In the early 1990s, the California band Sleep helped to create a hard-rocking genre that came to be known as stoner rock: something that resembled heavy metal, but with a tendency toward slower, sludgier and less screamy rock. Sleep disbanded in the late 1990s, but the trio reunited a few years ago. And last week, the group played two sold-out shows at Thalia Hall. The lineup included original members Al Cisneros (bass and vocals) and Matt Pike (guitars), plus Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder. I was there on Thursday, Aug. 28, and Sleep pounded away at its repetitive riffs with just as much force and intensity as you’d expect. (From what I hear, Friday’s show was even louder.)
Opening act Corrections HouseOpening act Corrections House
It’s hard to believe this work of art from 2010 — celebrated by critics, unbelievably ambitious and staggeringly impressive — has traveled to at least a dozen cities but has yet to appear in Chicago.
Photo by Ben Westoby/White Cube
Last week, I followed the advice of the Chicago Tribune’s Christopher Borrelli and took a trip to Minneapolis, where the Walker Art Center was showing “The Clock.” Christian Marclay’s 24-hour-long video collage pulls together thousands of clips from movies throughout history, most of them showing a clock or watch displaying the same time at that very moment of the day in the world outside the video screen. In other words, if you’re watching “The Clock” at 4:05 a.m., you’ll see a scene from a movie in which it’s 4:05 a.m.
That’s the gimmick, but “The Clock” is far from gimmicky. If you saw just a few minutes of it, you might think, “Well, that’s clever.” But then, if you keep on watching, the experience becomes strangely compelling. Somehow, even though “The Clock” lacks anything resembling a traditional narrative, it keeps you glued to the screen.
After a while, it becomes deeply moving and resonant, feeling like a portrait of humanity, of people from scattered places and eras, all progressing through the rhythms of one day. And it also functions like a history of filmmaking and acting styles, a commentary on how editing plays with our perceptions — and a masterful job of editing, too.
In 2012, The New Yorker published an excellent article about Marclay and “The Clock” by Daniel Zalewski, which explains the painstaking process Marclay used to create this stunning piece.
In some cities where “The Clock” has been shown, people waited in lines to get into the screening room. There were no lines at the Walker during my three visits, though the room frequently got crowded, with people standing in the back or sitting on the floor. Shortly after arriving in Minneapolis on a Thursday, I went to the museum and watched “The Clock” from 6:22 p.m. until shortly before the museum closed for the night at 9 p.m. The following day, I returned and watched from 11:35 a.m. to 2:05 p.m. and 2:25 to 5 p.m. — when the museum closed for the night. Saturday was one of the days when the Walker kept the gallery open around the clock, so I returned around 8:30 p.m. (watching the next half-hour or so for the second time) and stayed until 1:30 a.m.
So, all together, I ended up watching slightly more than half of “The Clock.” And now I regret not staying for longer, as the film continued to reel into the early-morning hours. And I wonder: When will I get a chance to see it again?
In his Tribune story, Borrelli reported that a curator at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York, which represents Marclay, “told me there have been no serious negotiations with any local museum or gallery to bring it to Chicago.” Really? If it doesn’t come to Chicago, I hope it gets a showing in another city I can visit. How about a permanent installation somewhere?
“The Clock” is, as other critics have proclaimed, one of the most incredible works of remixed art — art that takes elements from old sources and mashes them together into something new. (A strict adherence to copyright law would make an artwork like “The Clock” impossible, though I’d argue that Marclay’s technique qualifies as fair use.)
It doesn’t seem quite correct to label “The Clock” as a film; it certainly isn’t a traditional example of a movie. But the act of watching “The Clock” inside the dark gallery is essentially a moviegoing experience. However it is categorized — as video art, an installation or as a film — “The Clock” is one of the definitive artworks and most amazing viewing experiences of our time. Do not miss it if you get the chance.
