Inhuman Swill

Support Chicago radio personality James VanOsdol's history of the local '90s rock scene, Chicago Rocked! He's funding the project through Kickstarter.com and only has 13 days to raise another more than $10,000. Please pledge if you can, because I selfishly really, really want to read this book.

Winter is not here yet, but it has definitely RSVP'd this past week. Summer had finally shown up after slumming somewhere down south but only hung out for a couple of weeks before autumn served it its eviction notice. I know that in a few months we'll be longing for temperatures in the 50s, but right now it feels cold as hell out there.

Fortunately, it was hot inside the Chicago Theater last night, once everyone thronging the sidewalks stopped taking pictures of the marquee and squeezed themselves through the doors. As part of their Rent Party '09 tour, Steely Dan is playing complete albums in a few cities. Chicago is fortunate enough to have gotten Aja last night, and gets Gaucho tonight and The Royal Scam on Thursday. I wish I could go every night, but Laura and I could choose only one, so we agreed on Aja.

It was a fantastic show, with an incredible cross-section of great songs. I won't be posting a full review, but I do want to note a couple of things. First, this was the first show we've been to in a long time, with the possible exception of AC/DC, where the majority of the crowd appeared to be older than we. (Definitely not the case at, say, The Dead Weather a few weeks back.) Second, having listened to it countless times over the past 32 years, I can't quite put my finger on why "Deacon Blues" made me all teary last night. Maybe I, I want a name when I lose.



( Aja Classic Album (Plus) Night Setlist )

As a fan of the band The Negro Problem, I was delighted to pick up the following throwaway tidbit from a New Yorker blog post by John Colapinto:

{Spike] Lee's next excursion into the question of race in America is his filmed version of "Passing Strange," the remarkable musical by [Negro Problem leader] Stew. I watched Lee shooting this production last June, in the Belasco Theatre in New York. The movie will be released, Lee tells me, in late August, at the IFC Center, in Manhattan.  [full post]

I learn from Stew's website that it's also been picked up by PBS for a Great Performances airing in 2010, and possibly will have a theatrical run this fall.

Having missed the run of Passing Strange in New York, I'm glad there are going to be multiple opportunites to see it.

I may have shared this video before, but I was waxing nostalgic about the (now broken-up) Rogers Sisters today and had to rewatch the charming video for their excellent song "Emotion Control," from their album The Invisible Deck:

Emotion Control

(Doesn't the guy in the video remind you a little of Jim from The Office?)

Maybe I was feeling nostalgic about working in an office (not that I want to do that again). That's the context from which I once knew Rogers Sisters bassist Miyuki Furtado&151;we worked together in an office for a few months back in 2000 or so. Check out his new band Shock Cinema.

I loved this LCD Soundsystem song even before I saw the video, but now I love it even more.

Listen to my station on Blip.fm!

http://blip.fm/invite/shunn

RIP Freddie Hubbard, 1938-2008. He was probably the best trumpeter from the hard-bop era next to Miles Davis, though some poor choices starting in the '70s derailed a career that could have made him as much of a household name today.

But whatever. I'm going to put on Open Sesame and then Red Clay to work to this morning—not to mention that track "Zanzibar" from Billy Joel's 52nd Street where Hubbard lays down an amazing solo on the outro—and wish there were a heaven (or hell) where I could look forward to hearing him play like in his prime.

I had another misadventure on moving day, though I didn't know it for more than a week. AC/DC tickets were going on sale that same day, so I kept the cable modem and laptop set up while the movers were carting our stuff away. I had purchased a membership to the AC/DC fan club earlier so I could have access to the good reserved floor seats at Allstate Arena. My brother-in-law Tom and I had planned this all out.

Everything went fine at the time. I logged into Ticketmaster at ten in the morning, bought great seats, and went on my merry way. It wasn't until more than a week later that I looked at my bank statement online and saw that the $208.70 I'd been charged had been refunded to my card.

To make a long story short, I called Ticketmaster and discovered that I had forgotten to update my street address in their system. I had already updated the street address for my debit card, and when they ran a check later that day the two addresses didn't match. They sent me email (so they said) giving me 48 hours to call and resolve the problem.

I didn't receive the email. I didn't call. I lost the tickets.

Fortunately StubHub.com had tickets, and I was able to get a pair for not much more than I paid for the fan club membership plus the original tickets. The seats aren't as good, but at least we still get to go to the show. And the AC/DC fan club claim they will refund my membership since I couldn't use the ticket code they issued me.

