In rock, absence really does make the heart grow fonder, and familiarity breeds apathy if not outright contempt. How else to explain the torrent of hype and barrels of cash heaped on the Police last summer, while the Cure's current tour is met with a collective ho-hum? Saturday, their typically generous three-hour show made a compelling case for their legacy.
• Photos: The Cure
Chicago's own treadmill-boogying band OK Go performed a different sort of exercise Friday when they stopped by the campus of Northwestern University to talk about songwriting. The Grammy-winning quartet also took questions from a surprisingly sparse but enthusiastic audience, who asked about the band's favorite tunes, the recording process and whether bad reviews affected artistry.
NEW YORK -- Though going out on tour can also mean long hours, high stress, and sleepless nights, Janet Jackson says she's looking forward to all of it.
Chicago has the fastest rappers in the world. Really. Local rapper Rebel XD (Seandale Price) recently broke his own Guinness record to nab another authorization by the world-record group as the world’s fastest rapper.
Lewis Lazare: You better believe that when a brand shells out the big bucks for a presenting sponsorship deal, it is going to make the most of that arrangement. And Corona, one of the most popular of all imported brews, looks to be doing just that as the presenting sponsor of Kenny Chesney's 2008 "Poets & Pirates" tour. 'This could be the night when it all comes together,'' singer/songwriter Paddy Casey wails in ''City,'' a thumper off his new album ''Addicted to Company."
In rock, absence really does make the heart grow fonder, and familiarity breeds apathy if not outright contempt. How else to explain the torrent of hype and barrels of cash heaped on the Police last summer, while the Cure's current tour is met with a collective ho-hum? Saturday, their typically generous three-hour show made a compelling case for their legacy.
Well, that was fast: Tickets for Madonna’s Sticky and Sweet Tour have already sold out.
INDIE-POP: Los Campesinos! "Hold on Now, Youngster ..." (Arts & Crafts) ¼¼½There are plenty of reasons to dislike the debut album by this seven-piece indie-pop buzz band from Wales, starting with ... its undue fondness for ... ellipses and lots! of! exclamation points! Here are a few more: There's more glockenspiel here than on any record since vintage Jethro Tull, paired with plenty of equally cheesy violin; the arch Art Brut-meets-Pulp spoken-word asides of Gareth Campesinos! -- no real last names for any of these excitable collegiate auteurs -- who is no Eddie Argos, much less a Jarvis Cocker; and the ironic intellectual pretensions on one hand (chattering about existential crises and bragging that "We Are All Accelerated Readers") paired with faux-naive playground confessions on the other (Aleksandra Campesinos! compares an ideal boyfriend to Spiderman, and can easily be imagined dueting with Kimya "Juno" Dawson).
South Side native Jennifer Hudson has pursued acting and singing with equal zeal since winning an Oscar for her role in "Dreamgirls." She is working on her first solo album, due Sept. 30. Her first single, ‘‘Spotlight,’’ arrives this month. Then she appears in the big-screen debut of "Sex and the City."
Whether it’s David Archuleta or David Cook who wins ‘‘American Idol’’ next week, both singers will be part of the show’s annual concert tour, which stops July 19 at the Allstate Arena near Chicago.
NASHVILLE -- Country superstar Shania Twain and her producer husband, Robert ''Mutt'' Lange, are separating after 14 years of marriage.
Curiosity about what was going on "behind closed doors" was the inspiration for today's free "Hidden Talent" concert at the Harold Washington Library. Turns out, since it opened in 1991, the library has offered six practice rooms and a chamber room — free of charge — to musicians seeking to hone their skills. Watch the video!
Matthew Kerstein has taken a musical journey from Scotland to Massachusetts without ever leaving the Windy City.
The Chicago Chorale will end its 2007/2008 season with a special performance and peace vigil on Saturday at the Monastery of the Holy Cross on the Near Southwest Side.
The last year has been a blur for Sones de Mexico, as fast-paced and exciting as a zapateado (a traditional tap-style dance).
'This could be the night when it all comes together,'' singer/songwriter Paddy Casey wails in ''City,'' a thumper off his new album ''Addicted to Company."
The renowned Russian chamber orchestra Moscow Virtuosi stops in Chicago for a performance Sunday at Symphony Center in the South Loop.
Tenor saxophonist David Sanchez has a passion that's contagious, whether he's talking about his time in Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra, or flavoring his jazz with African, Afro-Cuban and Caribbean influences. He adds the Danilo Perez Trio to the mix with a show at 8 tonight at Symphony Center. We caught up with Sanchez by phone while he was packing his suitcase.
