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Chicago critics on C3
Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune and Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times are two of the very best daily newspaper pop music critics in America. Their mix of passion for music and reporting chops are mighty impressive. Like Siskel & Ebert, they’re friends, co-hosting the “Sound Matters” radio show, but they’re also competitors, make no mistake.
In their coverage of Austin-based C3 Presents, which somehow bought Lollapalooza as a destination festival to Grant Park five years ago, I think the quest for one-upmanship has made DeRo slant a little more negatively than called for. For instance, he’s repeatedly slammed C3’s radius clause, which contractually prevents bands playing Lolla from doing gigs at Chicago clubs for 60-90 days in each direction. But the radius clause is an industry standard and C3’s Charles Attal has been reasonable in letting local bands skirt. Last year, for instance, Alejandro Escovedo and the Jones Family Singers played free shows at Shady Grove the day before their ACL Fest sets and no one from C3 objected.
I mean, you don’t want a band like Kings of Leon playing Cedar Park before ACL, but Bob Schneider’s still going to play every night of the week whether he’s signed a radius clause or not.
Also, bands that play festivals always draw better at the clubs next time through, according to Grace Potter of the Nocturnals (at a panel last year). So it’s not like the clubs totally lose out.
DeRo basically blamed C3 when Rage Against the Machine fans nearly rioted last year. The only way C3 could’ve prevented that craziness would’ve been to not book Rage. Another thing DeRo’s been hammering C3 about is that their legal rep in Chicago is Mayor Richard Daley’s nephew. C3’s Charlie Jones has said that the Bossette’s neph was not involved in bringing Lolla to the sacred fields of Grant Park.
But it’s good that DeRogatis is watching C3. If they ever truly do something questionable in Chicago, he’ll pounce. But I don’t see where they’ve done a thing wrong.
I think this article by Kot is pretty fair about C3, and if you read it the way I did, you can understand why Chi-Town has not wrapped its big shoulders around C3. Chicago is the most agoraphobic town I’ve ever been to. It has a natural mistrust for outsiders. If you haven’t lived there at least 10 years, you might as well be a tourist in a Cardinals cap who stranded from the group going to the Field Museum.
Kot knocks C3 for not embracing Chicago, but’s not easy to hug an ice sculpture.
Personally, I love that a trio of Austin guys has taken the Windy City by storm. C3 co-manages Soldier Field and books the Congress Theater, in addition to hosting the biggest Chicago event of the year in Lollapalooza.
I lived in Chicago for three years (‘89- ‘92) and wrote a column for the Chicago Sun-Times, but to the locals I just got off the Greyhound last week. If you don’t speak in one of those Don McLeese accents that also helps scrape ice off your windshield, your words just don’t have much significance in Chicago. I felt so shut out there I took a job in Dallas just to be back in Texas.
So, go get’em C3. Order your beef sandwiches undipped, your pizza thin crust and have them hold the celery salt on your hot dogs. Put horns on your golf carts as you drive all over Grant Park the weekend of Aug. 7- 9. Get the gig staging the Olympics. Strut around as President Obama’s favorite promoters. Rub Chi-town’s face in your ability to get things done. Revenge is a dish best served with barbecue sauce and a side of beans.
Comments
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By MikeyRoyal
July 31, 2009 12:44 PM | Link to this
I think C3 appears in this story about 3000 times, yet the article doesn’t really tell readers how C3 throws its weight around. Chicago loves Chicago as much as Texas loves Texas. The people (and music “writers”) in Chicago probably just wonder why three Texans have ALL the POWER and are getting all the loot. They wonder why SOMEBODY/ANYBODY local can’t do it instead. Corky, why don’t you give us some real dirt about the mafia style strong-arming big agents and promoters do to get their way for clubs and the festivals while bands without mob-style representation play free shows for no people. Oh yeah, you don’t want to put your VIP ACL pass in peril. So let’s just let the ignorant masses sweat and pay $5 for funnel cake. Let the bands (with booking agents) and “press” eat and drink free in AC.
By Michael Corcoran
July 31, 2009 1:53 PM | Link to this
MikeyRoyal- The reason C3 was able to take Chicago was because they pay their way, giving $1.6 million to Chicago parks dept. Plus, they lost over $1 million the first year of Lolla in Chicago. Committing to the long haul, they’re reaping the rewards.
By MikeyRoyal
July 31, 2009 4:52 PM | Link to this
There isn’t any debate about whether or not C3 has it good in Chicago. That’s crystal clear. The question/debate is whether or not LOLA is good for the “grunts” of the Chicago music scene. A similar question could be posed about ACL, which rewards national acts and C3 rostered artists with big crowds while leaving out Austin “grunts”. The chosen few get to hang out in the VIP area while the small bands, bartenders, and small clubs that make the scene all year long get left out of the goldmine that ACL and LOLA have become. The Chicago writers are saying it’s great that you gave $1.6 million to the Parks Dept., but in the meantime you are siphoning a massive amount of business from people who toil in the trenches the rest of the year. Bands that aren’t part of ACL can’t expect to draw a crowd that weekend. Clubs that aren’t part of ACL can’t expect to draw a crowd and make any money that weekend. And in fact, the weekend before and the weekend afterwards are pretty dead too. These festivals take a lot of thunder away from local bands and local clubs and it leaves them out in the cold (or heat in our case).
