Do you love footwork music but despair of ever being able to bust moves like the masters? You’re in luck! Starting this Saturday, footwork dance crew the Era—regular collaborators with production collective Teklife—host a series of three dance workshops to help you dribble and skate like the pros. The workshops are Saturday afternoons from 7/11 till 7/25 at Pilsen’s High Concept Labs, which also hosts the Era’s Lab Sessions (“Best way to footwork in an art gallery during off-hours” in this year’s Best of Chicago issue). You don’t need to show up to every one, but it can’t hurt. Each class runs from 4 to 7 PM and costs $10.
It seems like just yesterday that Gossip Wolf was a wee pup shopping for industrial bangers at Wax Trax! Records in Lincoln Park—but it was actually the early 90s! The shop closed in 1996, after a bankruptcy, a brief stay in Bucktown, and the passing of cofounder Jim Nash. (The Wax Trax! label, home to the likes of Ministry, Front 242, and KMFDM, closed in 2001.) Nash’s children, Julia and Aaron, helped stage a retrospective festival in 2011 and a pop-up shop in 2014, which coincided with the relaunch of the label. They’ve also been hard at work with Regressive Films (producers of Chicago punk doc You Weren’t There) on Monumentary, a film about the life work of Nash and longtime partner Dannie Flesher (who died in 2010). It features a heap of new interviews, and with luck it’ll be ready for SXSW in 2016. The filmmakers have topped their $45,000 goal on Kickstarter, but backers can still earn serious swag, including rare test pressings of Wax Trax! vinyl.
Chicago rockers Dastardly have kept pretty quiet since 2012—too quiet, if you ask this wolf. But last Wednesday they self-released their debut full-length, The Hollow, and it’s a delight from its opening notes, blending ornate chamber pop with lush folk. Dastardly celebrate at Lincoln Hall on Fri 7/10 with openers the Gold Web and Oshwa. v
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