Chicagoist turns 5! (And some other news.)

Chicagoist turns 5! (And some other news.)

First of all, tomorrow is the event you've been waiting five years for ... the Chicagoist 5th Anniversary Party! It's at The Whistler. Grammar and The Interiors are playing. I'm DJing with Marcus and Lizz. Paul is creating a specialty cocktail for the event. It will be insane. And so much fun. And probably pretty packed at some points so get there early!


In other news, Lupe Fiasco is playing a free show in Grant Park during my britthday weekend. Guess where I'll be June 26 at 5:30 p.m.

Neu-New Romantic, maybe?

Neu-New Romantic, maybe?

I honestly have no personal beef with any of the members of Kill Hannah,* and if they ever move their sound forward and produce a genuinely good album I'll be the first to sing their praises, but when Mat Devine says stuff like this it's so hard to ever conceivably take the band seriously.

From UR Chicago:

W: Would you ever use the term “alternative rock and roll” to describe Kill Hannah?

Mat: I guess so. I think everything is alternative, which is why that word is meaningless to me. The very first time an “alternative” radio station played Metallica and Gin Blossoms, I realized it’s just completely meaningless. I refer to us as modern rock, which is what all my favorite bands from the 80’s were. Or I just call ourselves New Romantic. A term I came up with, kinda borrowing from the way bands like Duran Duran used to be described.

Dude, you didn't come up with the term "New Romantic" at all. That's not "kinda borrowing from the way bands like Duran Duran used to be described." I'm pretty sure that IS the way bands like Duran Duran used to be described.

*In fact I'm very much on the record marveling at just how insanely talented Jonny Radtke is. Though I'm not sure if he's in the band anymore.

Photo by jess da supastar

There goes the neighborhood.

There goes the neighborhood.

This is probably not the sort of thing that is good for a community.

The town of Winner, S.D., has produced a winner — and a $232 million one at that.

The winning ticket for Wednesday night's $232 million Powerball jackpot was sold in the ranching and farming town of 2,800 people. [AP]

The winner could conceivably split the money with EVERYONE in down and EVERYONE would walk away with $82,857 before taxes. Hell, if the winner invested the money they could probably support the entire town on the interest alone?

How much you wanna bet that lucky ticket holder is getting the hell out of Dodge A.S.A.P.? Also, seriously? South Dakota has a city town named Winner?!

Remembering Bennett.

Remembering Bennett.

I was among the first to post the confirmed news that Jay Bennett died Sunday night after following the story through numerous emails sent to me, Tweets observed, back and forth DM conversations, discussions with GalPal, and message boards read. I was hoping it was just a terrible rumor set off by misinformation passed around a sort of reunion of the Champaign-Urbana old school music scene, but as we all sadly learned, it wasn't.

I didn't really know Jay. I only ran into the guy a handful of times but each time I did he was friendly and funny. When he left Wilco I was stunned, and then I grew into one of the loudest local voices to lament his departure with each new Wilco disc, upset that his McCartney was lost to Tweedy's Lennon. In retrospect it could have happened no other way, but I was let down by Wilco's recorded output (though I admit their live shows just grew better and better as the band morphed into what it is now) and knew that the main reason those records sounded so flat was because Bennett's touch had been lost to the band. No one can deny that Bennet was an absolute virtuoso when it came to manipulating a studio.

Solo, Bennett was musically uneven. I still throw on his debut, The Palace at 4 AM, from time to time. The following discs all held glimpses of what I thought Bennett was best at, unexpectedly twisted yet lush pop, and each had its nuggets. And it saddens me that every obituary about the man has to do with legal proceedings that finally upset even the most stalwart Bennett defenders (myself included).

What people need to remember is that he was a musical genius in the right setting. And he was, by all accounts of folks I know who were much closer to him than I, a prodigiously gifted and incredibly rare soul, and genuinely sweet guy.

The last time I saw Jay was at a benefit show he was playing. He was just getting off stage and had obviously just had the time of his life. He was glistening, smiling, and 100% in his element, and that's the way I want to, and will, remember him.

Leaving under cover of darkness and prepping for THE PARTY!

Leaving under cover of darkness and prepping for THE PARTY!

Before I stealthily make my early morning exit I'd like to welcome you all to this abbreviated work week. Even if some of you, like me, had to work for a bit yesterday, this week still feels gloriously short, right?

And that means we're that much closer to the big Chicagoist birthday party at The Whistler this weekend! However, I must be honest, and admit I'm beginning to worry about the party. For once my fear is not that too few people will show up, but too many! I chose The Whistler because it was cozy but also had a PA and DJ gear ... oh yeah, and the specialty cocktails are delicious. Of course cozy also means limited space, and the bar has a healthy crowd on Saturday's as it is, so I expect things are going to get very intimate i.e. folks better not have a problem with other folks in their personal space since I think that'll be unavoidable.

