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News :: Miscellaneous |
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IMC Indie Music Festival 2002 |
Current rating: 0 |
by Jenny Stewart
Email: jenny (nospam) ucimc.org (unverified!)
Phone: 344-8820
Address: 218 West Main Street, Urbana, IL 61801 |
21 Feb 2002
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The Urbana-Champaign IMC is hosting an independent music festival from March 7-14 featuring local and touring musicians from all over the country. Charlie King, Allette Brooks, Paul Kotheimer, David Rovics, and The Mountain Goats are just a few of the great performers that will be playing that week. Weeklong passes are available at the IMC counter for $35. A percentage of the proceeds goes to the IMC to help keep indie media alive and well here in Urbana and help fund the new 'IMC Grand Ballroom' as Paul Kotheimer has christened it: our new performance space within the IMC. |
The Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center is presenting
IMC Independent Music Festival 2002!!!!
This festival is a weeklong celebration of independent music, featuring local and touring musicians, running the gambit of political folk to indie rock to pop to punk!!
This festival runs from March 7-14 and features six shows in eight days.
Tickets for each show can be bought individually at the door the night of the show or cheaper weeklong passes can be purchased at the IMC for $35!!!!
A percentage of the proceeds of these passes helps to fund the IMC’s new venue space that holds about 200 people and will hopefully continue to host independent music shows in the area!
Passes can be purchased at the IMC front counter!
The IMC is located at 218 West Main Street, Urbana.
For more information, please call: (217) 365-9497
Here is the Festival Lineup:
March 7 (Thursday):
The Mountain Goats, Paul Kotheimer, The National Splits, 7pm $7/door
March 8 (Friday): Charlie King & Karen Brandow 8pm $10/door
March 9 (Saturday):
Absinthe Blind, The Blackouts, Daily Bridge Club, 7pm $6/door
March 10 (Sunday):
Allette Brooks & MJ Walker, 8pm $7/door
March 12 (Tuesday):
David Rovics & Sarasparilla, 8pm $7/door
March 14 (Thursday):
The Violents, LipKandy, Rectangle, &
Sick of Midwifin’ 8pm $5/door
Below are descriptions of the musicians playing these shows:
March 7 (Thursday)- The Mountain Goats, Paul Kotheimer, and The National Splits (Mike from the local pop band Wolfie)
MOUNTAIN GOATS: On first listen to a Mountain Goats record, you'd think that songwriter and principal member John Darnielle has led the most crazed, wandering, demented, and occasionally violent life imaginable. And then, on second listen, you realize his songs are fiction. His simple instrumentation (often just his voice and an acoustic guitar recorded into a boombox) belies the creative complexity of his songs, in which he invokes everything from Latin to literary references to geography, creating his own historical mythology that is both outrageous and utterly mundane. Few musicians could successfully pen the line "The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it's you/and that you're standing in the doorway" ("Going to Georgia," from 1994's Zopilote Machine) without making it sound utterly inane, but that's exactly what Darnielle manages to do. In fact, with his simple yet urgent guitar strum and earnest though imperfect vocals, the words don't sound inane at all; they sound wonderfully prophetic, poetic, and profound.
Darnielle's precise strain of genius has not yet been completely understood, but legions of Mountain Goats fans will tell you that nobody is more amazing. Not to mention prolific: Darnielle writes songs more often than most people shower. In less than ten years, the Mountain Goats have released six albums, three separate collections of compilation tracks and singles, and a few limited 12-inches, cassettes, and side projects. Darnielle is not content to rest on his laurels, however: he continues to write new songs, blending raw emotion and lyrical finesse to create devastating short stories that just happen to be set to music.
PAUL KOTHEIMER is continuing a dedicated, decade-long romance with the craft of the American song and the technical art of the studio recording. Paul takes his own HAND-MADE RECORD LABEL into new territory as a fiercely independent Internet-based music distribution network, founded at www.handmaderecords.com, and as he takes his music to the nation and the streets as an artist-activist and independent media advocate.Call his work literary-acoustic, Americana, urban-folk, post-folk, anti-folk, activist-acoustic, folk-punk, acoustic rock, folk-rock, acousti-punk, or simply "singer/songwriter": Paul started out in the late 1980's and early 1990's, as many gen-X twentysomethings did, spending seven long years as a disillusioned undergrad, protesting the Gulf War, and slumming and gigging his way through small coffeehouses and clubs. In 1993, on a teaching assistantship from the University of Illinois, Kotheimer made the move to the thirving indie/college music scene of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where he quickly gained recognition as a solo performer at the historic Red Herring Coffee House, and elsewhere in the region.
