Blame it on the hammertoe? After a season that saw Sybris‘s writing and recording hindered by new parenthood and foot surgery, drummer Eric Mahle has split from the group for personal reasons. Mahle told Gossip Wolf: “Angela and I have plans on collaborating in the future, and Sybris may or may not go on with a new drummer. I’m concentrating on my new band Sunken Ships and getting my drum fix with Husker Dudes. No idea if new Syb material will see the light of day.”
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A new jolt of relevance for local rapper Hollywood Holt, whose last national splash was for “Throw a Kit,” his mopeding video from two summers ago: this week he released the video for “La La La Freestyle,” which features a cameo from M.I.A. According to Holt, the cameo was simply a matter of timing. “I have known her for a long time,” he e-mailed Gossip Wolf. “My cousin Mano was her DJ—we met several times over the years at events. She had a show in Chicago the day after I recorded the verse and we went to see her and she asked me what I had been up to and I said ‘rappin’ and I’m shootin a video tomorrow’ and she goes ‘well, I’m not doin’ anything’ and I said ‘do u want to be in it?’ She said ‘yeah’ . . . so the next day she came through and we did it in like five minutes.”
Your Gossip-giving Wolf knows the difference between true and false metal. Trust. Imagine a tall tree with all the branches of metal represented by actual branches. We pee on that tree all the time! We know that those on the black-metal branch wear makeup and ritually burn down churches, and that the glam-metal branch also wear makeup, but burn down lingerie stores. Wait, is that right? Anyway, GOOD NEWS! On November 9 local poet and literary critic Michael Robbins—who has seen his poesy in the New Yorker—and social-media consultant Keidra Chaney are giving a lecture, Heavy Metal 101. Topics include an “editorial analysis of what makes ‘true’ metal” and some “personal musings on the value of metal.” The lecture is part of the nonprofit Homeroom series, which seeks to bring together Chicago’s disparate artistic communities (like poets and metalheads, for instance). The free event will go down at the Hungry Brain (2319 W. Belmont) at 9 PM, with DJ sets by Chicago Underground Film Festival curator Bryan Wendorf.
