On December 13, I took a long drive to Des Plaines to pick up relatives of my friend Perry Kanlan, a showbiz-adjacent eccentric known as Dancin’ Man. The time on the road gave me the chance to reflect on the circumstances of my relationship with him. I formally met Perry in 2011, when my friend […]
Category: Music Feature
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Hemlock wants us to stay in touch
Carolina Chauffe doesn’t like to stay in one place for very long. Some of the most dramatic turns on her life’s path have been unplanned—she’s driven by what she calls “Coincidence with a capital C.” She thrives in uncharted territory, lured by a stretch of road, a door held open six states away, or the […]
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‘I don’t need fans, I need comrades’
Patrick Haggerty has just made me cry. Though we’re talking over Zoom, a day before the 78-year-old heads out on tour in support of his second record, Blackberry Rose and Other Songs & Sorrows, Haggerty’s passion and concern cut through, creating immediate intimacy despite the digital mediation. I feel lucky to be in conversation with […]
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Blind Arvella Gray
Editor’s note: This story originally ran in the Reader on January 7, 1972. It’s been transcribed exactly as it appeared then, and has not been updated to correct typos or conform to the Reader’s current house style. A blind man singing on the streets. It almost sounds as if it would be outlawed or long […]
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The second-biggest news about Bandcamp this week
Friday, March 4, is the 20th installment of what’s become known as Bandcamp Friday, when Bandcamp passes along its usual share of revenue to the independent artists and labels selling music through the site. But that occasion was overshadowed somewhat this morning, when Bandcamp CEO Ethan Diamond announced that the company is “joining” Epic Games. […]
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A concert-by-concert guide to the Frequency Festival
After a COVID gap year, the Frequency Festival returns on February 22. The six-day event is an outgrowth of the Frequency Series, which is programmed by former Chicago Reader staff music critic Peter Margasak and hosted by Constellation. Founded in 2013, shortly after drummer and promoter Mike Reed opened the north-side venue, the series presents […]
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How Chicago helped put the Queen of Grunge back on her throne
On January 4, 2020, Jen Lemasters started She Bop, an Instagram account dedicated to recordings by women in rock. Lemasters has a huge record collection, not least because she and her husband, Nick Mayor, own Bric-a-Brac Records & Collectibles. Lemasters’s knowledge of punk and new wave, and her particular love of underdocumented bands that exist […]
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A tribute to Syl and Jimmy Johnson
Chicago shaped Jimmy and Syl Johnson, and the brothers stayed grounded here even as they became global heroes. The singer-guitarists moved up from Mississippi after World War II and played blues and R&B, carving out their own spaces within those sounds. They had outwardly contrasting personalities and their careers took different paths; they worked together […]
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Duranguense: hecho en Chicago
Read in English Un estilo de música, de baile y de vestir. Todo eso es el duranguense, movimiento que surgió en Chicago a principios del siglo 21. El duranguense, un género híbrido que tiene sus raíces en el estado de Durango — ubicado al noroeste de México — y en la música conocida en la […]
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An interview with Saba: ‘For me, home is the people’
In late 2014, I was incredibly homesick: I’d just left Chicago for college out of state, and I was struggling to adjust to a new campus and an immediate world that looked vastly different from what I was used to. Treated like an outsider, I yearned for pieces of home. Luckily Soundcloud recommended Comfort Zone, […]
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Bandcamp Fridays reach their third calendar year
In case your attention’s been elsewhere, Spotify has been at the center of another uproar lately: last week Neil Young pulled his music from the streaming service to protest the COVID misinformation it was spreading via Joe Rogan’s podcast. Young’s attempt to call out Rogan’s bullshit has precipitated other artist withdrawals and a wave of […]
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Catholic school house
In November 2021, news broke that filled the Chicago house-music community with pride. Hometown house legends Ten City were nominated for a Grammy for Best Dance/Electronica Album for Judgement, their first full-length studio recording since 1994. Many Chicago fans remembered that around the time of the group’s formation in the mid-1980s, their producer, house pioneer […]
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Mandingo Griot Society: a global exchange born in Chicago
Foday Musa Suso absorbed centuries of tradition growing up in Gambia. As part of the griot caste, his family had performed a centuries-long role in Gambian society, narrating historical epics and singing praise songs while playing the kora, a harplike 21-string instrument his distant ancestors invented. Suso dreamed of bringing his music to places far […]
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Duranguense: made in Chicago
En Español A style of music, dance, and dress: duranguense, which surged in Chicago at the turn of the 21st century, encompassed all of this. Duranguense is a hybrid genre, with roots in the northwestern Mexican state of Durango as well as the music known in the industry as Regional Mexican—it includes popular genres linked […]
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Chicago’s instrument industry helps the world make music
Like a giant urban phoenix, Chicago rose from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1871 to become a behemoth in architecture, the arts, and business. Thanks to its waterways and its train system, the city had been known as a transit hub since the 1840s, but the shipping industry got priority during the Great […]