By Marilyn Ferdinand

On Bravo’s fashion design competition Project Runway, host and supermodel Heidi Klum always greets the contestants with the tagline, “In fashion, one day you’re in, and the next day you’re out.” That is the nature of fashion. In the short documentary, The World’s Most Dangerous Polka Band – a 27-minute valentine – really-first-time director Sonya “Sonny” Tormoen shows that operating outside of fashion can sometimes guarantee the kind of staying power money and fame can’t buy.

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Posted on September 27, 2006

By Don Jacobson

When Manitoba, Milwaukee, and the rest of the world aren’t treating you right, you wanna go North, South, or just plain Home to Chicago. In this edition of Chicago In Song – Chicago as escape hatch to mend your broken heart.

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Posted on September 24, 2006

By Mick Dumke

Jimmy Smith was a master of pulling soul out of the cheesiest organ lines. On “T-Bone Steak,” the flip side of this single, he and his band create one of these classic grooves, made up of funky guitar licks, a propulsive beat and bass line, and Smith’s oozing organ. But they sound even better on Side A: “Mickey Mouse.”

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Posted on September 23, 2006

By Mick Dumke

Coherence is overrated. Sure, there are moments when you know all the answers, and that’s when you play the first Ramones album, a persuasive argument in favor of two-minute, three-chord rumbles, wrecking shit just because you can, and getting stoned; or the early and mid-60s Motown singles like “The Tracks of My Tears” and “Nowhere to Run,” where the pain of loss is clear and cutting and you can’t think of anything else and don’t want to . . . though you still may want to get stoned.

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Posted on September 18, 2006

By Don Jacobson

This time in Don’s Root Cellar, the Hoyle Brothers hold ’em in down in Texas, Jon Christopher Davis makes me laugh in my beer and Lee Rocker shows why he’s still an O.C. (Original Cat).

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Posted on September 16, 2006

By Scott Gordon

You can hear that music play,
any time of every day,
every rhythm, every way!

– The Kinks, “Denmark Street,” Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround Part One
One of the advantages of my current job as a local editor for The Onion‘s A.V. Club is I get so much crappy music in the mail. It’s not the most opulent of fringe benefits, and it rarely actually helps me in my work, but I’m not complaining because you never know in just which ways crappy music has the power to entertain. For example, a few weeks ago I received a pair of sophomore albums from The Gurus and The Winnerys.

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Posted on September 12, 2006

By Mick Dumke

Right now, it doesn’t look like Johnny Cash will ever go away, and that’s the way it should be. His latest/posthumous record, American V: A Hundred Highways, has been a huge hit, and for good reason: the songs are a mix of originals and covers, but that voice makes each one into a detailed, personal experience we all can drink and weep and pray our way through.
Part of the Cash voice, of course, is, literally, his voice – that amazing baritone that many of us have tried and failed to imitate when we played the records and imagined ourselves performing from the stage of our own Folsom Prisons. Frankly, it doesn’t seem that hard to sing like Johnny Cash, until you find out you can’t do it. And that’s because the most essential part of his voice is really the way it’s used: not only is his baritone a lot deeper and cooler than ours, it’s a lot wiser, too.
It’s also deeper, cooler, and wiser than his brother Tommy Cash’s.

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Posted on September 10, 2006

Swingin’ Doors is a three-hour weekly radio show on KEXP in Seattle, in my opinion, one of the five best public radio stations in the country. Why? It’s all about the music on KEXP, lots of great shows and great DJs as well. And its Internet streams are the best – high-speed and crystal clear. Don Slack is the host of Swingin’ Doors, and his taste in roots and country-rock is awesome, as evidenced by the playlist below.

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Posted on August 26, 2006

By Don Jacobson

Sometimes I just can’t believe all the musical synergies and mysteries flowing all around me. No sooner do I mention Arthur Alexander, the semi-obscure early 1960s singer/songwriter who greatly influenced John Lennon with his soulful singing style – foolishly thinking it would be the last time such a reference would be made – than he surfaces in another context, this time in a (gulp) alt-country milieu.

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Posted on August 21, 2006

By Don Jacobson

Playlist from the Aug. 6, 2006, episode of the syndicated Little Steven’s Underground Garage show, which airs in Chicago Mondays at 10 p.m. on WXRT Radio.
Read on for a sampling the world’s best taste in new and old garage rock, that of Little Steven. He may run Bada Bing, but he’s king of the garage.

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Posted on August 8, 2006