Smile Politely. Speak Directly. A Champaign-Urbana Culture Blog

At this point it doesn’t seem that appealing, does it? And with the war on terror raging, it may not be so patriotic to listen to a Brazilian band. In fact, there might be a law against bobbing your head to this. But before you start raising those mini flags and chanting, You-Es-Ey! You-Es-Ey!, imagine Brazil: the warm and gentle sunrays, laid back beaches, Mardi Gras. Yup, they sound exactly like that.

“I knew for sure I wanted to be a part of DJ culture after seeing what DJ Premier was doing with it,” Boskey says. “An issue of Rap Pages magazine in 1996 pretty much cemented things.”

Soon after their follow-up album, Soup, was released in 1995, lead singer Shannon Hoon died from a drug overdose. Now, after a long hiatus, the band has returned with a new lead singer, Travis Warren, and a new album, For My Friends, on Adrenaline Records.

It's a 6:30 p.m. showtime with Underpaid Packy opening. Tickets are $15.

Evidently, Monday nights are alive in downtown Champaign, and you can thank the perseverance of local buzz columnist and musician/booking agent/promoter/kickball fiend/torrent master Mike Ingram. What was once a shot in the dark — an attempt to move the music action once centrally located at Cowboy Monkey over to The Highdive — has been paying off as of late; crowds of 150+ have been regularly packing it in to watch the cleverly named DJ Mingram spin the best of the best from the 1980s alongside videos and a small lightshow.

Reports of Pat Benetars, Michael Jacksons and Eddie Van Halens showing up are increasing by the week. There is no cover and cocaine, while still illegal, is bound to be snorted by someone at some point during the night. And if not, chances are, you can find a dork with a Rubix Cube somewhere.

Another great outdoor performance to check out tonight is at Mike 'N Molly's. They're featuring two local bands: Mad Mardigan and Hathaways. Since the Cowboy Monkey has stopped having regular concerts, Mike 'N Molly's has picked up a lot of the slack, usually featuring a full week of local and regional bands. With one of the better beer selections in town and a great atmosphere, you can't go wrong checking out a show here.

Show starts at 8 p.m. and the cost is still undetermined. Mike 'N Molly's is located on 105 N. Market St. in Champaign.

Once again, Krannert Center brings two dynamic performances to the U of I's Research Park for the second of their three-show series, OUTSIDE. Tonight, Urbana's Brandon T. Washington and Chicago's Bandoleros will perform at 6:30 and 7:30 p.m., respectively. With Washington's powerful voice and Bandoleros' multi-ethnic musical influence, there's no reason to bring a chair: you should be dancing.

Bluegrass is special to me because it is an uncorrupted, undisguised form of music. Artists claiming any affiliation to this genre are almost always based around acoustic string instruments, and consequently, bluegrass is earthy, natural and unforced. Furthermore, while bluegrass is influenced by both jazz and traditional Gaelic music, it is rooted most deeply in the mountainous regions of the United States.

Bluegrass is American.

As of June 19, another musician joined the pay-what-you-will, or rather free-for-all, reputation Radiohead glamorized with their latest album, In Rainbows. Gregg Gillis, also known as Girl Talk, claimed in an interview with MetroWize (based out of San Francisco) that he released the album, Feed the Animals, to give people a better chance at reaching out to music. Gillis also said that he is simply acknowledging the fact that it will leak, and people will somehow get it for free anyway.

Cristy: I like to hear music store owners’ viewpoints. It’s a window into how they run their businesses. This is how I came to comprehend how Bob Diener runs Record Swap. “I don’t consider ‘new’ music the end-all, be-all,” he remarked. At first I thought it was the typical cranky declaration of an older music fan, but as he continued, I understood what he meant. “Anything can be ‘new.’ It doesn’t matter if it’s 30 years old or 30 days old. If it’s new to you, it’s exciting — a brand-new discovery.” And that’s what Record Swap is: full of new discoveries.

This is the first we have heard from So Long Forgotten, a Champaign-Urbana based rockers on a massive two-and-a-half month bad boy of a tour.

“Trips like ours are greener grass left unknown for fear of believing trite sayings; sayings that are sometimes true. But our friends back home live an existence under the weight and awareness of time; a place we are slowly escaping; a world growing fainter by the hour and the mile.” – Donald Miller

July 17, 2008 Topeka, KS

Today is the 4th day of our run to the west coast and back. As I sat in the bus on our way from Kansas City, MO to Topeka, KS this morning, I noticed the book Through Painted Deserts sitting on the floor. It beckoned memories of our origins as a touring band. This was the first book I ever read on the road. It complimented those first weeks as a real touring band like a beautiful soundtrack. Those first few weeks playing shows every night, meeting new people every night, and going new places every day. I picked the book up today and began to skim through it seeing if I could conjure up some passages that really made that time so poignant in my mind.

It's so rare that I fall in love with new music anymore.

My job demands an ear that is more or less discriminating to the point of alienation; most artists are just a blob of sound that ends up forgotten before I can even give it a chance to be appreciated. It's a horrible side-effect to being employed in the "industry."

