In the summer of 1995, bassist Caithlin De Marrais, guitarist Kyle Fischer, and drummer Bill Kuehn formed Rainer Maria—which would become one of the elite national acts of emo’s second wave. De Marrais and Fischer had met in a poetry-writing workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the band toured the basement circuit and recorded frequently, with a sound that drew on the sort of emotive posthardcore whose lineage can be traced back to Sunny Day Real Estate. Soon they became key players in the burgeoning midwestern emo scene—and in the process they helped build fledgling downstate label Polyvinyl into a reliable indie-rock institution.
Bill Kuehn: Oh, amazing!
My boyfriend Evan [Weiss of Into It. Over It.] spoke to you about that [New Year’s] show. You were wearing that really great all-white outfit.
Oh, you’re not talking about my outfit anymore! [Laughter.]
I don’t know if there are enough holidays in the year for our next shows! But there are a few more in the works.
No, unfortunately it closed before I got to really know all about it. Most of what Chicago’s been doing, as far as our indie-rock emo scene, has been just a lot of house-show venues. There was this place called Strangelight that was the basement of a storefront. Everyone that lived at the place lived upstairs, and they just made walls with whatever. The basement space was as big as a Chicago storefront—you could fit a lot of people in there. And everyone would get in through the back alley, so there was no obvious red flag to any passing police—who unfortunately just love to shut things down.
Sat 2/14, 10 PM Lincoln Hall $20 18+