Jim DeRogatis: Flight of the Conchords may only be ''New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo a cappella-rap-funk-comedy duo.'' But at their sold-out show at the Chicago Theatre on Wednesday night, musician/ comedian Bret McKenzie and comedian/musician Jemaine Clement not only confirmed that they're the most wicked and spot-on rock 'n' roll parody since Spinal Tap, but the best made-for-TV rock band since the Banana Splits, or maybe even the Monkees before them.
Neil Diamond scores his first chart-topping album this week with U.S. sales of 146,000 for the debut of his ''Home Before Dark.''
A proposed crackdown on the Chicago live music industry opposed by concert promoters and venue owners was sent back to a City Council committee Tuesday for fine-tuning.
WASHINGTON — The best-selling pop album on planet Earth and a disc sent hurtling into deep space are among recordings the Library of Congress will preserve for their cultural significance.
Formed in suburban Wilmette in 2001, Fall Out Boy rose from playing exactly the sort of shows that the Chicago City Council would like to outlaw to headlining arenas and selling more than six million albums in the U.S. to date.
The president of Northwestern University said he is “honored, thrilled and ecstatic’’ that a new music school will be named after him and his wife.
The whole world's a stage and everybody playin' their part."
The Police are taking a victory lap following 2007’s most successful rock tour. Chicago fans with deep pockets got a triple treat on Saturday, as a jaunt emphasizing previously overlooked markets added Allstate Arena to last summer’s packed Wrigley Field performances.
Jim DeRogatis: Summer doesn't officially start for six more weeks, but you'd never know that by scanning the number of shows already on sale or sold out during the busiest months of the rock fan's concert-going year. Still, it's not as busy as it once was, for several reasons. One is that the massive Lollapalooza music festival in Grant Park continues to dominate the calendar.
Nonsense. Of course artists as inventive as these or fellow travelers Tricky and Massive Attack have moved on and expanded, just as the Beastie Boys progressed from fighting for your right to party to hanging at "Paul's Boutique," and the genre and us are the better for it. Last heard taking a distinct wrong turn on a live album recorded with the New York Philharmonic in 1997, Portishead returns after its decade-long silence with the proper follow-up to "Dummy" (1994) and its self-titled 1997 release, and fans will be happy to hear that it's still making party music for melancholics. But the band's sonic palette and its mood have changed considerably.
MOUNT VERNON, Mo.---- Joyce ''Dottie'' Rambo, an influential gospel singer and songwriter, died early Sunday when her tour bus ran off the highway and struck an embankment. She was 74.
Dave Hoekstra: The vaudeville ghosts of the Chicago Theater were smiling on Thursday night. Dolly Parton hit the stage in a two-hour revue that was part Mae West, Dottie West and Key West, if you catch my flamboyant drift. The Country Music Hall of Famer won over the audience with her honeysoaked vocals, Vegas-like stage show and lots of cornball humor.
The following list comprises the most popular songs in the Chicago market for the previous week, according to sales data compiled by Nielsen-SoundScan. Last week’s rankings are in parentheses.
Radney Foster is the rare artist who is equally revered by mainstream country executives in Nashville and by alt-country hipsters in Austin.
Chicago will be the second -- and the third -- stop on Tina Turner's first tour in eight years.
Fans of the Chicago Sinfonietta have come to expect artistic adventures from the 21-year-old orchestra -- indeed, musical innovation is part of its mission. The last offering of the season, "Portraits of the Blues/Back into Space," which will be played Sunday at Dominican University in River Forest and Monday at Orchestra Hall, is not likely to disappoint.
An exhibit and sale of cloth-and-thread artwork depicting jazz instruments and musicians has opened at the Vale Craft Gallery in River North.
Madonna has announced a summer tour beginning Aug. 23 in Cardiff, Wales, and running between 50-60 shows total — including Oct. 26 at Chicago’s United Center. Tickets for the Chicago stop are priced at $55-350.
Performers for this summer’s 28th annual Taste of Chicago have been announced, including headliners such as Chaka Khan, Stevie Wonder and Chicago’s own Plain White T’s.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Eddy Arnold, whose mellow baritone on songs like ''Make the World Go Away'' made him one of the most successful country singers in history, died Thursday morning, days short of his 90th birthday.
