We ended up killing a few days in Chicago and using it as a base for various shows around Illinois…so I won’t bother with a day by day breakdown…but basically…our time in Chicago rolled like dis:
In Chicago we got the chance of being bigtime music geeks. It started off with heading to downtown Chicago and checking out the buildings made famous (in our world) by being on the cover of Wilco’s classic “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”. The Marina City buildings are truly stunning, a must see if coming to Chicago.
Our host Melanie had a friend who worked at Electrical Audio, Steve Albini’s famous recording studio, so when she found out that we were all Albini fanboys she made a few calls and lined us up a tour. Haha, Nik was photographing close-ups of all the outboard gear and microphones and Rhys was photographing anything that had anything to do with Steve.
Its an incredible studio, the most amazing mic collection I could have ever dreamed of, and really, really cheap to work in. For a full day of lock out in Studio B, which is still really awesome, including an engineer is only like $500 a day, what you get for that is silly good.
PIC – 1 of the maybe 40 odd draws of awesome ol’school mics.
After checking out the studio we headed back into the City to check out the water fountain made famous from the beginning credits of Married with Children.
Crusing around Chicago we discovered a beautiful example of the type of rusty cars you see everywhere in the US. There is no “warrant” type system here. Your car can be as rusty as you like.
The car gets us discussing how we are pretty much positive that the US government is doing EVERYTHING they can to kill US citizens…for example. You can drive around as crap and as rusty a vehicle as you want, if you ride a motorcycle you do not need to wear a helmet, you can buy dodgy as fireworks or guns easy as…Anything “bad” for you is CHEAP as, you can get a pouch of Tobacco and papers for $1, less then the cost of 1 orange, you can buy a dozen beer pretty much anywhere for like $4-5, the cost of 3-4 apples, even in pubs you can buy a beer for $1-1.50. Fast food is crazy cheap, there are literally dozens of different chains and they all have a “cheap” menu with heaps of items you can buy for less then $1. Its very expensive to eat healthily here.
Basically, everything that can make you sick or kill you is cheap and freely available, but then the healthcare system is so retarded, if you get sick you’re stuffed. I’ve talked to several people who pay in the region of $5-10k a year just in healthcare and home/car insurance.
For me to get the cheapest possible insurance that makes it legal for me to drive it costs $450 for 3 months. if i had bought a years worth, it would have worked out to more then the cost of the car. basically, only the well-off can afford any sort of insurance.
On a less depressing note, we went to “Millenium Park” and were all touristy and stuff. The “Millenium Bean” as people call it is truly awesome, especially standing underneath it looking up… you’d be a fool to not check it out if you come to Chicago.
Warning…tourist pics below
Melanie who works at Second City (Basically the coolest comedy club in Chicago) scored us free tickets to a show “Champaign SuperNova - How many democrats does it take to lose an election” which was damn awesome, and we then cruised into (couldn’t believe our lucky timing) a free show of Jeff Garland (Larry’s agent/friend off “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) who was doing a free stand-up show testing our various material for a paid show that was big show the next night that was being taped for a DVD. He was AWESOME.
Melanie found some kittens that had been dumped close to her house, so we hung out with these guys for a day or two.
While in Chicago, we went and saw our mates Die! Die! Die! who were in town playing the first stop of their US tour with The Von Bondies. It was funny, I arrived in LA on March 6th on the same flight into the US as those guys…but by the time I ran into them in Chicago they had been around the US, to the UK, to NZ, to Aussie and were back in the US again..respect.
We found out the next day that Liam Finn was playing that night as well! nuts.
It was Melanie our hosts birthday on the last day we were in Chicago and her Second City workmates were having a party, so we went to that, the most awesome thing about it was it was in an area of Chicago famous for being overrun with rabbits…they were everywhere! On a walk of like 100 metres from our park to the house we saw at least a dozen rabbits just cruising. During the night me, Nik and Ash headed out to get a snack and on the way back we saw a FOX! A fox like in the middle of Chicago, chasing one of the rabbits. We tried to find the fox again but gave up and went back to the party, just as we were about to leap out of the car, the same Fox just meandered past our car sniffing around… coolest thing yet.
Photo at the party…thats Melanie throwing up a “westside” on the right of the shot.
While in Chicago we also watched this movie called Frank and Cindy. Its awesome (and depressing) about a bloke - Frank, who had a hit with his band OXO in the 80’s and its a doco about his relationship with his wife and son, shot by his son. It’s really awesome. There are some clips and stuff you can view here: