Here’s another very fun event on the horizon: What are you doing next Saturday night? Feel like going New Wave dancing with some of the most flamboyant and fabulous Earthlings in Chicago, at a groovy new location? Here’s what I’m talking about:

Some of you know that over the last eight years I’ve been heavily involved […]

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In order to keep these roundups fresh as a spring daisy, I usually discard any links I’ve been keeping around that are more than a week old. But since this is OcPot’s first roundup in more than six weeks, I’m extending the freshness window slightly to include a few things that were just too good […]

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My friend and colleague Chris Tillman and her husband Joe Losurdo, working under the name Regressive Films, have collaborated on a new documentary about the history of punk rock in Chicago. Titled You Weren’t There — A History Of Chicago Punk 1977-1984, the film will have its world premiere on Saturday, November 24 at the […]

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Via Gadget Girl, let us now thrill to this 1976 appearance by Oingo Boingo on The Gong Show, from the early part of their career when they were still called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo. With bonus Bill Bixby!

 
(As the notes on the YouTube page point out, you might think that’s Danny Elfman […]

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Out, damned spot! Fox News caught red-handed, laundering entries on Wikipedia. Keep on scrubbing, Lady MacFox, but those stains belong to you always.

The GOP’s California strategy: winning the 2008 election by undoing California’s winner-take-all electoral system. Once the state goes piecemeal, the Repubs gain at least 20 electoral votes from safe GOP districts.
Arianna Huffington looks […]

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I think I must have died and gone to David Bowie video heaven.
Prior to discovering the other videos in this post on YouTube, I had seen the clip of Bowie performing “Young Americans” on the Dick Cavett show in December of 1974, because it’s on the Best of Bowie DVD set. (I missed seeing […]

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POLITICS: The Washington Post brings us the fascinating story of how Cheney’s quest to undermine environmental science for political purposes led to a humongous pile of rotting dead fish. “… Because of Cheney’s intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was […]

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I haven’t done one of these Chicago Fringe scene reports in a while, so here’s what’s on my radar this week:

The Neo-Futurists’ annual festival It Came From The Neo-Futurarium VI: Curse of The Neo-Futurarium, consisting of staged readings of various camp-ready old films, kicks off this Thursday, June 21 at 8pm. The first installment is […]

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Today’s rent day,* here in Chicago anyway, so here’s some Patti Smith to soften the blow.
This is Patti doing my favorite song from Horses, “Free Money,” at the final CBGB’s show on October 15, 2006. (Dodgy sound and video quality — looks like a phone video — but the historic nature of the occasion […]

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Just the thing for a Friday: Captain Sensible doing his version of “Happy Talk” (i.e., the best version ever!) on Top of the Pops. If you ask me, the parrot steals it.

 
Bonus: Captain Sensible cereal commercial!

 
… and the good Captain getting interviewed by a puppet.
I just wish there were a video for “Martha the […]

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Green Day’s cover version of “Working Class Hero” by John Lennon was released May 1 as the third single from Instant Karma: the Campaign to Save Darfur, Amnesty International’s album of Lennon covers by various artists to raise awareness about the human rights catastrophe in the Sudan. All proceeds from the album will go to […]

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This is it — tonight’s the night The Partly Dave Show makes its long-prophesied return, at 7:30pm at The Neo-Futurarium.
I’ll dish out one more exciting little fact about tonight’s show: Even in Blackouts will be unveiling* the brand-new Partly Dave Show theme song, hot out of the oven** and never before heard by human ears!
If […]

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Ah, another thrilling YouTube find!
Some of you will know Suzi Quatro as the most prominent female glam rocker of the early 70s, racking up a string of hits with Chapman-Chinn numbers like “Can the Can.” Some will know her only from her soft-rock duet “Stumblin’ In” with Chris Norman, which you have to have a […]

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As a follow-up to my Roddy Frame post from a week or two back, here’s Roddy teaming up with Mick Jones from The Clash and Big Audio Dynamite to do something energetic, political, and way danceable: the ever-fabulous “Good Morning Britain,” from Aztec Camera’s album Stray, released as a single in 1990. And this is […]

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