We’ve known for a while that the Internet is good for at least a dozen different things, including watching cat gifs, watching pornography, and buying vintage country-music concert tees (which, considering the vicissitudes of a freelancer’s income and the fact that I just moved to the sixth most expensive city in the world, maybe I shouldn’t be buying, even if they were a remarkably good deal as far as vintage concert T-shirts go). To this short but growing list we can add “being constantly reminded how old the pop-culture ephemera from your youth is, and therefore how old you are getting.” But I do highly recommend this Spin piece on the 20th anniversary of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s immortal “Smells Like Nirvana,” even if it makes you feel less than youthful.
Brief bouts of nostalgia and/or existential crises vis-a-vis the inevitable aging process aside, it’s best to keep one’s eyes on the future. And right now very few musicians are doing more to push pop music into the future than Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, who for this week’s installment of Artist on Artist was interviewed by Chicago dance-music geek Chrissy Murderbot. It’s pretty great. Also on this week’s B Side, Three Beats gives us the rundown on the new record by jazz-metal fusioneers Yakuza, the scoop on young classical group the Spektral Quartet landing a U. of C. residency, and a collaboration between an Indiana indie label and a Chicago nonprofit. Gossip Wolf has the haps on Coach House Sounds and Verma, plus big news for fans of competitive jug-band performances. And the Soundboard recommends upcoming shows by Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Angry Samoans, Lindstrom, Holly Golightly, Miike Snow, and more.