Friday night lights

Last night I went to a show, a concert if you will, with some friends. Hardcore punk shows such as this are based on the DIY (do it yourself) ethos. That is, whenever possible the traditional music club circuit is eschewed in favor of off-the wall locales such as bingo halls and art galleries. Over the past year The Galaxie has become one of the show spaces of choice. Located near the intersection of Belmont, California and Elston in a former industrial warehouse which has been converted into an multimodal space hosting dance classes, art workshops, music classes as well as the occasional all ages hardcore show. It was somewhat of a momentous event because Vitamin X (from the Netherlands) had not played Chicago in about 5 years. Nick Baran- a hardcore elder statesman at the age of 34- had planned this show with low expectations due to the decreasing popularity of the particular substyle of punk that Vitamin X plays and the fact that the past few shows he had organized had been less than stellarly attended.


However, those fears were put to rest when show time came and it was well attended (by underground standards) with close to 200 paying. Chicago's hardcore and punk scenes are not exactly united, with its distinct subsets rarely playing together. This is not only because of the musical differences (though to people not familiar with punk, hardcore and metal it all sounds similar) but also due to geographic differences. There is a South Side scene centered in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods made up largely of Spanish speaking bands, a separate scene grew around the (now defunct) Albion House in Rogers Park and there are of course bands from the suburbs and Northwest Indiana that are all loosely interconnected in the umbrella of DIY. Baran attributed the success of this show to having bands from distinct subsets play in order to maximize the turnout: Cold Shoulder (from Northwest Indiana aka the far Southwest suburbs) brought along carloads of their friends; Intifada's niche was being a band made up of younger kids from the city; Poison Planet brought out a group of friends that have at least a working knowledge of the straight edge lifestyle; and Sin Orden is a band most commonly associated with the aforementioned South Side scene (and quite aptly as all their lyrics are in Spanish). The show itself was one of the best in recent memory with the bands receiving much crowd participation and singing along, two things that are most important in this genre. It made for an enjoyable start to my weekend. Additional pictures can be found here (all photos by Ryan Lowry).