list.in.to.chicago this week: 04.03.2006

My apologies to anyone who may have actually gone to Double Door to see Led Zeppelin on Saturday. What I'm hearing is that at least one of you -- who will remain nameless -- fell for the April Fools gag, while several others commented that "you almost had me!" DeRogatis was the obvious giveway, and there have been no reports as to whether or not he saw it and/or thought it was funny.

You have to expect those kinds of shenanigans from me by now, though, right?

Pick of the week
It's a good week if you like guitar virtuosos. Or is it virtuosi? Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson Wednesday and Thursday at House of Blues, and Buckethead on Thursday at Double Door. Then there's Tributosaurus on Friday at Park West going back to one of my favorite of their many subjects, Peter Gabriel.

list.in.to.COZ
I think the good folks at Cubby Bear realized I was going through gig withdrawal and gave Diver -- or the three-piece version thereof, for all you Tony-on-lead-vocals fans -- an opening set this Saturday.

Recap
It was a bad week for host guitars at open mikes. First, Dana's ax met an unfortunate fate on Monday at Stadium West -- but hey, suddenly there was an easy and obvious birthday present to get her, right? -- and then Tony dropped his on Tuesday at Vaughan's before we even got started, which may finally put it out of service once and for all. But maybe not. That thing might as well have been through a frickin' war.

But there was more than that, of course. On Friday night, Robert Pollard's obnoxious drunken boor act -- complete with a case of beer on ice in front of him and a bottle of tequila on the drum riser -- wouldn't have been so overbearing had his audience not looked to him as some kind of role model. It's called personal space, people, and you would do well to respect it. A few doors south that same night, The Paramours nailed Blondie's "Heart of Glass," which I don't think I had heard them do before. Saturday night was a set from NYCO that started strong, but tapered off a bit. I had forgotten how much I like Devin Staples' drumming. And finally, Otter Petter showed that if you combine Shins-esque emo with a little bit of Killers-esque new new wave, you can sound like a fairly run-of-the-mill 80s MTV band. It's like the snake eating its tail or something. Not all of their stuff made that jump, to be fair, but it was weird when it did. They did the emo side particularly well, even. Overall, the night just ended up with a lot of falsetto singing from both bands. I blame Coldplay.

4.03   monday
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah with The Brunettes (Metro)   SOLD OUT!
I have to wonder if there was some sort of hipster-attended ceremony where The Arcade Fire formally passed the "indie darling" torch to these guys, who are among the least likely to be worried about scheduling a show against the NCAA Championship game. Hipsters tend to look down their horn-rimmed glasses-adorned noses at mainstream sports, if they even own televisions, which are just so bourgeois.

Beth Orton with Willy Mason (Vic Theatre)
This is one of those artists who just flits around the edge of my radar, to the point where I tend to get her confused with Lida Husik.

4.04   tuesday
Open Jam (Vaughan's)   COZ SINGS!
No acoustic guitars were harmed in the filming of this episode. We hope.

The Format with June, Tickertape Parade, Anathallo (Metro)
Okay, this is where that indie-rock overuse of "the" gets to be too much. Although it makes me want to see The Format play with The Music. And The The.

The Kessler/Lonberg-Holm/McBride/Vandermark Chamber Quartet (Empty Bottle)
Do you get the feeling that the jazz series at the Bottle is just the same guys, but with a different name every week?

4.05   wednesday
Joe Satriani with Eric Johnson (House of Blues)   SOLD OUT!
Satch is still at it, and he's still clearly got his fan base. Personally, I'm a bigger fan of Austin guitarist Eric Johnson, although he started to lose me with his Venus Isle record back in the mid-90s.

Long Count Quartet (Stadium West)   FRIENDS OF COZ!
We need some sort of meta-litc site somewhere that counts the number of times I mention the same band before actually going to see them. Of course, given Steve's ubiquity in these listings, he wouldn't count anyway. But I might make it out this time. Really.

