In June 2023, the city gave landmark status to a stubby brick factory building at 206 S. Jefferson—in the late 1970s, it had housed the nightclub where Frankie Knuckles wove funk, disco, soul, and pop into the subcultural lifeline that became known as house music. Three months earlier, Preservation Chicago had named the Warehouse one of the city’s seven most endangered historical buildings, and seeing the city move quickly (relatively speaking) gave me some hope that it might do more to celebrate house music as a bona fide Chicago institution. After all, house became a global phenomenon thanks to generations of Chicagoans who are in many cases still producing, DJing, and dancing—and few get their flowers while they’re still alive. The 1987 Rhythm Controll single “My House” became a foundational text of the genre thanks to an impassioned (and widely sampled) dance-floor sermon by producer and vocalist Chuck Roberts, but when Roberts died this past June, the Sun-Times called him an “unknown house music legend.”
Earlier this year, storied house producer Vince Lawrence launched House Music 40, a nonprofit dedicated to celebrating the genre’s history (especially its Black origins) and giving financial support to local house artists struggling with health issues. The nonprofit’s name references the number of years that have passed since Lawrence and Chosen Few DJ Jesse Saunders made the first original house record, Saunders’s “On and On,” which helped establish the genre’s identity and accelerated its international takeover. This past January, Chicago house promoter Kirk Townsend (who as a teenager in the late 1970s helped turn Mendel High School into a crucial house hub) launched a GoFundMe to help Saunders recover from a severe stroke he suffered in November 2022. The musicians, promoters, and fans who built house aren’t waiting around for the city to provide for their community. House Music 40 is among the cosponsors of tonight’s unusual performance by Chicago house veterans Ten City, who’ve been active on and off since 1987. They’ll be backed by a 14-piece band, which ought to do a lot to flesh out the sophisticated ornamentation and glamorous flair on the band’s recordings—I’ve listened to Ten City’s 1989 hit “That’s the Way Love Is” often enough to wonder what it’d be like to see a live string section interact in real time with the velvety vocals of Byron Stingily. And as a setting for this grand display, Metro is perfect: Joe Shanahan has a long history with house and opened Metro and Smart Bar in 1982, drawing inspiration from his experiences at the Warehouse and Chicago’s first punk disco, La Mere Vipere. And while I still dream of the day when Ten City can command a stage at Soldier Field or the United Center, this might be an even better way to celebrate their contributions to house: surrounded by people who care about it in a space intimate enough to remind you that you’re as much a part of this culture as the people onstage.
Ten City This concert, billed as “Ten City and friends,” also includes White Knight, Curtis McClain, Harry Dennis, and the Good Girls. Fri 11/22, 8 PM, Metro, 3730 N. Clark, $50, $40 in advance, four tickets $100, table for two $150, 18+
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