Concerts

If you’re looking for something to be grateful for this weekend, look no further than Gratitude, an all-night party featuring producer/songster/DJ Alexander East, the man behind Planet East Recordings. This Minneapolis-based deep-house heavyweight has laid down vocals for Jake Childs and Chicago house godfather Derrick Carter, and he’s had his…

Unless you just arrived on this planet, you know there is no Margot in Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s — but the moniker of Richard Edwards’ charming chamber pop band sure does have a nice cadence to it, as does the music the outfit creates. On tour in…

This past Saturday, we stopped by the Backyard Bang, which stretched between Lincoln and Sherman on 12th. We noticed the riders all had headphones in, so being all about the music, we asked them what they were listening to during their respective drops, rail slides and whatnot in the scary-as-hell…

One of the finest blues players to come of out of these parts, Otis Taylor has won blues album of the year awards from Downbeat for four of his albums, and he’s jammed with Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and many other legendary players. Over the years, he’s mastered…

So it looks like there’s been some interesting developments in the Chain Gang of 1974 camp. Over the weekend, Kamtin Mohager — whose band attracted a substantial amount of notice at CMJ — posted this video in which appears to be signing some sort of contract, while “Everybody Wants to…

Pictureplane’s track “Real is a Feeling” came to life in video form last night at Redline Gallery studios, complete with a girl in head-to-toe lyrca and a pinata filled with rubber organs of the human variety. Filmed by Neil Ewing and visual artist Sterling Crispin and with the direction of…

DJ SHADOW With Pigeon John 11.21.10 | Ogden Theatre See slideshow and read the interview with DJ Shadow Josh Davis (aka DJ Shadow) has come a long way since his days collaborating with hip-hop icons Gift of Gab and Lyrics Born, and his skills have only gotten more sharply honed…

TJUTJUNA Woodsman • Married In Berdichev • DJ Peter Black 11.19.10 | Larimer Lounge For his set, Peter Black used an iPad to control and trigger some of the sounds he was weaving into his live remixes. This set of songs had kind of a raw, percussion heavy sound and…

NOSAJ THING With Jogger • Toro Y Moi 11.20.10 | Bluebird Theater This is not a diatribe dedicated to hating on electronic music, music made via laptop, patchy synths or anything else that involves playing instrumentation off of a card table. This is simply a timeline of Saturday night’s Nosaj…

MAC LETHAL with JDirty • Input • F. Stokes 11.20.10 | Marquis Theater Mac Lethal’s “Keep It Irish Tour” descended upon the Marquis Theater last night and brought a friendly crew of poets and rappers with it. The Midwest rapper obviously harboring a serious grudge against his ex-wife made it…

Ludacris, Carmelo Anthony, his wife, Lala Vasquez, and Sway Calloway from MTV surprised 1400 students at George Washington High School on Friday afternoon for the Get Schooled national challenge and tour, aimed at engaging students and their families to help improve high school graduation rates. GW was chosen because it…

DAS RACIST With Pictureplane • Hollagramz • DJ Synergy • Kentdub • DJ Nikka T 11.19.10 • Casselman’s Bar & Venue It really seemed like the whole thing might fall apart. It was well past midnight. Travis Egedy as Pictureplane, who followed two hours worth of dubstep, started his set…

SWOLLEN MEMBERS With Saigon • City Real • Prime Element 11.10.10 | Marquis Theatre Originally scheduled to take place the Summit Music Hall, last night’s Swollen Members show was moved to the Marquis Theater. The dichotomy of confused Christian rock fans hoping to see Red and the vodka-drunk, skull-faced soldiers…

Last night’s Remedy Relief event, headlined by Das Racist and Pictureplane, got a little ridiculous. Das Racist didn’t even take the stage until 1:15 a.m., and the booze had been flowing freely for roughly five hours at that point. The venue shouted everyone into the street after the show because…

Alas, the agonizing wait is over: This weekend at Northfield, I Love This Bar & Grill — Toby Keith’s, well, bar and grill — is celebrating its grand opening. Near as we can tell, there’s only four of these bad boys in the world, and somehow we got one. Yay…

Attention, ladies (or, uh, gents?), if you woke up this morning and noticed that you happened to be missing a pair of purple heels, we know where they’re at — well, or at least where they were at last we checked on our way into office this morning. As you…

Finally, Tjutjuna will be giving its debut LP a proper celebratory release tonight, with a show at the Larimer Lounge. The self-titled, ten-song LP — which became available for a a listening preview in September and was physically released in October — is finally getting its own psychedelic party, with…

BRANDON FLOWERS With Fran Healy 11.18.10 | Ogden Theatre It’s almost not fair to call Fran Healy an opener. The Scottish front man of acoustic indie rock band Travis has plenty of experience headlining shows. He’s got an engaging stage presence — and the star power to pack the house…

RED BULL BIG TUNE FINALS 11.18.10 | Metro, Chicago First there were eighteen. Then there was one. Last night at the Metro in Chicago where the 2010 Red Bull Big Tune finals took place, aspiring producers from around the country competed against each other in the hopes of receiving the…

J. COLE With K. Michelle • CJ Hilton • J Blev • Pries • KDJ Above 11.17.10 • Fox Theatre, Boulder While J. Cole brought the house down at the Fox Theater in Boulder for the BET Music Matters tour, the real comedy took place long before he hit the…

Brandon Flowers has grown up quite a bit in the past eight or so years — vocally speaking. The Killers’ run across the mainstream radar was a mere three-album jaunt (the band is currently on hiatus), but in that short time, Flowers’ has gone from an overstated, showy rock singer…