Tuesday 21st - Stars and Blues

The morning was spent visiting the last museum on Museum Campus, the Adler Planetarium. In the past I've been able to look at the area a webcam that used to sit on top of the planetarium and have watched the re-development of Soldier Field. Adler Planetarium is very much a hands on museum, giving visitors plenty of opportunites to interact with the exhibits. You can create your own moon crater as well as see how much you would weigh on the moon or Saturn. There are some fascinating exhibits on how many ancient religions were based on the passage of the stars. The main hall as live view via a very sophisticated telescope to the surface of the sun. It was amazing that I was able to watch solar flares "as they happen". The main exhibit in the hall is a roughly 20 foot high half-sun. This is a scaled representation of the sun as a red giant. The sun as it is , to scale, is roughly the size of a baseball. Next to this a pinhead sized representation of the sun when it has collapsed. This is, however, is TO SCALE! The Adler Planetarium is the only museum in the world with two full-size planetarium theaters. Powered by brand new Digistar 3™ simulator technology, the StarRider Theater is a completely digital, virtual outer space environment. Since 1930, the wonder of the stars has been visible in the historic Sky Theatre. The famous Zeiss Planetarium projector is capable of accurately reproducing the movement of every aspect of the night sky. The museum is worth a visit even if you're not into astronomy, I'm sure you'll find it interesting.





Having visited Buddy Guys Legends on my first visit to Chicago in 2000, The itinerary for this evening was to visit a blues club on the North Side,namely Blue Chicago. There are two Blue Chicago clubs on North Clark Street and I chose to visit the one at 736. I arrived at about 7:30 pm but found that it didn't open till 8, but luckily the Clark Street Ale House was next door so I popped in and sampled a couple of American beers. The pub was not what I expected. Guess what? It's almost like a British pub! Apart from having American football on the TV rather than good old British football there was very little differentiate between this bar and some of the pubs I've visited in my time (though I don't make a habit of visiting pubs you understand!)
Despite there being a couple of British beers, I chose a Goose Island Seasonal as I'd tried a pint at the Navy Pier and it had gone down very well. Once again they hit a spot and after a couple I made my way next door to Blue Chicago.

Blue Chicago is a long room with a bar at it's centre with a smallish stage at the far end of the bar, with booths around one side and the back of the room. The walls were covered with photos of the blues masters and some not so familiar as well as some genuine old concert posters featuring some of the blues greats, such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.

9 pm saw the band of the evening start their first set, The Linsey Alexander Blues Band. The band, made up of both young and old players as well as female drummer. The other young guitarist in particular (unfortunately I didn't catch the names)was kicking out the licks like a veteran. There was just a hint of peak period Peter Green in some of his lead playing as well as some pretty fine rhythm work when Linsey Alexander himself took the lead.

Joining them on the stage was Big Time Sarah, a veteran of the Chicago Blues scene. Sarah has been compared to Koko Taylor and that wouldn't be too bad a comparison. Sarah puts on a raunchy performance and tonight gets the mainly tourist audience involved in the show. There are now three men who now know where Sarah's "42'S and 68's" are! The ladies were not left out as she got three of them onstage to shake their booties. One young lady in particular seemed to really get into it if you know what I mean!

All in all a very enjoyable evening with some decent American beer and some fine blues. What more could you ask for?