The promoter's ordinance: What's the rush to push this through without input from the music community?
That's the question I'm eager to pose to 47th Ward Ald. Eugene Schulter, chairman of the City Council Committee on License and Consumer Protection, and Mary Lou Eisenhauer, acting director of the Department of Business Affairs and Licensing, prior to the vote on the ordinance scheduled for Wednesday.
I've made the calls to their offices for comment. Let's start the clock ticking as we await their responses...
For longtime Ministry fans, it was a bittersweet night on Thursday as the long-running industrial/metal band played the first of a four-night stand at the House of Blues in the city where it formed in 1981.
Some things I missed earlier: Anyone promoting a musical event would need to be fingerprinted and pay a licensing fee as high as $2,000 (on top of securing the $300,000 insurance); promoters would have to pass criminal background checks, and they would have to notify the commander of the local police district and sign written contracts with venue owners.
Remember: All of this is being imposed on promoters when they are working with established venues that have already fulfilled all of these obligations. Some examples: the Nocturna dance nights at Metro; the International Pop Overthrow Festival, the Tomorrow Never Knows Festival and others like it at clubs such as Schubas, the Empty Bottle, the Hideout and Martyr's; the Chicago Indie Radio Project Record Fair and the Chicago Folk & Roots Festival sponsored by the Old Town School of Folk Music , to name only a few.
City Hall's justification for the new law? It's a response to the E2 disaster of 2003 -- which, if you follow the press coverage, could have been prevented if many of the laws already in place were enforced. Who would enforce this new law, and why the rush to pass it five years after E2? Those questions remain unanswered.
Meanwhile, adding their voice to the growing opposition are local promoters Jam Productions, whose co-founder Jerry Mickelson is quoted in Spielman's story:
"When I look at the business we do at the Park West [160 seats] and the Vic [250 seats], a good majority of our revenue is from outside promoters. Many of them are ... little-time guys who rent our venue maybe once a year [or] once every other year. They can’t afford to pay $500 or $1,000 for license fees,” Mickelson said.
“We’re so selective in who we allow into our venues, losing any more puts us at a danger of not operating profitably. ... It’s tough enough to stay in business. ... We struggle each year to meet our nut. This ordinance will cause us to lose events.”
Mickelson said Jam has produced over 30,000 concerts over 37 years and has never had a major tragedy. That’s because the company is so selective and keeps such close tabs on its promoters, he said.
“At E2, they said, ‘Okay, guys. You’re renting my venue. Here’s the keys to my house. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ That doesn’t happen with a responsibly run venue. It’s vastly different than the way we operate,” Mickelson said.
Background reading on the promoter's ordinance: The proposed law, and the Chicago Music Commission's response to it
Following below are the text of the new promoter's ordinance that the City Council seems prepared to rush to approve next week -- with little input from the Chicago music community -- as well as the first public response to it from the Chicago Music Commission, the burgeoning activist group that seems poised to lead the fight in making the ordinance more fair for the community of artists and fans that it hopes to represent in the dark corners of City Hall.
After a more than four-hour session Wednesday, the City Council Committee on License and Consumer Protection passed the proposed promoters law written about at length in the preceding post. The ordinance now goes to the full City Council on May 14, and if approved there, the Chicago music scene will once again change for the worse at the hands of city officials.
The city tries again to legislate Clubland — without any input from the music community
With nary a word of public notice — and with no public hearings seeking input from the Chicago music community — the City Council Committee on License and Consumer Protection was set to meet again today in its rush to push through a new “promoters’ ordinance” initially proposed last year and only delayed at the last minute when music activists caught wind.
Like most laws, this one has a noble goal: to regulate concerts and dance events in Chicago, rooting out illegitimate “underground” promoters operating without proper licensing and therefore possibly endangering music lovers. Like many laws drafted from only one perspective, however, this one could cause serious, perhaps unintended consequences for people who try to promote live music here.
Aptly named for a group including four solid vocalists, Chicago’s Singer, the new quartet featuring Rob Lowe (90 Day Men), Ben Vida (Town & Country) and Todd Rittman and Adam Vida (US Maple), has issued a strong debut called “Unhistories” for the local Drag City label, exploring an airy brand of psychedelic jazz. The band headlines over Detholz! and Cloudland Canyon at the Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, at 10 p.m. Friday. The cover is $12; call (773) 276-3600 or visit www.emptybottle.com.
The legendary and once-again reactivated Detroit band Was (Not Was) is back on the road in support of the new album “Boo!,” playing two-hour sets of its unique mix of R&B, funk, rock and pop. It comes to the Abbey Pub, 3420 W. Grace, at 8 p.m. Saturday. Todd Snider opens, and tickets are $25. Call (773) 478-4408 or visit http://abbeypub.com/.
