Was "Wind of Change" the ultimate cold war power ballad? I wrote about it for Economist Culture.

I grew up playing Star Wars and spies with CIA kids and jamming with metal dudes at the height of the Cold War so this fantastic Wind of Change podcast from Patrick Radden Keefe was right up my alley.

Some of the best records I heard in 2019

Cate Le Bon, Reward (Mexican Summer)
What can I say? Reward was my favorite album this year. Both off-kilter (weird keys, saxophone?, downtown NY basses) and intimate, Reward has that balance of art and comfort that’s so rare. In less sure hands, it would be a curiosity, but le Bon’s voice--statuesque, dignified, but mercurial--brings it all together.
Play “The Light”

Purple Mountains, Purple Mountains (Drag City)
I’ve testified to the genius and humanity of David Berman’s musical output in Silver Jews forever… well, forever since the middle of college. Even managed an interview that once. That said, it took news that Berman had a new album and had relocated down the road from me to reignite my passion for one of our great American lyricists of the past 25 years. Alas, Berman passed on, which makes listening to Purple Mountains a mournful experience, but one for which I’m grateful to have at all. Respect to DB. 
Play “Margaritas at the Mall”

black midi, Schlagenhelm (Rough Trade)
Many a band of young people ascends the wild mountains of post punk hoping to come away with something as skronky, ornery yet beautifully sleek and mysterious as black midi do. How’s it done? Subtly complex rhythmic touches, impressionistic and minimalist vox hold on to micro moments of attention while the guitars are dunked in fresh concrete… only to break out once the tension has been exhausted. 

Mdou Moctar - Ilana (The Creator)
I gushed about Ilana for the Economist. And I could go on. I couldn’t get enough of this Touareg shredder meeting Western rock at the crossroads and borrowing the licks that suit him. Charismatic rock that struts across the globe brazenly.

Ex Hex - It’s Real (Merge)
Perhaps sliding dangerously close to a glorified Def Leppard at the edge of nostalgia, I still found myself throwing Ex Hex’s second album on to get through the day. Bubblegum hard rock stomper as self care? I’ll take it.

Aldous Harding - Designer (4AD)

Xlouris White - The Sisypheans (Drag City)

FACS, Another Country (Trouble in Mind)

Devendra Banhart - Ma (Nonesuch)

Mdou Moctar for the Economist

Mdou Moctar is a fantastic Tuareg guitarist and his new album is a killer blend of traditional music and Western rock. I was lucky enough to see him on tour in Chicago while I was working on the final draft of this piece for the Economist Prospero Arts and Culture blog.

Mdou Moctar

Photo by Nikki Cells, courtesy Pitch Perfect

The Empty Bottle Chicago: 21+ Years of Music / Friendly / Dancing

I edited a book on Chicago's Empty Bottle. The book comes out in a few weeks. Editing, in this case, was largely concerned with gathering material--essays, interviews, photos, poster images. Preview coverage for the book is in the links below.

Get it while it's hot:  Order The Empty Bottle Chicago: 21+ Years of Music / Friendly / Dancing from Amazon.

An oral history of the Empty Bottle, Chicago Reader

THAT TIME JAY REATARD RIPPED DOWN A DISCO BALL AND MORE: A SELECT HISTORY OF CHICAGO'S EMPTY BOTTLE, Noisey

What Do You Wear When You’re a ’90s Rock Band?, NY Mag The Cut

Empty Bottle Book Revisits 21-Plus Years of Underground Chicago Music, Chicago Tonight WTTW

New book takes a trip down memory lane at the Empty Bottle, Chicago Sun-Times

Travel back in time with photos from the Empty Bottle book, Time Out Chicago

JOHN DARNIELLE ON BELOVED CHICAGO MUSIC VENUE, THE EMPTY BOTTLE, LitHub

Billy Childish, Photo: Chris Anderson

Here's an unpublished interview I did re: the book.

The book was originally subtitled "Twenty-plus Years of Piss, Shit, and Broken Urinals"? What was behind the change? (The new one's just a little sunnier?)

The project itself as well as that working title were in place before I came on board. I never felt invested in that subtitle and as the project took shape, I realized it didn't have much to do with how I think about the Empty Bottle and played a bit too much into the stereotype of a "dive bar." Some of the touring musicians I spoke with for the book also took exception to that subtitle, noting that the bathroom really wasn't or isn't that bad compared to that of other places they play--even in Chicago. When you're touring, they noted, a locking door and toilet paper can make a huge difference. The language from the awning Music Friendly Dancing always seemed to echo around my head. It felt more natural. It wasn't a big deal to change it.     

