It says something that the biggest pop-music news of 2011 was not Gaga, another reformation of Smashing Pumpkins, Kanye and Jay-Z's Throne spectacular, Lollapalooza or the Guns and Roses tour, but the break up of R.E.M.
That queer front man Michael Stipe and company called it quits while in the midst of a career re-ignition threw everything else into stark relief. R.E.M. was so consistent, influential and artistically assured, and had shunned hype for so long you couldn't help but realize that for the past 29 years they meant as much to a generation as Elvis and the Beatles meant to theirs.
Am I overstepping here? I don't think so. That the band broke up within days of the release of its latest album, Collapse Into Now (Warner Brothers Records), and three years after the last tour with a flat-out statement of humility over cynicism (tell that to Axl Rose) went a long way in this age.
Worse, for the last 12 months the music industry slid deeper into the shitter. Sony dissolved/consumed lower-rung labels Arista, J and Jive Records (homes to Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, Usher, and Alicia Keys) as a matter of corporate tightening. Many, if not most, of the tours that came through town featured artists performing without new music to support, grabbing the cash at the gate with zero production costs. Also, it got way harder to sell out arenas, with tickets going on sale months in advance. Even American Idol, the artificial barometer of the pop zeitgeist in the wake of Adam Lambert, seemed dull and buzz-less.
None of this meant there wasn't an abundance of music to be had. Sure there was raving shit stinking up the airwaves (Bruno Mars) and an endless tsunami of hype. (Just one more magazine cover with sugar coated girly twink Justin Bieber and I will scream again and again and again.) However, there were also Adele (who made soul relevant again), Drake (ditto), Foster the People, Bon Iver, Sade (a voice from the past that's proved eternal), Ke$ha (this year's hot mess), the Smith Westerns, Lykke Lee, a premature re-appreciation of Amy Winehouse, Beyonce, Vampire Weekend and Kanye, in addition to new music from oldsters Tom Waits, Paul Simon and Thomas Dolby. This is not a year where any one album stands out as the best (try handicapping this year's Grammys) but I couldn't call it a flaming catastrophe, either. Let's just say that 2012 looks better and better from this perspective.
The 15 shows/recordings/events that I will remember 2011 for:
1. Fantasia and Kem at The Venue. It was the most calculated double bill of the year. Pairing Fantasia Barrino's ragged gutbucket fury next to Kem's polished cool craft made for a night of high drama, emotional friction and kinetic soul. Calculated? Maybe. Cynical? hardly.
2. Loretta Lynn at A Taste of Chicago. Hearing this icon sing "Fist City" live reminded me of how popular music ain't what it used to be.
3. Bryan Ferry at The Civic Opera House. Ferry's latest, Olympia (Virgin Records), may have been slight but the sight of him onstage in this jewel box of a theater rocking through "Editions of You" and "Love Is the Drug" proved why the man could be forgiven for anything.
4. The Hideout Block Party. Mavis Staples, Andrew Bird and the Staple Singers performing "The Weight" with unbridled fury; Booker T.'s slow burn through "Take Me To The River;" Skull Orchard's sloppy rip through "Delilah;" and freak-out sets by the Eternals, Kids These Days and White Mystery elevated this festival to another world.
5. Patti LaBelle at The Venue. After a 50-year career, Labelle whipped out vocal surprises that she's never even hinted at previously. That she keeps getting better is putting it mildly.
6. Glen Hansard at Millennium Park. That one guy with one guitar could pack so much drama, emotion, mirth, punch and charm into a 30-minute set seems impossible. Unfortunately for the band Low, Hansard was the opener.
7. OK Go, The Muppet Theme video. You can call me cranky and heartless for not getting teary-eyed over the new Muppets movie or dismissive of OK Go's unnecessary live CD 180/365 (Paracadute Records) but the video of the Muppet's theme song is an uproarious, vulgar send-up of both groups. Pretty-boy vocalist Damien Kulash jr. wakes up in bed in a cold sweat to find (horrors!!!) Miss Piggy in there with him; before the clip is over, OK Go has been turned into Muppets themselves.
8. Judas Priest at The Venue. I thought it was not my cup of tea but I was proven wrong; this show was a monster mash of '70s cliches, pyrotechnic flash, gargantuan heavy-metal thunder and queer front man Rob Halford's steel-shredding vocals. "Overwhelming" is the only word to describe it.