For more information on THE NATIONAL SPLITS, go to: http://www.prairienet.org/nationalsplits/
March 8 (Friday)- Charlie King & Karen Brandow
CHARLIE KING and Karen Brandow are a new duo with a long history. Their repertoire covers a century and a half and three continents. They perform with the sweet and precise harmonies of life partners. They sing and write passionately about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. Their new duo Appleseed Recording, I STRUCK GOLD, won rave reviews and much radio airplay: "lively & engaging…a wonderful album" All Music Guide: "two voices that complement each other beautifully & instrumentation that is spare, acoustic & just right" Victory Music Review. It was selected from all American releases for inclusion in the John Shelton Ivany Top Twenty-One, published in 200 national newspapers. Charlie King has been at the heart of American folk music for over 35 years. His songs have been recorded and sung by other performers such as Pete Seeger, Holly Near, Ronnie Gilbert, John McCutcheon, Arlo Guthrie, Peggy Seeger, Chad Mitchell and Judy Small. Honors include an "Indie" award for one of the top three folk recordings of 1984. In May of 1998 the War Resisters League gave their Peacemaker Award to Charlie and to Odetta. Pete Seeger nominated Charlie for the Sacco-Vanzetti Social Justice Award, which he received in November, 1999. Charlie has released a dozen solo albums since 1976, three albums with the touring ensemble Bright Morning Star, and numerous compilation albums with other artists. Charlie King is a musical storyteller and political satirist. His central vision as an entertainer is to leave audiences with a sense of optimism and possibility about the future. "I try to cover a broad emotional landscape in my concerts. The stories I collect and the songs I write take the listener on a journey of humor, heartache and hope. What I most value in a song is the way it helps us see an old reality in a totally new light." Folk legend Peggy Seeger says, "If we had more Charlie Kings in the world I’d be less worried," and Tom Paxton adds, "Luckily, we have him!"
KAREN BRANDOW has been performing with Charlie King since 1998. Prior to that, she was a member of the Amandla Community Chorus. While doing human rights work in Guatemala from 1986-1994, Karen studied voice and performance at the Angelica Rosa Academy of Performing Arts, and classical guitar in the National Conservatory of Music. She performed at numerous political/cultural events in that country as a soloist and was a founding member of the a cappella singing group, the Non-Traditional Imports. She began singing and playing guitar as a teenager. While living overseas, she broadened her repertoire to include Latin American music of the "Nueva Canción" or New Song Movement. She performs songs in English and Spanish that reflect her passion for justice and romance.
March 9 (Saturday): Absinthe Blind, The Blackouts, Daily Bridge Club
ABSINTHE BLIND
Absinthe Blind began in as four teenagers from a Midwest college town merging their thoughts. By the fall of that same year absinthe blind created a buzz in a scene that was changing. Bands such as HUM, the Poster Children, Menthol, Sarge, and Hardvark were moving up and new bands were breaking in. In the summers of 1997 and 1998 absinthe blind recorded two full length albums with Hammerhead Records. Through the music of the first two albums, absinthe blind was able to expand. They performed in venues all over the United States. Media attention of the Absinthe Blind rose to a pinnacle when the band was bestowed with the honor of "Best Band in Champaign-Urbana" by the prominent local entertainment magazine, The Octopus. Drawing comparisons to Radiohead, early U2, Pink Floyd, and the Stone Roses, live shows became larger and crowds grew to hundreds. Absinthe blind began sharing the stage with national acts such as Citizen King, Swervedriver, Dovetail Joint, Sponge, Jeb Loy Nichols, The Flys, The Gigolo Aunts and others. Their mailing list numbers had greatly increased and the fans begged for new music. 2001 saw the band switch to the Parasol Records Label and release 'The Everyday Separation'. Their most recent non-full length release is a version of 'Silent Night' on Parasol's Christmas Compilation released in November 2001.
