Plus: Fresh Rockie Fresh & Blood Money

“Slint’s been riding the whole ‘isn’t our album Spiderland great?’ train for a while now, ever since the band reunited for the first time back in 2005,” Marah Eakin writes for The A.V. Club.
“And while nine years seems like a long time for an almost 30-year-old band to harp on a record that came out in 1991, Spiderland is, in fact, a really fucking fantastic record. So fantastic indeed that it’s not only spawned a new deluxe reissue, but also a new documentary, Lance Bangs’ Breadcrumb Trail. The film comes packaged in the intense, $150 box set, but what really stands out about the Spiderland set is the actual music.
“Remastered here by Shellac’s Bob Weston, Spiderland shines in its simplicity.”
You can click through for the rest, but here’s what caught our attention for the purposes of this column.
“The band included a kickass cover of Neil Young’s ‘Cortez The Killer’ recorded live in Chicago in 1989, hecklers and all.”
Here it is, recorded at the late Club Dreamerz:

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Posted on April 15, 2014

Curation By The Beachwood Rock Local Affairs Desk

You shoulda been there.
1. Charlene Kaye at Beat Kitchen on Saturday night.

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Posted on April 14, 2014

Curation By The Beachwood Rock Local Affairs Desk

You shoulda been there.
1. Phantogram at the Riv on Thursday night.

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Posted on April 11, 2014

Keef Crew Rapper Lost To The Streets

“A Chicago rapper who recently signed to a major record label and was a cousin of Chief Keef was shot to death in Englewood overnight,” the Tribune reports.
“Mario Hess – who went by Big Glo at the time of his death and Blood Money before being signed – was the oldest member of the Glory Boyz Entertainment crew and was Chief Keef’s second cousin.
“Glo’s manager said he was trying to get the 33-year-old musician out of Englewood and the city.

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Posted on April 10, 2014

Rich, Dead Or In Prison

1. Lil Herb with Nicki Minaj.
“Okay, well this is a curveball,” Andrew Barber writes at Fake Shore Drive.
“Nicki grabs Herb and kicks the Herb/Bibby flow for this new joint called ‘Chi-Raq.’ We told you this years ago, but Herb’s officially out of here now. He pretty much just wrote his own check with this one. Unbelievable.”
Even more unbelievable is how lame the track is.

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Posted on April 8, 2014

Curation By The Beachwood Rock Local Affairs Desk

You shoulda been there.
1. St. Vincent at the Riv on Saturday night.

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Posted on April 7, 2014

Curation By The Beachwood Rock Local Affairs Desk

You shoulda been there.
1. Born of Osiris at Mojoes in Joliet on Monday night.

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Posted on April 4, 2014

The Godfather Of House Created A Worldwide Phenomenon From The Desolate West Side

“In Chicago, Frankie Knuckles was called the ‘godfather,’ not because of any underworld connections, but because he helped build house – a style of Chicago dance music that revolutionized club culture in the ’70s and ’80s and still resonates around the world today,” Greg Kot writes for the Tribune.
“Knuckles died Monday at the age of 59.”
*
“Knuckles learned his craft as a club DJ in New York City, then moved to Chicago in the late ’70s and developed a reputation as one of the city’s most influential dance-music tastemakers. He arrived in Chicago just as disco was losing steam. For many, disco literally went up in flames between games of a Chicago White Sox double header at Comiskey Park, when radio deejay Steve Dahl blew up hundreds of disco albums.

“I witnessed that caper that Steve Dahl pulled at Disco Demolition Night and it didn’t mean a thing to me or my crowd,” Knuckles told the Tribune. “But it scared the record companies, so they stopped signing disco artists and making disco records. So we created our own thing in Chicago to fill the gap.”

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Posted on April 2, 2014