Slumgullion

Shadows Of Knight frontman Jimy Sohns will be one of the musicians on hand for the annual Dick Biondi Toy Drive tomorrow from 10:00AM to 8:00 PM at Block Thirty Seven in downtown Chicago. Biondi, a legendary air personality in the Chicago area for decades, will be broadcasting live from the event. Guests are encouraged to bring an unwrapped toy.

   

Over the years, I’ve come to recognize musician/journalist Dan Pavelich’s indie label Vandalay as a trusted name in Christmas rock compilations. Pavelich produced three volumes of Hi-Fi Christmas, persuading numerous power pop and indie artists to contribute original songs that celebrated the holiday. Proceeds from those CDs helped fund research to find a cure for Von Willibrand’s Disease, a rare blood disorder.

Pavelich’s most recent effort on Vandalay is Christmas Without Cancer, and it features some of the same artists that made the Hi-Fi Christmas compilations so enjoyable. The Grip Weeds, Lisa Mychols, The Goldbergs, Jeremy, The Click Beetles, and Bill Lloyd are on board, along with newcomers like Mimi Betinis from Pezband and Sgt. Popgrass, a bluegrass Beatles cover band fronted by Graham Elvis. Christmas Without Cancer is available for $12 on the Jam Records website, and 100% of the profits will go to The American Cancer Society. 

Sorry I missed this a few weeks back, but Go Time! recently celebrated its fifth anniversary of making hard-edged power pop music. Congratulations to them.

It might be a little early to think about what concerts you’ll be checking out next Spring, but Shoes have announced they’ll be doing a show at Memorial Opera House in Valparaiso Indiana on May 31st. Hopefully more shows are in the works.

Also, coming up in the new year, The Abbeys will be debuting their new lineup at Redline Tap on February 15th.

The Posies are back in the USA and will be celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the release of Frosting On The Beater with the band’s original lineup at Neumos in Seattle on January 10th.

Rascals fans could be singing, “It’s a Beautiful Morning!” on Christmas day if someone gives them a copy of The Rascals A Visual Biography. The 9” x 12” book was sold at the band’s performances of its Once Upon A Dream musical, and is now available on the Wicked Cool Records website. The Rascals A Visual Biography, which was written by Joe Russo with a forward by Little Steven VanZandt, has 175 pages over 400 photographs.