Club Fever
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Other bands were playing Saturday night, of course, but that’s what was happening at the city’s more carefully booked venues. All of these figures exclude guest lists, which can account for as many as 100 more heads per show. That means that at least 1,700 to 1,800 people were out late–Saturday headliners don’t go on ’til 12:30 or later–to see rock and roll, and fairly obscure rock and roll at that. That’s a lot of consumers enduring crowded clubs, late starting times, and a cold night to see cool rock music. What’s going on?
At the Empty Bottle, the Wicker Park hangout on Western, owner Bruce Finkelman regularly packs the place with bands like Freakwater and Red Red Meat. Several months ago he jettisoned the old Bottle and moved one block down the street to a bigger space with room for a stage. Now he’s expanding into two neighboring storefronts: one will be a combination vintage guitar store and pool parlor, the other a cafe. “I think there’s a heightened awareness of the music scene out here,” says Finkelman. “I think it’s great as long as the quality’s there.”
Stuart Rosenberg, in exile from his longtime home WBEZ, is presenting a free concert at the Chicago Cultural Center on Saturday afternoon, February 19, from 2 to 5. The show’s a gift to fans who protested his abrupt canning from the station in November. Scheduled: world music mavens Michael Zerang and Hamid Drake; members of the classical combo Music of the Baroque; flutist Kathleen Keane, from the Drovers; Maestro Subgum and the Whole; and lots of others….The free show by the Flaming Lips (February 18 at Metro) announced this week–what’s that all about? Well, the twisted psychedelic pop band based out of Norman, Oklahoma, released its second Warner Brothers album, Transmissions From the Satellite Heart, last fall. The album didn’t go anywhere, and the band’s future with the label has been the subject of some black humor within the Lips camp. But over seven albums they’ve developed a base of support in Chicago–their December Metro show sold out with no radio play, for example–and late last year the local Warner rep noticed that both the Trib’s Greg Kot and the Sun-Times’s Jim DeRogatis had named Transmissions album of the year. Local sales zoomed. The show’s a thank-you to Chicago for its support–and the start of the label’s attempt to relaunch the band nationally….Pollstar, the concert promotion trade magazine, named Metro its 1993 nightclub of the year this week.
