By Tom Lynch

Everybody knows somebody who knows somebody in the Wilmette-born emo-pop band, as the four-piece was so immersed in the various “scenes” of Chicago and its suburbs before it got famous and its mouthpiece married one of the Simpsons. When Newcity did this cover story on FOB back in May of 2005, I met Pete Wentz at the Pick Me Up Cafe in Lakeview; he seemed as normal as can be, humble even. We talked about the newest “Star Wars” and how fans—teenagers—sometimes recognized him at places like movie theaters. He came off as genuinely mystified by his band’s growing popularity, and grateful to the dedicated fans. Just an excited kid.

Who’s to say if Wentz’s personality changed once he became rich and famous; the band’s music didn’t—not really, anyway—but as it turns out, according to a blog post by Wentz himself that went live yesterday, FOB may be no more. Or Wentz might be out of the band. Or something. 

Read Wentz’s address to his fans after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

What’s in a name, really? Too many commercial bands have made it with obscure names based off cartoons, books or movies. So what can you make of a band whose name is Jet W. Lee? It sounds like a mode of travel for Civil War generals.

The band’s sound? Nineties alternative rock like Superchunk or Local H mixed with a bit of eighties punk a la Minutemen. “We can’t stand only liking a certain type of music, although I would say we are solidly classified as loud alt rock,” says guitarist and vocalist Jesse Johnson.

Jet W. Lee calls Champaign/Urbana its home, but adds Chicago as its home away from home. The band began as a two-piece—with Johnson pulling guitar duty and Patrick Mangan behind the drum kit—and formed after a few drinks at a local bar. ” I was actually gonna ask him to play drums with me, but before I could ask he told me that we should start a band,” Johnson says. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Toronto techno favorite Jake Fairley makes his long-awaited return to Chicago this week. Releasing music since 2000 on labels like Traum, Sender, Border Community and Kompakt Extra, among others, Fairley’s melodic productions are informed by a wide range of musical sensibilities. His catalogue contains everything from funky machine-oriented rhythms, to dubby melodies, to fuzzy electro-inspired synths, to fat bass lines and rock-oriented electronic samples. Fairley will perform his critically acclaimed, energetic live set under his “Fairmont” moniker, which showcases the deeper, sultrier side of his repertoire. Chicago has local promoter Migrashun to thank for this night of many firsts—namely, the first Fairmont live P.A. in Chicago and Migrashun’s first showcase at Smart Bar. Supporting sets from the Migrashun residents will keep the sexy tech-house going all night long, with Mathias Matthew performing solo and Ariel Frank tag-teaming with former Detroiter Derek Fox. For added ambiance, local producer/DJ David Powers will be providing live visuals. (Elly Rifkin)

January 29 at Smart Bar, 3730 N. Clark, (773)549-0203, at 10pm.

By Dennis Polkow

Boulez.  The radical and outspoken enfant terrible who once advocated that concert halls and opera houses should be burnt to the ground as dead monuments to an irrelevant past, but who ended up being known as one of the all-time great conductors and interpreters of that past.

Boulez.  The name of the leading twelve-tone composer of his generation, the man who once advocated that serialism would become “the only musical direction of the future,” and yet who later completely abandoned it as a compositional method.

Boulez.  The frustrated artist who vowed that he would never come back to an artistic position in his native France, and yet who returned to Paris to found and lead the world’s premier experimental music research center at the Centre Pompidou for a decade and a half.

Boulez.  The defiant and arrogant lion in Nietzsche’s “Also sprach Zarathustra” who once attacked all established systems, but who is today as diplomatic and subdued as a pussycat and who has come to epitomize the very musical establishment he once so sharply opposed.

On the surface, at least, it would seem that Pierre Boulez is a man of considerable contradiction.  Rather, Boulez is a man of genuine paradox: a living parable and a walking twentieth-century monument.

Our greatest living figure in music, Boulez is widely regarded as one of the twentieth century’s most significant and innovative composers.  But there is also Boulez the conductor, the champion of new music, of technology to expand music materials, the teacher, guru to rock stars, author and lecturer of international renown; in short, a man who helped reshape the course of music after World War II on a myriad of levels. Read the rest of this entry »

By Tom Lynch

For what seems like an eternity, Tim Kinsella has been a figure in Chicago’s art scene, mostly through his musical work with Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, Owls and Make Believe, plus work he’s presented under his own name. While an innovator, Kinsella’s a bit of an acquired taste—his apparent aversion to conventional melody and his unique and often abrasive voice could turn a traditional rock fan off. That said, Kinsella’s a lyrical master, his projects each thrillingly distinctive and daringly experimental, and it’s obviously no stretch to call him an icon in certain circles.

