list.in.to.chicago this week: 04.19.2004

So, what I'm thinking is, this is a bad week for waiting until the last minute to plan to see the rock and the roll, as there's a gaggle of sold out shows littering the listings. Of course, there are always other ways to find tickets for sold out shows.

I meant ticket brokers. Get your mind out of the gutter already.

Pick of the week
Of the shows that aren't sold out this week, I'm leaning toward The Bad Plus on Saturday at Martyr's, and that International Pop Overthrow festival gig with Menthol headlining on Wednesday at Schuba's.

list.in.to.COZ
Just Vaughan's this week, but there will be more soon.

Recap
Went to see Ally, Allison, Darren and Resurrection Joe last night. They were all great and all, but I'm clearly a bar/club guy, not a coffeeshop/art gallery guy, so the venue was a little disquieting. Although going to more of these sorts of things might actually get me paying attention to lyrics more than I do now. The totally random association was that Resurrection Joe's slide blues reminded me of Primus for some reason.

On the playing front, the Soldier Field gig went without a hitch, and even had small throngs of teenage girls running up to the stage screaming. I only wish the game went as well.

4.19   monday
Billy Corgan (Metro)   SOLD OUT!
The former Pumpkin and Zwan frontman hopes to divert attention from his "tell-all" website to his new solo music, which apparently includes a bunch of songs about his hometown. If he's got a song about the Cubs in that bunch, I may hurl, and not in that good, Kerry Wood-Carlos Zambrano-Mark Prior-Matt Clement-Greg Maddux starting rotation way.

4.20   tuesday
Open Jam (Vaughan's)   COZ SINGS!
There's a chance of some old-school prog rock this week, along with slightly amended versions of tunes I tried out a couple of weeks ago. Now I can appeal to those of you who actually have day jobs in an effort to get people out to either sing or just have a good time, because if I can do it, why can't you?

Phantom Planet with Steriogram (Schuba's)   CANCELLED
You may be wondering why I'd mention a show that has been cancelled in this space. Well, it gives me a great opportunity to make a snarky comment about former band member Jason Schwartzman's new sitcom Cracking Up, which was also cancelled last week after just a handful of episodes. Anyone notice a pattern here?

Jazz Jam Session with the John Paris Jazz Quartet (Elbo Room)
Something different at the Lincoln Avenue club, and I'll be very curious to see how it goes. Despite Sumo's nearly decade-long tenure on Sunday nights, Elbo Room's bread and butter has almost exclusively been rock. They haven't really done much with jazz since the days of the late Barrett Deems and his big band, also on Tuesday nights.

4.21   wednesday
Joss Stone with Eric Roberson (House of Blues)   SOLD OUT!
You may or may not have heard the buzz over Stone. Knowing she's a 16-year old British singer, the easy assumption is another pop tart in the Britney/Christina vein. Then you hear her sing, and do a double take, as she's got soul beyond her years. And her geography, for that matter. I haven't heard much of her yet, so I don't know if it's a more traditional thing, or a more modern sound, a la Nikka Costa. The hype seems at least somewhat deserved, and prevalent enough to sell out the River North nightspot.

International Pop Overthrow Festival (Schuba's)
This weeknight bill on this year's IPO fest features one-time next-big-thing-from-Chicago Menthol as part of a pretty stacked slate that also includes Million Yen, Missile, The Amazing Kappa, Wes Hollywood Show, The Beatifics and Trolley. Looking over the full schedule, this looks to be one of the more attractive nights of the whole festival.

4.22   thursday
Sparta with Brazil (Bottom Lounge)
If you take the long view, Chicago was visited by At The Drive-in over a period of seven days. The higher profile band to come out of ATDI's demise -- at least as of late -- is The Mars Volta, who opened for A Perfect Circle over the weekend at that show I didn't go see. Sparta, on the other hand, has actually been on the national scene longer, releasing their major-label debut on Dreamworks back in 2002.

4.23   friday
Muse with The Exit (Metro)   SOLD OUT!
There's a bit of a buzz about this UK band, on the grounds that they've got healthy doses of Jeff Buckley and The Bends-era Radiohead in their sound. I definitely hear the former, but not so much the latter. If anything, the band reminds me a little of VAST, only not grounded in quasi-industrial music. Their latest, Absolution, is a pretty good record despite who it sounds like, and apparently a thousand or so other people think so as well.

The Crystal Method with DJ Hyper (House of Blues)
Perhaps a bit more than Chemical Brothers, but certainly less than Moby, The Crystal Method was one of a wave of electronica outfits to make a splash in the mainstream in the late 90s. They scored maybe a couple of relatively successful singles, including a collaboration with Filter that was featured on the soundtrack to Spawn. I guess that makes this an appropriate choice on the heels of another dark comic-book movie hitting theaters in The Punisher.

Indigo Girls with Kelly Hogan (The Vic)
I'm sorta on the fence about Indigo Girls. They clearly write good songs, but on the other hand, if I have to hear "Closer to Fine," and even "Galileo" one more time, particularly by marginally talented graduates of the Old Town School of Folk Music's Guitar Two course at some random weeknight open stage, I may impale myself on a microphone stand. That said, seeing them in this kind of intimate setting, particularly with Chicagoan Kelly Hogan opening, the show, would likely be worthwhile.

The Strokes with The Raveonettes (Aragon)   SOLD OUT
I can't recall if there's been another band that was allegedly going to save rock and roll from itself since The Strokes hit it big. Maybe The Darkness, but only in an ironic way, lest rock and roll expose itself as being kinda silly and over the top, and that would cause too much gnashing of teeth among rock critics. I'm pretty sure that The Strokes took that mantle away from Radiohead. I was hoping that a quick search of RollingStone.com for the phrase "save rock and roll" would yield hilarious results, but no such luck. Maybe NME?

4.24   saturday
The Bad Plus (Martyr's)
This piano trio made a big splash last year with their second album These Are The Vistas, which found a spot on many a critic's top ten list. I'm not wholly convinced that they're quite worthy of the hype, but it's one of those jazz groups that rock fans can wrap their heads around, as they stray from the typical book with interpretations of Nirvana and the like, so I definitely understand the appeal.

Anna Fermin's Trigger Gospel (Schuba's)
That's right, we're back to my age-old practice of bringing up bands that I keep saying I want to see, yet never quite get around to. Limited time and resources can be a bitch like that sometimes, especially in genres and subgenres that are slightly outside of my musical comfort zone.

The Fall with Shesus (Metro)
This is one of those influential indie label (in this case, Matador) bands that I feel like I should know something useful about, but don't. Sorry.

4.25   sunday
H.I.M. with Kill Hannah (House of Blues)   SOLD OUT
I have a vague notion of this goth-rock band H.I.M. (which stands for the oh-so-subversive and anti-establishment "His Infernal Majesty"), but for a sold-out show, they seem like barely a blip on the radar. So I think maybe the Disaffected Youth of Chicago's Suburbs are making up the difference in support of their hometown Kill Hannah, wearing their hearts -- and their socks, for reasons I still don't quite understand -- on their sleeves.

Janis Ian (Old Town School of Folk Music)
I wonder what Ian would do if you duped copies of her CDs and handed them out at the show, but I'm just not subversive enough to try it. She was very outspoken in support of file-sharing during Napster's heyday, so she shouldn't mind, right? Which reminds me, I need to get to work on the damn book.