So, I urge everyone to get the early and make sure you enjoy the bands, DJs fun, free stuff, and specialty cocktail the bar is concocting to mark the occasion.

This is gonna be a great party.

It's a holiday.

It's a holiday.

I'm laying low. No BBQs this weekend (proper ... we attended two kinda-sorta parties with grills as auxiliary components on Friday). Stayed in last night. Had to do work for the 9-to-5 for a bit each day. Saturday's DJ set was fun, although it was amusing to see Rudy hit the pop vein while I stuck closer to the rock setlist this time around (usually it's me playing the more overt modern dance cuts, right?). Each day involve long walks around Humboldt Park with an ecstatic beagle and a wide-eyed girlfriend new to the park's explosion of activity during warmer days.

All in all, not a bad weekend.

Holiday road.

Holiday road.

It's a holiday weekend so I can just TELL you are all ready to blow a gasket living it up over the next few days, right? Well, have I got your Saturday night all planned out for you! Rudy and I return to The Continental for another marathon late night set of rock and/or roll and soul dance music (along with exactly one hip-hop song allowed each DJ).

It all goes down Saturday night, which means it won't conflict with a single barbecue,, and since no one (hopefully) works Monday you'll have plenty of time to recover.

SATURDAY
May 21
at
The Continental

DJ Tankboy
DJ Rudy Tuesday

11pm - 5am

The Continental
2801 W Chicago

I love The Conti, plus, it's #7 on this girls' list of places she's barfed. Awesome!

Still.

Still.

It's a beautiful morning. The sun is lazily rising, our windows are open, birds are chirping, kitties are prowling thou the apartment and the building is still and silent. I suspect I'm the only person awake in the world right now. At least that's how it feels.

When you lead a life like mine, the concept of "solitary" is pretty foreign. I'm always on the go. And even when I'm not, even when I'm just sitting on the couch reading a book, I'm still surrounded by people. I like that, and my life is structured that way. Moments like this, moments when I truly feel like I'm the only person on earth, moments when I really experience the foreign notion of solitude, moments like this are rare and welcome experiences.

I don't want a lot of these moments, but when they occur I remember how much I need these moments.

Sunrise Chicago by clairegren

Colbert Cat!

Colbert Cat!

I almost nosed my milk when I saw this the other night!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Daily/Colbert - Keyboard Cat
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Dance party U.S.A.

Dance party U.S.A.

I came across a blog post that mentioned Meat Beat Manifesto the other day and it reminded me how much we all used to love dancing to them in college. Nowadays it sounds kinda clunky, but back in those days it passed for downright funky.

We would happily go from James Brown to Ministry to Dexy's Midnight Runners to The Partridge Family to Ned's Atomic Dustbin to The Blue Meanies to Public Enemy to The Revolting Cocks. And it all worked.

Those early dance parties really formulated my view on anything goes DJing and to this day I'm confused when people can't seem to dance to a rock and/or roll song because, to me, you can dance to anything if it's good and speaks to you.

Anyway, I thought I'd share an old school nugget that would slip into the playlist (usually held on a mixtape prepped pre-house party) at those parties.

MP3: Meat Beat Manifesto "Mars Needs Women"

Here's a fun side-game ... click on the photo to enlarge and see if you can spot a very young Tankboy at that particular party!)

Basic Twitter "rules."

Basic Twitter "rules."

I've come up with a few personal guidelines to follow with Twitter. These are not hard and fast rules, and by no means do I mean to imply everyone should follow them, it's just what I try to follow 90% of the time to make my Tweets as useful and fun for everyone as possible.

• Each Tweet should be a self-contained story. A teensy bit of context goes a long way, and it's not always easy to do in 140 characters (and even less if it's a reply) but it makes your conversations so much easier to understand.
• Try to convey a story beyond your current position or minimal action. Nothing annoys me more than those "I am at such and such a place" Tweets. Or, "I am eating a cantaloupe!" That is boring. I'm not saying NEVER do it, but if you do it often it's pretty annoying.
• Engage people who engage you. I can't follow everyone that follows me, but I try and reply when it's not redundant.
• Don't set Twitter to automatically suck in your Facebook status. I don't mind a little mirroring of the two sometimes, but if it always happens it starts to feel like spam.
• Twitter is great when you can combine it as a single tool to entertain, inform, and log what's on your mind all at the same time. At least that's what II try to do most of the time.

That's basically it! And like I said, it's just my take on how to better use Twitter in such a way that perfect strangers might actually take interest in what you have to say. There's no right or wrong answer here ... this is just what I think works for me best so far.