So, it was with great delight that I gave the (relatively) new single by M83 a listen for more than 20 seconds last week. The song "Kim & Jessie" has been playing in my office and car on a virtual repeat since last Thursday, and for good reason: it hits on all the best parts of my favorite bands from the 80's — Tears For Fears, INXS, XTC and the like.

And while Smile Politely's Zack Adcock isn't the biggest fan of M83's recent "pop music song structures," he was still able to see it for what it is: some of the best "pop" music being made today.

Listen to the radio edit of "Kim & Jessie" here: www.myspace.com/m83

July 12th - Day off in Portland, OR:

We woke up in Portland at our friends Joni & Mary's house after a late-night drive from Boise. We spent the day seeing why Portland is a haven of music, culture, progressive thinking, and, overall, good things. We went to The Doug Fir for a show, but only saw a SOLD OUT sign on the ticket window. Some friends of ours were going to be there; one, in fact, playing in the Portland Cello Project who was on the bill. So, we did the old shove-our-hands-in-our-pockets-and-kick-an-imaginary-rock-thing as we started walking back to the van. We commenced with Plan B and headed down the street to Dante's for a sweaty, drunken two band bill: Jacuzzi Boys from Miami (Aaron McAllister's twin on lead vocals and guitar) and King Khan & The Shrines. King Khan's is like a James Brown-meets-punk show: horn section, cheerleader, 2 of the members were French, and by the end of the night, the girl who kept hopping up on the corner of the stage so she could lift up her skirt just enough for her boyfriend to take a picture of her, her panties, and the band...still with me?...well, she hopped up one too many times and her arms, weary with whiskey, lifted her 2 inches short of a complete hop and she quickly made friends with the floor, her face being the handshake. It was rough.

A Midwestern band at its core, Shipwreck has invested the past four years into bringing forth classic Champaign-sound rock to a very flat Champaign County. The band is known to sway audiences from a relaxed enjoyable show to a revved up crowd through stronger guitar harmonies — transforming from just a Midwestern band with a coastline name to a Champaign-Urbana staple.

Don’t worry, I’ll assure you that I’m not going to yodel like a pretentious music geek and devote a whole paragraph to drop album references all over or yak about Captain Beefheart being an underappreciated musical genius.

( Ed. note: Andrew will be taking a fresh look at somewhat obscure, underappreciated older music with this regular column. )

The boys of Deconstructing Jim share a striking character resemblance to Clark Kent. By day, the men join the working class with their careers in machinery, public relations and the ever-popular egg delivery. However, by the night, the men live very different lives: rock stars.

Saturday, July 5th: The Blue Fugue - Columbia, Mo:

Day 1 of our 35 days out on the road. This tour will be 4 times longer than anything we've ever done. We'll put 7,000 miles on the van, spend $2,000 on gas, and inflate our air mattresses just about every night. So, you start somewhere familiar, and Columbia is our 2nd home. We've played the Fugue 4 times before, so it's a nice shoving off point. Columbia is what Champaign-Urbana would be if all 3 downtowns (Cham/Urb/Campus) were smooshed together, so you're almost guaranteed a crowd if you hit The Fugue or Mojo's.

Monday nights are notoriously empty at bars downtown; it's easily the toughest night for venue promoters to fill because of the inherent need for those who drink to come down from their weekend swill.

If history is any indicator, there will be too few people at the show tonight at The Highdive as well, and that's unfortunate. KaiserCartel, a folk-rock duo posing as indie kids from Brooklyn, will be making a tour stop in Champaign tonight, and will be supported by Tracey and Tricia of the band Tall Tale as well as Darling Disarm.

The show is an early one, starting at 7 p.m. Make sure to come out and support your downtown music scene. What's left of it, anyway.

Tonight, the U of I's Research Park is about to break out of the stale cubical feel and slip on something a little more exciting. Krannert Center of Performing Arts along with Fox/Atkins Development and the the Illinois Natural History Survey present the first of their three-show series of summer outdoor concerts appropriately named, OUTSIDE at the Research Park, beginning tonight, July 11 at 6:30 p.m. The public venue is located southwest of Assembly Hall on First St. in the Research Park on 1816 S. Oak St. in Champaign. Opening act is Champaign-Urbana's very own John Hoeffleur, of The Beauty Shop, and at 7:30 p.m., hailing from Louisiana, is the demanding presence of Rosie Ledet and the Zydeco Playboys. If you've never heard zydeco music, here's your chance. Don't miss it.

On Saturday, local jammers, Zmick will deliver their ground-up mixture of funk, reggae, jazz, and progressive that would surely move the butts of any patchouli drenched, birkenstock-clad audience. Falling just short of the platonic ideal of when "jam" meets "band."

Interestingly, they are juxtaposed with Santa who will churn out their own brand of local indie-pop laced with pyschedellic underlinings and toweringly piercing vocals. Adding to the indie-pop ambiance will be Tall Tale a piano-driven, female-fronted local quintet, whose soulfull (but gently delivered) vocal inflections become so rythmic at times it's hard not to bob your head a little.

