Many bands associated with famous DIY punk label SST Records have been enshrined for posterity, but SoCal rippers Saccharine Trust, who combined gloomy punk, wiggly free jazz, and other weirdness during SST’s 80s heyday, haven’t gotten their due. In 2000, local filmmaker Jim Sikora released My Char-Broiled Burger With Brewer, which he describes as a “portrait of an old and enduring friendship between two musicians—one who is very successful (Mike Watt of the Minutemen and the Stooges) and the other (Jack Brewer of Saccharine Trust) who is sliding into obscurity.” On Sunday, October 20, at 5:30 PM, the Siskel Film Center will screen the 40-minute film as well as music videos Sikora has shot for the likes of Tar and Urge Overkill, followed by a discussion between Sikora and former Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum. Sikora is working on the rock-centric Michael Shannon vehicle I’ll Die Tomorrow and a “smaller picture titled Things I’ve Done, starring David Yow and Brian Dennehy.”
It’s been a few years since singer Sacha Mullin (known for work with Dead Rider, Cheer-Accident, and Lovely Little Girls) dropped the solo album Duplex, but the song “Crow” is still ringing in Gossip Wolf’s ears! Mullin is working on a new album with Dead Rider’s Todd Rittmann, and he just dropped an earnest, hilarious video for “Crow,” whose Pop-Up Video-style factoids about crows, reality TV, and Pokémon are only sometimes actual facts—last time this wolf checked, Renée Zellweger was still alive! On Saturday, October 12, Mullin celebrates with a show at Cafe Mustache.
Last week, Chicago mashup masters the Hood Internet dropped “The Hood Internet Presents 1979,” a video that squeezes 50 hits from ’79 into three blissful minutes of cheeky pop. They’ll release another year’s video mashup each Thursday in October, concluding with “The Hood Internet Presents 1983” on Halloween—and that night they headline Schubas! v
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