Last week US Air Guitar, the official association for people pretending to rock out, announced that the 2011 national finals for wannabe ax bros will take place July 23 at Metro. Air-guitar icon and author Björn Türoque, star of the documentary Air Guitar Nation, tells Gossip Wolf: “There’s an obvious joke about air guitar coming to the ‘Windy City,’ but we at US Air Guitar disdain the obvious joke. This is some serious shit going down in America’s heartland.” In case you’re looking to show off your imaginary six-string skills, Chicago’s regional competition heats up May 12 at the Double Door; for more info, see usairguitar.com.
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Kinsella Watch: They say you can’t go home again, but Birthmark main man Nate Kinsella is packin’ his bags and heading back to his ancestral village of Minneapolis in October. Nate-dog says he’s psyched to get a move on, but admitted that said excitement will likely diminish midwinter. He’s also following the lead of his cousin Tim and attempting to fund Birthmark’s next record via Kickstarter. Polyvinyl will release the album, and Jason Cupp—who helmed the newest Maps & Atlases long-player—will produce. The pledge incentives are pretty sweet, and the big item is a three-day recording session at Pieholden Studios, with Nate engineering. In other B-Mark news, last month the band canceled a Japanese tour due to the recent disaster; now Nate is donating all the proceeds from online T-shirt sales to the Japan Red Cross Society. Pick one up at joanfrc.com.
This Wolf is a bit confused by Black September after catching a glimpse of their live set Saturday at the Empty Bottle. Is the Chicago quintet black metal, crust metal, or death metal? They rip it all up! Last week the band announced that they’d inked a deal with Prosthetic Records. On June 6 the label will reissue Black September’s debut album, The Forbidden Gates Beyond, which the band self-released last year. They’ll open for Megaton Leviathan (see the List) on Thursday at Memories, 4358 N. Cicero.
