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The CHIRP Blog
The Audible Snail writesYou Only Came for the Punk Show: A Love Letter to the Empty Bottle
In the beer sweat recycled air of a punk show at the Empty Bottle in September 2019, you perch on the steps to the left of the stage, nursing your beer—the first IPA of the night after a long week of teaching 6th grade for the first time. You haven’t been to a punk show in a long time, and you haven’t been to a punk show by yourself in even longer. It feels like home, in that deer-lodge-human-heat of the first show you attended by yourself in Chicago 14 years earlier: Empty Bottle, October 19, 2005 — in a Jens Lekman “Maple Leaves” kind of way.
You aren’t sure if you are going to talk to anyone, and the small joke you try to make to the group of punks in their 20s standing behind you returns no response. You realize you are old at a punk show.
Thank goodness.
Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesTake Two: “The Loco-motion” (Little Eva Vs. Grand Funk Railroad Vs. Kylie Minogue)
by Eddie Sayago
There is a chance that you have come across a song (or two, or so many more) that you enjoy and did not realize that it's either been covered by someone else or is a cover itself. We hope that this series allows you to appreciate both the original and the covers they have inspired, and to seek out and enjoy new music in the process.
The Original: Little Eva “The Loco-motion” From the album The Loco-Motion (1962, Dimension)
Dance crazes are a staple of pop culture, and back in 1962, “The Loco-motion” was a dance song that supposedly made listeners happy “even when you’re feeling blue.” Written by Gerry Coffin and Carole King for another singer in mind, Dee Dee Sharp, (whose signature song is the dance-fad song “Mashed Potato Time”) who rejected the song, thus allowing their sometime-babysitter, a 19 year old Eva Boyd, to record it. Boyd became Little Eva and “The Loco-Motion” was a big hit, peaking at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Little Eva was an overnight success whose popularity was short-lived. Her last hit single was in 1963 and by the end of the '60s, she stopped performing and moved to North Carolina with her children. She died in 2003 from cervical cancer.
CHIRP Radio writesCHIRP Radio Weekly Voyages (May 24 - May 30)
On the Podcast:
- Marjorie Alford speaks with Chicago artist Heavy Crownz
Top of the CHIRP Charts for the week of 5/24/21:
Mia Joy – Spirit Tamer (Fire Talk)
Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesCHIRP Radio Weekly Voyages (May 17 - May 23)
On the Podcast:
- Mike Nikolich talks with Audrey Foxx.
On the Blog:
- Nikki Stout reviews the new album from tUnE-yArDs.
Top of the CHIRP Charts for the week of 5/17/21:
Ya Tseen – Indian Yard (Sub Pop)
Nikki Stout writesAlbum Review: tUnE-yArDs’ “sketchy.”
tUnE-yArDs is back with their 5th album, sketchy. This is a decidedly political and decidedly straightforward album for the Oakland duo, as they soften their mosaic-like song structure in favor of a, “Let me be clear,” attitude. Covering prescient, pressing ground, sketchy. demands to be taken as seriously as the moment in which it debuted.
In a recent interview with NPR’s The World Cafe, Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner discussed the sense of emergency inspiring the album. Though the majority of sketchy. was written prior to the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd, tUnE-yArDs’ latest release timelessly explores the necessity of community, the sinister, insidious minutiae of white supremacy, and the demand for reparations and reproductive justice through a sober and mature evolution to their sound.
By incorporating literal moments of silence on the album (“Silence pt. 2"), sketchy. forces a long overdue reckoning with who we protect, who we are failing, and at what cost.There is no hedging here—only a keen awareness of power and privilege. Lyrics like, “My neighbors hold the key to my survival,” from “my neighbor” and “If you cannot hear a woman then how can you write her song?” from “nowhere, man” are razor sharp calls to action regarding climate change and reproductive justice, respectively. At both points, Brenner’s bass remains the leading sound under Garbus’ triumphant vocals. This expert interplay between instrumentation, vocalization, and a swinging spotlight has only continued to grow for the duo, and is put to great use in highlighting the album’s most powerful moments. The literal scoring, or underscoring, of the momentum in community is a pointed and important message as we hurl ever-forward into an uncertain future. It is in that range of dynamics, of knowing when to speak up, when to let the music speak for itself, when to give space for silence, and when to pass the microphone that gives sketchy. its defining voice.
The seeds that tUnE-yArDs planted on 2009’s Bird-Brains were so expertly planted that those same roots provide the structure for an album released under unimaginable global circumstances over a decade later. sketchy. is a proud entry in Garbus’ and Brenner’s catalogue, and powerfully picks sides in a time where there is no room for ambivalence.