9. Ezra Furman and the Harpoons-Mysterious Power (Red Parlor Records). This showed the wild and sweaty side of sweet polite Evanston native Furman and his equally polite band. The new Mysterious Power was loaded with garage rock ("Teenage Wasteland," "Bloodsucking Whore"), pop epics ("Portrait of Maude," "Mysterious Power") and lurching blues ("Hard Times in a Terrible Land"), and was without doubt the year's best album. Their homecoming show at Subterranean went off the rails early and, yes, I did see Jesus when Furman barked through "Bloodthirsty Whore" while foaming at the mouth.
10. Foster the People—Torches (Sony Records). The year's second-best album has a multitude of synths, upfront hooks and counter hooks, whooshes of reverb, cushioned percussion and damn good writing to tie it all together. FTP's SRO show at The Riviera did it no favors, but that didn't matter. "Pumped-Up Kicks" turned out to be the year's catchiest, most omnipotent and disturbing single.
11. Erykah Badu at The Venue. It was a non-stop opera of hard-boiled soul, jazz, hip-hop and funk, with Badu going apeshit with that voice of hers.
12. SSION at The Logan Square Auditorium. Queer rocker Cody Critchloe started the New Year off half-juiced while shaking his bon-bon to his disco funk and inciting his SRO audience to do the same. The straight boys didn't know what hit them and just followed their asses.
13. The Vanessa Davis Band at Fitzgerald's. Out rocker/blues woman Davis is Chicago's unheralded institution, and her three-hour set with her band literally wore her adoring audience out and left them limp and wet. Yeah ... it was better than sex.
14. White Mystery at everywhere. Northwest Side siblings Alex and Francis White released their sophomore CD (Blood and Venom); gigged nonstop in Chicago and the Midwest; and even landed on MTV. Blood and Venom is the year's best hard-rock album (meaning it's best played LOUDLY), fueled by Francis' brutal bashing and low-rent amiability and Alex's merciless guitar "noise" and fetching charm.
15. NoBunny at The Empty Bottle. OK—This was a sloppy, goofy, pants-down (literally, with Mr. Bunny performing his entire set in his skivvies) free for all, and undoubtedly the wildest show of the year.
Best places to see a show:
—"Down and dirty, throw it on the floor" category:
The Empty Bottle is the place for pogoing in place, punking out, barely above-the-radar indie bands and eclectic booking/promotions in every flavor (Smith Westerns, Big Freedia, Hot Machines, NoBunny, Diamond Rings, Omar Souleyman), courtesy of Pete Toalson and Christen Thomas. A night at the Empty Bottle is always a hot date.
—"All around showplace" category:
It's the Venue—a big room that's oddly intimate, spectacular, elegant, well-designed (great sightlines from every seat and pristine acoustics) and, well, friendly. Thanks to Mike Hodin, the bookings are for every taste (Smokey Robinson, Judas Priest, Melissa Etheridge, Erykah Badu) but that's just the half of it. That The Venue is nestled in the Horseshoe Casino in another state (accessible 24/7 by a free shuttle service that circulates from all over Chicago), with gaming rooms, restaurants, chandeliers and miles and miles of carpeted open space make it a guilty pleasure.
Among those who passed this year were at least five prominent members of the LGBT community: locals RJ Chaffin, Paul Varnell and Ron Helizon, and international pioneers/heroes Dr. Frank E. Kameny and Axel Axgil (an LGBT campaigner who was instrumental in Denmark becoming the first country to legalize same-sex marriage).
Others include Sidney Lumet (film director/writer), Elizabeth Taylor (screen goddess, AIDS activist, author), Gladys Horton (lead vocalist of The Marvelettes), Gil-Scott Heron (outspoken jazz musician), Polly Platt (film producer), Clarence Clemmons (saxophonist and Bruce Springsteen's right-hand man), Peter Falk (actor, producer), Cliff Robertson (actor), Dinah Kage (jazz singer), Jessy Dixon (gospel singer/producer), Betty Skelton (daredevil pilot), Roland Petit (ahead of his time ballet choreographer and mentor to Leslie Caron), Jani Lane (lead vocalist for Warrant), Ken Russell (over-the-top film/opera director), Sue Mengers (super agent), Andy Whitfield (hunk star of Spartacus), John Wood (Tony winning actor), Pete Postlewaite (legendary Irish actor), Shammi Kapoor (East Indian movie icon), Amy Winehouse (troubled chanteuse), Jerry Lieber (legendary pop composer), Nick Ashford (legendary soul composer), Steve Jobs (computer lord), and Don Kirshner (music industry entrepreneur).