The Clean’s concert on Monday, Aug. 18, at Lincoln Hall was one of those shows that leave you scratching your head and asking: What just happened? The legendary New Zealand band doesn’t come around all that often — the last time was a show at the Bottom Lounge in 2010 — so any appearance they make in Chicago is an event.
The trio sounded a little ragged, but I enjoyed the raggedness of the jams. As the Clean took the stage, drummer Hamish Kilgour crouched down next to his drum kit, as if hiding, tapping his drumsticks at the edges of the set. As that first song, the instrumental “Fish,” progressed, he eventually took his seat behind the drums. Bassist Robert Scott nonchalantly stood, holding down the rhythm. And guitarist David Kilgour stood with his back to the crowd, leaning toward his amp. It was a good while before he showed his face to the audience for more than a few seconds. At one point early in the set, Hamish hopped up from behind his drum kit, stepped off the stage and stood in the crowd for a minute, then got back up and leaned down to put his sunglasses on the microphone in front of his bass drum.
A few of the songs ended abruptly, like tossed-off numbers at a rehearsal — which made them feel more real to me. But then, after playing just 45 minutes or so, the band bid everyone good-night and left the stage. A long, loud round of applause followed, as the Clean fans made it clear they wanted to hear more. For one thing, the band hadn’t played its most famous song, “Tally Ho.” One guy was shouting, “Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!” — apparently, as his way of saying the band should play more. Hamish Kilgour and Scott returned to the stage and seemed to be getting ready to play, then went back behind the curtain. More applause. Hamish Kilgour and Scott return again. They disappear again. They come back, again without David Kilgour. Hamish said someone from the audience would have to come onstage to make an encore happen.
A guy I know from Laurie’s Planet of Sound, Paul Nixon, climbed onto the stage and took the microphone, offering a polite and gracious message to David Kilgour: The audience wants you to come back onstage and play more. Still, no sign of Kilgour. Now, a few other audience members (including my friend Sam O’Rama) got onstage to sing “Tally Ho” while two-thirds of the Clean played two-thirds of the song. Midway through the tune, another guy from the crowd climbed up and started playing the song’s three chords on Kilgour’s guitar (and playing it pretty well). And that’s how the show ended, with this odd audience singalong and the Clean missing one of its key members.
From what I recalled, the Clean’s last Chicago show, in 2010, was longer. But looking back at what I wrote about it, I see a harbinger of last night’s events:
Guitarist David Kilgour left the stage rather abruptly at the end of the main set and then again at the end of the first encore, almost seeming to surprising his band mates, drummer Hamish Kilgour and bassist Robert Scott. It seemed that the band was calling it a night at that point and the Bottom Lounge turned on the house music. But the audience wasn’t ready to leave, giving the Clean a loud and sustained round of applause, and finally the guys came back and played one of their best-known tunes, “Tally Ho!”
At last night’s show, Hamish Kilgour’s wry stage banter included the question, “What is a rock concert?” (Or words to that effect.) What indeed? This was certainly a rock concert, but unlike any I’ve seen.
Boogarins
The opening band Monday at Lincoln Hall was the wonderful psychedelic Brazilian outfit called Boogarins. Given the fact that they’re from Brazil and sing in Portuguese, they are bound to remind you of the late ’60s Tropicalia movement, but singer-guitarist Benke Ferraz told the Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot that music of Pink Floyd’s Syd Barrett was an even bigger influence on Boogarins. All of that was audible as Boogarins dug into its colorful rock symphonies on Monday night.
The Chicago Jazz Festival‘s organizers have been presenting free concerts in various spots around the city, calling the series “Neighborhood Nights.” This past Saturday, Aug. 9, the series featured the superb drummer Michael Zerang, playing in front of Logan Square’s Illinois Centennial Monument with a band called Blue Lights. This was a stellar lineup of leading jazz musicians from Chicago — reedists Mars Williams and Dave Rempis, cornetist Josh Berman and bassist Kent Kessler — and it sounded lovely in that park. The group played some original compositions, but it closed with a recognizable melody from the past, “Misirlou.”
