Blues Fest downsized from four days to three days this past summer, and the economic shrinkage continues for the local blues scene. Today Blue Chicago announced that one of its two branches, the North location at 736 N. Clark, would shut down on January 2, 2010, consolidating the venue to the 536 N. Clark building. The joint will still stay open 7 nights a week, presumably still serving up regular sets from Shirley Johnson, Linsey Alexander, J.W. Williams, Charlie Love and Grana’ Louise.

Earlier this month, word came from Evanston’s hoodoo institution, Bill’s Blues Bar, that the venue is on the brink of closing for good. Undoubtedly, the posh new SPACE venue a short distance away has hurt bookings. Owner Bill Gilmore’s downer email offered little hope:

Unless there is a drastic change in our financial circumstances, Bill’s Blues last day of operation is on the very near horizon.

Our current economic situation is desperate…

At this point, any last minute attempt to save Bill’s is a very long shot indeed and would most likely result in a complete restructuring of the business. I would be most interested in hearing from anyone who feels that they have anything of value to contribute.

The bar owes back state taxes and by government order lost its liquor license on November 2. Bill’s Blues Bar has been serving up shuffle and Hecky’s BBQ sandwiches on Davis Street for years. It is the longest running live-music venue in Evanston’s history.

Update: I was holding out a little hope, but it looks like it’s all over. Bill’s Blues Bar, as of yesterday, is officially closed.

The announcements for the annual year-end smorgasbord that is the Chicago New Year’s Eve concert schedule have started to roll in. So far the slate already seems like an improvement over last year.

It doesn’t hurt that we have a great new venue, Lincoln Hall, who will bring the Fiery Furnaces [click the links for tickets]. Better yet, the show is only $20, a bargain considering the typically inflated fees for these fetes that include gratis noisemakers and a plastic cup of champagne (or PBR, if you’re at Empty Bottle). The Schubas brothers’ eponymous older club will welcome Bobby Bare Jr. [$20] (The Furnaces will also play Schubas on Dec 30 for 5 bucks less.)

Lush Swedish indie-pop isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when I think all-night party, but regardless Jens Lekman [$30] will get hipper kids to swoon-in the new year at Empty Bottle.

Mash-up king Girl Talk [$35] will turn Congress Theater into a sweat pit. Hopefully the venue puts down the same plastic tarps used for the Insane Clown Posse visits.

After the two dudes have gotten their fix dabbling in side projects (the drummer’s solo project, Drummer, hits Schubas tonight, in fact), the Black Keys [$49] return together at the Riviera.

Long-running locals, er, Local H [$65] hit Double Door.

Other shows announced so far include Big Head Todd and the Monsters at the House of Blues, the Smoking Popes at Durty Nellie’s and the Gin Blossoms at the Intercontinental Hotel over by O’Hare. Whoo.

Metro, who tend to bring in the best acts, has yet to announce its final show of 2009. We’ll keep you posted.

At the end of the recital on Friday night, naturally we were all milling about outside discussing what we had just experienced. In my group of four, half of us—a critic and a semi-pro pianist—were unimpressed. The other two, myself and a colleague who has seen Philip Glass repeatedly over his career, were warm and mesmerized. For such a polarizing modernist, Glass plays deceptively simple music. His lulling patterns are immediate and accessible—new-agey you might say. Modernism so often carries the stigma of work that is messy or abstract for the mere sake of being difficult.  The first criticism often lobbed at such art is, “Geez, my kid could do that.” Sure enough, the pianist in our small debate griped, “I could teach my students how to play that in an afternoon.” She’s probably right. But the easiest retort I can think of is, “So?”

As we stood outside the MCA, a college-aged kid strolled out arm-in-arm with his girlfriend. He wore tails and a tophat. She had on a long dress and shawl. They looked silly—and being a smart-ass I joked about calling them a horse and carriage from nearby Water Tower Place—but the couple underlined the largest revelation of the evening: Modernism suddenly seems so damn old-fashioned.

Read more »

Before moving to Evanston, the best corn dog I ever ate was at the Minnesota State Fair, the mecca of deep-fried ingenuity and meals on a stick. Up there, the carnival delicacies are called pronto pups, which is also more fun to say. Like all good meatstuffs, the pronto pups are seared crisp on the outside and hot and juicy on the inside—the perfect food to take on a dark, creepy log-flume ride like Ye Olde Mill. But as I said, this was the best corn dog.

Without a doubt, Wiener and Still Champion, a greasy stand off the Dempster stop of the Purple Line, takes cornmeal-covered tube steak to insane heights, without losing any of the cheap thrills. This is not gourmet, just genius—a plump dog quickly dipped in a thick polenta batter. I’ve chewed the stick. But it’s more than just “dipping dogs” here. WASC’s owner, Gus, has that same renegade fast-food spirit of the Minnesota State Fair, finding ways to remix traditional burger-joint grub into mad frientist novelties.

