It's the '90s in Chicago Again This Week

Two great Chicago bands from the '90s are back and playing in town this week. The fantastic Poi Dog Pondering never really left (I do recall them "breaking up" but the leader Frank Orrall was back in business with a new lineup within a few months) but the Freddy Jones Band was definitely gone, as their Wikipedia entry states. Both are fun bands with Poi Dog being the musical outlet for Orrall's world beat sensibilities and Freddy Jones fitting in somewhere on the poppish end of the jam band side of the rock world.

Both bands will be back in what for those bands are prototypical venues. Poi Dog will perform with Abra Moore at the Metro (Clark St. just north of Wrigley Field) Wednesday and Friday nights. Freddy Jones will play Martyrs' (Lincoln Ave. due west of Wrigley Field) Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights. The Freddy Jones shows are sold out but this is Chicago; meaning if you want to go and you can throw the dough, you are in. The Metro is a fantastic little theater (capacity of about 1000 including a few hundred seats upstairs) that Poi Dog played quite often including notable New Year's Eve shows from the late '80s through the mid '90s. Martyrs' is a small bar venue with good sight lines that probably holds less than 200 people. Freddy Jones surely played Martyrs' back in the day but I remember seeing them upstairs at the now defunct Wrigleyside on Clark St. just south of Wrigley. One of the numerous attractions of the Wrigleyside was that Cindy Crawford occasionally hung out there when she visited friends in the neighborhood, she also claimed it as a college bar from her days at Northwestern, seven miles north. The guys from Freddy Jones lived in Wrigleyville at the time and are all pretty good guys as is Frank Orvall. For what it's worth Poi Dog, Freddy Jones and Abra Moore are all on my iPod.

I do not know if Poi Dog still performing with the House-O-Matic dance group shown in this video:



Here is some recent video of Daydream by Freddy Jones: