Curation By The Beachwood Rock Local Affairs Desk
You shoulda been there.
1. Operators at Schubas on Saturday night.
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2. The Lemons at the Empty Bottle last Wednesday night.
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3. Corrections House at Thalia Hall on Thursday night.
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4. Chase at Reggies on Friday night.
Ward: “For the first – and possibly the last – time in four decades, Chicago once again will echo with the blare of the hard-hitting trumpets that propelled the band Chase into the musical spotlight in the early 1970s.
“Back then, bandleader and trumpeter Bill Chase headed up a group that freely mixed rock and jazz but whose sound was prematurely silenced 40 years ago this month when Chase, 39, and other group members died in a plane crash.
“Surviving members of Chase, joined by other musicians, will play tribute concerts Friday and Saturday at Reggies on South State Street, returning to the city that served as the Grammy-nominated band’s adopted hometown in its heyday.
“We looked like hippies, but we weren’t hippies,” original bassist Dennis Keith Johnson said recently. “The band was all about musicianship.”
“Johnson’s bass work provided the low end for ‘Get It On,’ the group’s biggest hit, which came on its debut album in 1971 and featured the four-trumpet attack that was Chase’s trademark.”
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5. Sun Ra Arkestra at Millennium Park for Jazz Fest on Sunday night.
Reich: “This year’s festival has been honoring the centennial of jazz visionary Sun Ra, the high point of the celebration arriving with the event’s finale, a performance by a latter-day version of the Sun Ra Arkestra. The set began surprisingly tamely, considering the mayhem – musical and otherwise – that Sun Ra typically wrought onstage. Eventually, though, the band got lustier and more raucous, with screams and squeals from the saxophone of 90-year-old Sun Ra veteran Marshall Allen. None of this quite matched the frenzy and hysteria of Sun Ra at his best, but at least it gave listeners a hint of what once was.”
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6. Cecile McLorin Salvant at Millennium Park for Jazz Fest on Sunday night.
Reich: “One of the most accomplished and promising young singers in jazz, Cecile McLorin Salvant, followed Zenon on the Pritzker stage, and though her balladry and mostly medium-tempo music lowered the emotional temperature of the evening a few degrees, her instrument remained a joy to behold. Bending notes way up in the stratosphere, producing uncommonly rich and husky tones down low, Salvant conjured a seemingly endless array of vocal colors, drawing much of her repertoire from her WomanChild album of 2013.
“You could hear plenty of Betty Carter in the way she stretched phrases and elongated words, Carmen McRae in her depth of rhythmic accent and, of course, Sarah Vaughan in her quasi-operatic way of delivering a line. But Salvant’s idiosyncratic song interpretations – which often involved constant changes of tempo and direction – utterly rewrote classics such as ‘Guess Who I Saw Today’ and ‘What a Little Moonlight Can Do.'”
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7. The Chinese Professionals at the Double Door on Thursday night.
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8. STS9 at the North Coast Music Festival in Union Park on Sunday night.
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STS9 at the House Of Blues for a North Coast aftershow on Sunday night.
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9. The Chicago Afrobeat Project with Tony Allen at the Double Door for a North Coast aftershow on Saturday night.
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10. The Motet at North Coast on Saturday.
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11. Lettuce at North Coast on Friday night.
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12. Riff Raff at North Coast on Sunday night.
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13. DJ noDJ at the Double Door on Friday night.
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14. Tweens at Schubas on Saturday night.
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15. Snoop Dogg at North Coast on Sunday night.
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16. Kid Cudi at North Coast on Saturday night.
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17. Bassnectar at North Coast on Friday night.
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18. Showtek at North Coast on Friday night.
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19. Alesso at North Coast on Friday night.
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20. Adventure Club at North Coast on Saturday night.
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21. DSmith at Mojoes in Joliet on Sunday night.
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22. Emancipator at North Coast on Sunday night.
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23. Nicky Romero at North Coast on Saturday night.
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24. Griz at North Coast on Sunday night.
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25. Dada Life at North Coast on Sunday night.
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Dada Life at the Mid for a North Coast aftershow on Sunday night.
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26. Dan Deacon at the big West Side arena last Wednesday night.
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27. Environmental Encroachment at Phyllis’ on Friday night.
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28. Billy Corgan at Ravinia on Saturday night.
Gendron: “The rock star inside Billy Corgan refuses to be tamed, even at a solo show advertised as acoustic. Saturday at Ravinia, the Smashing Pumpkins leader began his first career-spanning concert unaccompanied before being joined by the group’s guitarist, Jeff Schroeder, for the remainder of the 150-minute set. But even before a bizarre finale – that witnessed Corgan invite dozens of personalities from his pro-wrestling league onstage – the duo ballooned into a sextet and succumbed to excess.”
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29. Capture The Crown at Mojoes on Friday night.
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30. Anna Fermin & Trigger Gospel at Fitzgerald’s in Berwyn on Friday night.
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31. Consume The Divide at the House of Blues on Saturday night.
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32. Unwed Sailor at Schubas on Friday night.
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33. Cashmere Cat at North Coast on Saturday night.
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34. Talib Kweli on the Spirit of Chicago for a North Coast aftershow on Saturday night.
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35. Slightly Stoopid at the North Coast Music Festival in Union Park on Sunday night.
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36. Ralph Covert & the Bad Examples at Mayne Stage on Friday night.
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37. Zed’s Dead at North Coast on Sunday night.
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38. Ookay at North Coast on Sunday night.
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39. 30 Seconds to Mars in Tinley Park on Friday night.
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40. Linkin Park in Tinley Park on Friday night.
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41. Scott Stapp at Mojoes in Joliet on Thursday night.
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42. Blessthefall at Mojoes in Joliet on Friday night.
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Comments welcome.
Posted on September 3, 2014