Dear Chicago,

I love you and I hate you.

Signed,

Chris

This American Life is a rerun this week, and thankfully so. Ira twists his way back dial to give us a program originally run in November of 2000. The subject is the Golden Apple Diner, situated at the 6-way corner of Lincoln, Southport and Wellington on Chicago’s North Side. Is it Lincoln Park or Lakeview? I don’t know nor do I really care. I do know that this hour of fine radio programming offers a glimpse into the lives of some very ordinary Chicagoans. The beauty is that the Golden Apple really could be anywhere in the world, but it’s not. You can download it for free until Saturday, April 7th. After that, buddy, you are shit out of luck and have to wait another 7 years.

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click for interview

So I saw Brendan Kelly (of Slapstick, the Broadways, the Lawrence Arms, Falcon…fame) at the fucking grocery store this weekend. I was walking–minding my own beeswax–looking for Mary, when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the elusive Chicago pop-punker. I did a double take as he realized that I knew that he knew that I knew who he was. Obviously he didn’t care cause he went on his merry way to buy tomatoes, croissants, Gold Bond, or whatever dude needed all whilst talking to Fat Mike, his investment banker, or the Pope on his celly. Apparently the Jewel in Lincoln Square is the place to be…Mary proceeded to make fun of me.

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…sez Hi over the East Village.

(click to enlarge)

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Thank you Colin Hay (and friends)…

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So here I sit, as I’ve spent most of my night — in front of the computer. See, I got a 30 Gig 5th Gen iPod from Santa for X-mas.  And it’s taken a long time to get it to work right (no thanks to the Dudes at the “iPod Bar” at the Michigan Ave Apple store, who thought I was crazy, but that’s another story). So I spent tonight ripping more of my CDs to Apple Lossless files. Ok, I’m a fucking snob when it comes to music. Sure I was just using a Walkman (cassette, that is) before taking the leap into the 21st century. But you know what? Mp3s sound like ass. Even if cassettes don’t provide the cleanest sound quality, they worked for me for a very long time. So maybe my ears and brain were are trained to accept the imperfections of analog as the sonic gospel? There is something to be said for analog. Us humans were analog for a very long time before those 0s and 1s became the technological, economical, and sociological norm. Hell, the first computers were analog.

Where am I going with this? Oh yeah, In Ear Personal Sound. So I’m sitting here listening to The Ventures Live in Japan ‘65 in my good ole headphones. This recording is so clean, from the performance, to the actual sound quality of the live instruments, to the final mixed down product. I honestly can’t sing its praises enough. It’s an absolutely beautiful live pop record.

Along with being able to listen to my entire collection of music almost instantly (ie, not having to make a cassette tape of a CD), I have discovered the whole Podcast thing the kids are so into these days. Wow, what a great idea! Cuz sometimes I’d rather listen to someone talk than music. While it blows that you can’t download the whole This American Life back catalog for free anymore, you can get each weeks episode gratis if you subscribe thru iTunes. Although I just found on the TAL website that you can buy each episode on a CD for 13 bux. Why you’d want to do this I don’t know, but you do get the episode sent to you on a CD with FUCKING beautiful packaging, (and we all know how much of a sucker I am for FUCKING beautiful packaging).

My point, again, is that I found this great little punk podcast called Sound Scene Revolution. SSR is basically a couple of dudes who interview bands rolling thru San Francisco. Many times the interviews take place backstage at the Bottom of the Hill before a gig. While the interviewer isn’t the most engaging of folks, the shows tend to be pretty entertaining and informative. I’d recommend the Falcon/Red Scare podcast. It’s funny…and I’m tired.

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