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A portion of all tickets sales benefit Feeding America, the nation's leading domestic hunger-relief charity.

Have a bacon recipe of your own? Send an email to enter! I make dreams come true! I can give you 15lbs of Hormel Black Label Bacon with which to create your farthest-fetched bacon notion!!! Enter now!!! There’s $1500 worth of top-notch cookware prizes from WÜSTHOF, Anolon (The Gourmet Authority), & Microplane.

"In the spirit of two wholly American pursuits — overeating and winning — comes the Takedown, a cooking competition where anything goes." - New York Times

"There’s simply no other food gathering in which a community of cuisine lovers can unite to celebrate the wondrous and wild recipe discoveries by amateur chefs." -Village Voice

"Matt Timms, the czar of amateur cook-offs, take-downs, and bake-offs in NYC, (inspired) a movement of down-home cooking competitions." - Phoenix New Times

The Takedown blasted into existence in the winter of 2003 - in a little hovel somewhere in Brooklyn NYC. Everyone loves us, so the Takedown has quickly grown into an adult-sized event. The press is insane, and in it’s wake, other cooking events across the country were more recently spawned, but the Takedown will always be the first and awesomest! Self-taught cooks bring in their brilliant creations and compete for money, prizes, and self respect.

In the life of Nathan Williams, the year of 2009 will go down as both a highlight reel and a total shit show. Meteorically, feverishly and somewhat improbably, two albums worth of naïve punk rock he recorded behind his parents’ San Diego home as Wavves became a sensation in the world of indie music. As a result, passports got filled, capers got pulled off and lots of good things got said about the music in both print and digital ink, plus in actual human voices. At the same time, fights got fought, situations got hairy and people got indignant and mean.

Oh well. Fuck it. All of it.

What’s important now is that, in the beginning of 2010, Williams madeKing of the Beach, the new Wavves album. King of the Beach is an adventurous and ambitious record. It cuts deeper into the bleeding throat catharsis and ’60s sunshine soul that Wavves is known for. It also unexpectedly flips out with elements of primitive electronics and psychedelic studio experimentation.

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2007 was the year the tortoise overtook the complacent hare and claimed the glory. Faced with a musical climate of TV talent freakshow contestants momentarily setting the gossip world aflutter before plunging back into obscurity, and fame hungry starlets publicly unravelling in front of the paparazzi, the alternative came in the shape of ‘Puzzle,’ the fourth album by Ayrshire rock trio Biffy Clyro, which exploded to propel the band out of the underground where they’d been honing their craft and into the mainstream consciousness. The gold-selling major label debut went on to shift over 250,000 copies, to the delight of the loyal and passionate fanbase who had been willing them on for the past decade. An overnight success story, this is not.

Biffy Clyro came together in 1995 in a school in Kilmarnock, just outside of Glasgow, when childhood friends Simon Neil (vocals/guitar) and twins James (bass/vocals) and Ben Johnston (drums/vocals) started playing music together. United by a love of underground, experimental rock and post-hardcore bands such as Braid and Karate, along with the starrier likes of Guns N’Roses and Metallica, they quickly honed their own unique sound, a mind boggling mix of off-kilter tempos, itchy, unpredictable guitars, soulful choruses and feral screams, sewn together into a strange tapestry of sound that sat resolutely apart anything else being made at the time, both in spirit and - thanks to their admirable refusal to uproot from their hometown for the dog eat dog music community of London - geographically too.

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Baths' debut full-length, Cerulean, snagged an 8.2 from Pitchfork- full review & mp3 download here!

“The double-neck guitar is the ultimate signifier of musical masturbation and phallocentric crotch rocking. That is, unless you’re El Ten Eleven, the post-rock duo from Los Angeles, who lay down simple rhythms, then wield the finished product as mechanized dance jams.” Flaunt

Call him a one-man band, a virtuoso, a gifted collaborator or a family man, Martin, Marty, Dosh or Dad, our subject has gotten to now by what seems an uncanny path (perhaps call it fate). When they met, Dosh's father was a Catholic priest with pile of degrees, and his mother was living in a convent in Minneapolis preparing herself for nunhood. They left the fold for marriage; subsequently the elder Dosh found himself blacklisted from local employment, and so they left Minnesota as well. Martin was born in the greater Los Angeles area, but at age 2, his health problems and the city's endless sprawl delivered the family back into the musically nurturing arms of the Twin Cities.

Comprised of members JP (dubbed “The Mastermind” by the rest of the band), TJ, Thomas Brian and Marcos, Surfer Blood met one fateful night at an after party for Miami’s Ultra Festival, though they didn’t attend the festival itself (“We do not like the D’n’B,” they proclaim). After discussing music, what else, for the remainder of the night, JP decided to recruit the three other guys to perfect a couple of songs he had been working on for some time, and thus, the band was formed.

If you’re wondering about the name, the band ain’t got no surfer blood in them, and actually denounce the surfer kids of their youth for making their high school experience miserable. As for the moniker itself, one of the band members just randomly yelled it out over the radio in the backseat of the band’s car, which is as good a naming process as any.