Joan of Arc, Kinsella’s longest-running project, has famously consisted of a rotating cast of musicians through the years and its twelve releases. 1997’s “A Portable Model Of…” and 1998’s “How Memory Works” remained my favorite Joan of Arc records for a decade, until “Boo Human” was released in 2008 and annihilated me. Kinsella’s newest Joan of Arc project is called “Don’t Mind Control,” and it’s a compilation of brand new songs submitted by past and current Joan of Arc members, eighteen tracks in all. Contributors include Tim’s brother Mike Kinsella’s Owen, A Tundra, Disappears, Jeremy Boyle, Cale Parks, Euphone, Tim Rutili, Josh Abrams, Ghosts and Vodka and Kinsella himself. In many ways this is the quintessential Joan of Arc release, as over the years the band has thrived with planets of talented musicians orbiting around Kinsella’s sun. Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

If you were going to catch only one concert of the month-long Boulez@85 celebration that would tell you the most about the man who is being celebrated, this is the one to catch. We know Boulez is a great conductor, but hearing his own music in Chicago is still somewhat of a rarity compared to how much music we hear Boulez conduct of others. This is the only concert primarily devoted to works composed by Boulez himself.

Opening the program will be French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard performing “Notations,” an early adventurous piano work consisting of several movements which Boulez is in the process of re-imaging for orchestra. Aimard will be joined by his protégé Tamara Stefanovich for “Structures I” for two pianos, the first major piece that Boulez wrote that applied the serial principles of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern to all aspects of its composition: form, rhythm, register, dynamics, et al.     Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

At this moment in time, Chicago seems bursting with powerful metal acts of all different forms, crews of slaughterhousers filling up clubs the city over. Metal’s on its way to becoming Chicago’s premier genre, and Raise the Red Lantern continues to do its part—the band’s aggressive, intricate and daringly melodic instrumentation works meticulous prog-rock into the otherwise deafening thunder. The four-piece’s self-titled debut from last year is a sledgehammer to the concrete, epic and bold, brilliantly menacing. (The band’s crafting of a heavenly guitar tone drives the sound, as members of Raise the Red Lantern run Emperor Cabs in Humboldt Park.) This is a welcomed annihilation; let the terror reign. (Tom Lynch)

January 27 at Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, (773)281-4444, at 8:30pm. $8.

RECOMMENDED

Local rock outfit Brighton, MA released an impressive debut full-length record last fall, called “Amateur Lovers,” which rides on the songwriting talent of ex-Scotland Yard Gospel Choir man Matthew Kerstein. A song like “Sunblinded,” from the record, is evidence of immense skill, and Kerstein’s voice—stretched and decimated in a Bob Dylan-meets-Paul-Westerberg kind of way—works surprisingly well with the slightly throwback, down-home rock music. The band’s first release, a five-song EP that predated “Amateur Lovers,” remains the group’s finest output, as Kerstein’s “Bet You Never Thought” just gets better with age. Live, Brighton, MA is topnotch, and the group headlines two nights at Schubas this week, each obviously worth checking out. The band keeps the folksy rock flame burning, which may not be a visual feast on stage but, sonically, runs with the best of them. (Tom Lynch)

January 22-23 at Schubas, 3159 N. Southport, (773)525-2508, at 10pm. $10.

The landscape of Chicago club life is changing, especially with the recent shuttering of Sonotheque and the re-branding of Lava. Smart Bar’s aiming for a little consistency in a business that’s anything but and just announced plans for a new Tuesday night series, titled Chilled, to be launched February 9. “Basically it’s gonna be a weekly downtempo night. We realized that, first off, there are not any good downtempo nights in the city, and secondly, there are a lot less options these days of things to do on Tuesday nights,” Nate Seider, Smart Bar’s talent buyer, says. “We just really want to do something laidback, more low-key, so the crowd can sit around and not feel so motivated to get up and rage and dance.” Seider used to run his own Tuesday night downtempo series at Moonshine, and picked DJ John Simmons to lead the charge on this new venture. He cites swanky joints Violet Hour and Rodan as models, as the evening intends to draw in the “martini crowd.” “I guess,” Seider says. “We definitely try not to be stuffy, but we just want people more in tune for a nice night out, to sit around and hang with friends and not worry about having to yell over the sound system.” (Tom Lynch)

RECOMMENDED

After turning to conducting, initially as an avocation, composer Pierre Boulez was chosen by legendary conductor George Szell in the mid-1960s to become the Cleveland Orchestra’s principal guest conductor so that Szell’s audiences would be able to hear large doses of twentieth-century music that Szell himself felt were beyond his grasp as a conductor to present convincingly.  Boulez’ Cleveland recording of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” from that time revealed the piece with a clarity and power that forever changed the way the public thought about the work.

“That work is extremely important to me,” says Boulez, “but it was rarely performed even in my student days. One performance I heard then with Charles Munch, the sacrificial dance that closes the second part, was as if both the players and conductor were driving on ice; neither were convinced.”

Boulez, for his part, says that he saw the significance of “Sacre,” as he calls it from its original French title, from the moment he saw the score, and that the transparency that became the trademark of his performances was immediately apparent and he admits that his approach to conducting the piece has been the same since he first conducted it nearly half a century ago.   Read the rest of this entry »