You've played at the Bottle with which of your bands (all of 'em?), and during which eras?

I played in a punk band in high school and in a few DC bands that were short-lived and didn't tour, but otherwise I think any band I've played in for an extended period has played the Empty Bottle at least once.

In the nineties, I played with Chisel, a band we founded while studying at Notre Dame and eventually relocated to Washington, D.C. We played Chicago often, however, and recorded in Wicker Park. In surveying the club's old listings for the book, I was surprised how many times Chisel had played the Empty Bottle, how early on and with which bands. Some of the musicians that pop up in the book--Ken Vandermark, Brian Case, Jay Ryan were on those bills. In general, Chisel did our own booking and the Day-Runner was always kept updated with the number of whomever was booking the Empty Bottle at the time. While we played the Czar Bar, Fireside, Thurston's, Metro--we tended to play the Bottle. I think because they knew us and had been there from early on.  

In the mid and late 2000s, I was with Perfect Panther (with former Reader scribe Miles Raymer), The Tax (a garage band from Athens, OH that had reconvened in Chicago) and Chicago Stone Lightning Band, all bands that played the Empty Bottle regularly. And a few years ago, I played drums with Zed or Zjed for a few Empty Bottle shows. Then booker Pete Toalson was always receptive to the bands I was working with--as well as forgiving. I've certainly had a few off nights there. Drum crimes and rhythm fouls.

How long did it take you to compile all the stories? When did you start hitting people up? And how many interviews did you do for the book?

The project started taking shape in late 2013--it was announced on Chicagoist around that time, I believe. I started reaching out and doing interviews in March 2014 and calls for submissions went out from the club and publisher. Material gathering didn't ramp up until a bit later--and took place sporadically. Between interviews, submissions, essays, there are approximately 116+ voices in the book.

What was the most surprising detail or indelible memory about the Empty Bottle you came out of this book project with?

I love detail, but this project, perhaps because of its sprawling nature, became about seeing things more broadly, almost taking an outsider's perspective to try and see what's special about this place, if anything. For a lot of folks, the Empty Bottle has been their living room. It's a place they grew up in, so they take it for granted in some ways. It's so obviously not perfect, but somehow it (usually) works. The consensus from our contributors was really that the booking--the "curation" if you will--has always been tremendous, that's the calling card.  

It was exciting when someone could recall an unusual show like it had just happened the night before and I could picture it in my mind's eye. The Flaming Lips playing an encore on the beat-up piano, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs playing an opening set, Jay Reatard grabbing the disco ball, someone legendary like John Fahey, Terry Reid or Jandek playing there and someone interacting with them. It's all very personal, which I love.

I came away thinking a lot about memory and moments. If life is made up of moments, what makes us acquire some moments and not others? Why did we hold on to one from the Bottle? Some of the most indelible nights of our lives are spent in these places (The Black Cat, the Empty Bottle, etc.), so is there anything to it beyond cheap drinks and really loud music? We love music. What else is there? Community? It's odd to think that this is where we go searching for the sublime, but a lot of us do.

What was surprising in a way was just the overwhelming humanity of the place, the social network that revolves around it, the music culture that's built up in this part of town over the decades. I was also struck by how Chicago continues to reckon with the nineties--so much was set in motion in that era and we're still living with it in some ways. And how this music--what was once considered underground--is so closely connected to this city or how people see their lives here, why they're here. Hopefully, some of this comes across in the book.

Empty Bottle book release parties info: June 7 & June 8

This Heat, Charles Hayward

I caught up with the mighty Charles Hayward ahead of This Heat's reunion shows as This is Not This Heat.

HBO's Vinyl for the Economist

So Vinyl is a bit of a mess, but there's something that keeps me watching hoping it will go somewhere. I wrote up the HBO series debut for the Economist Prospero blog.

The Libertines

Back in the days when the Reader had ample pages to fill it encouraged writers to go long whenever possible. I'm glad I had the opportunity to riff on the Libertines.

How Much Chaos Is Too Much Chaos? 

So far the Libertines are still a step ahead of their own cloud of dust.

