A few years back Anderson Bell, then a promoter for local nightclubs like Reserve and Crescendo, tried to buy a Pearl Jam ticket through Ticketmaster. “I was on a limited budget,” he says, “and the service fees were kind of a deal breaker for me. It was something like 30 percent of the face value of the ticket. . . . It just woke me up to the fact that something is really wrong with the system....
Courtesy of Fire Records Blank Realm The newest album from Brisbane’s Blank Realm, Go Easy (Fire), is no straightforward listen—a fact that actually doubles as one of its most distinct peculiarities and one of its most magnetic qualities. It teeters on bluesy skuzz-punk one moment, psych-infused indie pop another, and has a chaotic and raucous groove throughout that loosely ties together each of its eight songs. Yet another win for Australia, a continent with its finger currently on the pulse of artsy outsider garage punk....
12th Street beach wreck, year unknown Just south of the Adler Planetarium, an unidentified shipwreck is embedded in the sand. Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago president John Bell says that it’s probably the closest wreck to shore in the area; you can actually walk to it. Shoreline erosion caused by the construction of the planetarium in 1925 exposed the hull of the schooner, which is an estimated 140 feet long....
The seventh annual Wicker Park Fest runs Sat 7/31 and Sun 8/1 from noon till 10 PM on the stretch of Milwaukee between North and Wood. As befits a street festival held in one of the city’s best-established enclaves of hipness, the music is excellent—probably the most impressive lineup of any comparable event all summer. The fest’s three stages—North, South, and Center—showcase everything from doom metal to hip-hop to retro soul....
On her forthcoming album Sudden Elevation (One Little Indian) the wonderful Icelandic singer Ólöf Arnalds does little to quash the frequent comparisons to Joanna Newsom her music has generated over the years. In fact, the new record is her first sung entirely in English, so there’s no language difference distinguishing her. But really, if you listen carefully there’s no doubt that Arnalds has her own thing going—and besides, Newsom doesn’t hold the patent on slippery art-pop accompanied by strings....
In recent years the excellent Tompkins Square label has become one of the most important exponents of new fingerstyle guitar music, releasing terrific work from the likes of James Blackshaw, William Tyler, Ben Reynolds, Daniel Bachman, and Peter Walker, as well as many others who’ve contributed tracks to the label’s Imaginational Anthem series. Plus, the imprint has reissued or uncovered recordings from bygone pickers like Harry Tausig, Mark Fosson, and Richard Crandell....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Personally speaking, I find electronic music to be one of the most difficult genres to write about. Because of a lack of any lyrical context, it’s hard to position a strong critical tack to the music, especially when so much electronic music is aesthetically appealing even as it doesn’t have much in the way of concept or backstory. Shigeto’s recent album No Better Time Than Now, out now on Ghostly International, made me think about this recently....
Part of a 40-week series in which we take a look at a specific year in Chicago history via the pages of the Reader. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On November 18 the Reader published the article that would forever define it. The Essence of Beeing was written by associate editor Mike Lenehan. It began on the cover, continued on page 9, and ran nonstop (aside from ads) through page 38....
Not too many vocalists these days specialize in 60s- and 70s-style deep soul. Even on the southern soul-blues circuit, where veterans such as the late Johnnie Taylor forged new careers for themselves in the 80s and 90s, the emphasis isn’t on that coarse, gospel-influenced style—instead there’s a premium on youthful-sounding voices, supple yet strong enough to stand up to synthesized beats and backing tracks. Chicagoan Stan Mosley has a corrugated rasp and an irony-free emotional directness that hark back to his early deep-soul idols, most notably Bobby Womack, and he refuses the “southern soul” label (he’s simply a “soul singer,” he insists)....
Keith Dukavicius keithdukavicius.com Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » If you spend any time looking at locally produced features, you soon realize the field is dominated by genre movies—mostly romantic comedies and crime thrillers—that offer some hope of commercial advancement. That may be why writer-director-star Keith Dukavicius stands out: the guy will probably never make a dime, but his personal, culturally obsessed, and often hilarious movies are completely idiosyncratic....
