Inez Van Lamsweerde The inimitable Bjork. Not pictured: The six-foot Tesla coil she’s been using to play the bass line to “Thunderbolt.” It’s going to be a muggy and very likely rainy Friday—unless you’re stuck wearing your best shoes in the mud, an evening thunderstorm will probably be a relief. (I went to college in Houston, so my comment on this alleged “heat wave” would be very much like Chris Weingarten’s....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On Friday the Chicago City Arts Gallery opens a new group exhibition called “The Music Show.” I’m only familiar with two of the artists: local photographer Lauren Deutsch, also executive director of the Jazz Institute of Chicago, who’s long been chronicling jazz performances in the city, snapping some of the most beautiful shots of musicians I’ve ever seen. And trumpeter Bill Dixon, one of the most original individuals jazz has ever produced, who’s also an accomplished visual artist....
From the 50s into the 70s, this guitarist and singer performed in doo-wop, folk, and soul acts (his 60s and 70s discs on USA, Tip Top, and other local soul labels are collectors’ items). That kind of resume might make you wonder if Burns isn’t just a stylistic opportunist, but it’s helped give his blues work–his primary output for nearly 30 years now–the range that’s its strongest suit. His well-tempered baritone can sound alternately vulnerable and harsh, and his guitar playing combines the pop-tinged jauntiness of his soul days with a pungently bluesy mix of declamatory chords and sharp-toned, string-bending leads....
Like most artists whose music has been called “chillwave,” Dexter Tortoriello chafes at the term—unsurprising, given that it was coined by Carles, the brutally sarcastic persona of an anonymous blogger at Hipster Runoff. Even the critics who rushed to cover the style in the wake of last year’s South by Southwest seemed to enjoy predicting that it would be a flash in the pan. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
LUDICRA THE TENANT (PROFOUND LORE) In pop music, unisex is unusual. Hip-hop, for example, includes a ton of women—but most of them are background singers or R & B vocalists making guest appearances. Female MCs often rap about subjects rooted in femaleness: wearing lip gloss, being ultrahot, screwing or not needing to screw guys. Women in hip-hop also tend to be glammed up like Foxy Brown, so you can’t miss the important bits—if they dress like Missy Elliot, they come across as deliberately butch....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I think that it’s gonna be analyzed a lot in terms of how am I biased and which side is it ultimately on?” he told me. “Everyone always asks me ‘Which side are you on?’ The whole reason this is interesting to me is that I think both sides make valid points. The fact is that I have eaten foie gras and I eat meat....
On a scorching Saturday in late July, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy joined a march against violence in Austin, partly to publicize the City Council’s new and more stringent curfews for children 16 and younger. Channel 5 led its 5 PM newscast with the march and even found time to report on a rally held that same day by CeaseFire, a local organization dedicated to halting the cycle of killing in high-risk communities....
Lead Story Questionable Judgments Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In October a judge in Greenock, Scotland, found 23-year-old Hui Yu, a student from Beijing, not guilty of a traffic violation. Two police officers had identified Hui as the perpetrator, but the judge accepted the defendant’s claim that he’d been elsewhere at the time of the alleged offense, ruling that “all Chinese people can look the same to a native Scot....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Although the Non-Equity Jeff Awards, as they are now called, honor theaters throughout the city and near suburbs, the lion’s share of this year’s awards went to companies based in Rogers Park. On a single street in Rogers Park, at that. Lifeline Theatre snagged five, including Best Production–Play for its staging of The Island of Dr. Moreau; Theo Ubique, which performs just up Glenwood Avenue at the No Exit Cafe, took home four plaques honoring its production of Cabaret; and Bohemian Theatre Ensemble, which splits its productions between the Heartland Studio on Glenwood and the Theatre Building on Belmont, won two....
Andreas Ulvo Frida Ånnevik and In the Country In this week’s paper I have a preview running for the Norwegian instrumental trio Ballrogg, who perform Saturday evening at Constellation. The bassist and structural anchor in that group is Roger Arntzen, a musician who’s probably better known for serving the same role in the lyric piano trio called In the Country, who are a group that come out of jazz, more or less, but deliver indelible, aching melodies with pop-like concision....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » . . . or at least that’s what Barney Rosset says. The publisher and “smut peddler” who fought to bring out uncensored versions of works like The Tropic of Cancer and Lady Chatterley’s Lover is being honored with a lifetime achievement award from the National Book Foundation. In a recent New York Times story by Charles McGrath he says of The Tropic of Cancer, “I loved that book....
