A Holiday Playlist from Oh Theodora's Conor Sullivan

With Christmas less than a week away (and our big Christmas Show tonight!), myself and the rest of Oh Theodora understand you’re probably getting sick of all the same old songs playing in every store/car/car store you’ve been in the last two months. So, in order to keep you in the Christmas Spirit, here’s a playlist I’ve created of some lesser known Christmas gems to play while wrapping your brother’s Gift Card to Kenny Roger’s Roasters.

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Live Review: Eve 6 & Everclear

The Steamroller's live music correspondent Conor Sullivan (of  & Collectors Edition) saw Eve 6 and Everclear last weekend. I'm on a bunch of mailing lists for PR companies that represent bands both big-time and small (mostly small). A lot of the time, these messages get ignored, but when I received a press release highlighting an upcoming tour featuring coheadliners Eve 6 and Everclear, with a stop in nearby Joliet, something clicked. I knew Conor to be long-time, unironic fan of both bands and thought this would be a nice opportunity to check in with few bands most folks haven't given a second thought to in years. Check out the full review after the jump!

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Collectors Edition presents: Alt-Rock Video Roundup

Hullo!

My name's , and I am a writer-performer guy based out of Chicago. Tonight, (Wednesday, October 24th) at 8PM, my fellow writer-performer buds Richard Joyce and  will be putting on a show at the  called . It's a live essay show based on pop music, featuring monologues and singalongs and some serious deep emotional moments from all three of us. Tears. Feelings. Love.

We're putting on this show because we all love popular music more than anything. We are bona-fide pop-rock obsessives who will end almost every rehearsal with a 20-minute exploration of our favorite Foo Fighters album tracks. We are deeply in love with popular music and Collector's Edition is a direct product of that love. It is an outpouring of affection straight outta our hearts and hopefully into yours.

We also like exploring the strange and neat corners of pop music history. In past shows we've tackled the weird trend of Justin Bieber hatred and dug deep into the history of doomed pop music program Total Request Live. For this upcoming show we're gonna chart the rise and tragic fall of alternative rock radio, a subject that hits us particularly hard. The three of us were kids when Nirvana knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the charts, so we've witnessed the birth and death of alternative rock firsthand. The phenomena of underground alt-rock radio made the mainstream success of bands like Pearl Jam, Green Day, and the Smashing Pumpkins a possibility, making it all the more tragic when it was swallowed up and spit out by corporate masterforce Clear Channel at the end of the 1990s.

So we wonder: what was so important about alt-rock radio? What did we lose when it faded away? Is it still alive today, and if not, could it ever rise again? Tough questions that we will answer, without a doubt, tonight. 

But hey! Why don't we take a quick look at facet of alternative rock we won't be covering at the show: music videos! Man, I love me some alt-rock music videos. Check out a few of my favorites after the jump!

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