Read more »

Live Nation just fired off a terse press release announcing the cancelation of a joint tour between Kanye West and Lady Gaga. The entirety of the media blast read:

Los Angeles, CA (October 1, 2009) – Live Nation announced today that the Kanye West and Lady Gaga “Fame Kills” tour has been canceled.

Refunds are available at the point of purchase.  Tickets purchased online and via phone will be refunded automatically.

No word was given for the sudden plug pulling, nor was it ever explained who or what fame kills. Perhaps this tour. Kanye West has been in major mea culpa mode after misbehaving at a celebrity back-patting ceremony on MTV.

Undoubtedly, rampant web speculation will suggest that either: 1) Kanye West needs to “go find himself” after putting his fancy sneakers in his mouth or, 2), Lady Gaga is pregnant.

Fox canceled Family Guy in middle of the show’s third season. Some probably wish the decision had stuck. But in one of the great Lazarus stories of television history, the button-pushing, flashback-happy cartoon roared back thanks to fan protest and DVD sales. Now it’s on approximately 58 times a night.

It took me, and I’m guessing most of America (and especially the executives at Fox), several years to warm to the show. Or at least submit to it. The animation got better. The Simpsons got a little worse. It’s only competition is Robot Chicken and Two and a Half Men. I watch a lot of TV. Why not Family Guy?

So as a moderate watcher of the original, I can report that Guyaholics should be satisfied by The Cleveland Show. It’s basically more of the same, and nowhere near as unwatchable as American Dad. All the Seth MacFarlane tropes remain—holding on shots that aren’t funny at all for painful lengths until they beg for a chuckle; race jokes; toon nudity; talking animals; mocking the disadvantaged, etc.

Read more »

When John Lithgow started on 3rd Rock from the Sun, I was surprised to see the bad dude from Raising Cain, Cliffhanger, Footloose and Buckaroo Bonzai going slapstick. Of course, he was hilarious. So good, in fact, that now that he’s going back to villainy, younger Dexter fans will be taken aback.

Read more »

Back in the ’80s and ’90s it was understood that the French were just not very good at rock ‘n’ roll. I was vaguely aware of Les Thugs, a punk band on Sub Pop, and Serge Gainsbourg’s weird Nazi rockabilly record, but that was it. When I interviewed Air years ago, I asked them why France just didn’t crank out rock bands. Jean-Benoît Dunckel matter-of-factly said, “Ve did not grow up vit it.”

That’s clearly changed over the last decade, as Paris has become a hotbed of post-Strokes garage bands.  Acts like Second Sex, the Plastisicines, Les Shades, Brooklyn, Neimo and the Dodoz are denim-and-leather bubblegum. At the top of heap are scene grandfathers Phoenix. Of course, Phoenix started out long before the rest, as slick arch-pop Air underlings, leaning a little disco and studio-geek R&B on their first two albums, but they’re thrashed things up a bit on the more consistent It’s Never Been Like That and the hot as hell Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, the best pop-rock record of 2009 (so far).

Read more »

Yesterday Billy Corgan announced on smashingpumpkins.com that he will release a 44-track opus based on the tarot dubbed Teargarden By Kaleidyscope. Further, the perpetually goofier shredder-songwriter plans to give it all away for free via the Web one track at a time, starting sometime “around Halloween.”

After all 44 tracks have been unleashed to the Internet, physical copies will be available for collectors.

Work on the record began only yesterday, but Corgan has 53 songs lined up. Somewhat encouragingly, he promises the new material “harkens back to the original psychedelic roots of The Smashing Pumpkins: atmospheric, melodic, heavy, and pretty.” But without the original members, of course. This will be the first album to feature recent Pumpkin recruit Mike Byrne on drums. Audio geeks can follow the studio process on this blog. Looks like they’re using analog gear, which is nice.

In the middle of “City of Blinding Lights,” as U2’s massive spaceship shot a metropolis’s worth of candlewatts into the night sky, a fellow, sloppy on eight-buck cups of Guinness and bitch beer, turned to me and yelled, “Gotta admit, that’s pretty fucking cool!” And it was pretty fucking cool, as long as we’re talking about insane set-pieces. But the punched up and too-pristine music? The band could’ve been playing a CD as they strutted across revolving bridges and midfield runways. The spectacle of the 360º Tour is so grand, it’s easy to forget you’re watching a rock concert.

Ah, but good ol’ Bono, with his camp cranked to the max and voice occasionally tiring, was there to remind us that U2 are humans. Cheesy, incredible, spectacular, embarrassing humans.

The vibe of the gargantuan gig is easy to sum up: Imagine a cross of the opening ceremonies of a Summer Olympic Games and a megachurch sermon by Joel Osteen. Nearly 100,000 middle-aged believers reached their hands to the heavens, beat their fists against their chests and belted along to the mix of ginormo-hits from the ’80s and ’00s.

Read more »