"We only write about two feelings: one is the first day of summer when you and all of your friends are standing on the edge of a cliff watching the sun set and being overcome with all of your hopes and dreams at once. The other is when you're walking alone in the rain and realize you will be alone forever."

Jonathan Pierce and Jacob Graham of The Drums met at summer camp when they were children and have been best friends ever since. Soon after their initial meeting, they formed a persistent yet unprosperous electro pop band called Goat Explosion and toured extensively in North America during their teenage years. Around 2003, Jonathan and hometown friend (and master woodsman) Adam Kessler formed indie rock group Elkland, which was quickly signed by Columbia Records. In the years immediately following, Elkland garnered attention in clubs and on the indie music scene with their infectious debut single "Apart". In the meantime, Jacob formed a band called Horse Shoes (Shelflife Records), specializing in melodically strong and sentimental love songs. Jonathan ultimately decided to take a few years off from writing music after becoming disillusioned with the music business and parted ways with Elkland in 2005.

All Time Low has emerged as one of the most popular new bands in recent memory, beloved by an increasingly fervent fan following for their fast-paced and fizzy brand of pop-punk. Now, with the hugely anticipated “NOTHING PERSONAL,” the Maryland-based band has exceeded all expectations with a collection of effervescent new songs, marked by unstoppable hookiness and a newly discovered knack for exploration and invention. Where other bands might have played it safe by rehashing established hits, All Time Low instead opted to push the envelope by collaborating with a veritable who’s-who of producers, each with their own unique sonic stamp. Unified by singer/guitarist Alex Gaskarth’s clever lyricism, songs like “Weightless” and “Therapy” are marked by a range of diverse musical approaches, all the while retaining the patented All Time Low energy and enthusiasm.

“This record was less about doing what the bands we grew up listening to did,” Gaskarth says. “It was more about knowing what we do, developing that sound, but also stemming out, trying new things, and exploring other veins."

Chicago360 is an annual documentary program that showcases the untold and undiscovered aspects of Chicago life. Each year five Chicago filmmakers are brought together to interpret a particular theme and then create a short documentary film based on their interpretations. The result is a feature-length film broken into five individual sections, each section focused on a specific aspect of city life as told through the imagination and style of each filmmaker.

Chicago360 v.5 picks a unique theme each year centered around the Chicago community. This year's theme is "Aliens in the City". The Street Musicians segment will be directed by Alex Mechli.

Split Pillow's motion pictures are original works created by a constantly rotating segment of Chicago's greater filmmaking community. Split Pillow has no permanant company of artists, instead striving to bring experienced alumni together with new emerging talent for the mutual benefit of both. Split Pillow is funded through a variety of sources including state grants, foundation gifts, individual donors and film sales.

Oh hey, I'm LIGHTS--a fairly small-sized, Canadian girl who makes intergalactic-electro music. What do I mean by intergalactic? I'm glad you asked. I try to find sounds that seem like they could have been plucked from Saturn's rings or a meteor belt. Equal parts fantastical/epic/beautiful/emotional. As a kid I moved around a lot. To find some form of consistency, I had to find a place that always stayed the same. Concocting music became that world to me and I escaped there any chance I got. It started with just me and the guitar. Then, I moved on to drums, piano, and then the keyboard. When I started realizing the limitless possibilities that synthetic instruments presented, I invested in a little 8-track mixer. I was thirteen. I began the process of transferring what was in my head into something solid.

After drifting around and dabbling in different musical genres throughout my teen years, I finally landed on the so-called "electro-pop" planet I live on now. I unleashed a little taster of my work in the early months of 2008 as an EP but the songs kept coming...I couldn't stop them. And the more I made, the easier it became to convey how I felt through simple lyrics juxtaposed with sounds harvested from the far reaches of my alternate universe. Finally I sat back and listened to everything I had feverishly created over the past years, and I was happy. I realized I had discovered more about myself when I was just listening and creating music than from anything else. And for every minute of song that passed through my head, I was reminded of that realization, and it felt special. I called this first full collection of music, "The Listening." I hope that it makes you feel special too..

“If this is the arena rock of the future, send me a ticket” - Pitchfork

“A triumphant, heavily riffed, primarily instrumental epic, whiplashing through six minutes of smiling prog jams, and as many tempos as passages, before settling into one last minute of uplifting chants.” — Stereogum

“Life-affirming prog guitar anthems.” – Seattle Stranger

Fang Island describes its sound as “everyone high-fiving everyone.” And, the Brooklyn quintet’s anthemic and soaring songs make it quite possibly one of few bands befitting such description.

Its finger-tapping guitar lines, chanted vocals, triumphant harmonies and overall perky songs hearken to the sort of “Total Music” of the Fucking Champs, Jay Reatard, Ponytail, Kraftwerk, Marnie Stern, Thin Lizzy, et al. But, perhaps more so, its songs are like the music in your head at that moment when everything feels just right: that first kiss, that high score on the video game, buying your first small nation in cash… you know, good stuff.

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