The Chicago Sun-Times’ blog recently published an interesting piece by noted music critic Jim DeRogatis, in which he attempts to prove that ‘90s Alternative Nation darlings (and specifically Chicago acts Urge Overkill, Veruca Salt, Liz Phair and Smashing Pumpkins) resemble the baby-boomer acts they once railed against. DeRogatis says that although it seemed implausible that these groups would become like “the artistically stilted, cash-hungry or pathetically reactionary dinosaurs that prec
Sometime this afternoon, a big huge bus parked itself outside the RFT's offices on Delmar. Emblazoned on the side of the vehicle in fiery colors were logos for Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, a painted caricature of guitarist Joe Perry and his website, JoePerry.com. We're so conditioned to weird things in the Loop that none of us batted an eye at this. But sometime a bit after 5:30, our erstwhile photo intern Stew Smith came into my office and said, "Uh, did you know that Joe Perry is downstairs?" Appar
Everything looked bad but the weather. I crawled through traffic in parts of Cahokia and Sauget that will never make a John Mellencamp small town video. I stared at the lines snaking around the GCS Ballpark half an hour before show time. I forked out $10 for the pleasure of later waiting an hour to get out of the parking lot. And I felt certain the hippie gyro-dudes would have more fun slinging lamb for the tailgaters than I would watching the Bob Dylan Show (featuring The Wiyos, Willie Nelson a
