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

Two New York’s infamous five boroughs (Queens and The Bronx), well-known for producing some of hip-hop’s hall of fame artists, are getting ready to let loose two of their finest into the wild of their Illinois fan base. On Saturday, September 30, the Canopy Club will play host to one of the biggest hip-hop big ticket bills in recent memory, as Nas and Talib Kweli make their way into Champaign-Urbana.

Independently, these two artists account for some of the most critically acclaimed albums and lyrical works of modern hip-hop. Kweli, as part of the original lineup on Rawkus Records, was part of several pivotal hip-hop groups, including Reflection Eternal with DJ Hi-Tek, and Black Star with Brooklyn-native Mos Def. Since premiering with underground hip-hop hall of famers Mood in 1997, Kweli’s blunt-edged, conscious, black empowerment brand of hip-hop, combined with a sentence-cramming delivery have played into some of the most notable hip-hop tunes, translating into both underground and commercial appeal.

Bartman, who normally performs as a three-piece with drummer Aaron Kavelman and multi-instrumentalist Erik Christian Juhl, will be stripped down to a duo on-air, as Kavelman is unavailable for the evening. "It'll be pleasantly surprising what Erik and I can do with limited space and instruments," Bartman noted of their in-studio gig. "We're used to smaller stages, and we
find ways to make the clutter of instruments work."

(Ed. Note — Full Disclosure: A founding member of Smile Politely also produces Pygmalion Music Festival.)

As the golden autumn months set in, there is no better time for Champaign-Urbana indie rockers and music lovers to unanimously come together to celebrate some of the finest musicians C-U has to offer. The host: Pygmalion Music Festival. While the official music dates are set from September 17–20, four bands hand picked by Nicodemus Agency will set launch to the festival with pre-shows each Friday until the initial show hits on Wednesday, September 17, which includes a striking lineup leading to Elsinore's set at the Canopy. Though the pre-gaming will have to be done on your own time and on your own vicinity, this year's pre-partying will be hosted by Urban Outfitters with special guests, Headlights, tomorrow at 6 p.m.

After the jump, check out an interview with Tea Leaf Green guitarist and vocalist Josh Clark.

Trot on down to Cowboy Monkey tonight to check out three local acts: Scurvine, The Chemicals, and Krukid rock the restaurant/club that’s getting its feet wet again with live bands. After closing its doors for a few months earlier this year to remake/remodel, the Cowboy Monkey re-emerged with a new menu and music in the evening provided by disc jockeys.

The tour started in San Francisco and is making its way across the country to Washington D.C. where Greenpeace will be presenting to Congress stories of how Americans are doing their part to fight global warming — and encouraging Congress to do the same. If you would like to share what you have done on the global-warming front, Greenpeace will be collecting stories during the concert on Friday.

Where the gawd-love-it is Anniversary Plaza?

After a quick Google search, I discovered that Anniversary Plaza is somewhere by the Illini Union. And while I am not totally sure where, my guess is that if you show up in the vicinity tonight at around 6 p.m., you'll be led to it based on the extremely intricate and terrifically fantastic math-rock indie-esque-type music coming from somewhere around there.

So Many Dynamos will make the three hour trek from St. Louis today to perform for us, and they do so on the brink of what is bound to be some level of success: their last studio sessions were tended to by one Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie, whose own band will be performing at Assembly Hall on October 12.

Jesse Johnson, who sings and plays guitar and harmonica for Post Historic, traded emails with me, and the resulting interview is after the jump.

When we lost the High Anxiety Music house this past spring, lots of folks close to the music scene let out a collective sigh. The house, located on State St. in downtown Champaign, had been garnering a fine reputation for hosting some of the city's best house parties with great bands like Sunset Stallion, Santa, Curb Service, The Confines and more.

But when the landlord who owned the home fell on hard times, the once revered practice space and venue was shut down for good.

Have no fear though — owner Ralph Petrella is back. Sort of.

Ready to hit the road for an extended tour after a summer playing festival dates, Backyard Tire Fire will play the first of several record release shows around the Midwest tonight at the Highdive. Doors open at 9 p.m. with Golden Quality and Tractor Kings opening, and admission is $7 for the 19 and over show.

Check back in tomorrow morning on Smile Politely for a show preview and interview with Tire Fire frontman Ed Anderson. Click Continue Reading to see the rest of the Tractor Kings preview.

