We in the Midwest: 100+ Years of Chicago Music
Chicago hosted the last great World’s Fair.
In my lifetime, it has been home to the best basketball player in the history of the game, the richest and most powerful woman in the history of the media, multi-faceted weirdo geniuses like Ed Paschke, Steve Albini, R. Kelly, Cynthia Plaster Caster, Divine and Henry Darger, sports dynasties, political dynasties, and the first multiracial president of the United States. Home to some of the best food and worst politicians in the nation. New types of theatre, comedy, and literature were born here.
The windy city. The city by the lake. The city of big shoulders. Hog butcher. Tool maker. Stacker of wheat. Here’s 100 years worth of songs about shaking your ass til your’e wet enough to fuck.
We in the Midwest: Artifacts from the Rave Scene 1993-2009
Milwaukee’s Juiceboxxx just posted a link on twitter to some scans he put up on RaverGeek.com of the legendary Milwaukee rave zine Massive. In all, there are four complete issues of the magazine, spanning five of its six-year lifespan. It’s an important six years too. 1993-1999.
This was the time when a good chunk of the world thought that electronic music wasn’t just the next big thing, but the future of music (for better or worse) and magazines like Spin, Mojo, and Rolling Stone were asking question’s like “Is the Age of the Guitar Over?”. From any objective viewpoint, you could see the parallels between rave culture and hippie culture. Would 1997 surpass 1967 as a time of peace, love, music and drug-fueled social change? Would Generations X and Y finally shut the Baby Boomers up by doing it better, with new technology and a totally alien form of pop?
