Chicago Pride Guide for the Gay Tourist

Welcome to Dancing About Architecture. I see you’re in for pride. Your Melissa Etheride ’97 tour shirt tells me you may be here for music as well as getting your gay on. Glad to see you know that Pride is not only a great time to see a cross section of the Midwest gays or good lesbian spotting, but also a chance to see some great live music over the weekend.
Pride Weekend used to just be about the parade on Sunday, leaving the other days open for you to troll the bars. One year our pals at Northalsted Area Merchants Association decided a Pridefest, in the style of the successful Milwaukee one was just the thing. They were right. After a few shaky years, they seemed to have started to bring it. This year they’ll be bringing you stars like Ultra Nate and Deborah Cox on Friday night; Mya, Kim English, Crystal Waters and Kim English on Saturday. While a little 90’s diva heavy in my opinion, you can’t deny the star power and consistency, especially when there’s drag shows in between each act. If you need a break from all that weave, take a break and come with me and catch Chicago crowd pleasers 16 Candles and Rock Candy. So tasty.
A little drunk now on the music and warm Miller Lite? Let’s dance! You can hit some of boystown’s best clubs with the locals. Start at Scarlet where early is best and the DJ’s are always edgy and addicting. When Scarlet closes, you can go South for avant-guard craziness at Berlin, or more straightforward top-notch spinning at Hydrate. Don’t stay out too too late, the parade is the next day.

Post parade, I’ll give you two amazing options. You can follow me up North and avoid the bars and messiness for Pride North, a one night street party featuring live music by 16 Candles with opening DJ Voxbox and hosted by ME! If you’re not ready to pass out, join the legendary Circuit Mom as he presents Revolution, a new dawn in dance parties featuring DJ Brett Henderson and Matthew Harvat’s always stunning visuals. If you make it out of Chicago unstimulated by all this audio, don’t say I didn’t try! Thanks for coming, girl!

Kerli: Some Euro-beats For Your Maifest Weekend!

Here’s 2 fun, eurotastic remixes by Estonia pop singer/Traci Lords illegit daughter Kerli. I really dug her first album in 2008, just for its pop rock silliness. Now it seems she’s gone a bit more dance with her next step, Army of Love. Army came out earlier this year, but bolstered by her #1 position on Billboard’s Dance Chart, some fun remixes are dribbling, not leaking out to you.

Click on the down arrow on each for a free mp3:

new remix!

http://kerli.net/

An Open Letter To All Music Lovers …

Memorial Day Weekend is that odd time where people think of vacations but if you’re anything like me, escape is a hard thing to do when that oddity called “work” doesn’t let you get too far away from the homestead.

No bother, I offer you two album releases that can help anyone escape their day-to-day and find a little sonic vacation worth taking.

Consider each of these offering, and forward-thinking soldiers in the world of music, young “veterans” of the industry that, for whatever reason, haven’t found the right audience for global recognition. Sure, CockNBullKid has gotten amazing press from the shows at SXSW, touring with Duran Duran in the UK and finding great radio love across the pond with folks like Huw Stephens but would anyone here in the states truly know this band beyond hearing the name and thinking it sounded like a badly placed expletive in conversation? And, OK, I’ll give it to you, Patrick Wolf has been a darling of the underground music scene, even finding major label push from his ’06 release The Magic Position, but where is he on the US media radar: sadly, not a blip I tell you.

An open request to US music lovers everywhere, take in these two 2011 releases: ADULTHOOD from CockNBullKid and LUPERCALIA from Patrick Wolf and for your consideration, add them to some of your best releases of the year. Why? See below …