 |
Music •
Biography •
Press Kit •
Randomness •
Lyrics Gigs • Photos • Writing • Fun Stuff • Links • Contact |
Friday, February 26, 2010 Chicago Acoustic Underground Today the band recorded a podcast for Chicago Acoustic Underground - we played five songs, four of which will be on the new album, and had a blast! I played for CAU back in 2007, and it was lovely returning to the studio and seeing Michael Teach and the gang, which now includes my friend Leigh Evin McCullough from the Four Women Only series that used to live at Uncommon Ground Devon. In three years, they've added a second sound engineer and gone from podcast to presenter, as well as becoming one of the most supportive groups of local music in the city. And they're sponsoring the March 6th show at the Viaduct Theatre (which, by the way, you don't want to miss). The podcast should be online in the next few days, but in the meantime, if you go to the CAU website you can listen to interviews and music with years of fantastic performers - in fact, the most recent show online right now features jazz singer Jeanne Tanner and her band. Which happens to include the excellent Cory Biggerstaff, my bass player. It's a small world, folks.  (This is my favorite photo from today's session: Joe Chellman rocks out.) ^ Top | 11:57 PM | | | 
Tuesday, December 08, 2009 Christmas Lights! It's starting to feel like Christmas - I'm listening to Over the Rhine's Snow Angels  as I type, and today it snowed. I'm writing Christmas cards and finally put up decorations in my apartment, and I’ve started to see Christmas lights appearing everywhere. There seem to be more of them this year. Perhaps it’s an antidote to our economic instability?Last year I was using websites to try to track down light displays, but this year I’ve already stumbled across two enormous ones just driving around the city. For those of you in Chicago: there are fantastic light displays on Ashland Ave. somewhere around Irving Park (I was driving by, so I wasn't paying attention to the exact cross street) and Logan Blvd. and Washtenaw (the nearest major cross street is California).  Every year I spend time tracking down lights, so these were a fantastic find. The Lincoln Park Zoo also does a light display, and it's fun because you can walk around and see zoo animals in the process. And there's a wonderful cafe nearby that's good for warming up after walking around in the cold.  ^ Top | 10:58 PM | | |
Monday, November 03, 2008 Stumbling into Music After weeks of non-stop work, Friday night seemed like a good time to sit in a cafe and catch up on reading for a few hours. As long as you're not looking for internet access, Julius Meinl is the perfect place to spend a laid-back weekend night--they have live music and are open later than any of the other coffee shops in my neighborhood. (To my knowledge, the only 24-hour coffee shop in Chicago is Starbucks. There's only one other place that comes close: Pick Me Up Cafe. In a city this large, that's kind of sad.) A jazz duo was wrapping up their first set when I walked in, and I think I was the only person actually paying attention to them. When they took a break I returned to my book, perking up when they started playing again. In the middle of the first song, the pianist looked over and asked, "Hey, are you a musician? Pianist?" How did you know? Delighted at being correct, Ken Shiokawa talked me into playing a couple of songs. I, of course, was wonderfully dressed for the occasion: He and Lou Marini, the bassist, were both in suits, whereas I was dressed more casually than I normally would be to walk around town, much less perform in any setting. But Lou and I played together, and it was a lot of fun. I ended up making two new friends. And as a testament to how small the Chicago music scene is, I know Ken's other bass player and the band that Lou regularly gigs with. ^ Top | 1:15 AM | | |
Monday, July 14, 2008 The A-List TV Wow, this has been my longest break from blogging in six years. But it's over now, and I have a treat for you: video of my last Chicago concert, combined with an interview with the lovely Janelle Mascarenas from A-List TV. The A-List is a Chicago-based web TV show highlighting Asian-Americans, fashion, music, nightlife, and film. Check it out! Labels: Asian culture, Chicago, performing ^ Top | 1:21 AM | | |
Wednesday, May 14, 2008 Promoter's Ordinance Tabled! Great news! The Promoter's Ordinance is being pulled and will not be voted on tomorrow--it's going back to committee, but apparently they're going to ask for more input from the entertainment community this time around. Thanks to anyone to contacted their alderman and the 6000 people who signed the petition at Save Chicago Culture, and the various venue owners who met with City Council members. So for now, the ordinance is something we don't have to worry about, though it'll be worth keeping tabs on. What a relief. Labels: Chicago, music industry ^ Top | 1:34 AM | | |
Monday, May 12, 2008 Save Chicago Music In short, the City of Chicago is planning to rush through an ordinance on Wednesday that will severely damage the live music scene (and theatre and DJs, among other things) if passed. In summary:
Very, very few performers would be able to afford a $500 license fee (much less one for every venue they play at!), and few small venues could afford it either. If you live in Chicago, please contact your alderman before Wednesday, when the City Council will be voting. Click here to find your alderman. Labels: Chicago, music industry ^ Top | 11:25 AM | | |
