A look at a few Chicago West Side artists who tried to sell their music to Riot Fest crowds
This year, Riot Fest, the popular punk/rock/rap festival, moved from its long-time home in Humboldt Park (of the eponymous neighborhood) to Douglas Park (of North Lawndale). This was a big deal, because the circumstances behind the move were controversial and because, while Humboldt Park is working class and partially gentrifying, North Lawndale is poorer and about as far from gentrifying as one can get.
Since I am freelancing for a newspaper that happened to cover North Lawndale, I decided to see if I could do an article about what the fest-goers and residents thought about the move. What wound up getting published isn't quite what I submitted - chucks of it were cut/paraphrased for space, and a few paragraphs were rewritten completely - but most the substance survived.
One of the parts that wound up getting partially cut was a tangent about local musicians trying to take advantage of the crowds to try to sell their music. That sort of thing isn't unusual - you see artists trying to sell on 'L' trains, near the Cabrini-Green and down at the Loop. But it was still interesting to see rappers trying to sell music to white punks who were, at best, mildly curious, and, at worst, kind hostile.
And I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what it was some of the artists were trying to sell. It's one aspect of Riot Fest that flew under the radar, and I want it to be at least partially documented somewhere
L DOT (aka KING TURN UP) - an artist from Austin neighborhood, and the only one who actually seemed to know what Austin Weekly News was.
Rico Bandana (born Erick Lamont Vann Calbert), whom I mostly remember for his awesome hair style, said he lived on the West Side all his life, and that he was actually born in Mt Sinai Hospital (Which is located not that far from where Rico was selling CDs)
The embedding for his mixtape was disabled, but you can listen or download it here.
I was originally going to add a third artist, but "agugo tone" doesn't turn up anything on any search engines. Which suggests that I misspelled it. I tried several alliterative spellings, to no avail. That is why, as a reporter, you usually double-ckeck those things.
But even if I got all three of them, it wouldn't be a comprehensive list. I saw at least one more artist those name I didn't get. If anyone reading this was at Riot Fest and happened to run across into any other artists, please feel free to let me know in the comments. And if you were one of the musicians selling your stuff, please feel free to let me know, too.
(You don't need to have a Livejournal account to comment here - just log in using your Facebook/Twitter/Gmail account)
Since I am freelancing for a newspaper that happened to cover North Lawndale, I decided to see if I could do an article about what the fest-goers and residents thought about the move. What wound up getting published isn't quite what I submitted - chucks of it were cut/paraphrased for space, and a few paragraphs were rewritten completely - but most the substance survived.
One of the parts that wound up getting partially cut was a tangent about local musicians trying to take advantage of the crowds to try to sell their music. That sort of thing isn't unusual - you see artists trying to sell on 'L' trains, near the Cabrini-Green and down at the Loop. But it was still interesting to see rappers trying to sell music to white punks who were, at best, mildly curious, and, at worst, kind hostile.
And I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what it was some of the artists were trying to sell. It's one aspect of Riot Fest that flew under the radar, and I want it to be at least partially documented somewhere
L DOT (aka KING TURN UP) - an artist from Austin neighborhood, and the only one who actually seemed to know what Austin Weekly News was.
Rico Bandana (born Erick Lamont Vann Calbert), whom I mostly remember for his awesome hair style, said he lived on the West Side all his life, and that he was actually born in Mt Sinai Hospital (Which is located not that far from where Rico was selling CDs)
The embedding for his mixtape was disabled, but you can listen or download it here.
I was originally going to add a third artist, but "agugo tone" doesn't turn up anything on any search engines. Which suggests that I misspelled it. I tried several alliterative spellings, to no avail. That is why, as a reporter, you usually double-ckeck those things.
But even if I got all three of them, it wouldn't be a comprehensive list. I saw at least one more artist those name I didn't get. If anyone reading this was at Riot Fest and happened to run across into any other artists, please feel free to let me know in the comments. And if you were one of the musicians selling your stuff, please feel free to let me know, too.
(You don't need to have a Livejournal account to comment here - just log in using your Facebook/Twitter/Gmail account)