Local Music

As Ms. Majerus pointed out, my last post on what makes C-U worth living in more or less skimmed over music. Since we do have an uncommonly good music scene here, I figured I would make amends by doing a whole post on it. Of course I've never been allowed inside a lot of the venues (bars, the Canopy Club, etc), so this is going to be somewhat incomplete, but I'll try my best to give a decent overview of what people our age can see.

Personally I've been going to shows since I was about 13, which sounds impressive until you realize that that was four years ago. Needless to say I've missed out on a lot, but even in the time I've been here there've been some exciting changes. Probably the biggest is the opening of Error Records, an all-ages venue that's so far managed to get a lot of good shows. The genres are mixed but tend to run in the indie/hardcore region. In particular they seem to have the best record with out-of-city bands, which otherwise tend to be pretty poor, at least at shows where minors are allowed (unless you're really into high school Evanston sludgecore). Some of my favorite indie bands I first discovered playing in front of an old move at Error Records. It also doubles as one of my main sources of clothing; several of my t-shirts were bought in my excitement after seeing a particularly good band. This paragraph's recommended band: Muscle Worship, a Kansas hardcore/psychedelic outfit with no less than 3 bass guitars. I first saw them play at Error Records in front of a projection of Star Wars IV, which fit them surprisingly well. 

Error Records might be my favorite venue in town, but there are some other great options as well. Recently I went to a combination art/music show at the Art Party studio, which had some great local and out-of-town bands. I've never heard of the place before and I'm not sure they do these kinds of things routinely, but it was still nice to see. Some businesses like the Red Herring and Error Records (undoubtedly the best record shop in town) also have occasional shows if you check their schedules. Then there are the frequent house shows, which take place over two or three hours inside someone's private home, which is temporarily opened to the public. Unless you know the people involved the best way to find out about them is usually on either Facebook groups or Smile Politely's weekly "Overture" section. None of these venues is necessarily consistent, but put together they mean that if you want to go to a show on any given weekend, you can, and that's a very important thing to have if you want a really strong local music scene in a town like this. Recommended band: Acker, a local instrumental band that makes very good use of a cello in a rock setting. I've seen them a few times, always at small venues, and they're always a lot of fun. Their recorded stuff doesn't quite have the same energy, unfortunately. The members themselves are also great guys. 

Even with all of these available venues, if you look up shows around town it might seem like there's not too much going on. That's because the music scene is currently in the dry spell preceding the year's biggest musical event: Pygmalion. Some of you have probably been to Pygmalion before; it's one of the absolute best parts of the year for people who live in Champaign, and if you have any interest in indie music you've probably at least heard of it. Every year it brings in some of the best bands in the country, from of Montreal. to Warpaint to Grizzly Bear to Dinosaur Jr. Local favorites Elsinore are also a perennial presence. This year's lineup is especially deep, allowing there to be two separate days of headliners. Chvrches, Deafheaven, Panda Bear, and, most excitingly, the local band American Football, which is reforming just for this show after breaking up around 15 years ago. Their eponymous album is one of the most famous pieces of music to come out of Champaign, to the point where I've heard it even though I was 3 when it came out. The people who were actually around to see them live seem even more excited. I've seen individual members of the band play in various groups around town, and they all seem to be as good as ever. If only the organizers of Pygmalion had managed to pick up Slint, they would have had a perfect year.

Believe it or not, though, there was a time before Pygmalion. The venerable rock festival only started up ten years ago, missing out on the careers of some really incredible local bands. Like I said before, I wasn't around for most of this, and not a lot of books have been written on the history of the Champaign-Urbana music scene, but I do know bits and pieces of history. From what I understand the city had a kind of golden age of publicity in the 90's, as the success of bands like Nirvana and REM convinced record executives to search through college towns for the next big thing. We had a few near-stars, and a few fairly tragic stories, but we never quite ended up becoming the "next Seattle." What we got instead was much better: the 90's and early 2000's produced a ton of really great bands and musicians, which we get to enjoy even if most of the nation ultimately didn't (which might not have been a bad thing; look what happened to Kurt Cobain). Some particular standouts include American Football, Braid, Hum, the Poster Children, and Tortoise (technically Chicago-based but the members are from Champaign). These are all very talented and influential bands, and I would recommend any one of them. However, my final recommendation goes to Absinthe Blind, which I think is one of the best examples of the kind of shoegazy dream pop that's extremely indicative of the Champaign-Urbana scene. I first found this band at a local showcase at Error Records on the Saturday of Pygmalion two years ago. It ended up broken on the ground by the end of the day, but I managed to track down an online copy of their album Rings, and I have to say I agree with the person who sold it to me in saying that if you want to hear our local scene, you need to listen to Absinthe Blind.

(I'm going to tack this on here since I don't plan on writing another post about how great Champaign County is, but if anyone still doubts our artistic chops I just want to point out that Roger Ebert, David Foster Wallace, and Dave Eggers, three of the most influential voices of the late twentieth/early twenty-first century, have all lived in Urbana. Let's see Bloomington do that.)