"Happy anniversary," Brian Henneman shouted as the Bottle Rockets took the stage, launching into the heavy, bitter lament about a romantic relationship gone wrong. But his announcement had a double meaning: This year marks the St. Louis band's 15th anniversary, and vocalist Henneman, guitarist John Horton, bassist Keith Voegele, and drummer Mark Ortmann are celebrating by playing just 15 shows this year. At the end of the limited tour, they're giving away a custom-designed electric guitar and 'Bottle Rockets for Life' — all the merchandise and concert tickets a fan could hope for.

When the line for Lifehouse wrapped around the Canopy Club to the School of Music building on Nevada entered the venue, they fully packed the main floor and filled every seat in the balcony. Every fan dripping with anticipation for the ensuing performance.

And they got exactly what they were looking for when the band took the stage Thursday night.

The evening was an incredibly pure splash into the world of rock music. There was no frill to the concert; with simple lighting and minimum effects, the result was a refreshing taste of real, good noise.

When gawking at the enormous steel and concrete structures bursting forth all around you, be thankful that you live in a town where something, anything, is happening.

It keeps you thinking.

While you're thinking, you may wonder about the the plots on which those new buildings are sited. What was there before? Nothing? Something?

Perhaps a magic building, with weird beer, and the best sandwich you've ever eaten?

Nature's Table got bulldozed to make way for an enormous building. I suppose it would have been impossible for the university to build that same structure across the street — perhaps over the
parking lot that sits there still. The technology for building over parking lots has been around for a while. Heck, you can even construct a parking deck smack dab in the middle of your new building.

I've seen it done!

Improbably still, the lake rests contentedly as a sheet of glass. A summer by the lake brings feelings of softness and relaxation. Michigan is home to this eponymous lake, as well as one of the Midwest's finest breweries. Bell’s is known primarily for Oberon, its velvety summer wheat concoction. The versatile Kalamazoo brewery crafts beers as varied as any conscious beer drinker’s palette. Puffy-clouded summer days call for a puffy, slightly cloudy Oberon. Winter’s chill might sway a drinker toward the warming Java Stout.

But those searching for Bell's don't have to travel to Michigan anymore, the Kalamazoo brewery recently reached an agreement with a couple of Illinois distribution companies to start bringing Bell's to the masses in Chicago (and hopefully the Champaign-Urbana market soon), a year and a half after the fued that curbed Bell's sales in Illinois.

But as we all know, The Beatles giveth and The Beatles taketh away. The seeds that The Beatles have sown flowered into the honest croonings of Daniel Johnston. And some of those also became weeds known as Coldplay. But some got way too much of that untested chemical fertilizer. When that happened, The Residents' Meet The Residents sprouted.

The Bottle Rockets - 1000 Dollar Car (Live in Heilbronn / Germany July 17, 2005)

Brian Henneman has made a solid recording career by realizing these subtleties of working-class life. His band, Bottle Rockets, is only playing 15 shows this year to celebrate their 15th anniversary as a touring outfit, and one of those will be Saturday at the Highdive. Doors open at 6 p.m., opener Otis Gibbs will come on at 7 p.m. and Bottle Rockets play at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15, and it's a 19-and-over show.

Stay tuned after the jump for an interview with Henneman.

Read the "sounds like" section on any bands myspace.com profile and you'll likely get some self-aggrandizing gibberish, something nearly unintelligible, or the drivel of a band member who has no idea what their band sounds like. Two Girls, actually four guys who will be rolling through Mike 'N Molly's on Friday, fills this section of their myspace with an apt description: "the kind of music you wish hippies would make."

Although the band boasts a percussionist in addition to a regular drummer, the band avoids degenerating into a "crunchy" drum circle. Front man Joel Madigan's sludge-tinged, riff-driven guitar work slithers through the layers of percussion, invoking early stoner-psych bands like Kyuss. Maybe they'll make people dance like hippies should dance.

Sharing the stage will be local indie-pop outfit Hot Cops, featuring former Green Light Go bassist Mike Daab. Think textured, and emotive indie rock with towering vocals and harmonies.

Lifehouse, the boys who have been sticking songs in heads since 2000, will be taking over the Canopy Club on Thursday with their catchy hooks and romantic ballads. Their successes have landed them on mainstream radio charts and dorm room iTunes playlists everywhere.

Since their debut with No Name Face eight years ago, the members of Lifehouse have continued to bring chart-topping singles, rhythmic choruses and deep lyrics to the stage. Frontman Jason Wade, the only remaining member of the band who was also a founder, confirmed his place in songwriting history after “Hanging by a Moment” was dubbed the Most Played Song of 2001.

