Chicago MMXIII: Walk Don't Run

congrats. i would like to have a house.

I think he's talking about the new thread guise.

i know you are wrong because i follow him on twitter/facebook

Love that Great Lake, a place notorious for making no concessions to the demands of its diners, declined to sign a new lease because its landlord would make no concessions to the demands of its tenant.

dangit xp

I like the new thread too, but yeah, we did move to a new house. I'm excited just to be able to set up my stereo system again and have all my music out of storage.

Great to hear. Still in E-town?

Yeah, just moved further east. Not too far from Howard and Ridge.

Ooooh that's an area I'm interested in. I walk/run through there ALL THE TIME.

So are you going with "filed" or "has filed"?

It's a cool area, there are a lot of older houses in that area that have pretty distinct architecture. Our house is from the early '20s, it has a lot of charm.

Filed

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130104/pilsen/tamale-perfume-pilsen-perfumer-says-yes

“In the ER, I was the person the surgeon would hand a piece of liver to,” she said.

Hello. I would like to program five radio stations into my radio here at work (I have six slots but I'm putting WFMT in one of them). I guess I'll probably put WBEZ in another, so four slots.

What are your favorite popular music (of all genres) radio stations?

i always scan from station to station when i'm in the car, but these are my approximate guesses

96.3 for top 40 hits usually
95.5 for Spanish language music, or there's another one at the top of the dial but I forget the number
97.something classic rock
92.3 (?) rap - i think? one is more r&b/rap and the other is usually just hip hop rap etc, the other is at the top of the dial
101.1 for 90s cheese after big format change but it gets REPETITIVE (still, they played Pony)

103.something is usually good too but i forget the number

also one of the stations seems to be mostly straight mexican music and the other is more pan-hispanic chart hits

My current radio presets are...

1: 91.5 (WBEZ) = NPR
2: 101.1 (I-101) = mostly '90s Top 40 (everything from Pearl Jam to TLC), with some CHR (contemporary hits radio) mixed in during the week
3: 93.1 (WXRT) = maybe the most consistently good radio station in Chicago; definite ROCK focus, but everything from classic to new indie, usually nothing terrible (tho sometimes a bit too NPR/Rolling Stone; like, you'll hear Led Zep but not Steve Miller Band); smart DJs, most of whom have been with the station forever, etc. etc. etc.
4: 88.7 (WLUW) = Loyola college station
5: 89.3 (WNUR) = Northwestern college station
(I don't listen to the above two that often; I mostly drive on the weekends, and their programming isn't that great during that time. But with college stations, you never know what you might randomly come across.)
6 : 96.3 (B96) = Rhythmic Top 40
7: 103.5 (KISS FM) = CHR
(Above two basically the same format, but B96 leans a little more hip-hop, KISS leans a little more straight-up pop)
8: 107.5 (WGCI) = urban contemporary (R&B/hip-hop)
9: 97.1 (The Drive) = classic rock
10: 100.3 (Rewind) = 70s-90s hits, generally of the pop/dance variety (Madonna, Human League, etc.)

In the past, we've had 101.9 (The Mix) ("Adult Top 40" = another shade whiter than B96 and KISS-FM) and 106.7 (formerly La Kalle) (Spanish-language) on the dial, too.

(Presets in my car, that is.)

And of the above, I listen most often to 1, 2, 3, 6, and 7.

as usual, you did a much better job than i did!!
i basically just go up and down the dial until i find something i want to hear so i don't really have any loyalties.

I think I might have brought this up before but WXRT always sort of mystifies me, like they'll play some decent stuff followed by a track by a band I have legit never ever heard of before, and it's completely bland crap, and then they say "they played a sold-out XRT show at (the vic/aragon/some other similar venue) last weekend" and I go "Who the fuck goes to these shows?" and change back to NPR. Usually this happens around pledge drive time.

Ha. Yes. WXPN is the WXRT of Philadelphia and they used to play it at an old job of mine and there were dizzying highs and gut wrenching lows, sometimes in the same hour.

Thank you, jaymc and LL. This is very helpful. Also LOL at "Rhythmic Top 40"

As opposed to all that top 40 music that is just a big heap of soggy pudding.

From downtown, if you're downtown, you might be able to get Triton College 88.9, which is the same kind of mix as WNUR and can be great.

I am downtown and I am very fond of college radio.

I just learned from L3sl13 that my undergrad alumni group meets at Timothy O'Toole's to watch our alma mater's football games. LOL.