Cheap Trick played a show when the Hard Rock Cafe Chicago opened in 1986, and the Rockford rockers perform again this week to celebrate the rock-themed restaurant's redecoration -- new trash, new treasures.
Just outside Athens, Ga., Jim White is sitting in the little cinderblock house in his backyard that he calls his studio. From there he can look out over the 40 undeveloped acres that butt up against his property. Occasionally a deer, a raccoon or a coyote stops by for a visit. At night there are millions of stars in the sky and silence, lots of silence.
NASHVILLE, Tenn.---- Country music singer Gretchen Wilson has a mantel full of awards in her Lebanon home.
For a concert benefiting modern day laborers, the nearly four-hour conclusion of the Justice Tour felt inefficient and off topic. Organizer Tom Morello, the guitarist and activist behind Rage Against the Machine (who is also a Libertyville native), assumed the role as emcee for the show.
The reunited New Kids On The Block will release their first new music since 1994 on May 13, when the single ‘‘Summertime’’ will be made available via all digital music services, according to a blog post on the group’s official Web site. A Chicago-area concert date has been scheduled for Oct. 4 at the Allstate Arena.
From Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" to Marvin Gaye's "Here, My Dear," and from Liz Phair's "Exile in Guyville" to ... well, almost everything in the Rolling Stones' catalog, rock 'n' roll has never suffered from a shortage of great breakup records -- those "open your veins and let 'em bleed" chronicles of messy, nasty and profoundly sad romantic splits.
Five o'clock Friday evening is when most flee their downtown offices for the weekend. After all, who wants to stick around after that grueling work week?
The following list comprises the most popular songs in the Chicago market for the previous week, according to sales data compiled by Nielsen-SoundScan. Last week’s rankings are in parentheses.
Hailing from Melbourne, Australia, the Midnight Juggernauts bring their American tour to the Double Door in Wicker Park for a concert tonight.
An exhibit and sale of cloth-and-thread artwork depicting jazz instruments and musicians has opened at the Vale Craft Gallery in River North.
Jim DeRogatis: From Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks” to Marvin Gaye’s “Here, My Dear,” to Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville,” rock ’n’ roll has never suffered from a shortage of great breakup records. To this list we can now add “12 Angry Months,” the seventh album from those melodic but hard-rocking grunge veterans Local H.
What new can be said about the Lemonheads’ classic modern-rock album “It’s a Shame About Ray”? How about this: Polly’s in town! If you (like us) always assumed that was Juliana Hatfield on the “Ray” album cover, it’s actually Chicago-area actress Polly Noonan.
A Chicago man who fans say was heckling Fall Out Boy during a private show last summer is suing bassist and Wilmette native Pete Wentz, claiming the rocker and his security detail beat him after the show.
Terrence Howard is having a dream season for an actor, starring in one of the summer’s biggest movies with the superhero flick ‘‘Iron Man’’ and collecting critical acclaim for his Broadway role in ‘‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.’’ It would all be very exciting for Howard ... if acting was actually his true passion. What he really wants to concentrate on is singing.
Miley Cyrus isn’t the first teen singing sensation to be embroiled in a scandal, but as discussion of her revealing Vanity Fair photo shoot continues to make headlines, Cyrus is the only recent teen superstar who has had to manage such controversy in the midst of major success on several fronts.
British quintet Elbow last visited Chicago two years ago. Their cramped and muggy Double Door crowd was packed up close, but Park West hosted a more intimate performance on Tuesday. Frontman Guy Garvey greeted the devoted audience like family, inviting them into band moments and spinning the stories behind songs.
Social activism and music are not separate entities for Tom Morello. The Rage Against the Machine guitarist long has been an advocate of weaving his convictions into his vocation. With Rage and his solo folk moniker, the Nightwatchman, he's done just that. And now on his current tour, he and his fellow musicians are taking it a step further. Each date on the seven-city Justice Tour also has included a day of activism.
Sly & the Family Stone has canceled its concert scheduled for Saturday at Chicago's Vic Theatre.
A giant helium-filled pig didn’t drift off to hog heaven after it was released into the night sky during Roger Waters’ performance at the Coachella music festival. It’s been found — in pieces.
Have you seen this pig? It’s huge, inflatable, features the word ‘‘Obama’’ and it has lost its way in the California desert. Organizers for the Coachella music festival announced that the gigantic blowup swine, released into the night sky during Roger Waters’ headlining set Sunday, was still out there — and they want it back.