If you’re looking for a Chicago analog to Okayplayer—the loose-knit, Philadelphia-based musical community centered on the Roots but also embracing Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, D’Angelo and many others—the nine-piece band Vertikal is a strong contender. Founded by local guitarist Anthony Allamandola and featuring a DJ, a three-piece horn section and two diverse front people with the sultry-voiced Stacy Rene and the spoken-word artist Ben Butta Jones.
Dedicated to bridging the gap between hip-hop and jazz but also incorporating elements of funk, neo-soul, Latin, rock and blues, the mixed-gender, multi-ethnic band nonetheless churns out some surprisingly seamless and very accomplished grooves on tracks such as “Ready or Not” and “Time Chasin’,” currently streaming from its Web site, http://www.myspace.com/VERTIKALCHICAGO, and definitely in need of wider release.
Elvis Costello and the Impostors, “Momofuku” (Lost Highway) [2 STARS]
Constitutionally incapable of editing himself or accepting that maybe, just maybe his considerable talents aren’t quite so considerable that they justify excursions into piano jazz and classical music or collaborations with Allen Toussaint and Burt Bacharach, part-time luxury car pitchman Declan MacManus is getting some mileage from the fact that he rush-released this new disc with minimal hype (never mind that there’s been little interest in any of his new releases this millennium) and recorded it even more quickly after a sudden burst of inspiration following a guest stint on Jenny Lewis’ next album. (The California retro-pop/alt-country chanteuse adds harmonies here as payback.)
“Obviously the title is a tribute to Momofuku Ando, the inventor of the Cup Noodle,” Costello writes. “Like so many things in this world of wonders, all we had to do to make this record was add water.” For Elvis, the idea of avoiding overcooking and unnecessary spices is a good one: Touring solo acoustic and opening for Bob Dylan last year, his set outshined the headliner’s with its pared-down simplicity and unencumbered emotion. But the singer and songwriter couldn’t resist the urge to tart things up in the studio, even if he was working quickly.
Fussily adorned with harmonies, keyboards and pedal steel guitar, the new songs that worked onstage last fall—including “My Three Sons,” “Song with Rose” (co-written by Rosanne Cash) and “Pardon Me Madam, My Name Is Eve” (co-written with Loretta Lynn)—fall painfully flat here, and Costello persist in dabbling in genres that just don’t suit him (witness the samba of “Harry Worth,” or better yet, save yourself the pain). Only the organ-driven, Attractions-in-everything-but name garage-rockers (“No Hiding Place,” “Go Away”) offer any hint of the fun that Elvis claims he had.
Rare is the scrap of press about Philadelphia-raised, Wesleyan-educated, Brooklyn-based singer and emerging hipster heroine Santi White that doesn’t draw connections to her friend and fellow genre-blurring globe-trotter Maya Arulpragasam, and not without reason; just listen to this album’s single, “Creator.” But the comparison that haunts me isn’t with M.I.A., but with Missing Persons—the disposable ’80s pop band fronted by Dale Bozzio—both for the annoying similarity to Santogold’s helium-tainted warble, and for the sheer contrivance of both acts’ bids for pop stardom.
Bozzio was a former Playboy model who linked up with a group of veteran L.A. sessions musicians and former sidemen for Frank Zappa in an effort to hit it big by riding the then-mighty New Wave gravy train. White is a former talent scout for Epic Records who previously fronted a ska-punk band, wrote songs for artists as diverse as Res, Lily Allen and Ashlee Simpson, pals around with producers Diplo, Mark Ronson and Switch and is making her assault on the pop charts with help from a big corporate marketing push. (A press release from the Chicago advertising agency DDB boasts that it “has the new beer of the summer in Bud Light Lime and Downtown Records has the new artist of the summer in Santogold. It only makes sense that we should collaborate to get the most reach for both our brands.”)
Antiquated notions of indie purism and outdated critical standards of authenticity aside, none of the above would matter a whit if the merger of sugary bubblegum hooks, reggae, dub, electronica and hip-hop rhythms and boastful lyrics (“Me, I'm a creator, thrill is to make it up/The rules I break got me a place up on the radar”; “We think you’re a joke/Shove your hope where it don’t shine”) didn’t sound as sterile at times as a corporate marketing session (“My Superman,” “Creator”), and if White’s vocals weren’t so fingernails-on-the-chalkboard annoying that they mar what could have otherwise been Gwen Stefani- if not Elastica-worthy neo-New Wave anthems (“L.E.S. Artistes,” “Say Aha”).
