Andy Seifert

A punk-rock quartet of dark-haired females known as The Catchelorettes bounce around on stage, stumbling through their sacrilegious anthem "Holy Grail" with drunken, Sid Vicious-like musicianship. Dressed like an updated version of The Go-Gos, one expects these twentysomethings to play crowd-pleasing bubble-gum pop; instead they step to their microphones defiantly and rebelliously holler "Holy grail! Fuck you and your fucking holy grail!"

Perhaps they were introduced to the dark side at the Old Town School of Folk Music, where they—and all the other bands performing at the "Lincoln Square Idol" at the Dank Haus German Cultural Center—were taught how to properly tap into the dark forces of songwriting. Tonight's battle of the bands features sixteen mostly amateur bands, each adhering to slightly different genres of pop/rock. Among them: June Carter Clash and the Tex Pistols, who posits a world in which Johnny Cash, the Clash and the Sex Pistols allied to form a punk-country concoction (minus the spitting on the crowd); instrumental trio Snarf, noticeably influenced by Spinal Tap's "jazz odyssey" phase; and an obligatory indie kid called Voluptuous Tusk, who sports red slacks and Roberto Benigni's smile and grooves to a midi drum machine while convulsing wildly around the stage like Cosmo Kramer.

There's five hundred dollars on the line for the winner, but the MC makes a valid point. "Five hundred dollars, that's up your nose in a weekend," he says, jokingly, and then points to the stage to say: "This is what's invaluable, right here."
(2008-03-05)

Also by Andy Seifert

Trained in the Arts
For most Chicagoans, the El's dirty steel trains are just a screeching, annoying necessity of life; for an artist, it's another canvas. Some choose to draw graffiti, others like to spray fake blood all over them and write "Real Patriots take Public Transit" and "Storm the Castle!" in the windows—just like the one currently hanging inside A.Okay Official's modest gallery. Unfortunately, this conceptual train isn't life-sized (yet), but in model-sized, two-foot long form and hanging alongside thirty-five other train art creations, at least twelve of which are more peculiar and eyebrow-raising than this bloody, castle-storming artifact
(2008-02-19)

Painful Reality
A taxi screeches to a halt on Clark Street in front of Goose Island Wrigleyville, where a patient crowd of teenagers and twentysomethings are lined up. Out steps a gentlemen in his early twenties who wears faded jeans, Armani sunglasses and what appears to be Derek Zoolander's "blue steel" pose. The sad reality is that he is strutting towards the line to audition for the twenty-first season of MTV's "The Real World," and he probably has a decent chance at making the cut
(2008-02-12)

The Gates of Hell
If campaign rallies are any indication, John Mellencamp is the most popular musician of our time. Virtually every presidential campaign uses the pro-America, pro-common-sense values embedded within the prose of "R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A," and Republican frontrunner John McCain is no exception
(2008-02-06)

Bono Appetit
"Hola!" Bono yells, gyrating his twelve-foot wide crotch into each and every member of the audience. "I'm at a place called vertigo!" Normally, the sight of a gargantuan, six-story-high Bono would frighten masses into an apocalyptic frenzy, but not this time. Inside the Navy Pier IMAX theater, Bono is a friendly giant, a scruffy Irishman whose beard you can almost touch in the new "U2-3D" movie
(2008-01-29)

As Fast As You Can
(2008-01-22)

Smoked Out
(2007-12-26)

It's All in the Surname
(2007-12-04)

Bear Barren
(2007-11-27)

Rebel Cacophony
(2007-11-19)

Martha Martha Martha
(2007-11-19)

Take It Personal
(2007-11-06)

Tip of the Week
(2007-10-30)

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