaintop marriage ceremony on a glorious fall day and it isn’t crossing the stage to get my college diploma 10 years after dropping out of high school. It isn’t even the birth of loved ones.
Not even close.
No, the one time I was the coolest guy on earth involves Metallica, the Rolling Stones and the hallway of a loading dock in AT&T Park.

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Posted on January 12, 2010

By The Beachwood Neko Case Affairs Desk
Neko Case is no longer a Chicagoan – and no longer even on Chicago-based Bloodshot Records – but we still like to claim her as one of our own. We knew her when.
Now Case has wrapped up the biggest year of her career and the accolades have tumbled in; year-end best lists almost all include her release Middle Cyclone near the top. Let’s take a look.
Publication: Pitchfork
Year-End Ranking:: 21
Comment: “Arguably Neko Case’s best album in a decade, Middle Cyclone plays like the culmination of all her guiding eccentricities, as if Blacklisted and Fox Confessor Brings the Flood were just warm-ups for the real thing. Here Case sings about amorous storm fronts, menacing red tides, truly killer whales, alarming magpies, and other fauna that manifest particular conditions of the human soul. She’s singing about common alt- and mainstream country themes – broken hearts, wandering spirits, chilling loneliness, the nature of nature – but no one bends traditional Americana sounds to fit her eccentricities so perfectly, getting at these issues through tangential songwriting and force-of-nature vocals. Plus, with Middle Cyclone Case accomplished three undeniable superlatives: the coolest album cover of 2009, the most bizarre album closer (30 minutes of looped frog noises), and the loveliest love song, no matter that it was told from the point of view of a tornado in love with a lost child.” (Stephen M. Deusner)

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Posted on January 11, 2010

By Matt Harness
Happy 10, Bloodshot Briefing fans. Hope everybody enjoyed the tunes to end the Naughties.
The first music report from the Beachwood Music Desk in 10 is a big catch. After some consideration and handy connections, I reeled in Robbie Fulks, formerly of Bloodshot Records and now a self-releasing singer-songwriter who lives in the North Shore ‘burb Wilmette. Fulks, a Pennsylvania native who spent most of early years in the South, was one of Bloodshot’s first artists when he released Country Love Songs in 1996. He later left the label and began a journey that led to him putting out his own records with the help of his Web site (robbiefulks.com) and the various digital outlets. We talked about everything from his latest recordings to how to give a best man’s speech. The best news? Robbie is scheduled for a Hideout residency every Monday in February. Don’t forget to tip.
Beachwood Music: I must say I was confused. I know you’re a longtime Chicago resident, but I read where you moved to the hipster-haven Brooklyn last year. Skinny jeans?
Fulks: We lived there for part of last year as my wife took a job up there. I was more of a caretaker of the kids than a musician. I got enough music played, though. I lived there when I was young. It was more fun then, but it’s richer and safer now.

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Posted on January 8, 2010