Chicago -
City Was Chiraq And The Band’s Home Base Was Mobbed Up
“The orchestra was established in 1920 by Edgar A. Benson, a cellist who had become an impresario responsible for managing many bands in Chicago,” according to Wikipedia.
“The band soon became one of the most popular dance bands of the early 1920s, and had its base at the Marigold Gardens, which had some notoriety as a gangster hang-out.”
Posted on April 22, 2014
Curation By The Beachwood Rock Local Affairs Desk
You shoulda been there.
1. Chuck Loeb at the Montrose Room in Rosemont on Saturday night.
Posted on April 21, 2014
Curation By The Beachwood Rock Local Affairs Desk
You shoulda been there.
1. The National at the Chicago Theatre on Tuesday night.
Posted on April 18, 2014
By Smokin’ Billy Slater via YouTube with links added
“The rich history of piano blues has been overshadowed by the story of boogie-woogie piano. This Chicago-centric tale not only places Albert Ammons and Meade ‘Lux’ Lewis at the pinnacle of the art form, but also, falsely, at the center the story.
“As it is now told, a crude and primitive style of blues piano is forged in the barrelhouse bars of Texas; the sound migrates north to Chicago, and is perfected into the virtuosic – ubiquitous – style we know today.
“What’s wrong with this story? Everything! But let’s just touch on two things:
“Firstly, it discounts 20+ years of incredible African-American folk-art as merely a developmental time for the music. (It’d be like saying Robert Johnson was a step on the way to Muddy Waters perfection of blues guitar!) Call it pre-war piano blues, barrelhouse blues, or boogie-woogie, this music, by at least the early 1920s, was a fully formed expression.
“Secondly, and more important for this video, the story leaves out St. Louis! This is a tremendous oversight, for St. Louis, in the 20s and 30s, was a Mecca for piano blues.
“Practitioners included The Sparks Brothers, Henry Brown, Roosevelt Sykes, Stump Johnson, just to name a few.
“This tune, by Aaron ‘Pinetop’ Sparks (his twin brother Marion ‘Lindberg’ Sparks sang vocals) is a great example of the St. Louis style.
“Like most of his fellow St. Louisians, he didn’t play with the flash of his Chicago contemporaries, but Pinetop Sparks was an incredibly inventive pianist with a uniquely melodic style and a free-and-easy groove.”
Posted on April 17, 2014
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Posted on April 7, 2014
