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JACK ON!

Boy, what you doing standing there with your hands not in your pockets? Ain’t you glad to see us? Well stand at attention, then! Your friendly neighborhood Drag City Drone is floating way over your head, ready to blow you away at the first sign of life down there. So shake us a tailfeather please.

And – phoo – excuse the rain of crypt-rust – our outer layer’s a little dusty. But as you’ll soon see, we’ve got an insectoid world of wonder... (read more)

The month of February often conjures thoughts of hibernation, grayness and icky greeting card "holidays." Thankfully, this year we've got Sophia Knapp to help us think a little differently; Into The Waves brings aqua sea-foam auras and vintage, oceanic sunsets to the forefront of our frontal lobes, and it'll do the same for you on February 28th, when it funnels into your local record shop.

To get you in a beach ball-state of mind, chill(wave)y zoned as February may be, we've got a limited supply... (read more)

There's an 855 foot ship docked in Miami, like right now, just waiting to load up with rock kids of all kinds, boys and girls alike, for a three day exercise in avoiding mono while sleeping near a glory portal (I think we just got mono envisioning that! Or at least HIV). They call this high seas adventure The Bruise Cruise. Poor kids from glamorous locales all across the country like Chino, Lincoln, Denton, and Park Slope will board the floating phallus of phun... (read more)

Drag City types love all the fan mail you folks send in on a daily basis; it's our mission to ignore more pressing matters and respond to each and every letter received in timely fashion, gold pens in hand. Sure, we're used to the blood-scrawl of many an inmate, and always pass each of those tear-jerkers on to the artist to which they're directed. Most exciting are the letters full of mystery and intrigue to which we're obligated to investigate. Below is an excerpt from... (read more)

Tomorrow evening Bill Callahan will make his Lincoln Center debut as a part of the Center’s American Songbook series. It’s pretty pretentious - I'm sure you've seen it on TV. Somebody performs your song while you sit up in the mezzanine with a smile plastered on your face, trying to live through the moment with a medal rainbow-strapped around your neck. It's a good moment for mom, but for the rest of us...

Oh, wait, that's the Kennedy Center Honors, right! No, no - this... (read more)

For those of you who were born yesterday, it's hard to talk about 2001 without choking a bit. You know, when Y2K killed everyone and all their stuff, things were nuts, dude. We were eating dog food, drinking science water, making up sign language to indicate how high we were, reading the words in magazines, asking strangers for the time – just nuts. Then Damon & Naomi with Ghost called (on what you call a "land line") and they were all like “we made an... (read more)

Go go go to the chocolate city! Or let the one and only Jennifer Herrema take you there via the virtual world of You Tube with this intoxicateding version of the celebrity video playlist. Taking inspiration from the badass streets of SE Washington DC where this Black Bananas-frontin’ femme fatale first got her Rad Times rolling (and learned a thing or two about knife fights and double-compound swear words), Jenny Bananas put together a string of videos that totes pass the mustard. With... (read more)

New albums out, shit. Hey, we love 'em, but let's be honest — a new release is just the same as any other release, it just sits in a record store waiting for it's own peculiar kind of magic to occur. Or, okay, right — on a website, waiting for your to download and upload and digitally loose its (reduced) magic. But a new release plus a show? Now that's something a little more real. The new music is represented in a place that is... (read more)

It's a wide world of song that we're living in, if you can really call what "we" do living. Actually, "we" need more living in our lives - so open your eyes and ears to the endlessness of song and vision and everything else that's available to your five senses! Who knows what's going out there until you check, you know? Like, case in point - the residents of Sydney, Australia probably wouldn't imagine while looking up at the high rises that a certain celestial... (read more)

Tomorrow night the famed Music Box Theater will host an evening of entertainment that will rival the glamour of the ice capades and the excitement of Vietnam-era USO shows. The Chicago premier of Dragonslayer starts at 7pm with live music from Bitchin Bajas, visual accompaniment from Olivia Wyatt and a rock and roll appearance from Mayor Daley.

We’ve been talking about it for months as the SXSW/Hot Docs hit has been travelin the country, making waves and leaving names in a trail of... (read more)