In the event that you haven’t quite swallowed the dispiriting new post-Blagojevich narrative about the irredeemable corruption apparently endemic to Illinois–Whet had a great Chicagoland post about it a few days back–and are thus still capable of taking pride in anything that’s publicly connected to Chicago, you might want to look into this call for music from the producers of We Believe: Chicago and Its Cubs, a documentary in progress that’s due for release in 2009. Allegedly it’s the first to receive the team’s blessing in more than 30 years.

Basically they’re looking for local bands doing songs about Chicago. It’s a little unclear whether they want covers or originals, but you can e-mail yourmusic [at] webelievethemovie [dot] com with questions if you’re just as lousy as me at parsing the instructions.

The winning song will appear in the movie (alongside the likes of Frank Sinatra and Billy Corgan) and will also be collected on a CD with the rest of the ten top submissions. That means you stand to gain a cut of any album-sales revenue along with the non-negligible exposure of having your music in a nationally distributed Cubs documentary. So get cracking! What rhymes with Kosuke Fukudome?

UPDATE: The producers have replied to clarify that they are looking for cover songs about Chicago, not original tunes. 

Philip Montoro

Philip Montoro has been an editorial employee of the Reader since 1996 and its music editor since 2004. Pieces he has edited have appeared in Da Capo’s annual Best Music Writing anthologies in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011. He shared two Lisagor Awards in 2019 for a story on gospel pioneer Lou Della Evans-Reid and another in 2021 for Leor Galil's history of Neo, and he’s also split three national awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia: one for multimedia in 2019 for his work on the TRiiBE collaboration the Block Beat, and two (in 2020 and 2022) for editing the music writing of Reader staffer Leor Galil. Philip has played scrap metal in Lozenge, drummed with the Disasters, the Afflictions, and Brilliant Pebbles, and sung for the White Outs. He wrote the column Beer and Metal from 2012 till 2015, and hopes to do so again one day. You can also follow him on Twitter.