Terror at the Opera
Live Review - Venus Magazine Party

Venus Rising
The zine turns twenty at the Empty Bottle

It's 10:30 and event promoter Joe Proulx is looking nervous with a highball in hand. The Empty Bottle has been transformed. There's a cake surrounded by a ring of fanned magazines on the cloth-covered pool table. The stage is backed by a pristine silver-sparkled curtain above which hangs the logo, crafted in scarlet sequined letters, of Venus magazine, which is celebrating the release of its twentieth issue with a bleached-blonde Janeane Garofalo on the cover.

"Do you think many people are going to show?" Proulx asks the bedenimed hipster standing next to him nursing a PBR, as Amy Schroeder, the zine's founder and editor, walks by and flashes a confident, knowing smile: Chicago's cadre of fashonistas are running late due to primping.

As Gretchen Gonzales of Detroit's garage rock girl-super group Slumber Party takes to the stage to debut her new duo, Terror at the Opera, a steady stream of indie grrls and boys in reconstituted vintage fashions, American Apparel ringer tees, and designer-trunk-sale finds fill the room. When the crew of Thrill Jockey veterans arrives shortly after like some indie-rock alumni club, including members of Tortoise in requisite urban lumberjack garb, it's clear that the night is going to be a post-whatever-you-think-is-hip event.

After locals Pit er Pat heat things up and make hearts beat in sync, DJ Jim Magas takes to the turntables and the most unthinkable event occurs: There is dancing at the Empty Bottle.

John Vincler, New City Chicago Online - 6/22/04