4.06   thursday
Buckethead (Park West)
It's interesting that Buckethead is in town the same night as Satriani and Johnson, because even ten years ago, there was a certain old-guard/new-guard dichotomy between the G3 tour and the crazy shit Buckethead was doing, although the premise revolved a bit more around Steve Vai, who had been pushing the instrumental rock guitar envelope up to that point, and then stopped rather abruptly.

Nicholas Barron's Hyperaktive (Elbo Room)   FRIENDS OF COZ!
Your intrepid reporter will try to get to the bottom of the rather sudden and drastik new spelling of the group. Maybe Nicholas has been listening to the Chick Corea Elektric Band. I think if they wanted to be really cutting edge, they'd drop the 'e' at the end, too.

Joe Satriani with Eric Johnson (House of Blues)
Second of two shows for the reprise of the first G3 tour, minus one G.

4.07   friday
Hard-Fi with The Reputation, The Ladies and Gentlemen (Vic Theatre)
Once again, I'm more interested in one of the opening acts than I am in the new British band that was topping the charts the last time I saw them. They're not bad, but they go to that Clash/Big Audio Dynamite well just a few too many times for my tastes.

The Ladies and Gentlemen with Cisco Pike, Textbook, Split Habit (Nite Cap Lounge)
Of course, the opening band I want to see at the Hard-Fi show is apparently high-tailing it over to the new-ish Northwest Side club. I want to say this is about the second show I've seen here that involves bands I've heard of. It's a start.

Tributosaurus (Park West)   FRIENDS OF COZ!
The musical chameleons, subjects of a Sun-Times profile over the weekend, reprise Peter Gabriel. The Park West shows tend to be repeats of earlier shows, as opposed to the Wednesday Martyrs' gigs, of which there isn't one this time around.

The Strokes with Eagles of Death Metal (Aragon Ballroom)   SOLD OUT!
While I certainly don't dislike them, I've never been so interested in The Strokes as to catalog their rises and falls. So I neither relish nor gnash my teeth over their seemingly precipitous fall from critical -- although maybe not commercial, according to 5,000 Chicagoans who still like them -- grace. The point being that the last two records haven't done all that well.

Gary Sinise and the Lt. Dan Band (Joe's)
Yes, that Gary Sinise. He plays bass, and usually hires a bunch of killer local players when he comes through town for one of these shows, which typically benefit veterans' groups.

Eisley with Simon Dawes, Brighten (Metro)
The obvious reference for this band, who has been getting their fair share of Internet mentions as of late, it Sixpence None The Richer, but that sound seems pretty much blown out of the water by recent Chicago visitee Neko Case, particularly with New Pornographers. The bar for sugary pop has been raised.

4.08   saturday
Diver with Lounge Puppets (Cubby Bear)   SEE COZ LIVE!
Anto's off in England, so Tony will handle lead vocal duties tonight. Lounge Puppets are reportedly a hair-metal cover band similar to Hairbangers Ball, so we'll either skew towards some of our heavier material, or play medium-tempo conteporary stuff like Keane and Coldplay and see if the crowd throws shit at us.

American Motherload with Magnafux, Premium (Kinetic Playground)
This club, across from the Aragon Ballroom, has been open for at least a year now, I think, but the booking always seems to go in fits and starts. Here they get their heavy on with American Motherload and the first show I've seen from Premium in over a year.

Gogol Bordello with Dub Trio, Zox (Metro)
allmusic.com calls them a combination of punk, gypsy music and Brecht-ian cabaret, with a helpful link explaining just who the hell Bertolt Brecht was. I just know that they seem to be gaining in presence in the last three or four months, once again with the link to the helpful Technorati chart for those of you with HTML e-mail enabled.

Riviera with Brother Lowdown, Model One (Double Door)
I'm going to continue to just say that there's a buzz about this local act until I finally get around to seeing them, and that's not going to be this week.

4.09   sunday
Jeffrey Gaines with Ethan Kaulus (Schubas)
This guy will forever be known to me as the guy who recorded that godawful version of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes." That's a tough one to overcome.