By John Dugan

The Libertines at Metro, 10/9

Must the show always go on? In the late 80s, when I was in high school, I drummed for a punk band called Indian Summer. We had two gigs booked in the last few months before I left for college, but our singer and guitarist both refused to play--they were feuding, and the guitarist claimed to have come down with mono. Determined to leave northern Virginia on a high note, I decided that the shows must go on and enlisted two buddies home from college to fill in. The new guitarist was a local star--a semipro skater who looked like a blond version of Ian McCulloch. He learned four of our originals and added about five covers to our repertoire, turning us from Dischord-model punks into a college bar band with taste. The new singer stood way off to one side of the stage and sang at the wall. Our sets were tight, but the audiences looked stunned--I'm sure they would've gotten angry if they hadn't been so confused. People were still razzing me about it ten years later.

If you've read one word about the Libertines, you already know who they've had to replace onstage, time and time again. Front man Pete Doherty has made such a mess of himself and the band with an excruciatingly well-publicized addiction to crack and heroin that he makes Keith Moon look sensible. Repeated visits to treatment centers in London don't seem to have helped, and this summer Doherty aborted a detoxifying stay at the Thamkrabok monastery in Thailand after less than a week. Upon his return to the UK he was promptly arrested for possession of a switchblade. Last Saturday, when the Libertines came to the Metro, Doherty was an ocean away--his side project, Babyshambles, played a gig in London on October 6.

The Libertines stumbled straight into the big time with their 2002 debut, Up the Bracket, and even without Doherty's antics they'd probably be the most talked-about band in Britain right now--their second full-length, The Libertines (Rough Trade), hit the UK charts at number one when it came out this summer. Mick Jones of the Clash produced both albums, Peter Perrett of the Only Ones has joined them onstage and in the studio, and last fall former Creation Records boss Alan McGee signed on as their manager. The band's been held up as London's "authentic" answer to the Strokes--organic, spontaneous, unhinged, and enthralling. The British music magazine NME, no doubt hard-pressed to find an appropriately hyperbolic metaphor after squandering so many on Starsailor and the Darkness, has said the Libertines rock "like God on an angel dust bender."

Of course, Chicagoans may never get to see the band in one piece. The Libertines have managed a few shows in the States with Doherty: in April and May of 2003 they played New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, Boston, and the Coachella festival in California and appeared on Letterman. But coleader Carl Barat had already been forced to front the band alone before Up the Bracket was even finished, and in June 2003 the band drafted a guitar tech to finish a European tour. Doherty was also absent for the Libertines' first proper U.S. tour that summer, just as he is for the second. Meanwhile Babyshambles missed scheduled gigs in July and August and canceled another in Scotland this month.

But Doherty hasn't been kicked out of the Libertines, and Barat has said that he's welcome back anytime--provided, of course, that he's clean. The two front men are best friends, and though on the records Doherty takes the lion's share of the lead vocals, they're credited as cowriters on most of the songs. Onstage they often share a mike, pressed together nipple to nipple, their T-shirts ripped off--a guileless intimacy that makes these pretty boys look "gayer than the Scissor Sisters" (NME again). In the summer of 2003, Doherty burglarized Barat's apartment and spent two months in prison, but as soon as he was released the pair met for a drink--and the Libertines ended up playing an unannounced gig that night. The British music press has printed every detail of the band's sordid, heartbreaking story, and who can blame them? This isn't some puffed-up scandal about a pop band cuffed by bobbies for public urination--this is actual drama.

Partway through the Libertines' set at Metro last Saturday, my date said, "They're playing as if they have something to prove." And they do. The new record is a mess, a beautiful loser, sometimes sustained by charisma alone. The riffs constantly seem like they're about to fall apart, and the unvarnished production accentuates the plunking of picks on strings. It's lovable in its own way but ultimately a step down from Up the Bracket and the subsequent I Get Along EP. In a phone interview Barat insisted that the band "felt optimistic" making it, but the music tells a different story--the brash confidence of Bracket has given way to hesitation and insecurity. It's not the record it seems to want to be--and it's maddening to hear such a great band falling so clearly short of its potential. Even the mix sounds wimpy next to the sound the Libertines get from their current touring setup, which uses a wall of four amplifiers for the two guitars alone.

Compared to their loose but enthusiastic gig at the Empty Bottle in August 2003, the Libertines were all business at Metro, and they were better for it. With minimal banter between hearty swigs of Jameson's, they stormed through 23 songs in about an hour and a half. Every few numbers Barat, bassist John Hassall, and replacement guitarist Anthony Rossomando would fall into a huddle with drummer Gary Powell, as if it were fourth and goal with seconds to go. And when they cranked back up after each of these little conferences, they nailed song after song with bravado and purpose. (Rossomando, the band's "American cousin" as Barat calls him, is also in Boston's Damn Personals--and, in the interest of full disclosure, seven years ago he played trumpet with my old band Chisel on one tour.)

