Miss Derringer

A number of years ago I was in this independent bookstore called Quimby's . It's on North Ave, in Wicker Park. I always buy Gothic Beauty Magazine from them. They always have Bizarre as well. One day as I was reading Bizarre I came across an article about an artist named Liz McGrath or "Bloodbath" McGrath. There was something about this person that made me relate to her. She was raised a strict Catholic and when she was 12 was taken by her parents to this Christian Fundamentalist correctional institution. They kept her there for a year at least. Ms Liz was (and still is) somewhat of a rebel and an artist. Wait, there is no somewhat about it. They tried to beat the Artist/Rebel out of her. The article about her in Bizarre is on-line. I like reading stories like hers 'cause I find them really inspiring. And now she's well adjusted, productive as an artist, happily married, and sings in her band with her husband. Christianity could not break her. If I read the articles on her correctly she's in her thirties and she looks like she's in her mid-twenties. I know of people that in their late twenties feel burned out and unaccomplished. Some even actively lie about their age.

Besides fronting the band Miss Derringer she's had her art shown all over the world. Even if I did not like her music, her story is still an inspiration. Anyway, reading about her made me look up her band and I loved it. There is a lot of Youtube videos about the band including interviews. I think they opened for Blondie once or something like that. They have a proper video for "Better Run Away From Me", and live performances. I so wanted to see them here in Chicago, but all the way from L.A. you don't know if they can or will. Touring costs money, and it's a costly, delicate labor of love to exist as a band. I've since seen other bands that sound compatible to them like Puerto Muerto, The Dyes, the Fluffers, and Faceless Werewolves. Some share the sound if not the darkness of Miss Derringer. I'll write more later, I still have to finish this thing on Fluffers, and Coins, and Cordero, and Post Honeymoon. I haven't even started to write on the actual concert that Miss Derringer did in Chicago.

Zig

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Fluffers

I've been going to this place on Milwaukee Ave called The Whistler. There's no cover. The place is small and intimate. As soon as you walk in the stage is right there to your left. You can almost trip on it. They got chairs and a table right there in front. I've watched the bartenders work and they seem to really know what they are doing. Still, I only get a cranberry juice with no ice. This place has had Puerto Muerto, Coins (which is one is the lead singer of Sybris), and now Fluffers. I saw them on a Tuesday 16 June. It's hard to believe they don't have anything on CD officially yet. They sounded so good. They sound somewhere between The Dyes and Miss Derringer. This band has many interesting details, like their bass is played out of what appears to be a banjo. It so works. And their lead guitarist rocks. There is a lot that can leave an imprint here once you see them, and hear them. You will remember that guitar, for the solo moments within the songs. And then there's Ms Quin the lead singer. I don't know anything more about them than what I captured that Tuesday 16 June. I can start to describe their sound as an electric Puerto Muerto at times. Electric Americana, perhaps? Even at their most casual songs their guitars commanded attention. They did some covers that they totally owned like that Star Wars song. That Tuesday was this casual night, and yet grander still for its in these odd nights that bands I like perform.

Zig

St. Vincent

I missed Alla', but I caught a good....small part of St. Vincent, enough to take some pictures and videos.  Millennium Park is fucking huge.   I could have seen St. Vincent at Metro, but I was feeling lazy.  And I was so burnt out from the shows I did see this past week like Panda Riot, FFM, and Telepathe.   I do feel fortunate to be able to see bands such as these.  

