CHIRP: Chicago Independent Radio Project

Posted by Luscious Gris on June 9, 2008 around 11am

In these halcyonic days of technology this that & the other, I catch myself worrying about all that will be lost beneath the rubble of forgotten bullshit. Unsurprisingly, they are all things I grew up with, things I adore and adored, and stuff I remember by touch feel sight. Paperback books, 7” records, Pez dispensers, pinball, real jukeboxes, old skool b&w photo booths, diners. Let’s move on. I desperately hope for the persistence of small venues where bands play and top shelf means a double dewar’s. For some of us, dive bars and small venues are home.

The logic is excruciatingly simple. Small venues permit a band to play like they’re in your living room. Small venues don’t hold lots of people, the line at the bar can only get so long. Lots of the time you can get away with $15 or less. But it’s really about the dream. You just never know when the next Hendrix will play to 25 forty-somethings with shaggy beards and tallboys for $6. To me, it’s a free option: take it, shut up, and be thankful.

Without further ado, LET US NOW PRAISE SMALL VENUES!

Valentine’s Day, 2001, Khyber (Philadelphia), White Stripes

Playing to maybe 60 folks, a song stills the crowd. My then-girlfriend (now my wife) knows the song seconds into it, well before anybody has gotten it. Jolene has not been released. It is not a song that is covered often. Live, it is hard to convey the sense in which Jack White inhabits this song as if he were born to play it. I bought the Dolly Parton album shortly thereafter. Around the same time I gave up trying to locate any of the Pickwick releases Lou Reed reportedly worked on prior to VU.

Late summer 1997, Tokyo Rose (Charlottesville, VA), Moe Tucker and company

Tokyo Rose is a sushi bar upstairs and a dingy little club downstairs. They have a tiny bar, if you’re lucky somebody is there serving bass on tap. Moe Tucker swung by and played to a small number of folks, mainly older scenesters from surrounding Albemarle County. A little parking lot was real famous by virtue of members of both Pavement and Yo La Tengo having worked there in years past. This show inspired me to pursue the stand-up bass and sculpture when I retire. Moe Tucker rocks. So does the guy that runs Tokyo Rose, he lets bands get it done however they want.

Fall 1997, Tokyo Rose, David Thomas and company

A young Swiss woman is interviewing in the lab where I did my graduate work at the University of Virginia. I take her to Tokyo Rose to get a feeling for the “town”. I adore Pere Ubu and more specifically I can listen to David Thomas’ vocals for hours on end. Same with Black Francis or whatever moniker he elects. Mr. Thomas dons a bright orange hunting vest for this show. The lights are dimmed, as they usually were. Mr. Thomas’ physical presence on stage is staggering. His voice is staggering, I can’t really focus on anything else. Until, that is, the young lady asks me why Americans don’t dance. I said nothing’s stopping you, but she couldn’t hear me above Mr. Thomas.

Late fall 1988, City Gardens (Trenton, NJ), Jane’s Addiction

Reasonably early on in Jane’s Addiction lore, and very late in City Gardens lore. The club has a storied history, somebody opened, Perry Farrell got up there, tall & lanky as hell when viewed below the stage. Black leather jumpsuit. During a cover of a Bob Dylan song, Perry chooses to give us a prime & lingering view of his anus. Who knew black leather jumpsuits have a buttoned ass-flap? Without the production antics, Perry Farrell has a compelling vocal range. Good shit then, good shit now. Even if it’s overexposed.

Summer 1993, Miller’s, Charlottesville, VA, Tim Reynolds

I slip away from a table and find a real chill spot up near the front window at Miller’s. Tim Reynolds takes the stage. There weren’t more than 25 people in the place, fewer than a dozen of us on the ground floor where Tim was stationed. I didn’t know anything about Tim Reynolds, nor did he introduce himself. He just started playing. It didn’t seem like he cared or noticed that people were there, he was very absorbed in his playing. During the second song, I became transfixed. I just couldn’t figure out what the hell he was doing. I never got up until he stopped playing. Nor did I take my eyes off him.

Summer 2002, The Black Cat, Washington, D.C., Superchunk

I had seen Mac McCaughn at Tokyo Rose doing his Portastatic thing, and had wanted to see Superchunk live for a decade at this point. Mac rips into 100,000 Fireflies as the first encore. The woman on bass clearly likes this one. A mosh pit develops. On a related note, I think I’ve now listened to Detroit has a Skyline more than 100 times in the last two years. It is reassuring to me in ways that are inexplicable. They put out this 5-song acoustic EP a few years ago, I bought it at the DC show. Get it. I’ve now listened to that thing a good 250 times and it still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Mac’s voice coupled with his work on an acoustic guitar is spectacular.

Summer 1998, Knitting Factory, downtown Manhattan, Magnetic Fields

This was the first time I saw Stephen Merritt et al. play live. After listening to everything they put out, either under the Mag Fields name or related aliases, I wasn’t real sure how the stuff would fare live. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Merritt was a bit surly and Claudia Gonson was not. They played a bunch of stuff from the early albums, e.g. Distant Plastic Trees/Wayward Bus, Get Lost, Holiday. To my ears, the early stuff culminating in 69 Love Songs is the most compelling work. For a little spell there I caught a bunch of his music commentary and tried to reverse engineer what his actual thoughts and intentions are. I gave up. It seemed to me that he combined Rogers & Hammerstein lyrics with Phil Spector’s pop aesthetic from the beginning, never understood why critics never said that. The Tarnation soundtrack had a track from the Holiday LP. It’s overlooked in my book. The first 6ths album is also overlooked. It’s a cute idea and the first one was much better than the second.

Winter 1999?, Empty Bottle, Chicago, Aluminum Group

I showed up at the Empty Bottle after interviewing for a job. I can’t remember how I found it, maybe I picked up a Chicago Reader on the street. I knew Tortoise had played there, that was enough for me. I had the cheapest beer of my life, a 22 oz. Polish something. Aluminum Group came on. One of the guys had quit smoking, he talked about that a great deal. I liked the show a great deal. A year or two later I got a CD of Human League covers on the basis of Aluminum Group contributing. It seemed like the least I could do. It sucked ass. I think I was ready for it to disappoint, I had just gotten an album of Springsteen covers that similarly sucked ass. Let me rephrase: it is a disservice to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band to attempt to cover a song like Highway Patrolman unless one feels ready, competent, and willing. I recently discovered that Rolling Stone ranked Nebraska the 43rd best album of all time. This is one of a thousand reasons why I stopped reading Rolling Stone in 1991. I stopped reading the New Yorker in 1998 after they published John Updike reviewing art one too many times. Maybe there was a time when the publication didn’t suck, but that time ain’t now.

And one show that got away…

New Year’s Eve, 1997, somewhere in Seattle, Silkworm/Pavement/somebody else

I had been listening to Silkworm’s song “Couldn’t You Wait” for several weeks on end when this show came along. I was in Seattle at the time. I could have gone to this show, I wanted to go to this show, and to this day I apologize to Silkworm, Pavement, and whoever else played for missing it.