Chicago’s only mud wrestling troupe was founded in 2004 and features it’s own band that rocks to each wrestling match. Come glimpse these fearless ladies as they grapple in fresh mud! With the return of veteran wrestlers Brownie Bruiser, Molly Hatchet and Malice in Plunderland…the new recruits will have a lot to prove.

Eiffel Tower was born at a psychiatric hospital in the Chicagoland area where Alex (bass), Matt (handclaps) and Pete (bells) were working as orderlies. The three were in a seclusion room holding an aggressive patient who, in a last-ditch retaliatory effort, took the liberty of urinating on the floor. With the patient somewhat subdued, the three made a gallant dash to exit the room before the patient, hot on their heels, could egress. Things only went further awry when Alex lost his footing and slipped three feet across the slick, linoleum floor through the puddle of tepid urine. Matt and Pete instantly tumbled over Alex and found themselves equally soaked. The three spent the rest of the shift donning patient pajamas and questioning their chosen career path.

The three bonded over their work with psychotic patients and obsessively collecting their clients’ personal narratives. They found the coping mechanisms of the patients not far removed from many of their own misguided efforts to make sense of the world around them. They came to treasure these stories as the stuff of myth and legend. As the band began to write music, they focused on how alienation often leads to obsessive or delusional thinking. Musically, the band’s exultant energy was been characterized as “Frank Sinatra meets Bad Brains,” and as “marr[ying] the jangle-pop of Feelies with the playful self-loathing of Stephin Merritt.”

The trio quickly settled on the name Eiffel Tower, after the French monument. Upon its completion, the tower had widely been considered as a mistake and an eyesore. Guy de Maupassant, who reportedly hated the tower, was known to have lunched in it daily. When asked why, he remarked that it was the only place in all of Paris where he could not see the awful structure. The band Eiffel Tower celebrates the grandiose courage necessary to pursue seemingly foolhardy ambitions. 

Traci Trouble is back with a brand new three-piece combo called AWEFUL, and its a sweeping new sound you might not expect. Joining up with Lucy Dekay from Mystery Actions, this new project juts forth with a streamlined layered vocal and a wiry guitar tone, its a new direction, a subdued sonic approach with slithering dynamics and cavernous depth. Echoing solid 80’s Gun Club & Fur Bible’s chorus pedal-soaked vibes with a wall of dripping female vocals cascading over what sounds like a primitive and ominous lost Love and Rockets outtake, AWEFUL are a welcome new breath of fresh air to Chicago’s underground sounds. Stepping aside from pandering to the pedantic tropes of endless post-punk operatives, AWEFUL draw out a more luscious & moaning fuzzed-out experience, drilling their sticky repetition into your cortex with songs that pull you in immediately. Fans of Grass Widow, Wax Idols, and The Breeders take note, this band is turning those same corners and will soon turn those same heads.
– Todd Killings 2018

Sweetie is here with a sugar rush that’ll leave you wanting more! Formed in 2019, this Chicago three-piece combines the hooks and emotional dynamics of the Distillers with the guttural edge of early rock and roll. Sweetie is just what the doctor ordered.