Four of the five 2013 beers will be distributed nationwide, though, so I can’t say with 100 percent confidence that Chicago will get more Bourbon County than last year—more of the stuff stays here than gets shipped to any other city, but there are a lot of other cities. In case you’re curious why BCBS labels don’t mention a specific aging time, it’s because each barrel spends anywhere from 8 to 12 months working its evil magic on whatever beer it holds....
Growing up just one generation removed from the 60s, I’ve always had an odd relationship to that era—a connection to something that isn’t there, like sensations in a phantom limb. The period was a formative influence in the lives of my parents and therefore had a transitive effect on the shape of my own. I grew up listening to my parents’ music, watching their films, absorbing pieces of politics and culture forged in the crucible of a very different time....
COLUMBINUS Raven Theatre Look right through me, look right through Are the best I’ve ever had —Gary Jules, “Mad Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But as Raven Theatre’s moving, sometimes frightening, brilliantly acted Columbinus makes clear, there was in fact a cruel logic behind Harris and Klebold’s scheme. The real target of the Columbine massacre wasn’t the people who died; it was the people who were left behind, terrorized and infuriated and anguished and isolated and confused by their own brush with death and the deaths of their friends and loved ones....
I know. I used to get weary of the giddy, character-heavy riffing, too. Now I’m thrilled to go along for the ride. What’s changed? Maybe it’s me. I’ve got a greater appreciation for Williams’s risk taking, a more acute sense of the pleasure involved in seeing a performer confident and talented enough to let go of a script and expose some rawness. You just see more humanity in Williams than in most stand-ups....
The sun beat down on the vegetable stand on 115th Street, across from St. John Missionary Baptist Church in far south Roseland. Fresh cantaloupes, yams, and tomatoes baked in the 90-degree heat. Three volunteers, organized by church leader Donnell Williams, waited patiently for customers behind the table, sipping ice water. Sweat beaded on Williams’s forehead, but a smile never left his face. “It’s a small start, but you’ve got to start somewhere,” said Williams, 31....
This wolf has been a fan of local fingerstyle guitarist Ryley Walker ever since Plustapes released his 2011 solo debut, The Evidence of Things Unseen. Walker has now released three cassettes through that label, and he’s finally dropping his first slab o’ wax—a two-song seven-inch called Clear the Sky. The record was supposed to come out in November, shortly after Walker uploaded the title track to Soundcloud, but pressing delays intervened....
Check out our photos and video recap of the festival after its third and final day. See our previews and photo/video recaps of bands playing on: Friday · Saturday · Sunday Afterparties Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The weekend-long, Chicago-based version of Lollapalooza that launched in 2005 has now lasted two years longer than the festival’s original 90s incarnation as a touring show, but its identity remains rooted in alt-rock’s heyday....
The case is Pinnick v. Corboy, and it’s become somewhat notorious. As James Merriner explained in a Reader cover story on December 4, a fatal accident on an Indiana Interstate back in 1995 led the family of the young Georgia woman who’d died, Melissa Pinnick, to hire the prominent Chicago law firm of Corboy & Demetrio to seek damages. The driver of Pinnick’s car, a rented Mitsubishi, said she’d heard a thump and suddenly lost all control of the car, whose electrical system shut down as it swerved across the median strip of I-65 near Crown Point and was broadsided by a Cadillac coming the other way....
Voters will decide whether to enshrine workers’ rights in the state constitution on November 8. Nomination petitions at Alderperson Tom Tunney’s Ann Sather restaurants may violate election laws. When the police bring too many risks with them, where can you turn in a crisis? In communities reeling from gun violence, Black women caregivers do work that is often underpaid, undervalued, and hidden from public view. Chicago Books to Women in Prison partners with Women & Children First to get books behind bars....
Many of the movies that ranked among my favorites this year were things that, for one practical reason or another, I didn’t get a chance to review at length when they came out. I’ve rectified that with new pieces you can access below, along with my ten runners-up and a year-end list from Ben Sachs. —J.R. Jones 4 Two Days, One Night In this drama by Belgian social realists Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, a young wife, mother, and factory worker (Marion Cotillard) learns that her coworkers have voted 14-2 to lay her off rather than forfeit their annual bonus of a thousand euros....