It was cool to see bands from other parts of the world playing loud rock music last Friday night, Aug. 8, at the Hideout, as well as a couple of the Chicago bands that are regulars in the local scene. The evening started with Sultan Bathery, a group from Vicenza, Italy, who cranked out riffs like a punk version of a 1950s roadhouse band. Then came Chicago’s Uh Bones with more of a 1960s vibe. As the guys in Uh Bones started to turn off their amps, some enthusiastic fans shouted, “Play that cover! ‘Gloria’!” And so the band did an encore, playing the classic 1960s song by Van Morrison and Them, “Gloria,” which was a staple of garage-rock gigs back in that era. The song can still get a crowd going. I videotaped about a minute of it on Friday:
Next up was Make-Overs, a guitar-and-drums duo from South Africa, whose music was the most modern-sounding of anything all night, but still very rough and jagged, keeping with the spirit of things. Another guitar-and-drums duo, Chicago’s ubiquitous White Mystery, closed out the night with a typically raucous performance, their red curls flying.
Sultan Bathery
Uh Bones
Make-Overs
White Mystery
A shrine to the dead
While I was at the Hideout, I snapped this shot of a memorial shrine in the front bar, with pictures of longtime Hideout patron Daniel Blue, left, and Studs Terkel.
The Baseball Project played last Thursday, Aug. 7, at the Abbey Pub. This is an indie-rock supergroup of sorts, comprising Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows and the Minus 5, Peter Buck and Mike Mills of R.E.M., Steve Wynn of the Dream Syndicate and Linda Pitmon, who also plays in Wynn’s band, the Miracle 3. All of their songs are about baseball. Many of them are quite catchy, with an 1980s jangle-rock style. Buck did not appear in the show at the Abbey Pub, but it was a fun show, ending with Mills singing the R.E.M. classic “(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville,” some of which I captured on video:
Like most stage plays, All Our Tragic concludes with a final appearance by its cast. Just seeing all of those actors again — and thinking back on the multiple roles each of them had played on that stage over the previous 12 hours — was an unusually stirring experience on Sunday night. This was no ordinary curtain call. It felt more like watching runners crossing the finish line at the end of a marathon.
But it was more than that, more than just cheering for a feat of endurance (for the 23 actors and, to a lesser extent, for those of us in the audience). We had also just witnessed a devastating marathon of human folly. Adapted for the Hypocrites theatrical company by director Sean Graney from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, this was billed as “32 Surviving Greek Tragedies Performed in One Epic Narrative.”
Over the previous half-day inside the Den Theatre, we’d seen these actors playing characters who committed a seemingly endless string of atrocious deeds — fratricide, matricide, patricide, infanticide, genocide, human sacrifice, incest and betrayal, to name a few — and suffered mightily from the consequences. Seeing those actors gathered all together on the stage in the final moments of All Our Tragic was like coming across the mass grave left behind by all of this horror.
Emily Casey as Helen… or is it Helen? Photo by Evan Hanover
This had not been an unrelentingly grim affair, however. Far from it. It was often irreverent, as Graney and his cast played up the more absurd moments of these ancient Greek stories for laughs. This is a version of the classic tragedies filled with slangy modern dialogue and pop-culture references. All Our Tragic is not a perfect show — it’s hard to imagine any production this sprawling and ambitious, stretching on for nine hours of performance plus seven intermissions, coming off without a flaw. When All Our Tragic does falter, it’s usually when some of the attempts at humor fall flat. But that’s just a bit of nitpicking. Far more often, the daft comedy succeeds, which makes all of the tragedy considerably more bearable.
