Assault The Weekend! (5/7/10)

May 7th, 2010 by Oswald Hobbes / Comment on this post

Here at Assault HQ, we know how difficult it is to plan a weekend in Chicago. With so much good live music to choose from (and so much alcohol to drink to while you listen), who can decide? We can. Just follow this itinerary and you’re guaranteed an awesome time:

FRIDAY:

Dust off your machetes and machine guns: Direct Hit! are coming to town again. This time they’re playing at infamous Logan Square uber-dive Ronny’s. Also on the bill: The Sky We Scrape, Red City Radio, The Please & Thank Yous, and Tension Generation. Can’t vouch for any of those other guys (although I genuinely looking forward to experiencing them this evening), but you NEED to see Direct Hit!. You need to see them NOW. They are tighter than fuck, and they are hilarious. And DH! mastermind Nick Woods is a genius-level pop-punk songwriter. They’re still riding the buzz from #4, their blockbuster EP from earlier this year. The show starts at 6 and it’s all ages, although you probably don’t want to bring your kids here.

Later on in the night: That Ronny’s show is pretty early, so you should have plenty of time to catch White Mystery at Crown Liquors on Milwaukee -- also in Logan Square, which is kinda serendipitous. On the bill: Kommie Kilpatrick, Tender, The Amoebas, and Blasted Diplomats. If you’ve never experienced the magic of White Mystery live, do yourself two favors. First, pick up a copy of their recent full-length debut. Second, come to this show tonight and get your brain exploded and your sensitive spaces filled with demonic ginger seed. WM are the real deal. Show starts at 9pm, and there’s a $7 cover.

SATURDAY:

My buddy at NoVo hipped me to a pretty cool show on Saturday, and now I’m gonna recommend it to you. Haven’t caught these acts live, but I perused their MySpace pages and all of them make some pretty unique sounds that should set your ears pleasurably a-tingle. Who are they, you ask? I answer: Pretty Little Empire, Brendan Losch, and David Safran. They all lean towards the quiet and agreeably weird, which is a pretty ringing endorsement coming from me (now that I’m old and can’t handle the spazzy stuff [If I could go off on a tangent here, and I think I can since you're not paying attention, I tried to spin Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam the other day and had to turn it off halfway through because it was irritating the holy shit out of me; I'm not sure if it's because I tried to play it during an intense Scrabble jam, or because my ears simply can't tolerate that level of chaos anymore, but Jesus Christ. I'm pretty sure we'll all look at Animal Collective in twenty years the way most rational people view the Grateful Dead: you had to be there, and you had to be on something {anything!}]). Anyways, this promises to be a solid, low-key show, and the perfect way to settle down after getting aurally gang-raped by the deviant bastards in Direct Hit! and White Mystery. It’s at the Chopin Theater, doors open at 9:30, and there’s a $6 cover charge (plus, as the press release so helpfully informs me, a cash bar). It’s 21+ so the kids are gonna need a sitter, again.

SUNDAY:

Sunday is Mother’s Day, which means you gotta spend some time with the woman that birthed you into this cacophonous and disorienting place we call “the world.” So do that -- take her out to brunch at Golden Corral, take her to see Iron Man 2, maybe even escort her to the church of her choice. But once you’re done with that, get ready to lose your goddamn shit: Converge is playing the Bottom Lounge. These hardcore legends will basically do to you what Jeffrey Dahmer did to really unlucky dudes in Milwaukee, and you’re gonna love it. Also on the bill: Coalesce, Black Breath, and Lewd Acts. If that doesn’t trigger your boner-reflex, you might need to see a doctor. This show is all ages, so bring the whole family, and it starts at the reasonable hour of 5pm. Tickets are $16. Get ready for your acid bath!