Things I learned this weekend:

- The Assembly really need to relocate to England, where the press will fawn all over them, someone will sign them to a big fat record contract and paparazzi will follow them to the corner store for milk in a box and back.

- While I loved local band Box-O-Car to death, seeing frontman Skid Marks strike out on his own, expand his sound and actually build up a livelier stage show -- and I never thought is could get more energetic -- is truly inspirational. Why this guy isn't huge I will never know. Maybe he should move to England too!

- Recent Chicago arrivals by way of New York Suffrajett put on an arresting live show with some of the gutsiest female vocals I've heard this side of Patti Smith. Raucous guitar lines seeping sex all over the stage and getting stomped to death by base drums is a beautiful thing to behold live.

- Woolworthy has really hit their stride with their most ferocious line-up yet. As lead man Rudy spits out lyrics and melodies that would cause Ryan Adams to blush newest guitarist Alex shreds his fingers on his strings and pumps out pure rock and/or roll noise from his Marshall stack. How the music can be so brutal yet so toe-tapping and hummable slays me.

- The Beat Kitchen's music room sounds better than I remember and their staff is truly lovely to deal with…but they take waaay too much money out of the door to cover the bar's expenses. When someone books a show that totally packs the joint -- like we did last Friday -- they should really kick some more money towards the bands since they're making money hand over fist with the liquor sales. Oh well, c'est la vie in the club-world...

- While Photogal is getting better about actually staying to entire duration of a show I put together she still collapses before the after-party. Oh well, that's probably for the best since I would have ended up being that really annoyingly jovial drunk guy going, "I had so much fun. Did you have lots of fun? Oh my god that show was so great!" Yeah, it's better I went home and went to sleep...

- I couldn't have asked for a better show to end the Tankboy Music Promotion part of this year with…it really was a great reminder of just how terrific the Chicago music scene is and how tremendous a show is when everyone shows up and just gives in to having a back-to-basics good time.