list.in.to.chicago this week: 08.13.2012

Man, just one week off from having beautiful weather for Lollapalooza. Oh, well.

Pick of the week
Eef Barzelay! Eef Barzelay! Eef Barzelay! Sounds like a spell from Harry Potter, doesn't it? I might even hate his music, but it's just too damn fun to say.

list.in.to.COZ
Just Vaughan's on Tuesday and then that lunch gig on Wednesday.

Recap
So, Garbage at Metro was pretty great, despite the mid-set appearance of a large male with personal space issues right in front of us. I can quibble about Butch Vig's live drumming style, or about the preponderance of bass frequencies that made the guitars a bit muddy at times, but they're just quibbles. The band has really good songs that they execute very well, and they have Shirley Manson, who alternated between stalking the entire Metro stage and just sorta walking around in circles. Which I think I remember her doing the last time, too. No random encounters with guitarists after the show this time.

8.13   monday
Birthmark with Thin Hymns, Mazes (Empty Bottle)
For reasons I don't quite remember, I started following the band The 1900s on Twitter. The band, or at least whoever runs the Twitter account, is currently focusing on an offshoot project called Mazes, who opens up this free Monday night show.

8.14   tuesday
Open Jam (Vaughan's)   COZ SINGS!
In which we will play acoustic renditions of other people's music, and maybe you will, too.

White Mystery with The Hussy, Absolutely Not, Eeries (Fireside Bowl)
Thoroughly unimpressed with the duo when they opened for Garbarge, but I recognize that other folks might like guitar/drum duo garage rock, so if that's your thing, have at it.

Ted Nugent with Laura Wilde (House of Blues)
I've half a mind to show up to this show in an Obama t-shirt just to see what happens. Nugent, on the other hand, has half a mind under the best of circumstances.

8.15   wednesday
DIVER (225 West Washington)   SEE COZ LIVE!
Yes, it's time for our one annual summer "Downtown Lunchtime Series," with myself, Tony and original Diver bassist Avi Kopernik on bass. Yes, it more or less amounts to us playing on a street corner. Sort of.

System of a Down with Deftones (Allstate Arena, Rosemont)
After a four-year hiatus and a bunch of individual projects, the active-rock (I hesitate to lump them in with nu-metal) band is touring the U.S. after some festivals and a South American tour. Seems like an ambitious venue, in terms of size, but I don't really have a sense of what kind of pent-up demand has been building during their time off, so I could be totally wrong.

8.16   thursday
Mumford & Sons with Dawes (Chicago Theatre)   SOLD OUT!
I've been able to secure tickets to see Prince at the Riviera and Wilco at Metro through "normal" online channels, but I don't think I've ever seen tickets disappear as fast as they did for this show. Given those two benchmarks -- along with unconfirmed reports of large numbers of tickets available immediately on the secondary market -- I suspect some sort of foul play, and I'm kinda pissed about it.

Sebadoh with Lou Barlow, Circle of Buzzards (Schubas)
Apparently Barlow, who you may recall from Dinosaur Jr, or just from Sebadoh, is opening up for his own band here.

Matt Ulery's Loom (Millennium Park)
You've heard me talk about him before, but here's a chance to see what the local jazz composer is about for free in a nice outdoor setting. Weather permitting, of course.

8.17   friday
311, Slightly Stoopid (Charter One Pavilion)
I know it's not cool to like 311, but I have fond memories of back when the mother of one of the band members used to post about them to alt.music.alternative, some eighty million years ago. This was back when Courtney Love would also post to the USENET group through an intermediary. She wasn't any less crazy back then. Good times.

Eef Barzelay & Bobby Bare Jr. (Schubas)
I have no joke, I just like saying "Eef Barzelay." And "Detlef Schrempf," for those of you who used to watch Letterman in the late 80s/early 90s (unless he still does that bit). And Clem Snide, which is from whence Barzelay came.

Stoney Larue, Jacob Stiefel & Sarah Gayle Meech (Joe's Bar)
These sound like made-up names, just to compete with Eef Barzelay. Or, apparently, country acts.

8.18   saturday
Makeshift Prodigy with The Rouge, Cyclist (Lincoln Hall)
Saw them once almost four years ago, kinda liked them, haven't seen them since.

Brian Jonestown Massacre with Magic Castles (Metro)
I feel like I saw this band at Lollapalooza back when it was only taking up half of Grant Park, and thought they were a bit too noisy for my tastes. And a bit whiny, as there was a bunch of bleed from one of the other stages. Dashboard Confessional, if I remember right.

Marshall Crenshaw (SPACE, Evanston)
"Someday" is apparently Saturday, and "Someway" is taking the Red Line to Howard and then changing to the Purple Line. See, because he had a song called...okay, nevermind.

8.19   sunday
Doug E Fresh, Slick Rick, Rakim, MC Lyte, Naughty by Nature (Union Park)
Pitchfork and North Coast get all the hipster love in Union Park, but I think I like this "Shannon Brown's Wood-Star Music Festival" better than either of them.