Is it better to burn out than to fade away? Neil Young said so in his 1979 ode to the rock & roll myth, “My, My Hey, Hey (Out of the Blue).” In keeping with the example laid down by the author of the Rust Never Sleeps concept, you burn out by keeping busy, being […]
Music
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sound patrol 11-11-04
Various Artists The Late Great Daniel Johnston Discovered Covered (Gammon) History will prove you poor enlightened blue-staters right someday, but that’s cold comfort now, when Christian nutjobs and reckless neocons have hijacked your country. Instead of flouncing off to Canada, heed the wisdom of Daniel Johnston: “Do yourself a favor, become your own savior/Don’t let […]
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now playing 11-4-04
Making plans for a night on the town this weekend? How about checking out a new hip-hop group “borrowing” music from someone else’s record and complaining about paying for artistic property? Then we can sit and wonder if it’s the death of the genre. Don’t worry, that parasite of pop was never really alive. No, […]
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sound patrol 11-4-04
Augie March Strange Bird (spinART) Don the bard mantle at your peril, rockdudes. Before you break out the thesaurus, think of the sick-making excesses of Rush. Think of Lou Reed’s recent Edgar Allan Poe travesty. Think of Rick Whatshisname’s excruciatingly stupid line about how he needs some chick “like Leda needs her swan” (that swan […]
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music notes 11-4-04
• If you wanted to pick a pair of choirs, you couldn’t do any better than the Vienna Boys Choir and the African Children’s Choir. Now give them back-to-back shows in central Illinois and go look for a blue moon. The Europeans sing in harmony starting at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 9, at Illinois College’s […]
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sound patrol 10-28-04
Björk may be the most unpopular pop star alive. Sure, she had a gigantic hit single in her native Iceland when she was 11 years old, and she’s sold millions of records over the subsequent decades. She earned critical praise and several award nominations for her film debut in Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the […]
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music notes 10-28-04
• Lovers of bluegrass music should be clogging in their bibs right now, excited as they can be about shows headed for Mr. Lincoln’s hometown. On Nov. 12, Drew Emmitt of alt-bluegrass band Leftover Salmon (now on hiatus) picks his way to the Hoogland Center for the Arts (217-523-2787). The Greater Downstate Indoor Bluegrass Music […]
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now playing 10-28-04
What’s so scary about Halloween? Let’s dig a little deeper in the grave and find out, shall we? Halloween is actually All Hallows Eve, the night before All Hallows (or Saints) Day, so it’s like turning the night before Thanksgiving into a special celebration (which, by the way, is now the biggest bar night of […]
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now playing 10-21-04
What do you mean, you’ve never heard of Butch Hancock? I suppose you’ll also say you haven’t heard of Joe Ely or Jimmie Dale Gilmore or the Flatlanders, either? Well, how about Buddy Holly or Bob Wills? Ah yes, now we’re getting somewhere. And that somewhere is Lubbock, Texas. That dusty town way out west […]
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sound patrol 10-21-04
Tom WaitsReal Gone (Anti) At 54, Tom Waits is weirder than he’s ever been, which is quite an accomplishment when you consider that he’s been weird — deeply, uniquely, unrepentantly weird — for at least 20 years now, when Swordfishtrombones erupted like a beautiful boil on the polite posterior of the singer/songwriter scene. Over the […]
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music notes 10-21-04
• Anybody remember the Brown Bag Blues Boy, Tim McKean? They say he came from Illiopolis, hung out in Springfield, then relocated to Los Angeles in the late 1970s. While in the capital city, McKean performed with the Blues Boys, Sangamon Valley Hoedowners, and Finnegan’s Wake, and as a solo act. Welcome him back to […]
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now playing 10-14-04
During a recent excursion to a downtown nightclub, I was accosted by a local musician who was more than a little disturbed at the prevalence of karaoke nights in our Pub Crawl calendar. “That’s not live music,” he declared. “It shouldn’t be in with the bands.” For fear that I might not get the full […]