  St. Vincent is a recent discovery for me.  It feels like I'm jumping on to the band wagon late.   I understand this is the second CD that ms Annie Clark releases as St. Vincent.  It's really cool that Alla' played to the same audience that came to see the lovely ms Annie.  They were selling the CD Actor, actually both.  I only had enough to get the one.  I don't think I actually listened to the CD until a few days later.  So my first real experience was the night I took these pictures.  Perhaps I want my initial experience to be these live gigs.  I know all the songs on "Actor" will eventually imprint.  The one that is doing so right now with impunity is "Actor Out Of Work".  I was jogging when I played this and it's better than Red Bull injections.  I ran longer and harder.   The words to it are quite the thing to hear, but without the lyrics to read I can only assume that in part I create what I hear.  I like Caifanes/Jaguares, and for this one song I thought I knew the lyrics to it until I read them.  It was like I made my own up.  What I believed I heard was only just that.  I even liked my own better, blasphemy I know.   Perhaps it is the same with St. Vincent's "Actor".  It's just this powerful dancing track that is thought provoking (for me) like it's from John Lennon.  If that's overstated well I did say for me right?

This makes me want to get the CD previous to this one but all in good time.  This band's music is in a neighborhood that has Telepathe and SVIIB.  Hell if you like shoe-gaze this is a good leap of faith.     

  Taking these pictures, capturing the moments and going on about them here is my defiance to these harsh times.  I don't write here in a total vacuum.  For a lot of the artists that I go on about like mad, it's the same.  They don't produce in a vacuum, their existence is more delicate perhaps.  I post their defiance as my own.

Zig

Monday 7 June at Millennium

Last night I saw Panda Riot at Subterranean on North Avenue.  Tonight it's FFM at Darkroom.  On Friday Aleks and The Drummer is opening at Empty Bottle.  St. Vincent plays Metro Sunday.  I believe they will also play again on Monday.  The real surprise there is that Alla' is playing the same place.  That was a real happy moment for me 'cause I've been a fan of Alla' for a long time.   Now it appears like they will open for St. Vincent.  When you identify with a band, their success, their consistent gigs become a source of local music pride and happiness.  This same sentiment applies to Aleks and The Drummer.    

  This band Alla' I first heard on NPR, they did a live performance on some show on a Friday.  They had this performance at Beat Kitchen or somewhere.  I think I had reached that state where I was actively seeking out live bands.  I think it was 2006 when I first saw them.  The CD "Es Tiempo" was not yet available but they were performing it live like crazy.  So seeing the live, fleeting performance was important.  I recall how some of their songs had this disco feel to them.  It was in the twang of the guitar, and they would take you from there to their psychedelic, shoe-gaze fringe of the continuum.   There are these songs when Lupe's voice glides along over the clouds and then you descend into this violent fog of guitar and drums.  It's a roller coaster ride that always feels new even as these songs are not.  This level appreciation I have reached as a result of seeing them over and over again.  The songs they play do indeed change over time, they evolve, and that needs to be documented, archived for later, and promoted and talked about for the here and now.   This band Alla' projects articulately their Chicago identity.  Chicago has a way of shaping your specific cultural identity.  The music that inhabits our landscape in the mind will include a good deal of Wax Trax era stuff, along side the music our parents listened, like Javier Solis, Los Panchos.  And then there is spanish rock, like Jaguares, Cafe Tacuba, La Lupita, Maldita...hell.  I rant too much about what's in my head.  

Alla will play Millennium  Park this Monday, at 6.  

  

  Aleks and The Drummer opened for Telepathe  on a Friday at Empty Bottle, late May.   I arrived late for them.  They were the main reason I went!   This picture here is from before, when Kristeen Young opened for her.   I moped about the Bottle kind of seething at missing them.  Before the night was over I bought Telepathe's CD "Dance Mother".  I liked what I heard on their myspace page, I liked what The Reader said about them, but the luster of it faded in light of me being late and all.    Now that all this is in the past tense I can say that I'm glad I got the CD.   It really is pot-head music.  There is the first song that plays in my head all the time now.  I already have Aleks CD, the thing now and hell always is the live performance.  Back to that night, Telepathe begin to set up.   It's the first time I see them.  One is in a T-shirt and another is in a hoodie.  They are pretty.  The girls look like they can easily blend in the Empty Bottle's indy-rock crowd. 

