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Decades of the Dead: A Long, Strange Twilight of the '80s and 90's
With hundreds of hours of live Grateful Dead recordings available from their peak periods, you may ask yourself why you’d want to listen to the Dead in the ‘80s and ‘90s? It's a reasonable question for...
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To Art Laboe, With Love
Photo via Art LaboeArt Laboe is one of the very few figures in pop culture who actually merit the distinction of "living legend". Though, unfortunately, the "he needs no introduction" preamble doesn’t...
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The Obama Presidency Playlist
President Barack Obama is the only American president you could reliably trust to DJ a party. (Bill Clinton’s sax swag is hardly a marvel.) Politics aside, it might be a while before the United States...
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The Story of Majical Cloudz: A Playlist and the Debut of A Documentary
Still from "A Lot of Humans", by Neil CorcoranA trust fall naturally requires audacity, a degree of courage. At a point in our interviews for "Fall Down Laughing: The Story of Majical Cloudz", vocalist...
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What To Do When Your Song Is Used By A Republican Candidate
First of all, congratulations! Opportunities such as this come but once every four years. Sure, there are local elections in between but leave those minor controversies to the secondary market bands,...
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Journalist Jason Cherkis Discusses His Investigation Into Kim Fowley Rape...
On Wednesday night, Huffington Post published The Lost Girls, a piece that investigated the 1975 rape of then fifteen-year-old Runaways bassist Jackie Fox (nee Fuchs), by the band's manager, Kim...
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Lauryn Hill Owes Us Nothing
Photo by Will DeitzFifteen years ago, Lauryn Hill became a music industry émigré, following what we've since presumed to be the height of her career. Her solo debut album The Miseducation of Lauryn...
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A Look into the Future of Producer Will Yip's Studio 4
Photo via Facebook"Indie rock" has come to encompass pop, R&B, and even overt major-label acts without much pushback. Meanwhile, alternative rock stations are defined by their heavy rotation of the...
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Spending the Night on the Sidewalk for Pete Wentz
Photo via FacebookMost people wouldn’t want to spend their birthday waiting in a line, but when Lisa Saari turned 50 last Thursday she spent hers parked in a lawnchair on a sidewalk on Chicago’s...
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Fake Rainbows, Hologram Jerrys, and the Sloppy Legacy of the Grateful Dead’s...
Chicago got a Dark Star, though not in the expected fashion. In the very first hours of the 4th of July, the Grateful Dead’s most exploratory song was performed by a makeshift band of indie stars,...
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How Music is Helping Abortion Rights Advocates Keep Up the Fight
Photo via FacebookLast year, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 2, one of the country’s most restrictive abortion laws, that ultimately resulted in the closure of more than half of the state’s...
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Vince Staples and the Accessibility of Black Experience
Photo by Devon LittleBack in June, I saw the Long Beach, Calif. rapper Vince Staples open for Pusha T. Staples is a charismatic live rapper; he was almost giddy as he performed a medley of...
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Op-Ed: How My Depression Shaped My Music
A few weeks ago I had to wake up at an ungodly hour for a flight to a gig in London, and due to lack of sleep I was struck by the same sense of anxiety that I used to feel almost every single day, for...
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"Pony", "Closer" and Magic Mike XXL's Embrace of Strip Club Classics
Both strip clubs and movies use music as a utility; one that's either unobtrusive enough to serve as background or that can create an immediate shortcut to a strong emotional response in the audience....
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How Class, Videos and Goth Aesthetics Made Arctic Monkeys Huge in South America
Last winter, the Arctic Monkeys toured to South America, a place many bands can’t afford to visit. They’ve visited the continent twice before to tour, but on last year’s six-date trip they played, for...
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Chance the Rapper's Set at Pitchfork was #PeakBlackness and #PeakChicago
Photo by Kristina PedersenChance the Rapper closed this year’s Pitchfork Fest with a spectacular homecoming performance that was simultaneously #PeakChicago and #PeakBlackness. While his show appealed...
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A Report From FKA twigs' Rehearsal for Manchester International Festival
As the tick-tock beats and murmuring strains of "How’s That" faded out, FKA twigs’ eyes bulged wide. Twigs (nee Tahliah Barnett) gasped as a pair of hands grabbed her waist and hoisted her six feet...
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Nina Simone's Insistent Blackness
"To me we are the most beautiful creatures in the whole world…Black people. I mean that in every sense."— Nina SimoneThe first time I heard Nina Simone sing "Do I Move You", I was entranced within...
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Tastetesting QT's Energy Drink
As the music industry becomes increasingly more sophisticated at the very necessary and increasingly difficult task of converting art into products into money, musicians who explore the intersection of...
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Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the...
On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival in black jeans, black boots, and a black leather jacket, carrying a Fender Stratocaster in place of his familiar...
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