Last week, when I heard that Error House had been shut down, my heart sank. Such a wonderful and safe all ages venue, run by selfless musicians, helping fill the void that the Red Herring, Channing Murray, and many other venues and houses once filled — gone in a flash.

Scrambling to relocate their shows, they managed to put together some last minute arrangements with the boys of So Long Forgotten to move their tour-kickoff show to The Green Wolf, a farm house on the western outskirts of Champaign.

More videos after the jump.

Most underground hip-hop heads have been asked the question: “What I should listen to?” Even on a steady path of slinging burned CDs, hours spent on Wikipedia, and a slew of names you might not remember, you still may not be able to grasp the “classics” of indie hip-hop. Leading you back to the start — dejected in your Nike Dunks — unable to lay claim to your bragging rights.

So what becomes of the budding backpacker? Somewhat knowledgeable, but unable to find some of the records his or her friends talk so much about. Any indie music scene can prove to be hard to get into, namely because of the constant come-and-go passing of styles, names, and movements within it.

After sitting down to a round table discussion amongst cousins who first introduced me to decent hip-hop, we managed to hewn an agreeable list of tasty sounds that will get you started.

Crate diggers in training, grab your headphones, and away we go.

Elsinore, Champaign's latest band to make a go of it on the long and winding road that is the American West, is in the first week of their first extended tour thanks to local agency, Amnesiac Booking.

After years of growing local popularity, the members of the band finished school or quit their full-time jobby jobs and decided to make a go of it in the national indie rock scene.

"We've been ready for some time," said lead singer Ryan Groff, a well-known solo artist in his own right. "Things are going smoothly, and [despite gas prices] we're financially ahead so far."

Check out the rest of the tour dates after the jump. They will conclude with a show in downtown Champaign at the final street fest of the summer. Keep checking Smile Politely's Tour Diaries for updates from the road.

Originally under the name of Frequency Below, Armando Perez and Caroline Yohanan progressed towards an expressively creative outlet soon to be dubbed Lovers in Arms. Pulling in new members, Ryan Schoen (bass), Dan Lieber (drums) and Juan Lugo (percussion), Lovers in Arms submerged themselves in Chicago’s grassroots of soul and funk while also pulling in strings of electronica. The product: Lovers in Arms’ first, full length album, Belmont Electric, in 2007.

Belmont Electric demonstrates Lovers in Arms’ distinct entitlement to the electronic genre while the past influences of Frequency Below’s trip-hop and Chicago’s impregnable jazz accomplishes the band’s creative instrumentalism.

As proven by Fleet Foxes’ self-titled debut, the intersection between the ever-changing music that we’ve dubbed “folk” and “indie” continues to be interesting. The problem with this intersection, and defining it, is that these two brands of music are shifty and inherently lack definition. In this case, Fleet Foxes could be best described as a band that bridges the musical traditions of America’s coasts. Here, the psychedelic sprawl of the west mingles with the tightness of eastern roots traditions such as bluegrass and country-blues. But that doesn’t really cut them any slack as a pop act, which — strange as it might be to some — they are.

Jane Boxall has been in Champaign-Urbana just long enough to prove her worth as one of our greatest musicians and teachers. She arrived in town over three and a half years ago to pursue her graduate studies in percussion at the University of Illinois. Little did we know that she would soon go on to create some of CU's most interesting rock music, teach drum skills to half the town through local drum shop Skins and Tins and perform more marimba concerts than CU has hosted in the last 10 years combined. With a D.M.A. in hand, Jane will travel to Vermont to teach music to school kids from the first to eighth grade. Last week, Smile Politely had the chance to sit down with Jane, grab a beer and talk about her experiences in Champaign-Urbana.

Make sure to catch Jane's last performance in Illinois, tonight at the Alice Campbell Alumni Center at 7 p.m.

We wish you well, Jane!

Late Tuesday night, local band Bellcaster reunited for one last show after falling off the radar for roughly two years. What could bring a band back from the dead? A good friend of theirs, Bobby Northcutt, was in need of some help, so they decided to host a benefit concert complete with tattoo and piercing raffles to raise money for him. How cool is that? Solo acoustic artist Jonathon Childers, one-man band Andy V, and percussionist Jane Boxall assisted in the farewell show, as well. The audience was receptive, and one man in particular was very pleased with the show — he won not only a $75 piercing, but also a $75 tattoo.

Bellcaster:

More video after the jump...

A concept album is an ambitious venture for any band; thinking of a worthy idea is difficult enough, and then there’s the matter of producing an entire album’s worth of quality material that is thematically cohesive. It seems like there’s an endless supply of artists lined up to be the next Pink Floyd or The Who, but the albums that are produced in this arena tend to range from "bad" to "laughably bad."

Say it ain't so, Bellcaster.

After almost a full year hiatus, downtown rockers Bellcaster will hit the stage again tonight at the last indie venue standing, Mike N' Molly's. And then, they will hang it up.

For good, in fact.

The reason? Drummer Michael Allen is moving to Vermont with his wife, Jane Boxall, another local percussion hero known for lugging a full-sized marimba about town and performing the community into a trance.