Clicking through and trying to dodge the curtain of sentimentality.

I was cleaning some things up on ye olde site, testing the links in the left nav (if you're on desktop) and clicked through to the music I was listening to (and by extension, probably frequently DJing with) in 2004 and man oh man if that wasn't a really great year for music. It is a bit odd to read me being so snarky at points—I don't steer clear of negative takes but in the years that have passed it has often seemed less productive to knock down or steer folks away from an album when I'm far more interested in steering people to listen good bands I think they have a good chance of enjoying.

And wow, did 2004 have a lot to enjoy.

A healthy slice of Chicago concert history is waiting for you to devour it.

Every couple of months another news outlet or two discovers the growing archive of online concert recordings made in Chicago by longtime taper Aadam Jacobs. This is a good thing! I have often run into Aadam at shows, and his collection is vast, offering tons of well known bands in earlier days and in smaller venues, while also providing a nice slice of local talent that perhaps never hit it big, but were still important parts of our ever evolving music scene. 

There's a couple shows I booked at various venues in there, and even a few from my time as talent buyer at The Note have even started to show up!* (You can hear The Note sets from America's #1 Sweetheart before I joined the band, Wes Hollywood in his imperial phase, or a raucous The Amazing Kill-O-Watts show. I'm hoping the Yum Yum show I booked eventually shows up too, since Sweetheart and Wes recordings were from that show as well.)

Also, I've been looking for this Pavement show I saw at Double Door for forever! Plus that first Empty Bottle Polyphonic Spree show was pretty great so I look forward to listening to that too.* 

Anyway, if you want to hoover up tons of great concerts from Chicago coursing through the '90s and aughts, prepare to gorge yourself!

And if you'd like to know more about the archival project overall, this is a great place to start.

*Quite honestly, I took seeing Aadam show up at The Note back as a sign I was on the right track, booking good music, and successfully broadening the venue's appeal enough to bring in the previously skeptical rock and indie crowds...

**I just dug up an old post to make sure I had the date right and in it I mention "I'm in love with the choir girl with the dark straight hair." and I wonder who that was?! And I reviewed the show here!

I'm feeling this weather (and this tune).

A scene from today's lunchtime excursion.

The latest episode of Invincible has a song that straddles the line between darkly driving and sunshine percolation playing over a montage that immediately grabbed me. I looked it up thinking it was brand new and it turns out it's a catchy little number by Oliver Tree and Whethan (a Chicago producer?!)from 2019. How did I miss something so poppy and right up my alley involving at least one person from Chicago?!*

I just got back from a lovely lunchtime walk, and I couldn't stop thinking how much this tune would have served as the perfect soundtrack to it. So give it a listen** and feel free to deploy as frequently as needed as spring continues to lengthen ints tenuous hold on sunshine and warm breezes.

Oliver Tree · Oliver Tree & Whethan - Do You Feel Me?

*The answer to this is probably that 2019 was a weird year for me, and I spent a good portion of it trying to socially disconnect which also meant removing me from much music-scene mingling, so I probably wasn't on as sharpened a search for music, especially local music, than usual.

**I had a devil of a time finding an embeddable version, hence the Soundcloud player. I did track down an MP3 to buy for myself though.

Hearkening back to the days of single blog posts containing multiple topics in sorta capsule form!

We saw Hundreds Of Beavers—a movie I have already gushed over in this space—on the big screen last night for the first time! The Davis Theater in Chicago participated in the International Beaver Day screenings that were peppered across the U.S. and the movie played to a pretty packed house!

Those of us that arrived pretty early were treated to different educational films from decades past about beavers and it set the perfect tone for the movie to come.

Stunningly, when polled by the cinema's program director before the showing it seemed many people there had never seen the movie, and most of those people admitted they had no idea what to expect. Which made for a wonderful experience as were submerged in honest, surprised laughter for much of the screening.

If you haven't seen this movie yet, you are really just letting yourself down by this point. And if you have a chance to see it with a lot of people on a big screen RUN (do not walk) to secure a ticket!

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I recently went to renew my registration for the car I bought last year and discovered it needed an emissions test. The next day the mail delivered the letter to renew my license but told me I had to do it in person and take a vision test. At first, I spun out for a half a second, bemoaning all the time these activities would take, wondering how to fit them into my already pretty busy schedule during the week.

