I think the music was extremely evolved and well-done, and the singles were quite good. But we never had a problem booking that room. Whats Capitol offering you? It was just money that would seem like science fiction to everybody at the time. I remember Liz took soundcheck really seriously. You start out and you suck and you practice and your songs suck and they get better and they get to a certain level and you go up and more people go to your shows and at a certain point you peak and then you start going down. I always wanted to make really good records. Louise Post. We had a lot of phone calls, and I have most of those messages. The citys got Twin Peaks and The Orwells and Ne-Hi. There was no band that could touch them. But the songs were really good. We loved them, but it wasnt, thats not who we were. My money went with Post, who released another great post-Nina Veruca album in 2000 called Resolver. So Chicago had this rep as being this incredibly fertile music territory with really incorrigible artists that couldnt be tamed by major labels. And definitely, especially on my part, a certain amount of arrogance, which I think you kind of have to have to think that youre going to be able to operate on a stage like that. Labels sank fortunes into promotion, buying out venues and offering tickets for free, paying headline bands for support slots and festival positions. I think at that point, all of us had put all of our eggs in that basket. perfectrx, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons/Photoscape. Remember that moment? Mind you, this and every installment of Chicago Music History 101 is just one critical fans take on what is most in need of recognition from our long and rich sonic legacy. After a year or two of this, we wanted to make another demo, and Brad Wood was getting hot. Kranky and Carrot Top were founded in '93; Los Crudos frontman Martin Sorrondeguy began putting out records on his own imprint, Lengua Armada, in '93, and Thrill Jockey moved to Chicago in '95. Brad Wood: We definitely got more phone calls. Weird. There was just a certain amount of angst about that. You never knew who was going to be there. Parker, who played in a soul-funk band called Uptighty at the time with Dan Bitney, who would also go on to be in Tortoise, and Leroy Bach, who played with Tortoises John Herndon in 5ive Style and, later on, in Wilco, emphasizes how much was going on at that time. Joel Spencer: We did a short stint with Presidents Of The United States Of America. You were just borrowing the money. People were kind of sniffing around for like a year, but nothing was really coming out of the town. So I said, But it sounds exactly like Downed by Cheap Trick. What was it about these certain bands? Seattle was of course first and most famous. Greg Kot: I think the best live band of that era was The Jesus Lizard. And even if you are, its a hard road. And, at least for me, her best work came on albums two and three, not the much-lauded debut answer record to the Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street, Exile in Guyville, which took its name for what Urge Overkill called Wicker Park. But he was hilarious and said a bunch of really stupid stuff. We really couldnt believe our luck. That was our peer group, but there was also a predatory layer, big labels sending scouts to shows with a buzz around them, labels like Matador and Sub Pop becoming imprints for major labels and just fucking burning their money., While a few artists, like Urge Overkill and Eleventh Dream Day, were plucked out of Chicagos DIY scene, others, like Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair, werent well-known regulars in that small, tight-knit world. 200+ Of The Best Musicians and Famous Bands From Chicago - Ranker Joe Shanahan: I remember calling Idful, I wanted to see Brad or Brian or Casey, who were all running that studio. But it was also, the context was not, they wanted the next Nirvana, essentially. All across the city there was asense of musical playfulness and a lack of desire to be pigeonholed. Which I think was a good thing. DArcy was amazing. Seattle and Chicago almost simultaneously had that moment. Limiting the series to 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music is completely arbitrary it could have been 100, or 1,000 and Im leaving other genres such as jazz and country to other critics and fans. And they were thinking, coming to Chicago, some A&R guy would sign them. It was Fig Dish, Triple Fact Action, Hush Drops, and Nectarine, and everybody was supposed to play one side of Hot August Nights by Neil Diamond, just to fuck with the A&R people. I think that when youre that age, then of course youre over your head. Local Hs eighth studio album, Hey Killer, was released in 2015 on G&P Records. I think that that was the first time where I worked with somebody who was writing really great lyrics and great songs, but also was not encumbered with a band. And whenever we went to a label, we got to rob their closets of promos, we went to Epic and Atlantic and Capitol and A&M and Interscope, the list goes on and on and on, and made off with a ton of free music. Wes Kidd: I got offered a gig to go work with a guy who managed my band, at Red Light Management. There was nothing free about it. I just love that song. We did a tour with Everclear, which was weird and fine. We definitely had that small chunk of change and that was it. It was like a bomb went off. You could go out seven nights a week and see somebody that was writing great guitar-pop songs. Local booking agencies became international players. That was what that studio was meant to be, was a place to make records with the people who worked there. Collected Musings on the Alternative Music Explosion of the 90s, The current lineup performed and talked about that long and rich career on Sound Opinions last April, 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Rock In The 60s And 70s, 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Soul And R&B, 50 Chicago Artists Who Changed Popular Music Chess Records, Meet the artist whose bold portraits have dressed up Chicago bus shelters, 150 years later, Dixon bridge tragedy among nations worst, Why were launching The Democracy Solutions Project, Linda Lenz, who kept generations of CPS parents informed through her nonprofit publication Catalyst, is dead at 77. Openness and curiosity that fed into it. And then, as the decade neared its end, just as quickly as the scene swept in, it was suddenly over . 