First published 2016
For nearly twenty five years, Chicago's Empty Bottle has served cheap drinks while hosting legendary performances. This dive venue earned recognition from Rolling Stone as one of America's best rock clubs. The book compiles photographs, interviews, and essays from the club's community of bartenders, booking agents, bouncers, and underground musicians. John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats provides the foreword. First hand accounts come from members of The Flaming Lips, Interpol, Low, OK Go, and many others. Full color photographs and original silkscreen gig posters fill the pages. Stories capture unique moments like The Flaming Lips playing to a packed house, shooting pool with Nirvana's Krist Novoselic, and standing close to Arcade Fire during what one witness called a spiritual tent revival for secular indie rock fans. The intersecting tales explore memory's complexities and the experience of aging while looking back on being part of something larger than yourself.
Genres: 20th-century, non-fiction, music, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate
Tropes: memoir, oral-history
Setting: Chicago, Empty Bottle
Period: 1990s, 2000s
245 pages · Hardcover · Curbside Splendor Pub