Windy City pride was on full display pretty much everywhere this weekend, but it was perhaps no more rampant than at the Big Shoulders Ball, hosted jointly by the Hideout nightclub in Chicago and the Black Cat, benefitting the Future of Music Coalition. At the top of the bill were some big names like Andrew Bird and Ted Leo, and some legendary Chi-town music scene vets, like Eleventh Dream Day and the Waco Brothers.

Jon Langford is responsible for way too much great art for you not to know who he is. To begin at the beginning, he’s one of two remaining original members of the Mekons, singing and playing guitar in the increasingly difficult-to-categorize onetime punk band he founded while studying art at the University of Leeds, England, in 1977. Their albums Fear and Whiskey and Edge of the World, from 1985 and 1986, respectively, were among…