Jim DeRogatis: The idea is obvious: Bring together the top talents in hip-hop and R&B for one triumphant arena tour that raises the bar for the concert experience in both genres. Even better if you can pair one artist who really speaks to the ladies with another who all the fellas emulate.
INDIO, Calif.---- By the end of Coachella, over 100 bands had fanned out across five stages, more than 150,000 people had sweltered through the desert heat and at least as many bottles of water had been guzzled.
When you grow up with a mother named Nina Simone, music is just an everyday occurrence, something so natural you never give it a second thought. So it was inevitable that Lisa Celeste Stroud, who goes by the stage name Simone, would end up with a career in music.
BLUES-ROCK | Popa Chubby, "Deliveries After Dark" (Blind Pig) ¼¼¼A little of this kind of bone-crunching rock disguised as blues usually goes a long way, but a few artists can pull it off. Mountain's Leslie West was the prototype, and now another heavyset New York guitarist, Popa Chubby, has stepped forward to carry the mantle.
"No matter how hard I tried, everybody found out and gave me crap for riding my dad’s coattails. So I might as well ride my dad’s coattails." That's how Jesse Blaze Snider — the son of Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider — wound up reclaiming his identity and joining the cast of "Rock the Cradle."
Jim DeRogatis: Although she'll turn 50 in August, the mouthful of sweets that is Madonna Louise Ciccone Ritchie proves with her new album, "Hard Candy," that she's nowhere close to relinquishing her crown as the queen of dance-pop -- or abandoning her favorite role as pop music's most hot-to-trot coquette.
Stone Temple Pilots frontman Scott Weiland is recording his second solo album with famed Chicago rock producer Steve Albini and plans to release it in November.
More amusing irony this week. Last week, Alicia Keys reappeared on the Chicago chart with a song titled “Like You’ll Never See Me Again.” This week, Miley Cyrus pulls the same peek-a-boo with, of course, “See You Again.”
If you were going to build the perfect acoustic bluesman, he'd probably turn out looking and sounding exactly like Eric Bibb.
For the band Cloud Cult, every day is Earth Day. It's not unusual to find environmental politics mixed up in modern music, but Minnesota-based Cloud Cult finds a good balance between the two, making soft, pretty pop music that sounds spacious and intuitive -- very natural -- without the blatant lyrical moralizing that ruins many a well-intentioned song. Cloud Cult instead teaches by example, including recording their albums on their self-started green label, Earthology, which impressively lives up to the message that they (gently) advocate.
Huapangos, gustos and son jarochos are some of the lively regional music the audience will hear in Regional Journeys. The final concert in Chicago Sinfonietta's second annual Chamber Music Series will feature Chicago's own Mexican folk troupe, Sones de Mexico, at 7:30 tonight at the National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 W. 19th St.
Pack your bags and head to Davenport's, 1383 N. Milwaukee, at 8 p.m. Saturday, where Becky Menzie and Tom Michael will present their new program, Postcards from the Road: The Travel Show.
A couple of young singers who, each in his own way, evoke the good old days of Sinatra and Bennett will perform at a benefit for a local charity, Kids Fight Cancer, at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Rosemont Theatre, 5400 N. River, Rosemont.
Mariah Carey earns her sixth No. 1 on the Billboard album chart this week as her ''E=MC2'' debuts with U.S. sales of 463,000 Nielsen SoundScan figures show, making it her biggest sales week ever.
Mark Guarino: When angry young men turn intellectual sophisticates, mass audiences typically yawn and wait for the requisite return to form. But for Joe Jackson, who fronted the British New Wave in the late 1970s alongside other knuckles-out romantics such as Graham Parker and Elvis Costello, it’s been a long wait.
Producer Warren Zide has picked up the rights to Jim Croce’s No. 1 song “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” from 35 years ago in the hope of turning it into an action-comedy franchise.
World premieres by three young composers whose ages add up to just 92 and a salute to the 100th birthday of Elliott Carter led by another titan, Pierre Boulez, will highlight the 2008-09 season of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's highly popular MusicNOW series.
Only a few thousand families in Tennessee were able to see the Gospel Music Channel when it began less than four years ago. Now it’s television’s fastest-growing cable network — available in some 40 million homes. And Wednesday it carries live coverage of the annual Dove Awards.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico -- Reggaeton star Don Omar and TV weather forecaster Jackie Guerrido have reportedly tied the knot in their native Puerto Rico.
