Windy City Rock Presents: a benefit for Intuit, the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art

By Gene Wagendorf III

Regular readers of Windy City Rock will know that we love the strange, the weird, the out there, and the confrontational. Luckily for us, Chicago is home to an incredible experimental music scene that thrives both in traditional venues and in various basements, warehouses and gallery spaces. These bands are outsiders in the sense that their music sheds convention and predictability, defying genres and constantly crafting some of the most fascinating tunes in existence. 

Chicago also happens to be home to Intuit, an incredible organization devoted to self-taught and outsider art. The Center presents "self-taught and outsider art with world class exhibitions; resources for scholars and students; a permanent collection with holdings of more than 1,100 works of art... and educational programming for people of all interest levels and backgrounds." They're a unique group that does something we at WCR believe in firmly. Their focus and aesthetic is in-line with that of many of the experimental musicians we love, and they continue to operate thanks to the generosity of both donors and their members. In a unique twist, Intuit currently occupies a space that legendary and influential avant-gospel group ONO played thirty years ago, in July of 1983. 

It is with this in mind that we're happy to partner again with Chicago's best rock club, The Empty Bottle, in hosting a benefit show for our friends at Intuit. This charity concert will take place on Sunday, December 8th (7pm, 21+, $8), with proceeds going directly to Intuit. We've put together an amazing lineup featuring some of the city's best experimental musicians, and we'd love for you to join us for a mind-expanding, ear-shattering good time.

Windy City Rock Presents: an Intuit Benefit Show

Sunday, December 8th
7pm, $8 donation 

Crown Larks

Official Website  Facebook  Bandcamp

 

Mako Sica

Official Website  Facebook  Bandcamp

DJPTSD [members of ONO]

Official Website  Facebook  SoundCloud

The Humminbird

Official Website  Bandcamp

The bands have generously offered to donate their sets, and The Bottle is joining them by donating the door. With that in mind, we ask you join us, buy some records/tapes, have a few drinks and jam out for a good cause. 

Tickets are on sale at The Empty Bottle's website, and you can join the action on Facebook here.

If you enjoyed this, like us on Facebook and follow Gene on Twitter. 

Review: Unmanned Ship, John Bellows, ONO at The Burlington, 11/19

By Gene Wagendorf III

ONO | Photo Credit: Nathan Gregory (Nitetrotter)

Nitetrotter Fest 2013 kicked off Tuesday at the Burlington with a night dubbed "Ode to ONO." It was a celebration of the weird and powerful, and also a chance to bid farewell to John Bellows, who was playing his last show before leaving Chicago. I unfortunately missed opening act Headless Horse Head, but the buzz was good and you can check out their Nitetrotter Session here or snag their tape on awesome local label Teen River.

Legendary industrial/avant gospel group ONO were up second. The band rolled out a sinister, mechanized groove behind samples of the Mickey Mouse Club theme song; an unsettling combination that highlighted the curiously militarized qualities of the cartoon jingle by forcing it against the band's aphotic maelstrom. The first half of ONO's set expanded seamlessly, giving singer Travis free reign to unleash his hypnotic, grizzly vocals. "The Model Bride," from ONO's pioneering and recently reissued 1983 album Machines That Kill People (Priority Male), reveled in drooping strings and towering waves of distortion that eventually gave way to laser whips and pained howls; the sounds of doomsday on a technologically tortured, distant planet. ONO didn't melt the squalor to silence though, another expert move that was a testament to their ability to defy expectations. Instead, a pulverizing guitar riff and defiant beat emerged, and the song rode out on a kind of new wave garage tantrum.

ONO closed with their starkly reimagined take on The Velvet Underground's "All Tomorrow's Parties," a version of which can be found on their incredible 2012 release Albino (Moniker Records). The familiar plodding bass line and frothing keys were there, but cloaked in a hurricane of aggressive noise. Travis' vocals crackled with a rare and mesmerizing combination of desperation and authority, rising angelically above the pandemonium. He took only a brief recess from leading the band forward, when he hopped off stage to dance and embrace members of the enthusiastic crowd. The length and sincerity of those embraces stays with me still; it's the perfect snapshot of an ONO performance. There's no doubt in any given set that the band treads some pretty dark waters, but by their finale it's near impossible to come away not covered in goosebumps and radiating with a bizarre sense of hope.

Gene's 2012 favorites

By Gene Wagendorf III 

Twin Peaks at The Whip (photo by Gene Wagendorf III)

It's the end of the year and we're a music blog, so you know what that means: "best of" list time. That said, "best" is a silly and subjective word that we at Windy City Rock are trying to avoid this year. Instead we're offering you some lists of local favorites from several of our contributors. Over the next few days we'll be posting about our favorite Chicago records, bands, shows and what-have-you from 2012. Enjoy, and happy holidays!

5 Favorite Records

Twin Peaks - 'Sunken'
The soundtrack to my summer came courtesy of a group of delinquent minors who, between burning trees, skateboarding and prepping for college, managed to put together a record filled with anthemic, sunny jams. Expect big things out of Twin Peaks in 2013. Read a full review of Sunken here.

Fave track: Fast Eddie
Get the record: here

Running  - 'Asshole Savant'
Get Bent nailed it when they described Running as "an incendiary blast of rock ‘n’ roll akin to smashing Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music into the Stooges and then smashing that combo into Suicide." Asshole Savant does an admirable job of capturing the mayhem of Running's live sets. 

Fave track: I Can't Believe I'm Alive
Get the record: here

The Smashing Pumpkins - 'Oceania'
Oceania is Corgan and company's best record in the better part of a decade. Doesn't quite reach as high as it aims, but there are some beautiful moments here.

Fave track: Pinwheels
Get the record: here

Show review: ONO, The Hecks at Quenchers, 10/31

By Gene Wagendorf III 

ONO released Albino on October 31, 2012

In a city that likes to party as hard as Chicago, Halloween runs about two weeks long and offers up more shindigs and shows than the average mortal could dream of attending. Every music media outlet offers up their list of picks (WCR included), but in this writer's opinion there was no better place on the entire fucking plane to be on Wednesday than Quenchers. The evening wasn't just another bland, Malört-fueled costume shit show, it was a celebration of the release of ONO's first recorded music since 1986. More than that (at risk of being overly romantic) it was a celebration of the band itself and the local music scene of which they are such an integral part.

The task of setting the stage for ONO fell upon The Hecks, a jarringly creative two-piece who made a quick fan out of me when they opened up for Black Dice back in May. The songs, and the band, seem to have grown since then, at once aware of their pop instincts and simultaneously torturing them into something fascinating and freshly energetic. It's a nervous energy, one that inspires as much bopping as it does heart-racing. The driving force behind the band is the tension in that duality. Similar to Joy Division (in aesthetic, not so much in sound), the duo whips up bright licks and magnetic shifts, only to yank them into melancholy, and frankly distressing, sonic freakouts. Andrew Mosiman's deadpan delivery consistently dripped across jagged chords and strangely-tuned throngs, biding time until another tightly arranged wave of pop.