Dave Chamberlain

This weekend marks the beginning of the International Pop Overthrow festival, which runs March 29-April 12, with shows at Schubas, the Abbey Pub, Nevin's Live in Evanston, Wise Food Pub, the Beat Kitchen, Gunther Murphy's, Lakeview Links and the Double Door. (Clarification: This has nothing to do with Noise Pop, the San Francisco-based festival. Noise Pop will not be in Chicago this year.)

The brainchild of Los Angeles journalist David Bash, the festival is heading into its fifth year; this year marks its first on the road, having played New York in December. Though there are more than 140 bands playing, this isn't South by Southwest. Instead, think of it as a super-charged MobFest; the majority of the bands are on small labels, and very few carry any name value to the average Joe. In fact, beyond the Chicago bands (of which there are many), very few are bands I've ever heard of.

Bash, 43, who has been a freelance journalist since 1995, set up the festival "just to give bands from all over the world a platform to play." Unlike most music festivals, there is no fee to apply--Bash accepts unsolicited materials, and handles all the booking and promotion himself. Though music-types tend to roll their collective eyes at yet another festival, Bash doesn't worry about the over-saturation factor. "Most festival in the U.S. are multi-genre. We're genre-specific [just pop music]."

Chicago completes IPO's trifecta of large cities in the States, but he has eyes on making the festival truly international. "In the back of my head, I keep thinking about taking the festival to London, or maybe even Sydney (Australia)."

Dance party:
Bruce Finkelman, owner of the Empty Bottle, has had good luck turning Sundays at his club--traditionally a slow night in the rock circuit--into a success. In the mid-nineties, he struck gold with the Deadly Dragon Sound System, which featured the likes of John Herndon, Jeremy Freeman and Casey Rice DJing an equal mix of reggae, jungle and hip hop. "It's a matter of trying to mix things up a little bit," says Finkelman. "Sunday night is not a rock show, but instead a chance for people to come down and see dance music in a non-traditional setting."

The Bottle's most recent Sunday incarnation, The Big Up! (the brainchild of Josh Abrams and Jacob Ross), gets its highest-profile act yet when England's Fila Brazillia steps into the DJ booth, March 31. Fila Brazillia, composed of Steve Cobby and David McSherry, has released two records in the past year. The first, part of the "Another Late Night" series on Kinetic Records, is a mix-CD, designed to be played at the end of a club night or in the proverbial chill-out room. By combining everything from an old John Barry track to Prince Alla's root reggae to Brian Eno's "Regiment," Fila established itself as DJs with an ear for the mellow and bizarre.

FB's more recent "Jump Leads" (Twenty Three), is a completely different beast. For starters, it's made up of completely original music, something the American audience--especially the rock-club audience--tends to appreciate far more. Like the "Late Night" record, "Jump" is ultra-mellow; some tracks are like lo-fi techno Motown; others are nearly ambient, but spiked with samples from esoteric players like bluesman Washington Phillips or world-beat artist Oumou Sangare. Descriptions don't do Fila Brazillia justice. Though they hail from the electronic scene, McSherry and Cobby make music very unlike what most people associate with dance music. Not house music, techno, jungle or any sub-genre thereof, it's more Motown than any of the above.

Regardless of whether you know the music or the DJs, the Big Up! nights are a draw unto themselves. "It's a laid-back thing, kind of like Tuesday nights with Vandermark," says Finkelman. "Just a night for people to come hang out."

Empty Dreamz:
This one's for the old-school Wicker Parkers out there. Remember Dreamerz? It was a long-time music venue along the Milwaukee Avenue corridor, directly above what is now Nick's Biergarden. It closed in the early nineties, but for the last few years the space has been functioning as the studio for internationally known artist Dzine, who got his start primarily as a graffiti artist in the eighties.

Alas, the final remnant of Dreamerz is gone. Last month, in order to clear space for his own recording studio, Dzine tore up the stage. Under the stage was a veritable time capsule of music paraphernalia. "The first I found," says Dzine, "was an old Eleventh Dream Day poster, but it had a set list on the back." Another nugget was a an old 7-inch single of, oddly, "YMCA" by the Village People. But that wasn't even the most surprising. "I was blown away by the amount of graffiti that was under there, and it was all like `House Nation' stuff. I mean, this was a rock club."

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