As 2011 comes to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.
Aside from having the coolest name of any punk-leaning Chicago-area band since Big Black, Smoking Popes have been blessed with core fan base that refused to quit on the outfit. When leader Josh Caterer pulled the plug on the Popes in 1998, it came little more than a year after releasing what might have been the group’s best album, Destination Failure, perplexing many but apparently offending few. Seven years later, a sold-out reunion show in the Popes’ hometown was all it took to get Caterer back in a creative mood. From there, Josh and brothers Matt (bass) and Eli (guitar) pretty much picked up where they left off, releasing Stay Down in 2008 and compilation It’s Been A Long Day last year. The new This Is Only A Test (Asian Man) is a concept album that only occasionally comes across as such, with the 38-year-old Josh taking on the role of an angsty teenager to convincing effect. Josh and Matt will be guest-editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our new Q&A with Josh.
Matt: My girlfriend Tracy used to live out in the sticks by Kankakee, Ill. There are a lot of cool, odd places and weird little towns downstate, so we would drive around looking for them. One day we set out for Stelle. This little burg is famous in the area for being founded as a hippie commune in the ’60s. Rumor has it that the townspeople buried a spaceship underground to use to escape the apocalypse. Now the town is run as a sort of co-op. It kind of looks like a town in the movie The Village but with straw bale houses and solar panels. Next we went for lunch in neighboring Kempton. Home of Sgt Peppers Bar, Adventures Unlimited Press and a few grain silos by the railroad tracks. That’s downtown Kempton. After lunch at Sgt Peppers (which is a pretty straight-up rural bar, but has colorful murals of Beatles-related characters painted on the walls outside) we made our way across the street. Adventures Unlimited Press is a pretty big name in the UFO/conspiracy world. Alternative history, the illuminati, aliens, UFO cover ups, contrails, 2012—they cover it all. Once inside, we got to talking to the dude behind the counter, Jerry, who had written a couple of books for the Press. One on the quest for the Spear of Destiny, Secrets Of The Holy Lance, and one on the HAARP machine that controls the weather, Weather Warfare, which he had just been on Coast To Coast AM to promote. We bought his books and got him to sign them. While we’re talking, a lady interrupts us saying, “Jer, there’s someone on the line one for you. They’ve got a question about the lance.” After fielding his call, Jer invited us to a beer tasting at his house later in the week. We never made it to that tasting, but I think about that afternoon from time to time as an example of some of the random weird times we had driving around downstate Illinois.
