Radio Free Chicago

Embrace Local Music

Mark your calendars for another upcoming evening of intriguing local experimental music, sponsored by Northwestern's WNUR-FM (89.3).

Saturday, February 11th
Mr. City, 1133 W. Fulton
8 PM
Bird Names
Scalpels
The Genders
Lee Marvin Computer Arm
Toby Driver

New Releases Tuesday (2/7)

Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit (Matador) Stuart Murdoch continues to push B&S from an introspective indie collective to a one-man pop juggernaut.

Electric Six - Senior Smoke (Metropolis)
The domestic release of the Detroit ironic rockers sophomore effort comes a full year after it was released in the UK.

Minus 5 - S/T [The Gun Album] (Yep Rock)
Scott McCoughey of Young Fresh Fellows and REM returns with another installment of his Minus 5 project. As usual, Peter Buck is along for the ride...along with guest contributions this time around from Wilco, Colin Meloy, John Wesley Harding and Kelly Hogan.

Beth Orton - Comfort of Strangers (Astralwerks)
Recorded in just two weeks with Jim O'Rourke at the controls as producer, this album takes a much needed step back to basics after her overly glossy and bland 2002 release, Daybreaker.

Prefuse 73 - Security Screenings (Warp)
Not a proper follow up to last year's Surrounding by Silence, but rather a shorter "transitional" record of new material to hold you over while Scott contemplates the direction of his next full-length opus.

Various Artists - Run the Road, Volume 2 (Vice)
No Dizzee, Skinner or S-O-V this time around, but there are two tracks with Kano. If this is half as good as the first, I'll be happy.

Various Artists - To: Elliott From: Portland (Expunged)
New Eliott Smith tribute featuring covers by The Decemberists, The Helio Sequence, The Thermals, Dolorean and more.

Future of Rock n' Roll on the ropes again

BAM! It looks like "The Future of Rock n' Roll" (aka the former 97X in the 'Nati) is in jeopardy once more. Here's the omnious message today on the front page of WOXY.com:

Beginning today, WOXY.com is becoming a listener-supported operation...

Unfortunately, at the moment, advertisers just don’t know what to think about us. Are we a website or a radio station? Is our audience local or (inter)national? How do we track who’s listening? Everyone is intrigued by what we're doing, but advertisers are not quite ready to throw enough ad dollars our way to make it work.

We have always prided ourselves on being a free radio station. No matter who you are, whether you’re a starving student or multi-millionaire, each day we bring you the best music we can find on the planet, and serve it up with live DJs to boot. We think we’re doing something pretty special, and don’t want anyone to miss out on the party. Unfortunately, until technology catches up and advertisers know how to quantify us, we have to find a way to sustain ourselves. For that reason we’ve decided to make the move to being a listener-supported operation...

Starting today, we will begin offering our premium service. For the bargain price of $9.95/month we will be offering 24-hour, true broadband, CD-quality streams to subscribers...And for those of you who just can’t afford to pay one more bill each month, we’re keeping a low bandwidth stream. It may not be the best quality, but you can still tune in for free. But just because you can’t pay a monthly fee, we hope you’ll find a way to make a smaller financial contribution to keep us up and running. To ease the transition we’ll leave our 64 kbps streams running until February 13th.

While it's sad that WOXY.com won't continue as a free service, I guess it's not a complete shocker, either. With just a few banner ads and no on-air commercials outside of the Budweiser plugs during the daily "new music break," I know I wasn't the only one who had occasionally pondered, "damn...how these guys paying the bills?"

We're all huge fans here at RFC, so we sincerely offer our best wishes to everyone on the WOXY.com staff on the new business model. If you're a fan of the station as well, be sure to sign up and show your support.

Shameless Hollywood Plug

So I hope everyone got my sarcasm before...I'm sure as hell not taking any star tours or visiting wax museums while I'm in LA. I'm actually helping out RFC founder Jed James on a film he's working on out here called "My Suicide," starring David Carradine, Muriel Hemingway, Joe Montegna, Tony Hale and some punk ass kid named Gabriel Sunday.

Yes, Jed traded in his Chicago headphones a little over a year ago and has been trying to break into the "business" out here ever since. Besides the My Suicide project, he also just officially closed the books on his first film project as a producer, a Josh Evans story called "Jake Lead." Jed says, "it will probably be a direct to DVD foreign market affair," so the odds of seeing it in Chicago are pretty slim unless "some magic happens in post." However, if you happen to be in the Los Angeles area in March, it will be screened at the Hear Gallery in Echo Park on the 11th.

Weekend Schedule

Here’s a list of what’s going on this weekend, from Oh My Rockness:

2/03 Headache City, Busy Signals @ Empty Bottle
2/03 Captain Yonder, The What Four @ Hideout
2/03 Seth, Alphabet, High Hawk @ Martyr's
2/03 Richard Buckner @ Schubas
2/03 Aya Sofia, Tuffy UK @ Subterranean
2/04 Honorary Title, Limbeck, Koufax @ Beat Kitchen
2/04 The Methadones, The Bomb @ Beat Kitchen
2/04 Mi and L'au @ Empty Bottle
2/04 Freakwater @ Hideout
2/04 Catfish Haven @ Subterranean
2/05 Minsk, Bible of the Devil @ Empty Bottle

And a few shows of note go on sale tomorrow, all through Ticketmaster:

Billy Bragg @ Double Door 3/20
The Cult @ The Vic 3/17
Pretty Girls Make Graves/Giant Drag @ Metro 5/5

In other news, the Plug music award winners were announced. Sufjan Stevens took best album and best male artist of the year. Bright Eyes took artist and song of the year honors. Remember, you can’t complain if you didn’t vote.

Version '06

The annual Version fest has returned for 2006 and will take place April 20 to May 6 across Chicago, bridging the gap between art, technology, and social activism. The Version crew is currently accepting proposals from those interested in participating in the festivities. More information from the Version website:

Version>06 :: Parallel Cities
April 20- May 6, 2006 Chicago U$A

DEADLINE FOR PROPOSALS: FEB 28, 2005

Version is a hybrid festival focused on emerging discourses and practices evolving between art, technology and social and political activism. Version examines the activities of local configurations and external networks that use visual and conceptual art strategies, innovative social practices, creative uses of new technologies, organizing strategies, emerging activist/artist initiatives, campaigns, public interventions and DIY projects.

Version presents a very diverse program of activities featuring an experimental art exposition, artistic disturbances, exhibitions, networked urban events, screenings, interactive applications, performances, street art, presentations, talks, workshops, art rendez-vous, parties, and action.

Festivals and Festivals and More Freakin' Festivals....

So the Coachella lineup is unofficially officially released, sans Smashing Pumpkins; but don’t fret my Corganophiles because now they’re being rumored to appear at Lollapalooza this summer. According to Billboard Lollapalooza will definitely be returning to Grant Park in August. It’s unclear where these Smashing Pumpkin rumors come from, whether Corgan’s actually mentioned anything or if promoters are just lusting.

And the lineup for Tennessee’s Bonnaroo Festival has been announced, with Radiohead leading the way. The festival will take place June 16-18 and tickets go on sale Saturday, February 11.

And finally, as I reported last Friday, news is swirling around about Pitchfork’s Intonation Festival 2006. Now the Sun-Times is reporting that the festival will branch into two separate events, The Intonation Music Festival and the Pitchfork Music Festival, to take place in June and July respectively. No details yet on performers, but with all the other festival buzz this week, perhaps someone will accidentally on purpose start some rumors.