Big up to the juke mixtape on Chrissy Muderbot’s blog. Rock this several times a week, repeat.
Posts Tagged ‘chicago’
Jan
12
2010
2010.
Well I’m back and readjusting to my normal life after extensive post-holiday travels. I have high hopes for the new year, and have lots of friends that are getting their lives back on track after the harsh reality that intruded into so many people’s lives in 2009. The most exciting thing for me is finally having a practice space to play loud music in again. Back in the 1990s it seemed like finding out about cool music was relatively difficult, but having a place to create music was relatively easy. Nearly two decades later the opposite is true. Music as a commodity is not so valuable anymore, but volume is an extremely valuable commodity these days.
Those of you who enjoyed the Deep Earth track I played on my Chicago podcast will be pleased to hear they have a second cassette release in the works, and are now digitally distributing the first one.
Lets all share even more awesome music in 2010.
Sep
16
2009
chronic boom
via Urban Dictionary:
1. chronic boom
The act of attaching copious amounts of marijuana to any type of dynamite or firework which results in a massive explosion of kush that spreads a god-like odor throughout the land.
I used to play guitar in a rock band called Scalpels, which existed between 2002 and 2008. We played quite a bit of music that absorbed heavy, psychedelic music, and free jazz. At the time I sort of saw it as a critical and necessary intervention into received music history, although I’m not so sure about that these days. We had a lot of ad hoc releases. Now you can purchase this cassette release. Also available is a cassette for the group Deep Earth, a track of which was featured on my first podcast, so if you were into that you’ll want to check this out as well.
There is something still alluring about cassette culture. It used to be the loser format of the various releases, but it was also the format that help get music bootlegging culture to where it is today, and tapes allowed musicians to operate at minimal cost, which is always totally crucial.
Aug
02
2009
cold tropics podcast no. 1
“It was cheap, it was easy, go and do it”
Well here is my foray into the world of podcasting a.k.a. amateur radio. I’m going to try and do this on a schedule of the first Sunday of every month. I figure a monthly schedule should keep me motivated enough to keep doing this without getting burned out, and I thought Sunday is a good day to listen to radio or radio-like programs. At least that’s usually when I listen to radio. Every podcast is going to be based on a theme of some kind. I decided to start off with Chicago, the city I called home for seven years. Chicago is a big city any way you like it, and it would have been impossible to have covered everything (I do regret not having any Chicago juke on this, I didn’t know about it at all when I lived there, and I still have a lot to learn…) I decided to limit myself to the more humble task of trying to convey a much more general impression of Chicago music. Chicago, unlike places like New York City, the Bay Area, or L.A., doesn’t really have much in the way of hype infrastructure seeking out local talent. The consequence of this is there is a healthy don’t-give-a-fuck ethos displayed by a lot of musicians who don’t worry too much about taking risks, or fitting neatly into the easy categories favored in press releases. Sometimes this attitude results in a lot of hubris, but other times it could result in Chicago feeling like the most exciting place on the planet.
Cold Tropics Podcast no. 1
Tracklisting:
Mr. Fingers – Stars
Ghost Arcade – Datenaustauch
Memo – Coal 45
Binges – Bad Batch
Mayor Daley – M.L. Pony
Killer Whales – Ode to Puerto Rico
Bird Names – ??? (Track 6 off of Fantic Yard EP)
BobbyConn – Jealous (Winners Remix by Magas)
Jitney – Snowhite Sneakers
Fake Lake – Untitled (Track 4 off of s/t… presumably s/t anyway… CD-R)
Deep Earth – Worldly Men
Magical, Beautiful – Untitled (Track 5 off of Obscure Love CD-R)
Unfortunately I’m still figuring out the details about how to setup a podcast so that new episodes regularly update on your music/media browser (if anyone is familiar with this get in touch!), so for now you just get a boring old mp3 file. Next month I will be covering psychedelic music with an extremely heavy international slant that eschews the Sgt. Pepper’s and Grateful Dead paradigm.