The movers are here. The contents of the apartment are draining into the truck with disconcerting rapidity. There's not much about this neighborhood that we will miss, but one of our great regrets just walked past us up the sidewalk. Our neighbor John Stirratt, bassist for Wilco and before that for Uncle Tupelo, just ambled past pushing a stroller on his morning walk. He glanced at the open front door of our apartment, and at the hustling movers, as he passed by me and my armful of odds and ends, and it was probably just my imagination that he looked a little disappointed. We've said hello to him but never felt comfortable "bothering" him to try to strike up a conversation. We've struck up conversations with plenty of other people in the neighborhood, though none of those conversations ever led to making actual friends. But even given that dismal batting average, why did we shy away from even talking to the most obviously interesting* person on our side of the street? I feel very sad about this failure, and like a giant asshole. Maybe he and his family are lonely here too.

---

* I don't mean to imply that no one else on the street could possibly be interesting to talk to, just that Stirratt represents a subject I know already that I'm interested in.

Obsessing about politics is not all I've been up to lately. First and foremost, if you hadn't divined it from cryptic postings or from status messages on Facebook and Twitter, Laura and I are moving again this month. Not a huge move, just up to the northern end of Chicago, but we're hoping it will make all the difference for our Chicago-living experience. Humboldt Park turns out to be not the neighborhood we had hoped for, or thrive much in. (Even the fact that Wilco's John Stirratt lives a block down from us can't save it for us.) We're betting that the Andersonville/Ravenswood sorta area will be much better for us. We'll make the move just as the season changes.

We've also seen an uncommonly good deal of John and Shai Klima over the past week. On Saturday we drove to Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, and met up with them at the home of John's awesome parents. From there the four of us continued to Spring Green, where we saw a delightful outdoor afternoon American Players Theatre production of "The Belle's Strategem" by Hannah Cowley. We had dinner at a tapas joint called The Icon in Madison. Good times.

Then last night John and Shai braved oil-tanker accidents on I-88 to make the drive to Chicago. The four of us had an abundant Indian feast, after which we repaired to the House of Blues to see The Fratellis. Other than the slight hiccup of being barred from entering the House of Blues with a shoulder bag (what? no bag check inside?), we had a marvelous evening. I'm assuming that the Klimas made it back to Iowa in one piece after the show. (Didja?)

Meanwhile, I've been so wrapped up in packing the apartment that it didn't even register that two fellow Chicagoans are moving (in one case back) to New York! Congratulations (and no small amount of envy) to Deborah and scottjanssens! We hate you. (But only a little.)

Our celebrity sightings have definitely tailed off since we moved to Chicago, but Laura and one of her colleagues had a good one the other day. At the same hot dog joint where they were grabbing lunch, they spotted Dennis DeYoung of Styx.

(I'd suggest that he had too much time on his hands, but Tommy Shaw took the lead vocal on that track.)

There's no way on earth that I'm the world's biggest Steely Dan fan, but I like to think I'm up there in the top thousand. This may explain why I'm so stoked that, after 2006's Morph the Cat from Donald Fagen, we're about to get Circus Money from Walter Becker!



Check out the first single, "Somebody's Saturday Night", streamed from Rolling Stone:



We'll be seeing Becker and Fagen together this July at the Chicago Theater....

Epidode #53 of "ShunnCast" is now available, in which Bill combs through the dusty vaults of his cassette collection to unearth a musical gem from his missionary days that might more profitably have remained buried—"The Wenatchee Rap" by No Parking Zone.

http://www.shunn.net/podcast?id=53

See also shunncast.

My virtual contribution to April's CD Mix of the Month club was Out in the Streets.

(The story so far.)

I keep forgetting to post that my virtual contribution to March's CD Mix of the Month club was Life Is Good, an affirmation tinged with darkness.

(The story so far.)

My virtual contribution to February's CD Mix of the Month club was The Answers That You Want: Rockin' Straight from '70 to '74.

(The story so far.)

The CD Mix of the Month Club unofficially went out for karaoke Tuesday night, and I was there! My contribution, in regret at having missed their Chicago New Year's Eve show, was A Spoonful of Secrets: E.P.'s, Singles, B-Sides & Radio Tracks from Spoon.

(The story so far.)

I heard this Saul Williams album, produced by Trent Reznor, reviewed this morning on "Sound Opinions," and I had to pony up the five bucks to hear the whole thing. It's essentially self-released and available online only. I don't like music companies telling me what to listen to any more than Saul Williams likes them telling him how he should sound. Check it out.

[Apparently LiveJournal won't let me embed the Flash app that would allow you to preview the album here, so you'll have to head over there directly.]

I'm sure everyone in the universe is linking to this today, but I can't stop watching this YouTube video from The Beatnix, an Australian Beatles cover band. It's from an alternate universe where the young mop-tops wrote and recorded "Stairway to Heaven" in 1964:



Via the Tube Junkie blog at New York Magazine, via Brenda from CDMOM.

The CD Mix of the Month Club went bowling in Brooklyn for their December mixer, the lucky bastards. My contribution-in-absentia was We Are, and I surely wish we were.

(The story so far.)