Here’s Reason #487 Chicago is awesome: they have free concerts with bands people actually want to see.

Lots of cities put on concerts in the park that are free to the public.  But usually it’s something like the Dixieland Quartet or the Ragtime Hits Gang.  Never anything that you, or anybody you know, would actually want to see.

It’s confounding because the resources could just as easily be used to put on a show that the public actually wants.  The event planners, the stage, the PA system, the security, the performer’s fee.  That rockets already being blasted into space, why not point it at the moon?

We don’t really know why, but living in Chicago, we don’t have to.  Somehow in Chicago, the municipal powers that be saw it fit to use the world-class Jay Pritzker Pavilion for good by offering up Bob Mould and Split Single as part of their “Downtown Sound” Summer concert series on June 23rd.

Growing up in the Midwest, Bob Mould’s old band, Hüsker Dü, was our sweetheart. They shredded our hearts with brain-burning jams like this:

Then they broke up and Bob Mould did this:

Currently Bob Mould is just Bob Mould.  We saw him last year at Riot Fest and he brings it.  We’re not even going to qualify that with “for a 53-year old.”  He just brings it.  Like if we saw a 22-year old tearing it up on stage with that amount of ferocity and vigor, we’d say the same thing.  The fact that Bob Mould is doing it while inhabiting the body of a 53-year old man makes it kind of scary because it’s like he’s our dad and we’re 12 again and just handed him our 2nd semester report card.  It looks like this:Woah!

Also playing is supergroup, Split Single, which is basically Bob Mould’s touring band, with Britt Daniel from Spoon.

Show starts at 6:30pm at the Pritzker Pavilion, inside Millennium Park.

See ya in the pit.