list.in.to.chicago this week: 09.29.2008

Sorry, but it gets necessarily heavy towards the end.

check out list.in.to.chicago (and leave comments!) on the web at notabbott.com/litc

Pick of the week
If you've got a line on tickets for Beck (Thursday and Friday at the Aragon), you should act on it. The Gomez show on Thursday at The Vic should be pretty cool, too, at least for longtime fans of the band.

list.in.to.COZ
Just Vaughan's on Tuesday, and maybe the open mike at the Globe on Wednesday. Apologies to anyone who thought we were at Cullen's this past Saturday, but we did tell them we couldn't make that date a while ago.

Recap
I almost went to see Stars and Bell X1 on Wednesday, but the combination of Tuesday night at Vaughan's and actually having some work to do meant the couch seemed a much better option.

9.29   monday
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds with Black Diamond Heavies (Riviera Theatre)   SOLD OUT!
Both Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis agreed that last night's show from Cave was fantastic, and seeing how wildly their opinions diverged on My Bloody Valentine last week, that may be saying something.

Hot Chip with Growing (Metro)
Second of two nights, with a somewhat unusual posted start time of 8:15pm.

9.30   tuesday
Open Jam (Vaughan's)   COZ SINGS!
I may have a new old tune and a new new tune for this week. Definitely the latter, as "After Hours" from We Are Scientists has been getting stuck in my head to the point where I was forced to learn it.

10.01   wednesday
Ray LaMontagne with Leona Naess (Chicago Theatre)
I thought I had seen that this show was sold out, but Metromix doesn't concur at the moment. And after seeing some promo e-mails, I can't shake the notion that the modern folk crooner is a dead ringer for Haywire from the first and second seasons of Prison Break.

Tributosaurus (Martyrs')   FRIENDS OF COZ!
The first Wednesday sorta snuck up on us this month, which means it's Tributo-time once again. This time as The Clash.

Rachel Yamagata (Lakeshore Theater)
The second major-label album from the former Bumpus frontwoman drops next Tuesday. A four-song EP from the record has been available on iTunes for a while now.

The Wedding Present with Dirty On Purpose (Empty Bottle)
Englishman David Gedge has been at this long enough that there was a fair amount of rock critic fawning when the band released a new album this year. It's on my big playlist of 2008 releases, but hasn't made much of an impression. And I have one report that Brooklyn-based Dirty On Purpose is nothing to sneeze at.

10.02   thursday
Beck with MGMT (Aragon Ballroom)   SOLD OUT!
His collaboration with Danger Mouse was a bit of a letdown if only because it seemed like such a good idea on paper, the expectations were way too high. And while I suspect he may not be trotting out the marionettes again for this tour, I'm sure he's got something interesting up his sleeve for the live show.

Gomez with Other Lives (The Vic)
The lads are celebrating the tenth anniversary of their Bring It On album by playing it in its entirety, along with new tracks that they've been recording here in Chicago since at least June or July.

Linsday Buckingham (House of Blues)
The new record from the Fleetwood Mac is in a similar vein as his big solo comeback from a couple of years ago -- heavy on finger-picked nylon-string guitar, but with a bit more traditional instrumentation on some tracks that sound very Mac-like. There's a point on the opening track where the instrumental style actually is a bit reminiscent of Adrian Belew, but that moment seems to be, um, fleeting.

Liam Finn with The Veils (Lakeshore Theater)
The son of Crowded House's Neil Finn has played Chicago so often in the past twelve months that I'm starting to wonder if he lives here now.

Weezer with Angels and Airwaves, Tokyo Police Club (Allstate Arena)
On the one hand, Rivers Cuomo and his merry band have released some pretty good songs over their career. On the other hand, I hold them largely responsible for the mainstreaming of hipster irony. They're going to need to write a lot more catchy tunes to overcome that.

Alanis Morissette with Alexi Murdoch (Chicago Theatre)
I tried giving her new album a listen when it first came out, but it just was not working for me. I think I lasted a track and a half before bailing on it.

10.03   friday
Frank Russell Quartet (Andy's Jazz Club)   FRIENDS OF COZ!
I have no doubt that there are a lot of really great bass players in the city, but I haven't seen too many that Russell can't go toe-to-toe with.

Helicopters with Headlights, World's First Flying Machine (Schubas)   FRIENDS OF COZ!
Okay, I must pay due respect to whomever decided to book Helicopters with World's First Flying Machine, but only if they did it on purpose.

Brazilian Girls (House of Blues)
Electronic dance music from NYC with lots of Latin and South American influences thrown in, along with a singer with a penchant for costumes. I saw them at Bonnaroo last year, and they were entertaining, even if I don't really remember much about the music itself.

The Ataris with American Taxi, The Collapsed, Four Star Alarm (Beat Kitchen)
I guess they outlasted all those other bands from the early- to mid-nineties that had "Atari" in their name, although the only one I can remember now is Atari Teenage Riot.

Beck with MGMT (Aragon Ballroom)   SOLD OUT!
See Thursday's listing, only this time, I'll be there.

The Dials with The Mathematicians, The Ettes, The Deccas (Empty Bottle)
Perhaps more so than any of the other bands affected, The Dials have tried to move past the tragic death of drummer Doug Meis three summers ago. So I don't know how heavy the recent news about the reduction of the sentence for the woman who killed Meis, John Glick and Michael Dahlquist in a car crash will weigh on this show. My thoughts go out to those who were close to these three friends, because I only knew Doug peripherally, and still feel punched in the gut.

10.04   saturday
New Kids On The Block (Allstate Arena)
The idea of this band existing in 2008 is wrong on so many different levels. The whole point of this band was that they were cute and they were young and it was 1990. How can that possibly translate, eighteen years later?

Sunset Rubdown (Empty Bottle)
I seem to remember a lot of indie rock snobs -- probably on the Sound Opinions message board -- going on and on about this band a year or two and finding them noisy and inscrutable when I actually took a listen.

My Life With Thrill Kill Kult with The Last Vegas, Fashion Bomb (Metro)
With Ministry having retired, these guys may have become the elder statesman of industrial music by default, but I'm probably missing a whole bunch of bands on account of the fact that I don't really listen to industrial.

10.05   sunday
Uli John Roth (House of Blues)
He replaced Michael Schenker in The Scorpions, and was subsequently replaced by Mathias Jabs, who is the guitarist (other than Rudy Schenker) that I associate with the band on account of not really knowing who they were until "Rock You Like a Hurricane." Like Michael Schenker, Roth seems to have a solid fan base among the 70s rock fans who listen to The Loop religiously and reflexively scoff at any rock music released in the last twenty years.