Friday 19
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The Smart Bar opened, perched atop the building at 3730 N. Clark, in July 1982, but after an up-and-coming band called R.E.M. played there that August, the club moved (literally) underground, and owners “the Joes”–Shanahan and Prino–turned the main upstairs room, renamed Cabaret Metro, into one of the more noted concert venues in the U.S. (as a recent series of testimonials in Entertainment Weekly, Details, and Spin attest). The venue’s ninth-anniversary party spans the weekend with three major shows–tonight the very hard rock of locals Naked Raygun, along with Coup de Grace and the Boll Weevils; Saturday Chicago’s latest grunge-rock phenom, Urge Overkill, with Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, the New Fast Automatic Daffodils, and the Climbing Vines; and Sunday Soul Asylum with the Jayhawks and Pearl Jam. The doors open at 9:30 each night, with music after 10:30. Tickets are $9 each night. Call 549-0203.
If, despite the corruption of apparently a great number of Sandinista leaders, you think the Nicaraguan revolution held–holds–promise, hie thee to a political forum and celebration dance to honor the revolution’s 12th anniversary tonight. Casa Nicaragua and the Nicaragua Solidarity Committee promise “distinguished representatives of the international community” at a 6 PM forum to discuss the country’s last 12 years of turmoil (much of it paid for with U.S. tax dollars). At 8 there’s music from the Orquesta Nabori. It’s at 1579 N. Milwaukee; tickets are $7-$15, a sliding scale based on ability to pay. Call 728-5561 or 276-5626 for details.
Monday 22
Cheryl Trykv (pronounced “trick”) is a performance poet whose acidic first-person accounts of travels into alien worlds–from personal relationships to middle America–are direct and refreshingly unsentimental, both thematically and structurally: she refuses to take refuge in flashy subject matter, flowery language, or meaningless tropes. Pal David Sedaris, currently expatriated in New York City, is even less abstract, whether he’s reading a series of vicious modern urban epigrams from a “diary” or giving a lucidly amoral account of his stint as an elf at Macy’s. The pair will read tonight at 8:30 at Club Lower Links, 954 W. Newport. It’s $7. Call 248-5238.
