Okay, if you missed part one of this road trip to Chicago, no worries, just click here to catch up. And speaking of catch up, we’ll watch this video moment of hilarity from Pulp Fiction while you read yesterday’s news:
Okay, Gumby and I have awoken from our nap and we now take you to Evanston, Illinois...
To 27 Live, where The Handcuffs are opening up for a reading by Legs McNeil.
It's just about showtime, so let's go in and let the evening begin.
Here's Derrick the bartender serving up a can of Pabst.
There's The Handcuffs merchandise table. Let's go say hi to the person behind the table...
The person manning the table is Erika Linden Green, in addition to helping out The Handcuffs, she's also a freelance creative, check her out here: Erika Linden Green.
I ran into my friend Aaron at the show. I last saw Aaron in Chicago when I was doing my 365 bar crawl blog. Aaron drums for the popular Chicago band, The Joans. And note that Erika made sure that the merch stays in the picture!
The stage is all set up...
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome...
The Handcuffs! From left: Alison Hinderliter, keyboards; Susie Q, lead guitar; Brad Elvis, drums; Chloe F. Orwell, lead vocal, rhythm guitar and Emily Togni, bass.
And they're off to a rocking, thunderous start. This is the first gig with their new guitarist Susie Q, and they sound great! The crowd is loving them.
Emily adds some harmony while keeping things grounded in bass land.
Brad pounds the skins from the back of the stage. He puts on a one-man show twirling and bouncing the sticks around while laying down the beat for The Handcuffs.
Here's the front person and lead vocalist for the band, Chloe F. Orwell belting out a tune onstage, where she rules it like a badass!
Is she not Devo? Nope, she's keyboardist extraordinaire, Alison, proving that despite what Kermit says, it is easy being green.
Kerrrrang!
Brad Elvis, rocking steady.
I'm not the only one taking photos of the show. This guy's taking a shot of Susie Q up on stage.
Feets don't fail me now!
Feets part two.
Feets Part III: The Search For The Megaphone!
You can't see Brad's feet, but you sure can feel his beat back there bathed in his magenta spotlight.
I've seen The Handcuffs in the past and have been blown away, but this line up is killer, here's some shows they're playing at soon, you should definitely check them out: Upcoming Handcuffs Shows. And if you can't see them live, stop being so stupid and download their tunes or buy their CD's already. Sheesh!
Okay, The Handcuffs set is over and now the stage is being set up for Legs McNeil. Legs is the co-author (along with Gillian McCain) of the legendary book, "Please Kill Me."
And here's the man himself, Legs McNeil. Legs delivers a fun show and it's way more lively than most book readings.
Legs started out by reading some pages from his forthcoming book he's working on.
Then he launched into some great stories about writing the oral history of punk, "Please Kill Me."
It was fun to hear Legs reading excerpts from the book, in his unique way of delivering the great punk rock tales within the book.
As I had stated in part one of this adventure, Legs was my first New York editor and I had the privilege of interviewing him and Gillian for my magazine, fishwrap, after "Please Kill Me" was published. Here's a short excerpt from that interview: Legs: We wanted the book to become a punk book, not be about punk. Sex and dope and violence is much more interesting than if you have an E chord or a D chord.The book is very subversive. It makes you think. We achieved the book we wanted to do.
It was a great show and it was fun to see Legs after all those years and it's always fun to see Brad, Chloe and the rest of the Handcuffs!
And Gumby even made it up onstage for a final encore.
Meanwhile, back in Peoria the next day, I had to go to work. Ugh! See you all tomorrow.
Further reading: The Handcuffs on facecrack, The Handcuffs and Please Kill Me.
