Champaign-Urbana Sound Revue

This year’s Midwest Music Summit in Indianapolis was another success, and featured several Champaign-Urbana bands. Over the three days, badge-wearers and other festival patrons were able to see performances by Headlights, elsinore, Cameron McGill and the Quartet Offensive, the Elanors, Lorenzo Goetz, Tractor Kings and Shipwreck. Check out midwestmusicsummit.com for more info and several downloads from great bands.

Speaking of music festivals, the second annual Pygmalion Music Festival is set to kick off on Wednesday, Sept. 20 until Saturday, Sept. 23. Last year’s festival brought bands and fans from all over the US, and garnered press from the mighty Pitchfork! What might this year’s bring, you ask? Well, check out pygmalionmusicfestival.com for the full schedule.

2006 CU Music Awards “Best Live Band” winner elsinore played a free Courtyard show last Thursday to welcome students to the neighborhood. The show also featured local favorites Shipwreck, a drummer-less Watery Domestic, and Ohtis. Said one fan: “Wow.” You can catch elsinore this Saturday at the Cowboy Monkey, with Darrin Drda, Lovely Houses and Gentleman Caller. Check out elsinoremusic.com for more info, or find them on Myspace and friend them. You know you want to. The friend count is what it’s all about.

Headlights’ new Polyvinyl release, Kill ’em With Kindness is now out for you to purchase. They kicked off a few months of touring the country with a CD release show at the Canopy Club last Sunday. The Living Blue and Decibully also appeared. You can catch Headlights in CU again at the Pygmalion Festival. See how we’ve come full-circle?

For those of you who decided not to brave the rainy weather on Saturday, you missed truncated sets and wacky antics at the Urbana Sweetcorn Festival. Sets by Lorenzo Goetz, the Living Blue, Tractor Kings, and Doxi [formerly Soultro (formerly Doxy)] went off with many hitches. Amid leaky stage roofs, scattered showers, butter-covered hands, electrocution jokes, and the chance of being out-danced, the bands took the stage and still managed to rock downtown Urbana. Unconfirmed reports that Lindsay Lohan was riding a bike around the festival were shot down when Beauty Shop drummer Creech removed his giant sunglasses.

Tonight you can catch an awesome rock show at the Canopy Club featuring Triple Whip, Bellcaster, and Oceans (9 p.m., $5), or you could head over to the Cowboy Monkey and sing karaoke with Champaign’s own Live Karaoke Band (10 p.m., $5). That’s right, a real band plays and you sing. Check out livekaraokeband.com for more info and sexy pictures.

Friday’s best bets: Happy hour at Cowboy Monkey with local world-beat favorite Desafinado (5:30 p.m., free) and Lorenzo Goetz at the Illini Union Courtyard Cafe (9 p.m., $5). Downtown will be abuzz with Dress Code at Mike n Molly’s, and a hot show featuring the Great Crusades (ex-Suede Chain), the Greedy Loves and Lanterna (10 p.m., $5).

Saturday: elsinore w/ Lovely Houses, Gentleman Caller and Darrin Drda at the Cowboy Monkey (9 p.m., $5) is a great call, as is the Reds’ show (featuring Kayla Brown) at the IMC at 9 p.m.

Sunday: One of the great CU songwriters, Cameron McGill, returns home for an Iron Post show with a string quartet, and opener Matt Hopper (10 p.m., $5).

Mike Ingram has been a musician and booking agent in the CU scene for several years, and has learned the hard way not to sniff Seth Fein’s fingers when asked. You can reach him at forgottenwords@gmail.com to pass on hot show news and the like. If you think you can come up with a better title for his column, let him know. He will sing your praises in this very column.

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