The inhabitants of 591 55th Street (or The Basement as it is commonly called) spend plenty of time playing Street Fighter and drinking. A few months ago, a combination of boredom and distaste for venue promoters prompted The Basement to dedicate some time to hosting bands.
Since then, a variety of musicians have performed in their space. Word has spread and many shows have reached capacity. 591 55th Street will be expanding in the near future to accommodate the crowds.
Care to stalk us this weekend? Search for us around Chicago as we see Subtle, The Lonesome Organist, Eastern Blok, the Andreas Kapsalis Trio, Young Widows, and more. And maybe you’d care to see The Dark Knight with online editor Scott Morrow…
Japanese Motors inhabits that mythical Gotham of our rock fan imagination; of tuff boys and tuffer girls, of leather jackets and tight denim and “I Heart NYC” tees, of Lou Reed and Debbie Harry and Richard Hell.
Yay! That’s All I Have To Say.
Faith No More didn’t revolutionize the rock landscape, but for much of its tenure, its members created some of the genre’s best mainstream songs while courting radio success. Along the way, Mike Patton and crew peppered other styles into their expanding repertoire, wedging lounge sounds, incoherent squeals, and even an angelic choir into songs that ran alongside pummeling rock tunes.
There is a kitschy guilty pleasure to pre-Patton songs such as “We Care a Lot,” but respectfully, they can’t compete. So with apologies to the Chuck Mosely era, here is our list for Faith No More’s best songs.
Melancholy Americana would be a better denomination than freak folk, the tag that has clung to Viking Moses since the band’s appearance on Devendra Banhardt’s 2004 Golden Apples of the Sun (Bastet) compilation. The band’s newest offering, The Parts That Showed, should rectify that reduction.
Doomsdayer’s Holiday is the new release by Portland’s instrumental rock band Grails. Fusing Indian music, 1970s film noir, and psychedelic sounds into heavy acoustic and electric rock, Grails is a wonderful anomaly. I recently spoke with guitarist Alex Hall, who created the artwork for the album.
ATP announces another festival; ’90s doom-metal group Sleep reunites; Calexico posts a free streaming video of a 23-song performance. This and more…
The Whitehaus Family Record is a three-story house located in the lush town of Jamaica Plain, Massachusettes. Inside this house, a variety of performances such as fire breathing, live radio drama, music playing, and weekly hootenannies occur in the living room. The Whitehaus Family plans to continue these shows until they die.
ALARM Columnist Sean-Michael Yoder wants you to consider listening to these new tracks. Freq Nasty compiles the new disc for the Fabriclive series, fellow Britons Bombay Dub Orchestra have some Indian-influenced dance beats, and Polish duo 3 Channels are back with a new name.
Our plans this weekend include local shows with the massive stoner metal of The Sword, the experimental jazz of the Umbrella Music Festival, and the raw alt-country of O’death.
And our friends in Austin have another great festival of their own, as the Fun Fun Fun Fest run on Saturday and Sunday.
Austin, Texas is so overflowing with live music now that the city throws together an eighty-band festival in its sleep. So it was for the Fun Fun Fun Festival, whose biggest handicap might be its goofy name.