When I heard about this new New England psych project, I wondered if the name “Stella Kola” referred to a solo artist, a duo, or a band—or possibly alluded to a soft drink. It turns out that it’s a little from column A and a little from column B. Stella Kola is the collaboration of […]
Author Archives: Steve Krakow
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Prolific composer John Cale kicks off 2023 with a double album
It’s hard to convey how much the music of John Cale means to me. The Welsh-born polymath cofounded the Velvet Underground, bringing a crucial avant-garde perspective to the band; he’d worked with experimental titans Tony Conrad and La Monte Young back when Lou Reed was still writing teenage doo-wop pastiches. When Cale left the band […]
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Remembering the Big Boss Lady
“I’m the mother and the grandmother of the blues,” Johnnie Mae Dunson declared in a 2005 interview with the Chicago Tribune, and I won’t argue. “When I first started playing in Chicago, in the ’40s, people said ugly things about a woman who plays the blues,” she recalled. “They said, ‘She must not be a […]
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John Primer is a living link to the departed giants of Chicago blues
It’s barely January, and already a “bomb cyclone” storm has frozen pipes, disrupted travel, and much worse, all while a “tripledemic” tears through the population. Every year the Secret History of Chicago Music undertakes its annual Winter Blues series, and every year the season seems to find new ways to give us the blues. This […]
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Forty years in review
Joe Shanahan founded sister venues Metro and Smart Bar in 1982, inspired by the adventurous punk and no wave he’d seen in the late 70s at New York venues such as the Mudd Club and CBGB. Shanahan was in his 20s at the time, but the Wrigleyville building his venues occupied had been built in […]
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Homegrown guitar legend Harvey Mandel issues a mind-bending new album
Harvey “the Snake” Mandel is a guitarist’s guitarist. Born in Detroit in 1945 and raised in Morton Grove, he moved to the west coast in his early 20s to launch his career. He never became a household name like Stevie Ray Vaughan or Eric Crapton, but beginning with his debut LP, 1968’s funky fuzz classic […]
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Local soul sensation Jo Ann Garrett disappeared from the biz in her 20s
Sometimes the Secret History of Chicago Music reads like a novel, with an interesting origin story, lots of detail spanning the artist’s entire career, and a satisfying conclusion. But sometimes I hit a wall, and SHoCM feels more like a mystery story. Even when I don’t ask, those columns are essentially a plea to anyone […]
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Witchslayer have finally released the album they should’ve made 40 years ago
I’m choosy about metal. Thrash and technical metal don’t often move me, and as unhip as it makes me sound, I don’t care for most death metal or black metal either. (The latter’s well-documented Nazi infestation doesn’t help—but yeah, I do have Venom’s first album.) I like my metal sludgy and epic, preferably with lyrics […]
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Walter Jagiello defined the polka sound of Polish Chicago
I’m part Polish, but in 18 years of the Secret History of Chicago Music, I’ve somehow never covered a polka musician. By certain generous estimates, around 1,900,000 people of Polish descent live in the Chicago metropolitan area—it’s the largest such community in the United States and the second worldwide only to Warsaw. Polka originated in […]
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Saxophonist Clifford Jordan epitomized the Chicago tenor sound
When tenor saxophonist Clifford Jordan died in 1993, he hadn’t lived in Chicago for nearly 40 years, but he was still beloved here. “Clifford’s personality was warm and sincere, just like his tone on the saxophone,” Chicago tenor titan Von Freeman told Howard Reich at the Tribune. “He was a beautiful person—he helped me and […]
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Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin hit the horror-prog sweet spot this Halloween season
Being a fan of Italian horror prog rockers Goblin can be massively rewarding and profoundly confusing. Famous for mind-bendingly complex tunes as well as their scores for late-70s films by the likes of Dario Argento and George Romero, Goblin dissolved in the early 80s, and since they began re-forming a couple decades ago they’ve existed […]
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Soul-jazz organist Odell Brown helped write Marvin Gaye’s ‘Sexual Healing’
I’ve been delving into Windy City jazz for most of my life, beginning with the out-there, Afrocentric sounds of the Sun Ra Arkestra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and the like. These days, as an old man, I’m also drawn to soul jazz—an earthier, groovier style that incorporates elements of hard bop, blues, gospel, R&B, […]
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In a scene full of big personalities, Jim Post was a giant
Once again, Chicago has lost a legendary musician, and in this author’s opinion there haven’t been nearly enough public tributes. Jim Post was a crucial part of the Old Town folk scene in the 1970s, but compared to John Prine, one of his contemporaries on that scene, he’s barely been memorialized. Both men had long, […]
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Magma turn up the positivity on their new album, Kãrtëhl
Formed by drummer Christian Vander in Paris in 1969, Magma have made a career of defying convention, and the fact that they’re still actively recording and playing live today is an astonishing gift. Their music could arguably be labeled modern classical, progressive rock, free jazz, or even psychedelia, but it’s too big for any of […]
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The Reader’s guide to World Music Festival Chicago 2022
The term “world music” has never been adequate to the task we’ve set it—even in its most benign reading, it implies a division between the listener and the rest of the world. And if that listener is in the United States, our country’s global hegemony in popular music colors the term’s meaning too. Americans don’t […]