Plus: City Plays Chicken With Congress Theater
“A few years ago, Gary Records founder Robyn Chang gathered her possessions and traveled to Taiwan for a job at Groupon, the coupon company,” Jaycee Rockhold writes for the DePaulia.
Her interest in local music scenes followed her there, where she began doing research. The language barrier was a problem.
“There was one website that was in English,” Chang said. “All the other ones were in Chinese.”
The band names were primarily listed in Chinese as well, which proved difficult in finding homegrown bands. Chang relied on one of her friends in Taiwan, who introduced her to a few groups, but this struggle of discovering international bands led to the birth of Gary Records.
Named after drunkenly searching for pictures of a man named Gary on Google, Gary Records produces “international splits,” in which two bands from different parts of the globe are paired on the same 7-inch vinyl.
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* Gary Records.
Chicago Punk Band Covers Garth Brooks
No Fences, Fuck You.
St. Bowie
St. Vincent discussing David Bowie with Jessica Hopper starts here, and continues in five more parts.
High Times
“The fifth album from Chicago quartet Disappears is so massive, so spatially aware that it appears to descend from an unattainable height without ever touching down.”
Congressional Theater
“[T]he much-publicized restrictions placed by the city upon the Congress prohibiting EDM were aimed not at that musical genre or even at that specific venue, but at [owner Eddie] Carranza as an irresponsible operator who racked up dozens of complaints,” Jim DeRogatis reports.
“Sources say it also was a tactic to prod React/SFX out of prolonging its legal fight. Rather than the city being anti-EDM, the move was pro-Congress, one source said.”
Maybe so, but that’s a dangerous and unseemly game to play.
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Liberace’s Big Note Song Book
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Bass To The World
“The Pirruccello brothers took over Chicago’s Lakland Bass during a tough economy and turned it around,” WTTW reports.
“They’re now tenants and supporters of the Jane Addams Resource Corporation, with an emphasis on job training skills. Those skills include the making of electric components for their instruments, work which used to be done overseas.
“We find out what goes into the making of the bass guitars that are favored by many superstar bands, including Black Sabbath, U2, and the Rolling Stones.”
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Comments welcome.
Posted on January 13, 2015