Bandcamp’s daylong inducement to music-shopping sprees, rebooted yet again last month, returns for its latest iteration on September 3. On the first Friday of the month for the rest of the year, the online music store will pass along its usual cut of sales to independent musicians and labels—a practice it began almost a year […]
Tag: pandemic
Posted inMusic
How live music looks during COVID
Live music is back, though it looks different today than when it went away in March 2020. For 16 months we carried on without the collaborative magic of artist and audience. We’ve watched musicians find creative ways to keep gigging and be safe, whether delivering livestreams from their homes or playing on porches. Our favorite […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Postcards from a stranger
You may have seen one of Jenny Lam’s blank, prestamped, self-addressed postcards affixed to a light pole or on a bookstore shelf somewhere in the city. The postcards always feature the same prompt: “Tell me one thing you dream of doing before you die. Use this card as your canvas.” Lam, a Chicago-based artist and […]
Posted inCity Life
Keep it small, baby
During the loneliest stretches of pandemic isolation, when I spent ages eternal locked in my studio apartment eating canned chili and descending into my most feral state, I missed a lot of things. Thrift stores. Dinner parties. Riding the el. But the thing I missed with the most startling acuity, as if a vital organ […]
Posted inMusic
Damon & Naomi reunite with guitarist Michio Kurihara for meditative songs about distance and connection
One of the few positive aspects of the pandemic is how it’s highlighted the importance and irreplaceability of our relationships, even as a tangled web of geographic and public health considerations has often made it unclear when (or even if) we might be able to see one another after prolonged separation. A Sky Record, the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
‘I’ll be the first to die’
As Illinois prisons accelerated releases during the pandemic, many were forced into crowded, unmonitored residential reentry centers across Cook County.
Posted inCity Life
Saying it with flowers
An unexpected movement is taking over neglected landscapes across town.
Posted inNews & Politics
Brutal and beautiful summer
Three stories from the front lines of the 2020 protests, when the bridges went up and the statues came down
Posted inMusic
How working remotely brought Fuubutsushi together
An online collaboration by four musicians in four states has parlayed pandemic necessity into new forms of creativity—and some tight long-distance friendships.
Posted inMusic
Pitchfork announces the lineup for its delayed 2021 music festival
Plenty of COVID-related uncertainty still surrounds the Pitchfork fest, as it does any large-scale event—but we can be reasonably sure about who’s scheduled to play.
Posted inMusic
Chicago music venues lean on grassroots fundraisers as they wait for federal aid
COVID relief grants are taking their time arriving, but the compilation Situation Chicago 2 benefits CIVL’s SAVE Emergency Relief Fund right now.
Posted inNews & Politics
COVID’s invisible victims
The narrative that young and previously healthy Americans are the “new” pandemic patients is an erasure of Latino victims.
Posted inMusic
Ganser move their creativity online for the pandemic
Chicago postpunk band Ganser made their new remix EP with help from social-media connections built during lockdown.
Posted inNews & Politics
Politics of fear: Are youth really to blame for the carjacking spike?
Cops say masked teens with a thirst for violence and joyrides are terrorizing the city. An examination of arrests reveals a narrative built on shoddy data and anecdotal evidence.