Seattle-on-the-Lake: Hitsville’s Guide for Soon-to-Be-Recent Arrivals
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Billboard’s detailed exegesis on Chicago this week–four stories covering an extraordinary four full pages, detailing the scene, the labels, and the bands, all under the banner headline “Chicago: Cutting Edge’s New Capital”–makes Chicago’s status as the next big rock ‘n’ roll thing as official as it gets. (Hitsville contributed an article on local labels.) What denizens of the last few next-big-thing scenes (Athens, Austin, Seattle) found was that such a designation immediately produces a wave of bands and industry people panning for gold. Despite the obvious opportunities for hazing such a situation presents, it’s probably incumbent on us to make these pilgrims as comfortable as possible in the months ahead. To some extent they will be helped by Billboard’s thoughtful inclusion of a map of Wicker Park, including such local landmarks as Idful studios and the Rainbo. But in order to facilitate what in the computer world is known as “buzzword compliance,” Hitsville offers the following potpourri of musical factoids for soon-to-be-recent arrivals.
Right: “Nate around?”
Blackie Onassis’s real name is Johnny Rowan. He grew up in Beverly.
Metro was called Stages back in 1982; when current owners Joe Shanahan and Joe Prino took it over they called it Cabaret Metro. But they changed the name to just Metro last year.
