underground music/art shows summary

For the past four or five years I have been a part of a group (or scene if you will) of people in the Chicago area who collectively and individually put on underground music and art shows. During this time we (my roommates and I) have collected just about 743 videos of bands and artists alike displaying their craft in front of a live audiance in these underground spaces. I use the word underground lightly but really what that really means is "not a proper venue" or to be even more clear "illegal" in the sense that what we are doing could get us arrested or at least a hefty fine. Venues that pay extra taxes to cities like Chicago just to have live music until a certain time of night would love nothing more than to shut said underground venues down in order to get the business that we collect on any given night.

As far as music goes this normally conforms to basements, lofts, and warehouse spaces that are put to use with five to six bands on any given show night; with no stage, no ticketmaster, and no security or drink tickets to speak of. This also means no $15 door fee, no $6 PBR, and no signed autographs and backstage access. To those of you who think that stuff is important at any given venue well boohoo, to the rest of us that stuff is deliberately there to make you invest more money into the venue that is hosting said event. With these sort of bigger venues like the empty bottle, schubas, the metro, and even the aaragon; there is no love for the actual music being done in the city of Chicago, there are only: bands that people like and are willing to spend money to see. At the end of the day the venue is much more interested in decreasing the amount of paper in your wallet rather than whether or not you or anyone else actually enjoys the music being played.

Try and imagine Molly Cyrus or AC/DC or whoever-the-fuck playing a full show in front of a group of 200 people tops in a warehouse space in Little Village being promised very little or no pay; with kegs being tapped, blunts and bowls being passed, and fully-naked-hairy-drunk 40 year old men grabbing the microphone to occasionally contribute to the lyrics being sung. Thats right, you cant; because it doesn't happen. The shows that do happen in these usually cramped spaces have a certain sense of intimacy that one simply can not spend money to get at a "real" venue like the Metro. In a way, so many of us banding together to see shows that provide this unified feeling puts a real face to the rest of the world and the way that they view music. Whether or not you like the music matters to you but having a sense of community in any given scene is very important in order to keep spaces like this functioning.

This idea of the mainstream music/art shows versus the underground meaningful music/art shows that occur will basically be the basis of my paper and researching their origins and how they have turned into what we consider normal today.