31 Best Rock Bands of the 2000s - Music Industry How To Drag City wasn't particularly Chicago-centric but their Chicago crew was spectacular, Brise-Glace, anything with David Grubbs in it, Jim O'Rourke, all of Rian Murphy's endeavors.. A. That was the good kind of competition, where youd watch the band play in front of you and just really want to do a good job, because they always did. There was a certain amount of that. So it can come out of a basement, it can come out of the back room of a small bar like Czar Bar or Phyllis, and then on its way to bigger, more established places like Lounge Ax. He was just a misogynist. I got that plus more. , I often look for bands that don't sound like anyone else, and Scissor Girls were kind of like that. " Learn to Fly " remains one of their most enduring hits. They look really happy. I remember, one of my first big pieces was about Eleventh Dream Day, in 87, 88. But the strength of the music and its influence on the sounds that followed matter just as much, if not more. 100 Best Alternative Rock Bands - Spinditty I was able to find a manager as a result of that, and that was really helpful, too. Phair still sparks endless debate for the few who care about all that, fueling endless culture studies term papers. I think the goal, in my mind, was always to let whoever was working at the studio book the room and get as busy as they can be. I think to this day hes still one of the best songwriters that Chicago has produced, and I think hes made a bunch of really great records that people seemed to care less and less about as the years go on, but he still does really strong work. Local H, all the time. And I tried to enjoy it for what it was. Athens, Georgia went through its moment. But I wasnt really very good at telling people to come work with me. When Guyville broke, he was a bit surprised to see that Phairs stage persona had changed significantly, but not at all surprised to see her success. Thats the reason I went with Capitol. But I mean, The Jesus Lizard was an incredible band, and Ill go my grave saying they were the best live band I saw in Chicago during that era. The magic of the group always was the soul-sister partnership of these two guitarists, vocalists, and songwriters. Joe Shanahan: Well, format changes. 10. I think our A&R guy was really busting his balls to make it happen. We walk off stage and Alex Chilton walks up to us and looks at us and says, Oh, you played You Cant Have Me, and were thinking hes going to say something nice to us, and he said, We used to butcher that fucking song, too. And then he just walked right by us on stage. And so our big homage to them was we learned how to play You Cant Have Me by Big Star. But you know, it had been kind of weird up to that point anyway. Some nights, you had 10 people show up, and some nights you had 500 people show up. But I got a lot of laughs out of it. Which is a particularly Midwest thing. Everybody just came out of the place just at once. Its like, wow, two guitars, thats so cool. Not everybody was going to be playing and selling out the United Center like Corgan. They were in great form that night. But Im a pretty hard critic of my own work, I guess. For a brief period in the mid-90s, the city famous for blues but not much in the way of rock was swarmed by A&R reps looking for talent to sign. And Jodys all nice, hes like, Hey man, Alex is going to use your amps and everything. I didnt see Alex anywhere. A number of emerging alternative acts are promoting their music in a big way on video streaming channels. I really liked that about Seagrass. I dont know why they would. I guess thats what production would be for me. Thats where everyone lived and worked. . Talk to Buddy Guy about working at a label or John Lee Hooker about how long it took him to get paid, or any artist of substance. 10 obscure but brilliant 90s bands that deserved better There was things that would be happening, little splinter bands of some of the more established artists that would slide up and people would come and check them out. Sort of like, hence, why my partner Sean and I opened up the Double Door in the mid-90s. We toured with everybody. Here are 20 bands from the '90s you probably forgot about We can be whoever we want to be. But it wasnt all that different from Kanye West giving me a cassette tape of his music at the House Of Blues. Every neighborhood was different, and there were music scenes, there was a lot of interesting stuff going on here in the early- to mid-90s where you saw some cross-pollination between the jazz scenes and the indie rock scenes and the avant-garde noise scene. But when Casey started working there in 91, I dont think we ever pitched ourselves as a team. I mean, Naked Rayguns influence on the whole pop-punk thing. Local journalists, bought off with access and promotional spending, began to write about this feeding frenzy as though it were the renaissance of a music scene that had been percolating along nicely regardless..