For more information on Daily Bridge Club, go to: www.dailybridgeclub.com
March 10 (Sunday)- Allette Brooks and MJ Walker
ALLETTE BROOKS is a driven, passionate singer-songwriter who's breaking the rules and grinning. She has released three self-produced CDs in five years. She's a classically trained vocalist now singing acoustic folk. She didn't pick up her instrument of choice, a guitar, until she was studying ecology in Botswana as a college junior..Allette¹s performance style has been described as both "in your face" and "disarmingly relaxed." Her newest CD, "Swim With Me" was released Dec. 1, 2001. In the title track, the avid swimmer paints a longing, nearly mystical invitation using underwater imagery and experiences in rocky river canyons. The CD includes "Rolling Blackout," social and ecological commentary about our excessive use of energy; "Same Room," which gives voice to the fear and isolation of a child immigrant; an ode to Midwestern fireflies and the loss of wonder; and a piece written in the Okavango Delta in Botswana that has been an interactive hit with live audiences. Allette's deft touch and wit leaves listeners laughing at themselves and our species, while appreciating her skill on the strings. A student of human biology, she recognizes the complexity of environmental/social issues. She focuses on raising awareness rather than preaching solutions. Although, she says, "Being a folk artist, as opposed to being a mainstream pop artist, is inherently political. It's a choice to relate to people on a different level, to be really honest, and to be yourself." Her audiences respond with delight to that honesty, as well as her strong stage presence, intelligence, sarcastic wit and clear love of her art and theater. In an average show, audience members vote, sing, and take a quiz or two. The title track of her second disk, "Silicon Valley Rebel," paints a sketch of a feminist friend who bikes her environmental, gender and economic viewpoints to the corporate cubicle where she is a diva web designer. Her first album, "Privilege," was inspired by experiences in Africa and at Stanford, where her exposure to environmental problems and gender, race and economic inequities mobilized and energized her poetry. A perfectionist, Allette has produced her own CDs, choosing the artistic integrity and freedom over security -- and giving herself the time to get each track just right. Her music is available from Goldenrod Music, folkweb.com and many major online and retail stores.
March 12 (Tuesday)—David Rovics and Sarasparilla
DAVID ROVICS is a folksinger of the rabble-rousing variety. He has become something of a fixture in the American protest scene, performing at demonstrations throughout the country, including A16 (the April 16th protest against the IMF/World Bank), the School of the Americas, and many others. David also performs regularly throughout North America, Europe and occasionally elsewhere at festivals, folk clubs, college campuses, and at conferences, including many SEAC conferences as well as those of organizations such as Veterans for Peace, the Green Party, the Union of Radical Political Economists, Independent Progressive Politics Network, SURGE, STARC and many others. David has shared the stage with the likes of Pete Seeger, Michael Moore, Billy Bragg, Howard Zinn, John McCutcheon, Ralph Nader, Eric Drooker and Fred Small. David sings original songs about the various struggles of the day, combining accomplished bluegrass-style flat-picking with incisive lyrics. His fifth CD, Living In These Times, was recorded in September, 2001, most of it done live at Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs, New York. It includes songs about the September 11th tragedy in New York City as well as many songs focusing on the evils of US foreign policy such as the sanctions and bombing of Iraq, songs about the media, shutting down international financial institutions, and songs promoting polyamory and strange bicycles. David also sings many songs of other activist-oriented contemporary songwriters such as Jim Page, and those of a variety of 20th-century songwriters such as Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, and Phil Ochs. In addition to putting on concerts, David does performances and workshops that focus specifically on the music of 20th-century social movements such as the radical labor movement of the early 20th century and student and anti-war movements of the 1960's. David's recordings have been aired nationally by Pacifica Radio and by other radio stations across the U.S., Europe, Australia and New Zealand, including national radio in Ireland (RTE), the BBC, and the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). His songwriting has been commended by noted colleagues including Pete Seeger, and his songs have been published in Sing Out! magazine as well as in the Earth First! Journal.
March 14 (Thursday)- The Violents, Rectangle, and Tired of Midwifin’
THE VIOLENTS are a local “dance girl punk rock band” featuring Aimee Rickman, Annie Poppen, and Sally Mundy. For more information, please go to:
www.angelfire.com/indie/theviolents
RECTANGLE: The dissonant rock outfit Rectangle displays a love for guitars and all the strange, magical things they can do in their twisted but catchy indie rock songs. Listen for alternate tunings, effects pedals, and weird, almost Middle Eastern chord progressions as Rectangle's dual tensile guitar lines twine around one another like gossamer threads woven by hyperactive spiders. Yes, Poster Children indie rock magic carpet rides can be counted an influence on the Illinois quartet's sound, as can a number of the usual indie rock suspects -- Sonic Youth, Pavement, and The Pixies -- but Rectangle has a creepy, mangled, sometimes startling mien all its own. The band debuted in 1998 with an EP, Prowl Across the Arctic, then came back in 2000 with their first album, Bunker (produced by the Poster Children's Rick Valentin).
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