Sometimes, the only choice is the best choice.

For Krist Krueger of Southerly, living in Fon-Du-Lac, Wis was a dead end trying to both perform and work within the national indie rock scene. So, instead of whining about it, he left for one of the hottest and most relevant of them all: Portland, Ore.

Scher, whose style of music has been described as anti-folk, has played piano for the Elastic No-No Band, a collaboration with Justin Remer.

As usual, following WEFT Sessions, the station will play requested local music.

Lurking in a converted basement of an unassuming house in old town Champaign is the motor that drives some of the best-respected bands in indie rock. Bob Andrews, who runs the local office of Undertow Music Collective, keeps things running smoothly for such artists as Centro-Matic, David Bazan, Jesse Harris and Bottle Rockets. Bottle Rockets will be playing at the Highdive on Saturday, August 15 16 (check out Smile Politely's preview on Thursday).
Pictured are (left-to-right) Adam Klavohn and Bob Andrews.

Way Out West Entrance

Generally speaking, Smile Politely tries to cover events in and around Champaign-Urbana. It's part of our mission statement actually; we believe in the notion that our cities have their own culture. But seeing as how almost half of us have been overseas for the past week and a half, we thought a few photos from a great music festival abroad, Way Out West, would be fun to share. Enjoy.

Last night, I intended to see Terminus Victor at Mike n' Molly's. I discovered Lollipop Factory. They are my new favorite band.

Editor's Note: Roving beer and music enthusiast Matt Cohn combines these iconic forces, matching the perfect brew for the perfect band in his new column, Listing to Music.

Beer and music are meant to intoxicate, so what happens when we combine these forces?

Visualize a Venn Diagram formed by two iconic circular objects of our time. On one side we have the sweat left by a bottle of beer, or a pint glass. The other side can be a compact disc, a vinyl record or (pervasively) a portable device’s click wheel.

I'm excited about Common Loon. I don't get excited very often.

Pop music still gets the bad rap of being a young person's folly; and few young people have enough time to absorb the lessons of their predecessors. Perhaps they think they're "rebelling" by not "conforming."

Unfortunately, rebellion is not the practical consequence of not learning-the-rules before breaking-the-rules. For pop musicians, tired, rehashed and boring orchestrations are the consequence of not learning-the-rules before breaking-the-rules. If you prefer kindness to bluntness; "well-worn," "simple," or just plain "familiar" are useful adjectives.

That’s right, this StreetFest is a first in giving us a sampling of local delights. It’s got Headlights, with their upbeat melodic goodness and boy-girl vocal interplay. Elsinore, with their catchy choruses and laid-back riffs, will definitely entertain. Not to mention, Tall Tale, with piano keys trickling and the unapologetic pop voice. Let’s not forget, Krukid, bringing his tight beats and proudly African brand (no gangsta’ gimmickry over here) of rap.

Homegrown talent Kayla Brown will make a departure from Champaign’s music scene in a little more than a week for a bigger scene in Nashville, Tenn. But, before she hits the road, Kayla leaves behind a little more of her acoustic magic. Aside from her solo work, you may know Kayla from local band Darling Disarm, or you may have seen her behind the wheels of steel under the moniker DJ Lil' Big Bass. This Thursday, Kayla plays a set with her constant stage partner Mike Ingram at Aroma Café. The free all-ages show starts at 8 p.m.

This is Angie's second concert this summer at Biaggi's. Of her June 24 show, she said, "It was great! Lots of friends, and lots of new faces." For those of you who haven't been to see live music at Biaggi's before, she added, "People can eat or drink and enjoy music on the patio. It's important to make a patio reservation to ensure seating. Come hungry!"

On Friday, Mike and Molly's will become part local venue and part Revolutionary War re-enactment when local metal outfit Bang 76 strikes a chord heard halfway around downtown. The four-piece band rocks out in garb worn by the American Revolutionary Army, complete with powdered whigs and white face paint that gives them statuesque presence. Musically the pallid-faced quartet seems to channel distorted guitar-laden and angst-soaked grunge and metal of the early 90s.

Frontman "Gen. G.W." belts out crooning and guttural melodies over the drone of palm-muted guitar interspersed with Sabbath-inspired riffs. Although they may not rock as heavily as a band like Slayer, the fact that they play while wearing serveral layers of hefty jackets and ruffled shirts in the central Illinois humidity makes them no less brutal. After the show, find a British person and give them the finger.