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Watching baseball on the other side of the world and listening to modular synths in a former church.
A few weeks ago, I walked into the building that once housed Quenchers, a quintessential Chicago neighborhood dive located on a corner of a busy intersection known for having good beer on tap, serving free popcorn, and housing a stage where many local bands cut their teeth. The bar closed for good in 2018 when the owner retired and sold the building to a pediatrician, who gutted the place and turned it into a clinic. I showed up to attend a free infant CPR class at that clinic, which likely had to be fumigated to remove the lingering stench of stale beer and sweaty musicians befitting of a former watering hole.
Quenchers came to mind (again) last week as I learned of the untimely passing of Steve Albini, because I’m pretty sure that it’s the first place I ever encountered Albini, who was taking in a set from the back of the crowd (couldn’t tell you which band it was). I never visited Albini’s recording studio Electrical Audio or joined his infamous poker games, but I heard a lot of stories from folks who did, and they were usually accompanied by some snarky observation or witticism that Albini had uttered in their presence (his Twitter feed is pretty indicative of his way with words). I wish I could remember some of the brief but sharply worded stage banter he delivered when I saw Shellac play in a giant circus tent at the ill-fated Brilliant Corners of Popular Amusements festival in Chicago’s Eckhart Park.
Albini was best known for dressing like an auto mechanic, eschewing traditional royalties, and sharing his unfiltered opinions about the music industry, but the things he did outside of the studio spoke to the kind of person he really was. He delivered gifts and money to families in need every Christmas on behalf of the Letters to Santa fundraiser. He wore a Cocaine Piss T-shirt to a poker tournament, won a championship, and snapped a photo that sent a lot of curious folks to the Belgian punk act’s Bandcamp page. And he reckoned with the willfully offensive persona that defined his past in an honest and self-reflective way.
Most will rightfully remember Albini for his crisp drum sounds, penchant for Ricobene’s breaded steak sandwiches, fluffy coffee, and willingness to share his craft. But in my mind, he’s the guy who engineered Mogwai’s “My Father My King” and happened to be standing at the back of Quenchers enjoying a show, just like everyone else.
Out of Left Field
Recently, I’ve developed a new morning routine involving a bit of televised replay-enabled time travel. When I sit down to start my workday at 9am, it’s 11pm in Tokyo, which happens to be when some Japanese television stations re-air Nippon Professional Baseball games that were played earlier that day. Through the magic of probably-not-entirely-legal IPTV streams (my only option for watching most games, more on that later), I often begin my day sifting through emails and Slack messages to the sound of chants ringing out in Koshien Stadium or Tokyo Dome. With the White Sox potentially on their way to a record-breaking losing season, it’s an opportune time to turn my attention to baseball on the other side of the world.
I was able to see the Yomiuri Giants and the Hanshin Tigers play at Tokyo Dome when I visited Tokyo last spring, where I ordered beers from vendors hauling miniature kegs on their backs and witnessed each team’s extremely coordinated cheering section in action. Televised games capture a bit of that energy, but I’ve become more attuned to their idiosyncrasies, like frequent slow-zoom shots of the scoreboard or the post-game “hero interviews,” where players from the winning team unpack what happened on the field — often while holding a plush version of their team’s mascot. And since the games I watch are aired late at night in Japan, I end up watching many ads for weight-loss products, mail-order seafood, and the occasional DVD box set.
At a time when Shōhei Ohtani commands the largest free agent contract in MLB history, Shota Imanaga is maintaining a low ERA with the Cubs, and Yusei Kikuchi is sharing fancy Japanese whiskey with his Blue Jays teammates, the overseas league where these players got their start has essentially zero presence in the US. That’s par for the course in a national market that’s already saturated with sports, leaving networks with little incentive to make deals with international leagues (it took a global pandemic for ESPN to air South Korean baseball games when all of the leagues in the States were shut down).
