July's Five Can't-Miss Shows
(Tom Lynch)

1. Pitchfork Music Festival
(Union Park)
Sonic Youth performing "Daydream Nation" in entirety? Cat Power? Iron & Wine? Califone? Malkmus? New Pornographers? Sea & Cake? Fucking Yoko Ono??? Be there.
(July 13-15)

2. The Thermals
(Subterranean)
Portland's indie-punk band offers its musical frenzy to Subt--the four-piece is one of the best bands in the country, hands down.
(July 27)

3. Under Byen
(Abbey Pub)
The phenomenal Danish band--whose 2006 "Samme stof som stof" will stop your heart with its blend of ambient rock and IDM--brings its great live show back to the States.
(July 11)

4. Tortoise
(Metro)
Chicago's iconic, influential and groundbreaking post-rock outfit--the band has, quite simply, never disappointed.
(July 1)

5. New Black
(Beat Kitchen)
The powerful local rock band is back...hopefully. The first show in a long while, fingers-crossed a new album follows, as my copy of "Time Attack" has busted due to too many spins.
(July 6)

July's Five Can't-Miss Shows
(Duke Shin)

1. Jamie Jones
(Spy Bar)
Crosstown Rebel Jamie Jones drops his amalgamated electronic soul, fusing deep house and minimal melodies to create an intelligent-yet-freaky dance floor.
(July 13)


2. Music 101 Boat Cruise
(Flatwater)
In time for the city's fireworks, Music 101's boat cruise will depart from the Flatwater packed with DJs and partiers for a three-hour tour, a three-hour tour. (If you get lost, at least you'll have enough supplies to party up Gilligan's island.)
(July 13-15)


3. We (Heart) Chicago
(Empty Bottle)
Enough fresh air and sun at Pitchfork? Because now it's dark, and you want a dirty, smoky bar to properly rock out to the likes of Chromeo, Cool Kids, Flosstradamus and more, right? Thought so. Two PBR's coming right up...
(July 13-15)


4. John Tejada
(Sonotheque)
The tech-minded monthly known as Wake Up! welcomes the sublime melodic techno of L.A. giant Tejada.
(July 19)

5. Claude Von Stroke
(Smart Bar)
The second visit in consecutive months from San Fran's Dirtybird camp is all good news for those who like their house straddling the electric techno fence. Blip it, bleep it, whistle it..."Who's Afraid of Detroit?"
(July 20)


July's Five Can't-Miss Shows
(Dennis Polkow)

1. The Police
(Wrigley Field)
All three members of The Police have expanded their musical horizons considerably since the band's notorious break-up over two decades ago. Sting toyed with jazz and has just released an album of Elizabethan songs by John Dowland, Steward Copland wrote several celebrated soundtracks and even an opera about the Crusades and Andy Sumners formed a band with jazz-bass master Stanley Clarke, but the real question is what all of this will mean for the three to come back together in a stadium format after so long of a time apart.
(July 5-6)

2. Toumani Diabaté & the Symmetric Orchestra & Vies Farkra Touré
(Pritzker Pavilion)
Last year's "Music Without Borders" three-concert series that spotlighted folk and pop artists from around the globe was such a huge success that the City of Chicago has doubled the number of concerts from three to six, and this African double bill of renowned Malian kora master Toumani Diabaté, who has collaborated with Salif Keita, Ballake Sissoko, Taj Mahal, Peter Gabriel, Spain's flamenco-fusion band Ketama and countless jazz musicians, appears with his latest project, the fifteen-piece band known as the Symmetric Orchestra.
(July 12)

3. The Decemberists & Grant Park Orchestra
(Priztker Pavilion)
Metro is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary with this special free collaboration concert between the Portland-based Decemberists, whose latest album "The Crane Wife" (Capital) is topping college music charts with its blend of progressive rock, klezmer, Irish jigs and sea chanteys, and the Grant Park Orchestra conducted by Sean O'Loughlin, which will provide orchestral accompaniment to the band.
(July 18)

4. James Conlon's Zemlinksy Showcase
(Martin Theatre Ravinia)
Conductor James Conlon is continuing his "Breaking the Silence" series spotlighting music of composers whose music was banned by the Third Reich with a look at the music of Zemlinsky, a contemporary of Mahler who used to conduct his music regularly, and a teacher of Schoenberg. It was Conlon's conducting of Zemlinsky's music that first led him to explore music of other silenced composers. This concert spotlights chamber music with comments from Conlon, but several orchestral works and operas are planned all season long.
(July 14)

5. Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival
(Toyota Park)
What separates this Lollapalooza-style event from others is the quality and diversity of the artists assembled, a virtual who's who of guitar greats of past and present which, in addition to Clapton himself, include Jeff Beck, Doyle Bramhall II, Robert Cray, Sheryl Crow, Vince Gill, Buddy Guy, B.B. King, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Sonny Landreth, Albert Lee, Los Lobos, John Mayer, John McLaughlin, Willie Nelson, Robert Randolph, Hubert Sumlin, Derek Trucks, Jimmie Vaughan and Steve Winwood.
(July 28)





(2007-05-22)

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