So having said that, are you subscribed to the Tankboy Twitter?

Classic Superman in the modern vernacular!

Classic Superman in the modern vernacular!

Thanks oh so much to Scott Smith for turning me onto the beauty of Superman Summaries.

You too will fall in love with this contemporary take on classic Superman tales ... this is an excellent place to start.

Party people, this is your weekend.

Party people, this is your weekend.

Sharp eyes scanning online listing may have noticed that there's a little "Tankboy presents" show at Subterranean tonight! And that I'm a co-sponsor of a show at The Empty Bottle tomorrow! Yes, it's been a while since I presented a show, so I'm making up for it by doubling up with two in a single weekend.

I can't take credit for the great bills though. Rudy asked me to book something for The Midnight Shows and then he lined up the other two fantastic bands playing with them tonight including my old pals The Bon Mots and Neutral Milk Hotel cover supergroup The Jeff Magnum Appreciation Society.

As for tomorrow's show, Chicagoist colleague and founder of the excellent MP3 danceblog CreamTeam Veronica was having trouble finding a home to throw a party to celebrate her blog's first anniversary. So I offered to help out once I saw how terrific her bill was and secured her a night at The Empty Bottle. Performing Saturday evening are Vega, Hey Champ, Cousin Cole, Moon Goons, and general insanity. Don't miss it. And hey, look at the nifty little poster Veronica worked up for the party. She totally nails Jon from Hey Champ...

L.A. makes me pine for the CTA ... how sad is that?

L.A. makes me pine for the CTA ... how sad is that?

My last time out here I said I could see why I might consider moving out west at some point. This trip has made me realize that probably wouldn't happen. L.A. isn't a city, it's a bunch of cities stitched together, none of which have decent transportation options outside of owning your own car. Cabs? Overpriced and hard to find. Buses? I saw two the whole time I was here. Shuttles? I took one from the airport and it took me 2.5 hours to get to my hotel ... a co-worker who took a later flight actually checked in before me! Trains? Uh uh. And even when you do have a car, traffic is always a hassle.

I find it slightly terrifying that transportation options are so limited, especially when I do something like walk into a bar to find it packed with people chugging shots and downing beers only to see them stumble out to the valet to collect their cars and weave home. I'm not saying Chicago doesn't have more than its fair share of drunk drivers, but at least the city gives you an option to get home otherwise after an evening of carousing.

So it's funny, after all the preconceptions I thought would keep me from likeing L.A. -- the plastic girls, the burnished boys, smog, fakeness, celebrity culture, blah de blah -- the one actual reason that turns me off of the city is its lack of transportation options.

Go figure.

I'm kind of a big deal.

I'm kind of a big deal.

On set, taking lunch, between shots and reviewing takes on the monitor. And it's all looking great.

Yeah, today ... it's good to be me!

Businesstime.

Businesstime.

Since I'm traveling today I reckon this is as good a time as any to hit on a couple housecleaning / "been meaning to do this awhile" types of things. With so many scattered ways to interact online here's a handful of the best ways to keep up with me.

• If you link to my blog, let me know! I don't do link exchanges per se, but if yours is interesting I'll probably either link to it here or subscribe to its RSS feed.
• RSS feeds! The dinosaur way to read blogs! (According to some overly eager naysayers, that is.) Whether you link to my site or not, be sure to subscribe to my RSS feed so you don't miss a tasty morsel! I don't care about analytics traffic here ... I only care about readers reading my stuff!
• Follow me on Twitter! Again, I simply can't follow everyone back, but I do follow most that aren't marketers or bands.
• Let's not even get into FriendFeed ... yet.
  

There you have it, keeping up with Tankboy 2.0 (personal feeds).

Go West, young man.

Go West, young man.

I'll be in L.A. (well, Universal City to be exact) Tuesday and Wednesday for work. I don't know how much free time I have -- I'm going to assume my evenings will be open but I'm not 100% sure -- but is anything particularly fun going on then? Any reasonable but cool restaurants I should hit? (I'm already planning on adding Jack In The Box to my "West Coast Fast Food" checklist.)

It's a business trip so I don't have time for touristy things but I'd like to do something other than write in my hotel room!

You can not resist ... the Pickle!

You can not resist ... the Pickle!

SOme early Friday cuteness for y'all... enjoy your weekend, folks!

You really can't expect the unexpected.

You really can't expect the unexpected.

My cheek is still slightly twitching from the imaginary shrapnel.

I was walking by the Daley Center after getting off the train this morning when suddenly this huge bang went off by the bike racks. Everyone froze. It took a second for it to register that everything was O.K., that someone had just set off a mid-size firecracker or something comparable, and everything was fine. Once that became clear you could see everyone's faces tighten with the realization that what had just happened was so instantaneous.

