Construction of a New Action (1990s Chicago Underground Rock)

Continuing our focus on 1990s indie/underground rock scenes, this week we turned our attention to Chicago. Rather than focus heavily on a few genres or labels (as we did with our recent D.C. and Olympia shows), we tried to cover a wide range of the Windy City's musical styles and scenes/communities. We purposefully skipped the city's alt-rock heroes of the day: Smashing Pumpkins, Liz Phair, Urge Overkill, Veruca Salt, Wilco, et al. And there were a lot of great bands that we didn't have time to include: Tar, The Coctails, Red Red Meat, Mekons, pretty much all the emo/post-hardcore bands apart from Cap'n Jazz. But we were able to include a number of personal favorites (Trenchmouth, Lake of Dracula, Los Crudos, Assembly Line), as well as feature a mini-set of artists from Chicago's terrific "now wave" noise rock scene of the mid-1990s.

Here's the playlist for our Saturday, October 11, 2014, broadcast:

Shellac - "Wingwalker"

Tortoise - "Cornpone Brunch"

Gastr del Sol - "Is That a Rifle When it Rains?"

The Sea and Cake - "Flat Lay the Water"

Joan of Arc - "Post Coitus Rock"

Trenchmouth - "The Volcanic Action of My Soul"

Assembly Line People Program - "New Minds"

Jaks - "Fidgecake & Pismire"

Los Crudos - "Crudo Soy!"

Charles Bronson - "Chicago"

The Jesus Lizard - "Nub"

Ministry - "TV II"

Bobby Conn - "United Nations"

U.S. Maple - "Letter to ZZ Top"

Flying Luttenbachers - "Fist Through Glass"

Scissor Girls - "Vamps, Here!"

Lake of Dracula - "Blues Fantastique"

Cap'n Jazz - "Basil's Kite"

Archived streaming audio of this show can be heard here now (playable in Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Opera, and Safari browsers):

Bookmark the permalink. RSS feed for this post.

About The Way Out

The Way Out is a weekly radio show hosted by Andrew and Diana Bottomley on WSUM 91.7 FM in Madison, Wisconsin. We feature a wide range of punk, post-punk, indie rock, garage rock, psychedelica, no wave, noise rock, and other rock’n’roll esoterica. We're drawn to anything that's adventurous, different, and "out there." We've even been known to throw in a set of modern classical, prog, or country from time to time. Mostly, we play “classic” material from the 1960s through the 1990s, though we also mix in some newer music here and there. Following a "no hits, all the time" philosophy, we emphasize overlooked and otherwise unheard of artists, or lesser-known songs from more popular artists.

About WSUM

WSUM, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s licensed student radio station, is an award-winning station with over 200 members. Following a handful of different incarnations that operated between 1952 and 1993, WSUM officially began broadcasting on February 22, 2002, from Vilas Hall and has been going strong ever since. The station can now be found at 333 East Campus Mall, Suite 4100, in the new Student Activities Center. WSUM is a proud and active member of the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association and College Broadcasters, Inc., and has won myriad statewide and national awards for its dynamic music and talk programming, live sports broadcasts, and news coverage.

The Way Out