3: 93.1 (WXRT) = maybe the most consistently good radio station in Chicago; definite ROCK focus, but everything from classic to new indie, usually nothing terrible (tho sometimes a bit too NPR/Rolling Stone; like, you'll hear Led Zep but not Steve Miller Band); smart DJs, most of whom have been with the station forever, etc. etc. etc.

I was back in Chicago over the holidays and I not that surprised to find out that XRT's core playlist hasn't changed in 25 years. John Hiatt! The Eurogliders! The BoDeans! Poi Dog Pondering!

*was not that surprised

OMG what is the deal with poi dog pondering?! for real, i don't get it.

First two records are really good, when they were legit Austin weird.

I wasn't around here for it, but I bet they moved to town at just the right point where a lot of Chicago folks, the kind who don't go out of their way to be music connoisseurs but want something they can like outdoors at the Zoo once a year, embraced them as something sunnier than the Pumpkins, Veruca Salt, and Urge.

^ this is OTM. I knew more than a few people whose favorite band -- of all time -- was Poi Dog Pondering. It was like some mini-Parrot-Head cult.

ok that makes sense
reelin in the years though eh?

Wishing Like a Mountain and Thinking Like the Sea got a lot of play in the House of Hippies where I lived junior year of college.

I cannot get 88.9 btw. :(

i had friends who had friends who listened to poi dog pondering, but iirc none of my friends liked that sort of thing. this is like rusted root?

I legitimately like this PDP song quite a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWmfXimrLSU

YES it is like Rusted Root! It is very much like Rusted Root. Maybe not entirely in sound, but definitely in demographics/style/size/enthusiasm of following.

is there an intersection with DMB people?

if so, this was decidedly not my scene but i recognize the people

IME that demographic is "Deadheads trying to be open-minded about music."

Again, in my experience, and I was kind of dead center in the time and place for this stuff (let me tell you about the time I hung out with Rusted Root at an outdoor festival at a ski resort in PA while I was tripping on so much acid!!!!) there was a lot of DMB overlap in the early days (let me tell you about the time I got kicked out of a DMB show at the Stone Balloon in Newark, DE for being drunkenly belligerent and trying to fight with a bouncer!!!!) but not so much when DMB were cemented as a white basball hat college bro band.

Like, I am almost positive that I saw an outdoor festival show featuring Dave Matthews Band, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and like... Widespread Panic or something. I mean, I know I saw Bela Fleck and DMB at an outdoor festival show, but I can't remember who the third band was.

In the middle of all that grunge, here's this guy singing "Are you the cup that I hold by the cheekbones? / I pull you close and I drink you up."

I was trying to figure out why I think of them alongside Crash Test Dummies, and it's because they both sang a lot about breasts and sex and things in a way that ran counter to the irony/sarcasm/violence of other "alternative" music on the radio at the time. And who wants to have ironic sex, anyway?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4j7EQtKPUc

xp - gotcha, that's exactly what i was talking about! now i know. the friend of friend who i knew sold my friend and i mushrooms once and iirc that guy was pretty nice and basically acted like i was invisible, which i liked. i also once drove him for four hours to visit friends at a college (i was visiting different friends) and we listened to the greatest hits of bob dylan vol 1 and 2 over and over and over both there and back. i mean while we're telling lol stories. i guess those aren't very good stories now that i re-read them.

eazy only pays attention to the songs about boobz looooooooooool ;)

lolling at the rusted root comparison, so otm

Much better lyrics, though. (That "Thanksgiving" song above is A+.)

I actually don't know Poi Dog's music very well at all, but one of the band members used to work as a sound guy at the Beat Kitchen and ended up recording C4n4st4 on a few occasions and is a pretty decent dude. IIRC, the band started out in Hawaii before moving to Austin and then Chicago.

Okay, I went with:

91.5 WBEZ
93.1 WXRT
98.7 WFMT
97.1 The Drive
103.5 KISS FM
107.5 WCGI

I'm sure they are very nice people, and they clearly have a ~chill vibe~ -- I don't think I'm super into their music but that's true for lots of things. More power to them for lasting this long.

xp Yeah, they're totally Chicago's Rusted Root.

XRT used to (and maybe still does) cheerlead some of the most tepid and mediocre Chicago bands...but then, they never played local music (outside of "Local Anesthetic") unless the band was on a major label (cf. the Insiders, Nicholas Tremulis).