   How Aleks dresses up is always fascinating.   It's never tacky.  I'm convinced that the more people (from inside and outside Chicago) know about Aleks and The Drummer, the more they will remember her sense of fashion.  There's nothing wrong with that just ask my aunt Siouxsie Sioux . Before everything even the music I think, Siouxsie had her fashion down, and we love her for that.  I believe so can it be for Chicago's ms Aleks.  An icon of fashion yes, as well as this awesome musician.  

  Alright, so, Telepathe set up and I'm wondering if even I should get their CD.  At this point, saving money looks just as good.   They start and ....wow.  It really is the coolest pot music, The Reader was right.  I took pictures but I mostly danced.  There's documenting and there is riding the moment, being in it.  I was ok with a few pictures.   The strange and wonderful thing is that I don't know which songs they did on stage.  The CD I started hearing a few days after, and I almost didn't get it.  As I danced I noticed the crowd get into it.  There were some that seemed to already know Telepathe and that was part of their enjoyment, the fulfilled anticipation.  As for me, no anticipation, just pow.  There were those that stood around but a lot danced.  Part of the fascinating thing for me is the way they dance.  Different from how it's done for FFM who played Darkroom recently, and different from goth clubs.  This is what I notice, how people dance to what, wherever I go.  The one common thread I think is how people felt free to dance how they like.  So it was for that night with Telepathe, at Empty Bottle.  It's very dancy dreamy kind of music.  It doesn't lull you to sleep.  In performance you wanna dance.  Think of your favorite Cocteau Twins songs and imagine them electronic.  Damn, this last sentence I could see use for a lot of bands.

Zig  

FFM at Darkroom 4 June. Thursday

  I just found out about this today after wandering around Wicker Park.  Ain't that grand?  I saw them the same Friday I saw Pezzettino, 22 May.  Where do I begin with FFM.  It's electro dance music that never sounds formulaic, but new and resonant.  Lindsay the lead singer is sexy and sophisticated in her delivery of the lyrics.   She is in full control over the image she projects to her audience.   Lindsay is beautiful to behold and she knows it.   Perhaps it's just all in my head but there are all these songs that suggests to me that she knows we are watching.  She's still in charge.    I'm not just going on about Ms Lindsay because she is this sexy beautiful woman.  I'm a total fan of the music of FFM.  It's music that effortlessly gets you to dance without any trace of formula.  The lyrics are smart and direct.  This is a band to dance to.  I post these pictures up to remind, gently remind or persuade if I may any who read this to go see them live.  It's the most direct way to support their existence as musicians.

Zig

Panda Riot, FFM, A Camp

 As it is with many bands I first learn of them through Scary Lady Sarah.   Panda Riot is one such band. I first  saw this local shoe-gaze band during some national holiday weekend, a Sunday night.  It was an all Sarah weekend.  The Saturday before she held a yard sale/vegan bbq and I recall going and having fun with friends that I normally see in a goth night.   From Sarah's I was off to see Long Blondes, but once again this is about Panda Riot.  They were first before STAR another awesome local shoe-gaze band, who were the original reason for going to The Abbey Pub that night.  It was a good night to be a novice to a local shoe-gaze night for this was the night your short attention span was harnessed and focused.  And it was a good night to have a few behind you to better appreciate what was before me in that moment.  Each of Panda Riot's songs had it's own intangible yet recognizable signature, evoking and capturing different sentiments.  It's like I'm in a different indy film in each one.  It's like a splash of rose water that wakes you to a pleasant Monday morning that feels like a Friday for no reason at all.  In a goth night this is the shoe-gaze to dance too.  Ever since learning about this band I play them all the time in the car and I've gone to see them again and again in places like Empty Bottle, and Darkroom.  I feel fortunate to have them living in Chicago.  They are playing again this Wednesday at Subterranean.  

  Here are some moments captured during some of their performances.  I'll see bands like this over again like a compulsion.  There are the things that hook you in the beginning and there are things that one can appreciate over a span of performances.