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Category: music
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Weekly Top 10 and an Attempt to Play A Portion of All Four Discs of The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka at Once
A children’s book made #1 this week?! That’s crazy. But true.
Also! Here’s footage from an event here at Quimby’s for the Continuum’s 33 1/3 series about albums of the past 40 years. This event on 9/17/11 featured NIU prof Joe Bonomo who did a book about AC/DC’s Highway to Hell, Editor-in-Chief of Pitchfork Media Scott Plagenhoef who did a book about Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister, and managing editor of Pitchfork Mark Richardson who did a book about the Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka. The footage below is of Mark Richardson reading from his book and then attempt to sequence the four CDs of the album to play simultaneously. Click on the image below and go watch it on YouTube.

Click on the picture to watch Mark Richardson discuss and play part of The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka 1. Counting In The Studio by Cecilia Pinto and Megan Williamson $10.00 – This attempt to show the process of creative expression to young readers. A dog lives with an artist who has also depicted her own studio in the book. Inside the studio it is possible to stare out windows just like those in the book. The studio, at the back of the artist’s home, is nestled on a side street in a Chicago neighborhood. The artist and the writer met at the studio to talk about the project before and after making their own separate work. The dog was always present and lent his inestimable support even when napping on the comfy, pillow-strewn chaise lounge which is up against a wall with drawings on it, just like in the book.

2. Spoken Nerd Revolution by Shappy Seasholtz (Penmanship) $15.00
3. Mister Wonderful: A Love Story by Daniel Clowes (Pantheon) $19.95
4. Gentlewoman #3 Spr Sum 11 $10.95
5. Burn Collector #15 by Al Burian (Microcosm) $3.00 – Al Burian takes on his new home town, Berlin with a little help from a Chicago All-Star team of Anne Elizabeth “Unmarketable” Moore and Liam “Secret Beach” Warfield.
6. Archiving the Underground #1 by Jenna Brager and Jami Sailor $2.00
7. OP Original Plumbing #6 Trans Male Quarterly $8.00 – The theme this round is “Schooled”, highlighting a twin commitment to both the “It Gets Better” and the “Make It Better” campaigns targeted at queer youth.
8. Cartooning Philosophy and Practice by Ivan Brunetti (Yale) $13.00 – This is about as close you are going to get to having Ivan Brunetti come to your house and teach you how to make great comics. Turns out, it’s pretty damn close – Philosophy and Practice serves up a concise and well-honed crash course on finding and fine tuning your comics voice. -EF
9. Hi Fructose #19 $6.95
10. Hot Teen Slut by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz (Write Bloody) $15.00
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Sara Marcus Reads GIRLS TO THE FRONT With Jessica Hopper, author of The Girls Guide to Rocking
The last great underground cultural movement of the pre-Internet age, Riot Grrrl revolutionized girlhood itself. In the early 1990s, young women were realizing that the equality they’d been promised was still elusive, and a newly resurgent right wing was turning feminism into the ultimate dirty word.Riot Grrrl roared into the spotlight in 1991: an uncompromising movement of pissed-off girls with no patience for sexism and no intention of keeping quiet. They published zines, founded local groups, and organized national conventions, while fiercely prophetic punk bands such as Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, and Bikini Kill helped spread the word across the US and to Canada, Europe, and beyond.
GIRLS TO THE FRONT (Harper) is the first-ever history of Riot Grrrl—lyrical and infused with punk, it tells the story of a group of extraordinary young women coming of age and coming into their own. Part social history, part cultural criticism, and part collective biography, this passionate narrative takes us from the front row of a punk show to the stage of the Republican Convention; from a seedy strip club to the US Supreme Court. It tells the tale of a time when America thought feminism was dead, but a generation of noisy girls rose up to prove everybody wrong. Deftly weaving together a wide range of political and cultural histories, this is a dynamic chronicle not just of a movement but of an era.
Also joining Sara is Jessica Hopper, author of The Girls Guide to Rocking (Workman Books).
For more info: www.girlstothefront.com
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Neon Marshmallow Fest Starts Tonight!
Tonight the Neon Marshmallow Fest starts at The Viaduct Theater 3111 N. Western Ave. Chicago, in the heart of Roscoe Village. Don’t miss this weekend’s festivities there, featuring a wide array of experiental noise music. See neonmarshmallowfest.com for details.
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A Night With Continuum’s 33 1/3 Book Series
33 1/3 is a series of short books about critically acclaimed and much-loved albums of the past 40 years. By turns obsessive, passionate, creative, and informed, the books in this series demonstrate many different ways of writing about music. The series now spans over 70 titles, covering a wide range of albums, from Public Enemy and Slayer to ABBA and Celine Dion. Indeed, this event is probably the only time in history that AC/DC and Belle and Sebastian will share a bill. Three writers, three albums. One event.
Joe Bonomo – AC/DC’s Highway to Hell
Joe Bonomo strikes a three-chord essay on the power of adolescence, the durability of rock & roll fandom, and the transformative properties of memory. Why does Highway To Hell matter to anyone beyond non-ironic teenagers? Blending interviews, analysis, and memoir with a fan’s perspective, Highway To Hell dramatizes and celebrates a timeless album that one critic said makes “disaster sound like the best fun in the world.”
