list.in.to.chicago this week: 01.03.2011

Happy New Year! The tale of the tape for 2010, in case you were wondering and if my records are accurate, was 37 shows attended and 40 shows played, not including open mics. Throw those in and it's some sort of music every two and a half days. Sounds about right.

Pick of the week
It's January, which means Buddy Guy at his South Loop blues club. Tickets are still available for Thursday and Sunday this week.

list.in.to.COZ
No Vaughan's at all this week due to college football, I think. I'll be at The Globe on Wednesday and then The Trollops are at Temple Bar on Saturday. Who are The Trollops? Keep reading to find out.

Recap
One thing that jumped out at me about Yeasayer on Friday night was that, while all the vocal harmonies sort of blend in with all the other textural elements on their records, when you see them live, you can't help but noticing that they're singing the crap out of these songs. And the band seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely with their out-of-left field cover song encore consisting of Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know," "Miss You" from the Rolling Stones, and finally a joint effort with opening band Health on "Plush" from Stone Temple Pilots. Health seemed to be aspiring to the loopy, angular weirdness of a band like Battles, but I didn't feel like they were connecting.

1.03   monday
Robbie Fulks with Don Stiernberg (Hideout)
Patricia Barber Quartet (Green Mill)
Good to know that, as the calendar changes, steady Monday night gigs don't.

1.04   tuesday
Two Star with The New Diet, Paradigm (Double Door)
Time Out Chicago says this band is aiming for a sort of Death Cab For Cutie sound. If that sounds at all interesting, the price is certainly right. As in free.

1.05   wednesday
Sing Along With Coz (The Globe Pub)   COZ SINGS!
So, I jammed my thumb making an absolutely heroic, highlight reel save (as far as you know, with one or two exceptions on the e-mail list) on a breakaway yesterday for my indoor soccer team, which could make playing guitar very, very interesting.

Kevin O'Donnell's Epiphany Spectacular (Martyrs')
The former drummer for Andrew Bird's Bowl of Fire has been doing this gig annually for a while now, but I haven't had any startling revelations about it. There has to be a better word for that.

1.06   thursday
Buddy Guy with Guy King (Buddy Guy's Legends)
This will be the inaugural residency for the new location in the old HotHouse space. I wonder if they built the room specifically to accommodate the part of the show where the blues legend takes a stroll with his guitar through the crowd, out onto the sidewalk, and back. When he played at the U of C, he even went up to the balcony. Even though it's a new room, the old pattern holds where there are tickets for Thursday and Sunday, but Friday and Saturday are sold out.

1.07   friday
Weezer (Aragon Ballroom)   SOLD OUT!
They're doing all of the Blue Album on Friday and all of Pinkerton on Saturday, I believe. If you are a bigger fan of the band than I am, this will presumably tell you which night you're more bummed to miss because you didn't get tickets before both shows sold out. Or which night to look for on Craigslist, I guess.

Marcy Playground with Chris Buehrle Band, One Lone Car (Double Door)
Already, this year has given us that age-old musical quandary -- do you play the one song everybody knows really early and get it over with, or do you make everybody wait until either the last song of the set or the encore while you throw stuff from your new record at them?

Buddy Guy with Lubriphonic (Buddy Guy's Legends)   SOLD OUT!
See Thursday's listing.

1.08   saturday
The Trollops (Temple Bar)   SEE COZ LIVE!
So, this is the provisional name for me, Tony and Andrew somehow splitting the difference between Diver and Andrew Fraker & Sons and helping subsidize our rehearsal space. As of this writing, we haven't actually learned any songs specifically for this band, so it could be interesting.

Empires with The Graduate, Mother/Father (Lincoln Hall)
I was going to say that I think I've heard of this band, but I may be thinking of another band that had a record called Empires. That said, their Wikipedia page has been deleted on four separate occasions, which strikes me as a very post-modern badge of disdain for the mainstream. And I will say, they have a pretty sharp-looking new website. Also, The Graduate was one of my pleasant surprises at Lollapalooza some three years ago, although I've been bad about keeping up with them since.

Vulgar Boatmen with The Injured Parties (Schubas)
This performance appears to also be a screening of a movie called "Drive Somewhere: The Saga of the Vulgar Boatmen," which makes me wonder if I'm in the background of any pictures of videos from the early nineties. Although I don't know that I saw the band all that much back then.

Buddy Guy with Billy Branch and the Sons of Blues (Buddy Guy's Legends)   SOLD OUT!
See Thursday's listing.

Weezer (Aragon Ballroom)   SOLD OUT!
See Friday's listing.

1.09   sunday
Buddy Guy with John Primer (Buddy Guy's Legends)
See Thursday's listing.