WEEK OF 2/7/20

Chirp Swag / all 📷 :  Mick Reed

A lot can happen in a decade. Hell, a lot can happen in one year, to be honest. But after you’ve been stacking annuals for awhile, it can get hard to remember where you started. That’s why it’s important to put a popsicle stick in the hamster wheel of life every once in a while and throw yourself a party. You only get so many trips around the sun; you might as well take some time to enjoy the ride while it lasts. And as long as you’ve stopped to smell the hydrangeas, you might as well invite a few friends to join you. This is true whether you’re a highly venerated, community radio station, run by (mostly) volunteers, or a nascent, small-batch vinyl pressing plant, or just somebody who has a cat and a couple of records and eats pizza three times a week because you keep forgetting to pack a lunch before leaving the apartment in the morning. I’m not going to say whose party is going to be better attended, but when the former two team up for a bash, any home-slice who fits the description of the latter will likely be there with bells on. So did I attend CHIRP Radio x Smashed Plastic’s Anniversary Bash at Sleeping Village last Saturday? Well it would be weird if I were writing this and I hadn’t. So, let’s cut to the chase. I was there, and it was a good time... (Preamble over, on with the show!)

For those not in the know, CHIRP Radio is a (like I said, mostly) volunteer-run community radio station (with one paid staff member) that focuses on promoting the music, arts, and culture of the second city. The station has been streaming live from a former industrial facility in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago since 2010, but since October 2017, they have also been broadcasting over a low-power FM signal. You can hear CHIRP Radio at 107.1 FM on the city’s Northside from 6am-midnight every day of the week. This achievement is the product of a ten-year campaign by station head Shawn Campbell and various community partners and has changed the way that people in the city of Chicago listen to and connect with each other through the air waves. These efforts include nothing short of changing federal law to allow for a non-profit like CHIRP to operate a low-power radio tower in a market saturated by bossy commercial signals. If anyone deserved a drink after a ten-year-long battle with the feds and big money media interests, it’s the scrappy disc spinners over at CHIRP (full disclosure, I DJ with CHIRP in addition to volunteering with the station in other capacities. This fact does not denigrate how unimpeachably great the organization is, even if I am a little biased when talking about them). 

Given CHIRP’s mission to promote local music, teaming up with local vinyl-pressing mavericks Smashed Plastic to celebrate the simultaneous one-year anniversary of the SP’s plant opening and the launch of the station’s terrestrial signal was a no-brainer. You may recall that I covered SP’s grand opening last year (article here) and while the showcase at Sleeping Village lacked the spontaneity of a DIY rock show in a gallery space that the party had last year, the celebration this year still had that trademark relaxed, rumpus-room vibe that I think many have come to expect from a boozy night out at Sleeping Village. There wasn’t much pretense to the event, but then again, when you’re putting on a live, local showcase, pretense can be a real buzz-kill. There were no announcements between sets and no pushy evangelizing from behind the mic from station volunteers. Everyone knew why they were there, and this silent, but appreciative acknowledgement, lent a suffuse sense of purpose to the evening’s proceedings. 

When I arrived at Sleeping Village that evening, I was coming from a friend’s housewarming party that had doubled as a very cozy open mic, and was greeted by the warm, plushy guitars and psychedelic swirl of Space Gators. The cosmic croc-a-dudes caught me off guard in January when they dropped their latest album Intergalactic Swamp Songs, and it definitely shocked me how fresh their brand of pop-psych felt in 2020. It was like they had been beamed in from a dimension where 1968 never ended. A time when getting high in your room probably felt like being part of a revolution, unlike today when it’s just part of how some people calm their nerves enough to get fully dressed for their service industry job (I am not judging. You do you).  Their set had an appropriate amount of whimsy weaved throughout and effectively conveyed a transported sense of foggy optimism. I’m looking forward to seeing more of these guys in the coming months. 

After Space Gators unplugged and returned to their home planet, rock-a-billy rascals The Dyes got everyone’s spurs tapping in time to their rebellious beat. On paper, I think Americana revivals are about as interesting to contemporary ears as Ben Stein reading aloud the unabridged novelization of The Hangover Part II. In practice though, the Dyes manage to elevate their material far above its station simply by loving its subject matter and style. It’s that love that really drew me in during their set, and captured what I think attracted people to this style sixty some-odd years ago. Earnestness in a performance is something that audiences pick up on, and it can act as an enticing foothold to get invested in a set. Something has to counteract the inertia of expectations born from years of witnessing tired exercises in geriatric genres of popular art over the years, and if love can’t get you there, you might not be going anywhere fast. Sometimes the thing that most gets your attention is a bright light in the rear view mirror, and The Dyes are nothing, if not a bright spot in our city’s current alternative country and rock revival circuit. 

It almost goes without saying that the party planners saved the best for last that Saturday. Superknova is a singular performer in Chicago’s underground pop and rock scene, both because of her uniquely fabulous and exploratory blending of sonic themes and styles, but also because she is usually the only one on stage when she performs. Her music plays a role within the sonic soundscape of the city and fills a niche that it did not know it had before she decided to crawl inside and call it home. In an examination of the former industrial Midwest’s relationship to the blues and soul through the kaleidoscopic lens of effervescent queerness, she uncovers dimensions to fading folk sounds that were always plainly felt but which previously slipped through the cracks of perception, passing without recognition or appreciation. Her sound and performances enduringly frame those aspects of urban living that are not often seen or acknowledged but which constitute the vibrant and sometimes contradictory threads and patterns of existence that overlap in the winding fabric of the world, and the queerness that is inseparably bound within it. I’ve described her performances as intimate in the past, but that description fails to capture the dialectical quality of her music in conversation with a living audience. There is an exchange of energy between her and those who gather for her performances that feels as inherent to the experience as any of its audible qualities. A communing of spirits in many ways. That said, I’m half-expecting her next LP to be a gospel album. I’m not a religious individual, but I’d stand for the good news of this Glitter Evangelion any day of the week. 

If you missed out on the CHIRP and Smashed Plastic’s big birthday bash, fear not! CHIRP has plenty more planned for 2020 to celebrate its 10-year anniversary, including open houses, special live lit events, and even live, on air performances from local artists at Smashed Plastic’s factory in Workshop 400. Stay tuned to 107.1 FM, and check out www.chirpradio.org to keep up with these cats as they continue their celebration throughout the rest of the year.   

-Mick Reed