To tell you the absolute truth, I’m utterly and completely exhausted after last weekend’s Pitchfork Music Festival. I’m weak from both all the music and all the people. And I need to conserve energy for Lollapalooza, which is even bigger. So I’m gonna try to make it to the Wicker Park Fest this year, as for the last few summers, it’s featured better live music than any other Chicago street fest, but I’m not sure I’ll make it. I live right down the block and I’m still not sure. I just don’t know if I can handle another weekend of flip-flops and spilled beer. But if I were going to attend, I would certainly be jazzed about the overwhelming lineup they’ve put together, which includes, over two days: Poison Arrows, Bloodiest, Scott Lucas and The Married Men, Backyard Tire Fire, Company of Thieves, Junior Boys, William Elliott Whitmore, Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s, Elvis Perkins in Dearland, The Hood Internet and Smoking Popes. Not bad, if I were going. Maybe I can just check out Bloodiest on Saturday and the Popes on Sunday. Or, maybe…alright, fuck it, I’ll see you there. (Tom Lynch)
Wicker Park Fest takes place July 25-26 on Milwaukee Avenue, between Damen and Wood. Noon-1opm both days. For more info visit wickerparkbucktown.com.
For “Want” of a Change: A Preview of Rufus Wainwright at Ravinia Park Rufus Wainwright isn’t the first singer-songwriter to reinterpret earlier work through an orchestral lens. And much of Wainwright’s third and fourth albums, “Want One” and “Want Two”—whose twentieth anniversaries are the prompt for this new tour—is fully scored. But when Wainwright hits the Pavilion stage at Ravinia tonight, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra will be behind him.
Brutal Finesse: A Preview of King Crimson at Ravinia There have been few new compositions from King Crimson these past two decades, but the live arrangements of songs from its catalog are often strikingly different than the recorded versions.
Cooling It: A Preview of Colleen Green at Cole’s Bar When Green strums power chords or chiming notes on top of her backing track, you might think you’re at Ramones karaoke night and Madonna is taking her turn.
