Local punk label Kid Sister Everything released a five-song live EP by Fargo posthardcore band Animal Lover last week—its first cassette after four years of CDs and seven-inches. via Three Beats: Bassist Harrison Bankhead finally releases an album of his own | Three Beats | Chicago Reader. Live at Lemp Arts Center by Animal Lover
Cloud Mouth start their long good-bye with a round robin via Three Beats: Cloud Mouth plays a round robin | Three Beats | Chicago Reader. Chicago postpunk trio Cloud Mouth will break up in the fall, and their round robin show is the first of many good-bye celebrations. Read more!
I’ll do it my way: Locals pick their jams for Saturday’s Punk Rock Karaoke Chicago event | Music | The A.V. Club Chicago. Punk and karaoke, together at last. Here are some picks from Chicagoans for the second Punk Rock Karaoke Chicago.
Love Justin Bieber, but afraid to reveal it to your punk rock friends? Do you tell your friends that the music you’re blasting on your iPod is the latest pop sensation when it’s really Black Flag’s Damaged? Wish these two worlds could finally meet? Well, XLR8R and Exclaim! music writer and Grown Ups member Josiah … [Read more…]
Late Sunday night, famed Chicago Sun-Times movie critic Roger Ebert posted one long article. Actually, it wasn’t so much an article as it was a screenplay. Ebert opened his vault and unloaded part of the script he wrote for a Sex Pistols-focused movie. Originally titled “Anarchy in the U.K.” and later retitled “Who Killed Bambi?,” the … [Read more…]
The Green Day-inspired rock opera, American Idiot, is now open for business. And the reviews are good [via The New York Times]: A pulsating portrait of wasted youth that invokes all the standard genre conventions — bring on the sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, please! — only to transcend them through the power of … [Read more…]
I recently critiqued an article by Steve Almond that I felt unfairly and naively  lambasted music criticism. Almond wrote music criticism is pointless: I disagreed. And then I stumbled upon something that support Almond’s point 100 percent. I still don’t agree with what Almond wrote, but this piece of “music criticism” by Impose’s Jason Diamond … [Read more…]
A couple years back, Minor Threat drummer and Dischord Records co-founder Jeff Nelson decided to do a little spring cleaning. So, he did what any person looking to unload a whole lot of perceived junk would do: Sell it on eBay. Yet, Nelson wasn’t getting rid of, say, an old Tickle Me Elmo. Nelson began … [Read more…]
The BBC is reporting that Sex Pistols’ svengali and artist-musician Malcolm McLaren has died: Malcolm McLaren, the former manager of punk group the Sex Pistols, has died in New York, aged 64, his agent has said. There have been a lot of famous pop music managers over the years, but none like McLaren. Though the … [Read more…]
The Dillinger Escape Plan‘s reputation precedes the band. The mathcore quintet is (in)famous for their chaotic live sets, which are known for hosting waves of crowd-surfing and leaving members of the crowd and/or band with a broken bone or two. Such a legendary live performance might explain why the crowd Friday at Reggie’s Rock Club … [Read more…]