By Outside Lands II
July 31, 2009 6:54 PM | Link to this
I think Chicago is taking the local pride thing a little too far. But C3 is far from perfect. For example ACL is the same core lineup as San Fran’s Outside Lands this year. Both are in big city parks, but San Fran has much better (cooler) weather than ACL. And none of the Outside Land stages are corporate advertisements, but ACL hits us over the head with ads from AT&T, DELL, AMD, & XBOX. Point being, Outside Lands does the same exact thing in the same park setting, but better.
By Jim DeRo
July 31, 2009 8:51 PM | Link to this
Michael: You know I love ya, brother, and I appreciate the kind words up top. But a few points:
I was born and raised in New Jersey, didn’t come to Chicago until 1992, and my experience was nothing like yours: I found this music community warm and inviting pretty much from the moment I arrived. So I don’t buy your “outsiders not welcome here” argument.
I think you gloss over the specifics in some of my reporting on C3 — for example, the Rage gate rush last year seems to have been a direct result of a C3 supervisor ordering a gate opened against the advice of experienced local security personnel. So yeah, it could have been considered in part a C3 error.
Chicago and Austin, as you well know, have a veritable sister-city relationship, especially with the music communities. (The Mekons/Waco Bros. belong as much to Austin as Alejandro does to Chicago, etc.) Any criticism of C3 in Chicago is not because C3 is from Austin, not Chicago. It’s because C3, as Kot puts it in his article, doesn’t seem to care to establish any sort of Chicago identity or community presence. There is no aesthetic in their Chicago festival; it is, as I’ve said many times, essentially a musical Wal-Mart on the lake. And as such, it has both its champions and its detractors in the surrounding community, just like when the big box store tries to move in.
By stan
July 31, 2009 9:38 PM | Link to this
What Rage gate rush? Rage played the last set of the day, gates opened at 11am that morning.
By RichardC
August 1, 2009 12:58 AM | Link to this
MikeyRoyal — your posts make you sound an awful lot like you’re in a local band that’s never been tapped to play ACL Fest. You say ACL “rewards national acts and C3 rostered artists with big crowds while leaving out Austin ‘grunts’” and that “the small bands … that make the scene all year long get left out of the goldmine …” In your first post, you say that festival slots only go to acts with “mob-style representation.” By that I suppose you mean local acts like past/current ACL performers the Belleville Outfit, the Jones Family Singers, Troy Campbell, Ruthie Foster, Nakia, Terri Hendrix, Jon Dee Graham, Sunny Sweeney, the Real Heroes, Leatherbag, Beaver Nelson, Nelo, Greyhounds, Amy Cook, Brandon Rhyder, Sara Hickman, Trish Murphy, Patrice Pike, South Austin Jug Band, White Ghost Shivers, Kevin McKinney, Topaz, Gary Clark Jr., Jane Bond, Wayne Hancock, Jimmy LaFave, the Gourds, Bruce Robison, Del Castillo, Monte Warden, David Garza, the Damnations, Pauline Reese, W.C. Clark and good lord, I could go on and on. And that’s not even mentioning the likes of Bob Schneider, Kelly Willis, Reckless Kelly, Okkervil River, Alejandro Escovedo, Joe Ely, Los Lonely Boys and of course Willie Nelson — all major draws on the local (and national) scene, and for good reason: They’ve EARNED IT. And yeah, you better believe a lot of them have booking agents. That comes with the territory of being a professional music act. But a lot of them also work their behinds off booking themselves and putting out records on their own labels. All of these artists represent the local scene loud and proud at ACL and hold their own against any of the national acts C3 also books. And C3 books those national acts because, well, that’s what you get at a festival of this magnitude, and even diehard local music fans can appreciate (and deserve a chance to see) touring acts, too. As for the festival somehow hurting the local club scene … really? This is ONE weekend a year. And I’m pretty sure the local economy — hotels, restaurants, shops, Waterloo Records, etc. — does alright that particular weekend. Oh, and as for those $5 funnel cakes you were also griping about — I’m not even sure if you can find a funnel cake at ACL, but if you can and it’s $5, I challenge you to find a cheaper funnel cake at any other festival, street fair or county fair in the country. Sorry for the rant, but whiners like you are as big a sore on the Austin music scene as the folks calling 911 to complain about outdoor concerts.
By Michael Corcoran
August 1, 2009 10:15 AM | Link to this
Stan- The gate incident at Lollapalooza last year happened after Rage Against the Machine started. When many in the crowd were trapped into a corner by surging Rage fans, C3 made the decision to open a gate to allow those who wanted to leave to do so. There was no other way for them to get out. When the gate opened, a wedge of fans outside the park rushed in, trying to crash the show. In my opinion C3 did absolutely the right thing, putting crowd safety over the threat of giving access to crashers. The Sun-Times report blamed C3 for creating a volatile situation. Here’s the Sun-Times story by DeRogatis: http://blogs.suntimes.com/derogatis/2008/08/ragingduringtherageset_her.html
By Stan
August 2, 2009 4:31 PM | Link to this
So, the promoter decided to help trapped fans, opened an exit, and some of the local “music fans” decided to storm an outgoing point? Nice. I can totally see how the fault lies with C3(hence the sarcasm DeRo).
I love “Sound Matters” btw, wake up every Sat. morn at 6am to listen. The reviews have turned me on to some good albums.
By Doug Martsch
August 3, 2009 9:54 PM | Link to this
They lost $$ in year one? really? Rumor is they’ve sold sponsorship of Buckingham fountain to Mt. Dew and it sprays green all weekend this year.