Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesOn Tape: Minnie Riperton on The Mike Douglas Show (1979)

Welcome to On Tape, CHIRP's weekly exploration of Chicago music in films, videos, and beyond. Each week, our editors will reach back into the archives for the interviews, music videos, live concert appearances, and found footage of the city's most important musical icons. This week: Minnie Riperton.

Minnie Riperton first tells the lion story on The Mike Douglas Show in 1975. Just weeks removed from the one-week reign of "Lovin' You" atop the pop charts, she's the room's rising star, and it shows in her delivery; Douglas and company treat her like the cleverest kid at an adult party, hardly letting her finish the story of how she'd nearly been mauled during a promo shoot for Adventures In Paradise before asking another question, reuqesting elaboration. Her dusky blue dress looks cool amid the set's garish yellows, matching the demeanor of the person it covers. She is unflappable and elegant; even Dom Deluise can't get her to break.

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Tyler Clark presents: Local Mythologies writesOn Tape: Naked Raygun, Live at the Metro (1985)

Welcome to On Tape, CHIRP's weekly exploration of Chicago music in films, videos, and beyond. Each week, our editors will reach back into the archives for the interviews, music videos, live concert appearances, and found footage of the city's most important musical icons. This week: Naked Raygun.
 

Punk's not dead. Punk's been dying since it started, but it's not dead. It certainly didn't die, contrary to the pearl-clutching at the time, when Sid Vicious OD'd or Johnny Ramone voted for Reagan or the Clash released "Rock The Casbah." What punk did do, however, was migrate. Punk spread out from skids of London and New York and colonized new populations: the doper surf burnouts of Orange County, the disaffected anarchists of Washington, DC, the Nordic ragers of Minneapolis, and (most importantly, for our purposes), the Rust Belt troublemakers of Chicago. It inhabited the voice of Naked Raygun lead singer Jeff Pezzati, whose band would quickly become the standard bearers of the city's scene. On the night depicted above, the band's dominance of Chicago punk was already evident; they play to a packed, sweaty house at the Metro, thrashing around Wrigleyville in the days before boutique pizzerias and condo buildings full of recent Big Ten grads repeating a continuous loop of embarassing decisions. Though the neighborhood's changed, the impact of shows like this one linger; this summer, Pezzati and the rest of Naked Raygun's current line-up will play the venue across the street, sharing a bill with the super-fans in the Foo Fighters. May everyone in the outfield who asks "Who?" be flung immediately into the nearest mosh pit.

Video courtesy of YouTube user RoCkiN' ReX NY.