Joe Bonomo teaches in the English Department of Northern Illinois University. He is the author of Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America’s Garage Band (Continuum 2007), and Installations (Penguin), a collection of prose poems. His personal essays and prose poems have appeared in numerous literary journals.
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Mark Richardson – Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka
“[A] wildly accessible, entertaining, and thoughtful book about the importance of an album that nobody talks about much anymore.” –The Stranger
The Flaming Lips’ 1997 album Zaireeka is one of the most peculiar albums ever recorded, consisting of four CDs meant to be played simultaneously on four CD players. Approaching this powerful and complex art-rock masterpiece from multiple angles, Mark Richardson’s prismatic study of Zaireeka mirrors the structure the work itself. Thoughts on communal listening and the “death of the album” are interspersed with the story of the Zaireeka’s creation (with assistance from Wayne Coyne) and an in-depth analysis of the music, leading to a complete picture of a record that proved to be a watershed for both the band and adventurous music fans alike.
Mark Richardson is the managing editor of Pitchfork. He was a contributing editor to The Pitchfork 500 and his writing on music has appeared in publications including the Village Voice, LA Weekly, and Metro Times Detroit.
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Scott Plagenhoef – Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister
If You’re Feeling Sinister shows how Belle & Sebastian transformed themselves over the space of a decade, from a slightly shambolic cult secret into a polished, highly entertaining, mainstream pop group. Along the way, the book shows how the internet has revolutionized how we discover new music—often at the cost of romance and mystery.
Scott Plagenhoef is Editor-in-Chief for Pitchfork Media.
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For more info: http://33third.blogspot.com/
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Chunklet #20 Is Here!
Now in stock for the awesomest price ever of $9.99 for 134 pages of the usual tiny font, the 20th issue of Chunklet (20 issues, 15 years!). Don’t miss Whirlyball with such bands as Arcade Fire, The Shins, Death Cab for Cutie and countless others. Laugh-out-loud funny Rock Sniglets, Music Journalist Application Form, Zine Fair Pick-Up Lines (That Failed Miserably) [“I’m not the do-it-yourself type…I’d rather do it with you.”] — This is rockin’. That’s why this mag only comes out once every 3 years, because of its high hilariousness quotient. Chunklet makes fun of pretty much everything the cool kids listen to, which is why I love it. More music mags should have this many opinions, instead of just being a conglomeration of press releases the publicity agents are sending out. I mean, really, does EVERY magazine need to have Cat Power on the cover with varying pictures from the same photo shoot?
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Bend Matrix Live at Quimby's
Dan Layne stopped by the store today and gave a short demonstration on the Bend Matrix. It is some kind of crazy sequencer that sends audio signals out to different speakers. So armed with an array of eight little speakers, a circuit bent drum machine and hand built tonal generator Dan proceeded to rock out the back of the store with crazy tones and cycling beats! Excellent!
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Louder Than Your Mom Karaoke Tournament Fundraiser
Our friends at Co-op Image Youth are holding a Karaoke Tournament Fundraiser at Ronny’s. If you’re in Chicago this Friday (June 27th) you should come, even if you’re not singing; karaoke singers need an audience! Here’s their details:
Be the Karaoke King/Queen you always knew you could be! Or just be mercilessly entertained! On Friday, June 27th Ronny’s (210. Suggested donation of $51 N. California Ave) will host Chicago’s first, one and only, Karaoke Tournament: LOUDER THAN YOUR MOM! at the door, contestants get in for free. Karaoke power-couple Joe and Liz Mason will MC the event as the First Round begins at 9 o’clock. There will be four rounds of competition. This event is held to benefit Cooperative Image Group.
Here’s how it will work: Karaoke contestants will compete in the contest, much like a marathon. They will be required to have a minimum of three sponsors who can donate up to four songs (depending on how far they expect their contestant to go) at $10 a song. A panel of audience judges will be rating the performances on a scale of 1- 10. Four finalists will receive a prize and trophy designed by Co-op Image Youth. The winner will receive a prize, trophy, and cash.
Incorporated in 2003, Cooperative Image Group is an interdisciplinary arts education and social entrepreneurship organization that facilitates programs with youth ages 6-21. Located in Humboldt Park, Co-op Image works with over 700 youth per year out of its Corner Art Center and approximately 400 additional community members through a number of outreach satellite projects. The programs Co-op Image creates include the production of a cooking show aired on CAN-TV, a screen-printing and design business, an audio/visual recording studio, mural painting, glass sculpting, documentary film-making and more. Co-op Image seeks funding through several channels, including a number of creative fundraisers and benefits, earned income, individual donors, and foundation and government grants. Benefits like LOUDER THAN YOUR MOM! account for approximately 30% of Co-op Image’s annual budget.
Check us out at: www.coopimage.org and to view our videos check us out at: http://www.youtube.com/user/coopimage.