Brian Jackson/Chicago Sun-Times Dick Mell, 2009 When the Wall Street Journal in 1984 called Chicago “Beirut on the Lake,” the Reader‘s Gary Rivlin ran with the metaphor and called Alderman Richard Mell and his 28 white allies on the City Council the “radical Shiites of the city’s northwest and southwest sectors.” Nothing was more important to them than sabotaging the administration of the new black mayor, Harold Washington. If that meant bringing the city down around them, so be it....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Because “anyone who doubts that a toxic political environment can be overcome should look to Chicago. Consensus has become more conspicuous than conflict. Deal-making is more important than showboating. In short, the city’s politics has become post-partisan. It’s a concept that should be familiar to anyone who has followed Obama’s presidential bid.” And as for the screwed-over little guy who’s the hero of 10,000 newspaper columns, Conley bathes his tormentors in as gentle a light as will ever find them: “Critics might also argue that leaving a seat at the table open — and allowing a multitude of unelected leaders to emerge — opens the door to corruption....
In late May the old-school hip-hop site Unkut.com put up a post called “The Search for the Biggest Douchebag in Hipster Rap.” Site curator Robbie Ettelson defines the hipster-rap scene as a “new wave of ‘ironic’ rappers who seem hell-bent on achieving new levels of sucking,” dismissively calls their style “Party Rocking,” and complains about the “gimmicky, calculated vibe” of everything they do. “Whether it’s wearing 80’s gear and garish print hoodies, rapping about skateboards and BMX bikes or making songs about nail polish/lip gloss, these wacky young ‘uns are poised to take ‘tarded rap to the next level....
Sherman Alexie’s terrific new novel, Flight (Black Cat), uses a nightmarish premise to explore the human capacity for violence. “I’m dying from about ninety-nine kinds of shame,” declares Zits, its 15-year-old protagonist, early on. Abandoned at birth by his Native American father and orphaned when his mother died of cancer six years later, he’s lived in 20 different foster homes. With a nickname inspired by a disfiguring case of acne, he’s the ultimate outsider, mocked and unwanted when, fueled by anger and empowered by handguns, he enters a bank prepared to gun down anyone in his path....
We’ve rounded up 58 spots for all manner of frozen treats—not just ice cream but everything from gelato to fro-yo, including Taiwanese shaved “snowflake ice” and even soft-serve, with delivery, for your pooch. Bellezza Gelato Caffe When I paid a visit to this Harlem Avenue cafe it was so hot outside that everything was melting. Even so, my scoop of banana-caramel-praline gelato was one of the best I’ve had outside Italy....
Ben Muller, Piccolo Theatre ensemble member, can’t mask his enthusiasm for: Inside Out Art Studio The front room of Inside Out Art Studio (at Damen and Montrose) is set up like any other storefront, but it’s cluttered with the sort of bric-a-brac you’d expect to find in an artist’s studio or scientist’s laboratory. It has a living, active energy that I don’t typically encounter with artists’ shops. I took one of the classes taught by master mask-maker Jeff Semmerling, and I must say, as an actor I’ve always seen visual arts like painting and sculpture as something akin to magic performed by mysterious wizardlike beings....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This week, Chicago moviegoers can enjoy not one but two films by Robert Altman. The Long Goodbye, his chief masterwork, screens at the Gene Siskel Film Center as part of their ongoing series “Public Enemies: The Gangster/Crime Film,” while the Patio has a far lesser work,Thieves Like Us, a tepid update of Nick Ray’s They Live by Night that lacks The Long Goodbye‘s revisionist air....
HARRY BROWN directed by DANIEL BARBER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But Harry Brown is no superspy: he’s a pensioner living in a hellish London council estate ravaged by drugs and crime, the sort of place where old people creep along the margins, praying that no one will notice them. After his wife dies and his best friend is murdered by drug-dealing punks, Harry turns vigilante, rediscovering the violence of his early years as a British soldier in Northern Ireland....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Even during their heyday in the early 80s, Philadelphia band the Stick Men were pretty obscure, and the past three decades have only made matters worse—which really saddens me. I only saw the five-piece once, but it was one the most memorable shows of my life. When their scant recorded output was collected on the CD Insatiable (Cuneiform) in 2001, it sounded better than ever....