Monday, September 10, 2007 Free parking does not exist. A full row of cars lined each side of the street, every one paired with its own parking meter. The meters only required payment until 6pm on weekdays, so we were excited to find free parking downtown. But it was not to be. After about an hour, we returned to the the block and discovered that it was nearly empty. Only two cars were left, and mine was not one of them. My first thought was that it'd been stolen (strange, considering the state of my car compared to the niceties of the neighborhood). Then we saw a sign hidden behind a tree: "Tow Away Zone: 15 minute parking 9pm -9am Saturday-Sunday." What? The SUV next to where my car used to be had three parking tickets decorating its windows, but it was still there. I called the police station to find out what had happened and was put on hold. As I was waiting to discover the fate of my car, a wizened cab driver pulled up and asked if we needed his services. "You have to get home to your husband. Go home to your husband, he's waiting for you." Creepy. Diana (the other person involved in this misadventure, another twenty-something female) managed to get him to go away after a few minutes. Shortly after, a trio across the street was exclaiming something about a car, so I asked them if theirs had just been towed, since I figured that was the fate of mine (still on hold). An Asian girl replied that her car was still there, but it was a rental and she was trying to figure out if she needed to pay the ticket. "I'm not even living in this country anymore. But I still have an Illinois license." Her friend said that the area was a trap, and she ranted about Chicago's mob-controlled government. Finally I got someone on the phone, and he informed me that they had no record of my car being towed. "Go to the nearest police station and file a report. It's stolen." The others thought this unlikely and convinced me that I should try going to the impound lot anyway--the strangers-turned-friends even offered us a ride, which we were grateful to accept. One discussion about Hong Kong, an hour and a half, and $160 (not including the $50 ticket that looks like it might have been written after the tow truck took the car) later, I had my car back. Ah, the joys of Chicago. Labels: Chicago ^ Top | 5:51 PM | | |
Wednesday, July 04, 2007 Fireworks Imagine cramming 1 million people in maybe 15 blocks as close to Chicago's lakefront as possible for a 25-minute minute show and you'll get a good feel for the annual Independence Day fireworks display (which for reasons unknown is held on the 3rd of July rather than the 4th--the display on the 4th lasts half the time). I've never been in such a crowded space in my life. I like fireworks--who doesn't?--but I don't like them enough to navigate crowds of that magnitude. But an hour before I was going to head home from downtown, Jeremy called me to say that he and his friends had staked out a prime piece of real estate a few feet from the lake. "If you want to see the fireworks without being overcrowded, you should come now--we need more people to fill our space." This was at 5pm. The fireworks started at 9:30pm. Apparently there are people who will camp out by the lake starting in the morning. And from a logistical point of view, there's a good reason: taking a bus, it took over an hour to make a trip that would normally take 15 minutes. I was perhaps 20 ft. from Jeremy and company when I gave up--I couldn't see them, and there was literally nowhere to move. Not to the front, not to the right, not to the left. And all around, people's cell phones weren't working very well even though the signal strength was high (too many people for the tower to handle, I guess). I ended up sitting on the grass behind a couple that said they were only a few feet from their family--they'd left to get something to eat, couldn't push their way back, and were sitting on another family's blanket. We ended up sharing drinks and pizza and watching the display in that semi-awkward, friendly companionability of strangers who are half-united by circumstance. When the fireworks were over I found my friends and we decided to walk one stop south on the L, thinking it'd be less crowded. Wrong. It was impossible to even get into the station.* So we walked to the stop a mile and a half from where we'd started--and ended up in the same train as people we knew. For all its size, Chicago can be surprisingly small. * Actually, I was impressed: in the time it took us to walk about a mile, the L went from being so crowded you couldn't step inside the station to nearly empty. Not bad. ^ Top | 1:17 AM | | |
Monday, June 18, 2007 Kid-Friendly Food It always mystified me that Americans consider certain foods particularly suited to childhood palates--"kid-friendly" is not a concept applied to food in Asian culture. A recent article in the Chicago Reader about school lunches highlights the case in point: The menu the OSP [Organic School Project] has introduced at Alcott [a public elementary school] has been an adjustment for staff and students alike. One morning’s breakfast included broccoli-and-cheese quiche. “We never did anything like that before,” says cafeteria manager Carmen Crespo. “The students didn’t like it—they went straight for the cereal. They’re picky. They like pizza, hamburgers, hot dogs, ravioli, macaroni and cheese.”Americans seem to think that food for children has to be simple in both flavor and preparation, dressed up in cheese or spaghetti sauce, or colorful (we're talking neon green or blue or purple here, not merely decorated in a pleasing, artful arrangement). If these conditions are not met, the youngsters will be less interested and won't eat. A Google search for "kid friendly food" as a phrase yielded over 25,000 results. In contrast, when I was growing up, if my parents were eating sushi, so was I. The same applies for dishes like curry, beef tripe, and shark's fin soup (easily $40 a bowl). The only time I can remember having foie gras, I think I was in elementary school--and I thought it was amazing. Recently I told my brother about this confusion, and he had a simple response: "It's because for Asians, food is communal." He's right. In a typical Chinese meal, multiple dishes are placed in the center of the table for everyone to share--if the adults are eating something "strange" or expensive, the kids are expected to eat it as well. They don't get special food for dinner, and few parents would be willing to accommodate requests that the entire party would not be eating as well (sure, we had pizza for dinner at my house sometimes, but the point still remains that everyone ate it, and it wasn't thought of as catering to the younger set). Thus a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma has for me been solved. Labels: America, Asian culture, Chicago, food ^ Top | 12:48 AM | | |
|