There’s a tinge of black humor to the most violent moments —the sawing of a foot, the stomping of a baby, the many squirts and spurts of blood. And yet, the silliness rarely undermines the tragic. If anything, it sneakily pulls us into the performance, building our fondness for these characters (and the actors playing them). As the tragedy accumulates, piling higher and higher, we are reminded anew of human existence’s cruelties, but also of its potential for peace, love and understanding — a potential that is often squandered or thwarted, but a potential nevertheless.
Erin Barlow and Geoff Button in All Our Tragic. Photo by Evan Hanover
You don’t have to sit in the theater for 12 straight hours to experience All Our Tragic. The Hypocrites are selling separate tickets for the four parts of this epic, making it possible to see this cycle of stories spread out over a few days. But seeing it all at once (with breaks for lunch and dinner, plus shorter intermissions) is a remarkable experience. Binge-watch it if you can. Like the best long-form entertainment, it’s richer and deeper because of the time we spend with it. And how often will you ever get the chance to see a 12-hour play? Just think of all the logistical challenges the Hypocrites are going through to schedule this show.
According to a press release for the Hypocrites, the idea is to “create a contemporary Festival of Dionysus, the ancient gatherings for which these tragedies were originally crafted — to bring together a daily community to bond, eat food, drink wine and discuss complicated topics of society that we have been wrestling with since the creation of civilization.”
John Taflan and Erin Barlow in All Our Tragic. Photo by Evan Hanover
All Our Tragic is an audacious concept and an astounding achievement. It feels destined to become a signature moment in the history of Chicago’s theater scene. (“Remember that time when the Hypocrites performed all 32 Greek tragedies in one day? Can you believe that really happened?”)
The show’s end is the only time when the entire cast — 17 actors with speaking parts and six others — is on the stage at the same time. Most of the actors play three or four roles, and it won’t be much a plot spoiler to reveal that most of these characters are dead by the time the drama finally draws to an end. When I clapped my hands at the climax, I wasn’t just applauding the Hypocrites’ actors. I was also saluting all of those ghosts I’d come to know.
Tien Doman and Walter Briggs in All Our Tragic. Photo by Evan Hanover
All Our Tragic continues through Oct. 5 at the Den Theatre, 1329 N. Milwaukee Ave., Chicago. For details, see www.the-hypocrites.com.
July 30 was one of those nights when I wanted to be at concerts simultaneously. As soon as Courtney Barnett finished her bang-up show at Schubas, I hopped into my car and headed for the Empty Bottle — arriving sometime after Oneida had started playing. I caught the final hour or so of the performance, though, and what a joy it was to see these New York musicians playing in Chicago again, making their first appearance here in several years.
Since the Krautrock-influenced group finished its epic “Thank Your Parents” trilogy of albums, it has released two records: Absolute II in 2011 and A List of Burning Mountains in 2012 — instrumental recordings with long passages of quiet punctuated by jarring blasts of noise and percussion. Joined by James McNew of Yo La Tengo on bass, Oneida played some of that sort of stuff during its show last week, but it also delivered some of the Oneida pieces that more closely resemble actual songs — ending with one of its most lively, riveting numbers, the 2006 song “Up With People.” Audience members pogoed to the insistent beat.
At the merch table, Oneida was selling some limited-edition cassettes of recent music, called The Brah Tapes, but they’d run out by the time I tried to buy one.
Courtney Barnett sang her delightful lyrics in her deadpan style on Wednesday night at Schubas, which was very charming — but what really wowed me was her guitar playing. Early on in the set, she stepped away from the microphone stand and started flailing around with her guitar, her hair hanging down over her face, digging harder into her riffs, while bassist Bones Sloan and drummer Dave Mudie pounded away. As terrific as this Australian’s songs sound on her 2013 record The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas, they were even more intense and alluring in live performance. This was a Lollapalooza pre-show, and Barnett seemed to be marveling at how much her fan base has grown. Expect her to play a bigger venue the next time she’s in town. And if you’re at Lolla today, make sure to catch her set at 2:15 p.m. (Check out this video of a performance she gave earlier this at the WBEZ studios.)