Little did I understand how much these tasks have changed since I last owned a car in the late aughts!

I took care of my emissions test last Friday, taking a full day off work to make sure I had plenty of time to do so.* The closest center was a 15-minute drive away and ... I spent less than 5 minutes there because they were so dang efficient!**

As for the license, you now need an appointment for pretty much anything at any DMV around here, and due to a glitch in the computer system it would only offer me a single day and time slot: 7:30 a.m. today. So, I snagged that time, preferring to get this renewal done ASAP. I arrived at 7:20 a.m., ended up being first in line (until I wasn't***), and was all done and back out the door by 7:45 a.m.! And every single employee I interacted with was a pleasure to encounter. Pro tip? If you keep a smile on your face, a pleasant tone to your voice, and interact with other people as co-equal human beings, they tend to treat you incredibly well!****

I know I can project a persona that can be pretty forceful or aggressive when the situation specifically calls for it, but in my daily life I've tried to default to keeping a slight smile at the corners of my lips and eyes, and let the more sing-song aspects of my voice play over the more direct tones, and it really does make a difference. Not only does it seem to make other people's days better, it also does do a nice job of setting an internal tone that radiates out from me, making my own day far more enjoyable.

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Well, hey! Gotta go now, but also wanted to leave you with something to brighten your day. So, check out "Same," off Courtney Barnett's new album Creature Of Habit, below. The album in general seems to be an embrace of a lighter and poppier approach overall by Barnett, and "Same" is the song I find myself playing over and over and over and ... you get the idea. Enjoy!

*Don't worry, I had other errands to get done that day too. Including picking up a piece of Penny Pinch art I bought at his Dutch Auction a few weeks ago (and I love it so much)!

**And my car passed with flying colors.

***When they opened the doors I thought they wanted us to ascend the long twisting ramp we were lined up by, and halfway up that ramp I saw everyone behind me just went up the short set of stairs next to the ramp. Don't worry, I found it hilarious and had a nice time laughing at myself.

****I gleaned from a few employees that they were unused to dealing with people who were pleasant to them. 

People should be a lot more excited that we're going to the moon again!

Artemis II crew photo by NASA/Josh Valcarcel

Sure, the news has picked up on it today, but NASA launching a rocket to orbit the moon for the first time since 1972 is huge! Is it because we're not landing on the moon that people seem less than impressed by this? Do people even understand what a huge achievement it is every time human bodies venture further beyond our planet? Me? I am very excited! Good luck to all the astronauts and I am so jealous of what they'll get to experience and so grateful they're brave enough to undertake a massive road trip. 

Who do you think is in charge of "road" games and dispensing treats every hundred miles?*

UPDATED 4/2: It was amazing!

*Those 100-mile treats were a mainstay of my own family's countless road trips since every vacation we took as I was growing up involved traveling great distances in our largest family car at the time.

There is so much to fall in love with out there.

Photo by Sebastian Buzzalino

I stumbled across Daniel Romano's prodigious output over the pandemic and he had me hooked from the start. For a while there, Romano was releasing music so quickly, and hopping genres so frequently, you never knew what to expect from him, but what you got was always engrossing. 

Romano's last few albums have started to hone his rawkier, poppier elements while mixing Crazy Horse instrumental looseness with tightening Tom Petty-esque melodies. His latest album Preservers Of The Pearl is credited to only The Outfit, and stands as Romano's most collaborative effort yet, granting a deeper dimension as what was once a musical nom de plume has morphed into a fully functioning democratic band.

I share this album with you because it's really good. But I also share it as an example of what happens when you actively remain open to new bands. If I recall, I stumbled across Romano being mentioned in another review, liked the comparison or description of his morphing sounds at the time, went to check out his Bandcamp page, and discovered there was a treasure trove of music there that was still growing at a fantastic pace. 

There was an entire musical universe out there that was ready for me to fall in love with by chance, and if that's true here, then the number of musical universes tailor made for me (or you!) to fall in love with is staggering. Any time I think I've "heard it all" I remind myself that there are an infinite number musical galaxies out there that I could fall in love with if I only found them. And the only way to do that is to keep actively searching.

The search is never over; it will never, ever be complete. But for now, take a breather, take in The Outfit, and then use that as a springboard for your next search.