I've never seen Doherty sing live (except on TV), and I know I'd miss his onstage chemistry with Barat if I'd ever felt it in the first place. But Barat's voice, slightly deeper and coarser, is fine by me, and he has no trouble moving between careless cool, romantic nostalgia, and fevered intensity. As a front man he more than held his own on Saturday: on "What a Waster" he sounded electrified, and to kick off the lead riff of "Last Post on the Bugle" he spun on his cowboy boots like a figure skater.

The band opened with the jangly rave-up "The Delaney," a B side that's also on the EP. "Some run from trouble, some meet it halfway," Barat sang--a lyric it'd be hard not to hear as addressed to his absent friend. For the rest of the night the band skimmed the cream from the new album and combined it with some more top-shelf B sides and the best songs from Bracket. Tunes like "What Katie Did," which sounds tentative and disorganized on The Libertines--it's obvious the band couldn't pound everything into shape during the short stints Doherty was around to record--were absent from the set entirely. The Pogues-y punk of "Mayday" stopped and started precisely, and the brooding "Road to Ruin" was so much better than the album version that I didn't realize it was the same song until I got home and went back to the CD. A year ago at the Bottle the band had met cries of "Where's Pete?" from obnoxious fans, but at Metro nobody heckled at all.

The set wrapped up with "Boys in the Band," "The Good Old Days," and "What a Waster"--huge-sounding songs, with backing vocals from Hassall beefing up the melodies and plenty of Powell's endearingly overdone, tom-heavy drum fills. The encore was even more impassioned, tearing from a snotty version of "Horrorshow" to a blazing "Narcissist" and then into "What Became of the Likely Lads"--one of the brightest spots on The Libertines, where Barat and Doherty trade lines and wonder "What became of forever? We'll never know." Finally the band machine-gunned away that aftertaste of regret with "I Get Along."

Though Barat has proved that he and the band can make it with or without Doherty, he barely seems to have considered whether he could do it without his cowriter in the long run. "I've got a few nice ones on the new record," he says. "But maybe I'll have to. I don't know, we'll see." He may find out sooner than he'd like. Doherty doesn't appear to be making great strides toward recovery. And in September, Babyshambles released a tune online called "Gang of Gin" that calls out both Barat and Alan McGee by name: "I'll tell you my story / The treachery, it bores me / Carl and McGee both promised me / It would not happen this way."

In the Libertines bio at tiscali.co.uk, Mick Jones is quoted as saying, "I think they're the most important band in Britain today." But it's worth remembering that the Clash was hamstrung by drummer Topper Headon's drug problems even as it seemed poised to conquer America with Combat Rock. The Libertines are effectively down a man already, and they don't have anything like London Calling under their belts yet.

Southern Diplo-macy

 [I profiled Diplo for Time Out Chicago back in 2005 or so in advance of a visit to Sonotheque, which ended up being Sonotheque's biggest night up until that point. It was bananas.]

Diplo dabbles in doc film and daydreams of retirement  

Diplo, real name Wesley Pentz, is the main American proponent of Rio's favela-rooted funk carioca/baile-funk culture, which we at Time Out Chicago can't seem to shut up about. So it's only natural that he's joining baile-funk king DJ Marlboro for the MCA's TropicÁlia: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture festival.

With various mix-CDs from his Philly label/collective Hollertronix, his production on M.I.A.'sArular album and new stature as a remixer to Beck, Gwen Stefani and Bloc Party, Diplo has brought the Miami bass–derived homegrown dance music of Rio into the hipster solar system. But he has more music coursing through him, including a new, jaw-droppingly good Fabric mix-CD, slated to be released by the label wing of the London club where, incidentally, Diplo fatefully met M.I.A.

"Basically it's about me growing up in Florida," Diplo says of his latest, as he chats with us on his cell phone while runningerrands in Manhattan. The disc sums up his influences without regard for geography. "All that techno stuff on there, I kinda felt like that was Miami bass until I found out it was from Detroit a couple of years ago," he laughs. On the disc, he jumps from Detroit electro to Rio funk to booty bass back to ghetto tech, then sprinkles indie snippets like Cat Power and Le Tigre.

He plans to release (through Turntable Lab) a live set from an upcoming Brazilian festival, to show his love for pop, his solo creations and Brazilian street music. Tomorrow, he's jetting to Rio, so today he's getting a camera, film, dropping off original tracks for a new 12-inch at Turntable Lab...and ordering a pineapple roll for lunch in Chinatown. "I might hire a cinematographer when I get there," he says.