Still, if you’re curious about where the current crop of MLB stars came from and want a look at the next wave of Japanese players being courted by American teams, there are a couple of legitimate ways to watch select NPB games. Japan’s Pacific League (the half of NPB that includes Ohtani’s former team the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters) runs a paid streaming service that allows you to watch most games that are hosted by the six teams in the league — and there’s an English language FAQ that guides you through the sign-up process. Reigning NPB champs the Hanshin Tigers run a paid streaming service called Toratele (the site is in Japanese, but there’s an English sign-up guide) that airs all Tigers home games — it’s like the Cubs’ Marquee Network, but not nearly as pricey.
All other games (including home stands for both Tokyo teams: Japan’s Yankees equivalent, the Yomiuri Giants, and the probiotic beverage company-owned Yakult Swallows) aren’t available overseas unless you’re willing to dive into the murky digital backwaters of IPTV. Plenty of dubious services will gladly charge you a monthly fee in exchange for doing all of the IPTV leg work, but I can attest that it only takes a few carefully worded Reddit searches to access around 100 Japanese TV channels (these are the pertinent ones) — including at least one that airs Dodgers games with Japanese commentary.
While I hope for a day when NPB’s presence in America amounts to more than the origin of MLB superstars and yet another thing you can bet on via sportsbooks, I’m well aware of the limitations. NPB broadcast rights are even more convoluted than MLB thanks to each team’s corporate ownership (Yakult, DeNA, Softbank, etc.), with teams making individual deals with various Japanese TV networks to air home games. Plus, the time difference would place live NPB simulcasts in the middle of the night and the cost of making NPB games available internationally would likely outweigh the return from a relatively niche overseas audience. (The fact that you can’t easily buy an official NPB team ball cap in the US is indicative of how laser-focused the league is on its domestic market.) For now, I have my morning time-shifted baseball ritual — at least until the Motion Picture Association manages to nuke IPTV.
Recap: Sam Prekop + Laraaji at Epiphany Center for the Arts, April 26, 2024
The last time I went to a concert in a church, I was in the Netherlands at Janskerk, a church in Utrecht that dates back to the 11th century. The (former) church that houses Chicago’s Epiphany Center for the Arts wasn’t around in the Middle Ages like those towering stone basilicas in Europe, but attending a show in the space for the first time summoned a similar sense of architectural awe and an appreciation for the finely-tuned acoustics of buildings designed so that members of the clergy could be heard by their congregations.
Part of a roving event series called Reflections that pairs ambient and new-age acts with intricate, projection-mapped visuals, this gig's backdrop was a constantly shifting barrage of colors that made the church’s stained glass windows and Biblical murals undulate like ghostly portraits in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. I’ve never been to a Pink Floyd laser light show, but I’d posit that these projections were just as trippy.
Indie rocker turned modular synth wiz Sam Prekop opened the evening by briefly taking the stage and quickly departing to go grab his glasses (necessary for all of the precise knob-twirling). When I saw him open for Black Duck last summer, Prekop spun up burbling house-inspired beats that seemed destined for a Berlin dance floor, but this time his set drifted from rhythmic Autobahn sequences to more ethereal Vangelis-adjacent arrangements.
I thought that I knew what to expect from Laraaji’s performance, but I was a little surprised by how stripped down the zither-focused set was, perhaps harkening back to his time as a street busking musician. Eventually, he dialed in a few woozy effects and triggered some samples of crickets chirping, giving way to the new-age, ambient-leaning sound that he’s arguably best known for. When Prekop joined Laraaji for a brief collaborative set, the former seemed to hold back, allowing the latter to lead. Eventually, Prekop and Laraaji started trading (and blending) synth arpeggios and chorus-laden zither strums — it was the first of four planned performances by the duo, and there was something special about witnessing them finding their mutual groove in front of an attentive audience.
As always, thanks for taking some time out of your day to read this newsletter. My wife and I have a new roommate joining us any day now (the kind who demands that you change their diaper and feed them), so future missives will likely be a lot shorter and littered with 50% more dad jokes. Looking forward to it!