I've never been in combat, or been at the site of a suicide bombing, or any kind of bombing really. So I never realized how instantaneous those things are. After a steady diet of action movies where the hero always seems to be able to react as an explosion goes off, and comic books where the heroes doge bullets, and books that slow down an instant to span pages, I realized I have no concept of a truly unexpected moment.

One minute I was happily walking to work and the next I was standing in shock and surprise. The moment of the actual occurrence had passed before I even realized it happened. There is no rolling with the punch when it hits you in the back of the head, or dodging the bullets shot from an unseen vantage point, or responding to a train that has suddenly hit something else head on. The closest I had come to truly understanding this reality is when in a plane during either take-off or landing, when I can't see anything in front of me. I wait and wait and wait and hope that everything doesn't just suddenly stop, knowing that if it did I wouldn't have any time to react and things would most probably just stop, forever, for me. But until today I hadn't realized what it was to encounter, in the real world, something you truly didn't see coming.

Man, is that scary.

Photo by g33kgrrl

The state of the DJ.

The state of the DJ.

I realized last night that I've more or less given up actively DJing. I don't mean I've QUIT, only that I no longer actively seek out gigs. I have a regular two or three a month and that keeps me happy. I might have something else in the works to add to that at a new bar, but again, they approached me.

DJing has changed a lot in the last few years, and I don't just mean because of so many folks moving toward laptops and iPods. I have zero problem with that. But for a while, EVERYONE was a DJ, and EVERYONE was a grossly overpaid DJ. And that sort of killed things.

Back in the days when I'd DJ for kicks behind the bar at Danny's -- pre-remodel / global funk days -- and they'd pay me in drinks and good company. As the years went on I got higher paying gigs, but the pay was almost always commensurate with the venue.

A few years ago, though, the field became over saturated and for some insane reason bars kept paying people more and more money to DJ. And I'm not talking about the dance night DJs, I'm talking about the kid that'd come in and play his favorite rock records, or a playlist straight off 1999 Q101, or their fave New Wave hits, that sort of thing. I've got nothing against that, hell, I often DJ nights like that, it's just that EVERYONE was doing it and EVERYONE was being overpaid for it.

So what's wroong with that, right? Here's what's wrong ... too many DJs in the mix spread the crowd pool too thin and everyone's nights suffered because of it. Crowds were sparse, bar rings fell, and everyone blamed the DJ. It got noticeably worse over the last two winters as the economy began to slip out from under everyone's feet, and rightfully much of the blame for low attendance (especially last winter) should have gone to the financial crisis, but instead it was directed at DJs.

And who could blame them? When everyone is DJing who the hell is actually going to show up and buy drinks?

It was right around then that I realized much of the fun in DJing has disappeared for me. I do it because I like to both turn people on to good music and I like seeing people have a good time with the tunes I play. I like playing cheesy dance music at Liar's Club just as much as I like digging out deep Bowie b-sides at The Burlington or block rockin' beats in-between band sets at Double Door.

I DJ because it's something I love doing. And lately I feel like I've been DJing for folks who actually have fun listening to me. And I haven't felt that way in quite a while ... so I'm happy to return to old days of just a few regular gigs that allow me to build up a friendly crowd alongside the odd non-resident gig or guest spot.

Ugh, Tweedy versus Bennett. Double ugh.

Ugh, Tweedy versus Bennett. Double ugh.

Look, I've defended Jay Bennett's contribution and importance to Wilco for years, but this just feels oh so wrong. I have my own theories on what's going on, but won't go into them since they're not very nice, but suffice to say I think this lawsuit should've probably been -- and could have been -- handled behind the scenes.

Apparently zombies are the new Snuggie.

Apparently zombies are the new Snuggie.

Or are they zombies the new bacon? Or are all these "new trends" just old news the mainstream is only now getting wind of?

One thing we can all agree on? Some zombies are hot.

DJ Tankboy resurfaces!

DJ Tankboy resurfaces!

It's the first Friday of the month which means I must be DJing at the Old Oak Tap tonight!
If this fog sticks around we can all pretend we're hiding out in some remote forest getaway and eat some awesome food.

(Seriously, I can't stress enough how awesome their burgers and fries are. It might be sacrilege to say, but Kuma's pales in comparison.)

Also, I will be playing lots of fine music. A whole bunch of new stuff interspersed with old faves and the odd request or two. I'll play just about anything. Except Menudo. Don't even ask for it because I don't have it.

Anyway, I hope to see you tonight!

Friday, May 1

DJ Tankboy

10pm-2am

The Old Oak Tap
2109 W Chicago