City

Chicago

US

Chicago appears in 5 Songsheets issues: 90s Midwest Emo, Post-Rock, Industrial, Chicago House and Northern Soul. 10 artists in the archive came from here, including Ministry, Tortoise and Ron Hardy.

Chicago functions as the gravitational center of Midwest emo, with venues like Fireside Bowl, Lounge Ax, and the Empty Bottle hosting the scene's most important shows throughout the 1990s. Jade Tree Records artists tour through regularly, and the city spawns countless crucial bands including The Promise Ring (before relocating to Milwaukee), Joan of Arc, and later Rainer Maria. As the region's cultural and economic hub, Chicago provides the recording studios, college radio stations, and concentrated audience that allows suburban and downstate bands to professionalize while maintaining DIY ethics.

Scenes

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90s Midwest Emo
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Post-Rock
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Industrial
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Chicago House
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Northern Soul

Artists from Chicago

  • Ministry

    Al Jourgensen started Ministry as a synth-pop act before Arista Records tried, unsuccessfully, to groom the band into "the next Joy Division." He walked away from that deal and back to Chicago's Wax Trax!

  • Tortoise

    Tortoise formed in Chicago in 1990 and spent the next several years quietly redrawing what a rock band could sound like.

  • Ron Hardy

    Ron Hardy got his start at nineteen, not at the Music Box but years earlier at a club called Den One on Chicago's North Side, in a building that had once housed a Paul Bunyan-themed family restaurant complete with statues of the giant lumberjack and his blue ox.

  • Jesse Saunders

    Jesse Saunders made 'On and On' in 1984 for a reason that had nothing to do with inventing a genre: someone had stolen the bootleg megamix he'd been spinning as a DJ, and he needed a replacement.

  • Phuture (DJ Pierre, Spanky, Herb J)

    Phuture's origin story runs on an accident.

  • Larry Heard (Mr. Fingers)

    Larry Heard pulled house away from its cold, machine-driven center of gravity.

  • Marshall Jefferson

    Marshall Jefferson built 'Move Your Body' around a single piano chord — upright, percussive, struck like a stab rather than played like a melody — and in doing so gave house music its first real mainstream foothold in 1986.

  • Jamie Principle

    Jamie Principle recorded 'Your Love' in 1982 in his own basement, straight to reel-to-reel tape, with no plan for it to go anywhere beyond that room.

  • Farley Jackmaster Funk

    Farley Jackmaster Funk ran with the Hot Mix 5, the crew of DJs who mixed live every weekend on WBMX-FM and, in the process, taught an entire city how to hear dance music.

  • Major Lance

    Major Lance (1939-1994) grew up in Chicago and went to the same high school as Curtis Mayfield, who wrote many of his hits for Okeh: "The Monkey Time" (1963) and "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" (1964), which reached No 5 in the US.

Records made by artists from Chicago