Just as Diplo is poised to hop from cult figure to star status, he changes mediums. The DJ plans to spend the next few months filming a documentary on Rio de Janeiro's baile-funk scene. "I don't want it to be seen just as a trend," he says. "I want to make sure that people see the energy level as well, not just the drugs and the gun culture around it. It's like kids making a whole music industry out of nothing."

The road to Rio has been indirect. Diplo grew up near Daytona Beach, where he turned on to the rave scene. "I'm talking about the big pants, the glow sticks," he says of the fairground gatherings of his youth. Diplo soaked up Orlando's budding club scene and he picked up a love for "fun, bouncey shit" before Disney dominance and curfews crushed it. The first chance he had, he set off to Philadelphia, where he enrolled in Temple University's film program. He then dropped out of the program to become a schoolteacher, but soon quit "because I was making more money deejaying and I got caught up in the bureaucracy at the school," he says. A teaching-assistant stint in Japan taught him where not to be. "I need spontaneity and it's not spontaneous there," he says. "In Philly, there's always a stolen car running into a stop sign or something."

Establishing himself in the gritty city wasn't easy. "Three or four years ago when I first started getting up there, kids didn't like me," he says. "I couldn't get my own night; they didn't like my style. That's why I started Hollertronix. Now I think I represent what the kids want, so all the young kids like me."

This year, Diplo's southern hemispheric sensibility has come into vogue. Rather than cash-in personally, he wants to inspire a grassroots scene: more white labels and more kids doing club nights. "I think that Chicago is probably one of the only cities that has a real underground, that has different DJs and different followers...but that's about it," he says. "Club culture is dead everywhere else in America." But he doesn't see himself a part of that culture at 40. "I want a life where I can raise kids, catch shrimp and live off the land."

Jamie Lidell | Interview

​I chatted with my old buddy Jamie Lidell for TIme Out Chicago, roughly 7 years after I first wrote about him.

​The U.K. electro-soul crooner calls Nashville home now, but he hasn’t gone country.

We’ve followed Jamie Lidell from his days as a Berlin-based beatboxer to more recent turns with a full-blown soul band. Now, the U.K. native is back with a self-titled album of aggressively funky tunes recalling early ’80s R&B in the best way. We caught up with Lidell via Skype as he toured his new one-man show in Belgium.

After moving around you’ve settled in Nashville.
It was like a Sun Ra move, you know? Space is the place. We realized, my wife and I, that we just couldn’t afford to stay in Manhattan and grow as artists and a couple. A few people told me to check out Nashville—one of them was Beck, the other was Pat Sansone from Wilco. We’ve got a great place and we spend most of our time at home.

You record at home?
[The new album] was entirely recorded and mixed at home. I never left the house for any of it, which is something I’m pretty proud of because I think I got a decent sound for a home recording. It was a pretty serious undertaking. I don’t think it’s for everyone, working out of home, but it’s definitely for me. The empowerment is something that can’t be underestimated. It’s ridiculous.

The album recalls early ’80s funk and boogie. Is that what you were going for?
Living in Nashville, we got addicted to this radio station called 92Q. Michael Baisden puts on this amazing show, it’s become a huge thing for us, they play these amazing jams. It reminded me of these hidden gems that I grew up loving and listening to that I’d put to the back of my mind. Drum-machine funk. And, because I made a lot of this music on my own, starting with a drum machine made a lot of sense. That immediately put me back in the ’80s in a sense.

Did you have a crisis being pegged as part of a wave of soul revivalists?
When I did Multiply and Jim, I was heading down the road of the blue-eyed soul crooner. To sing like I did on those two albums, I’m proud of all that stuff. When I made Jim, to try to follow with what I thought people wanted me to be, some part of me was a bit dead when I did that. It felt like I was chasing the money. There’s some great music on that record, and I don’t regret doing it. It’s an interesting challenge to stay relevant, stay popular enough to tour and stay true to the music you want to make. You’re always going to shake people off if you take a heavy turn.

What can you tell us about your current tour?
It’s a one-man show, so sonically I’m presenting new material and old material in a made-over fashion. I’m taking people back to the early house days, which always seemed a good setting for my voice, my horn of a voice. I’ve been tapping into my inner diva. I’m just belting it out over house music at the end. I get everything lathered up and at the end we have a wash down. That’s why they call it a rinse. You check your troubles at the door and rinse it out.

Published April 4, 2013