Into the Woods Marco Casentini Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Emblematic of the general tendency is Jeff Carter’s Segment, a group of aluminum “bamboo” stalks set to swaying by little motors in their bases. Never mind the quaint fact that an art lover can buy the stalks singly or in discounted multiples, there’s something disconcertingly restful in the sight of these tall, segmented columns riffling in a nonexistent breeze....
Back in January I wrote what I thought was a rave review of this rock ‘n’ roll horse opera, connecting it fondly to Howard Hawks, Sam Shepard, Jellyeye Drum Theatre, the Flying Karamazov Brothers, and the early Lookingglass Theatre Company. My 19-year-old son was not pleased. An intelligent jock who moves easily between frat life and Dylan Thomas (which aren’t really all that different when you think about it), he’d seen the show with me and liked it so much he went back later with his friends....
Read Harold Henderson’s blog, Daily Harold, at chicagoreader.com Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » [snip] Eminent domain for thee but not for me. Northwestern law professor David Dana points out in the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy (law.northwestern.edu/ journals/lawreview/) that most of the state laws passed in response to the Supreme Court’s 2005 Kelo decision leave in place local governments’ ability to condemn property declared “blighted....
I appreciate the critical scrutiny Mike Miner gave my reporting on police abuses in Chicago public housing in his July 29 column [Hot Type]. He raises important questions that I hope readers of the ongoing series Kicking the Pigeon on “The View From the Ground” (www.viewfromtheground.com) will carry forward with them as the narrative unfolds. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » How are we to judge the reliability of a reporter?...
Studs is still going strong. The beloved nonagenarian mined his long-running WFMT radio show, The Wax Museum (1945-’90), for material for his latest volume, And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey (The New Press), and though it doesn’t have the cultural weight of Working or his other, sturdier oral histories, it effectively charts the development of a host of musical genres from the points of view of principal practitioners–and presents a clear portrait of the “eclectic disc jockey” of the subtitle to boot....
The view from the second floor of the yellow brick house at the corner of Clark and Irving Park extends east and south across 14 and a half bucolic acres. The lot is filled with elms, cottonwoods, mulberries, flowering cherries, trees of heaven, and ranks of stone obelisks, like some miniature Egypt among the foliage. It’s a backyard that’s also a graveyard. Thirteen cemeteries in Chicago have caretaker’s residences on their grounds, but this 2,000-square-foot brick Victorian at Wunder’s Cemetery is perhaps the most conspicuous, sitting on prime real estate at a major intersection walking distance from Wrigley Field....
Lumpen and Public Media Institute produce this annual festival, now in its fifth year, focusing on radical art, media, technology, and politics, with an emphasis on work generated by underground and activist communities. This year’s festival continues through Sunday, May 7, in Bridgeport and scattered other locations and includes neighborhood tours, workshops, numerous public art installations and interventions, barbecues, film/video screenings, music, and performances. All events are at the Version Kunsthalle–aka Iron Studios, 3636 S....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon explains it so even I can understand: “‘Choice feminism’ is a derogatory word that feminists use to describe it when a woman wants her patriarchally approved compliant behavior to be declared perfectly independent of social influence, even when it is obviously not. . . . The most common form of it is, ‘Feminism is about having choices and therefore my decision to submit to my husband/get breast implants/totter around on high heels and giggle is beyond analysis....
Remounting this bluegrass take on the New Testament in the intimate Chicago Dramatists space only makes the charm of Timothy Gregory’s performance more evident. His effortlessly joyful Matthew, who acts as the narrator, and quicksilver transformations into various characters–a cattle farmer, a crooked politician–are what make this re-envisioning of the Gospels of Matthew and John so entertaining. Based on a book by Clarence Jordan in which Jesus is born into the contemporary south, Tom Key and Russell Treyz’s lighthearted, spirited show features Harry Chapin’s music and lyrics, ably played here by an infectious five-piece band....
The return to prominence of 69-year-old trombonist Curtis Fuller is easily the feel-good jazz story of the decade. Fuller starred in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in the 60s and appeared on John Coltrane’s classic Blue Train in 1957, but as of last year, when he performed in the Blakey alumni tribute that opened the Chicago Jazz Festival, he apparently hadn’t stepped into a recording studio since 1986. Three days after that, Fuller took advantage of his extended visit and recorded Up Jumped Spring for Chicago’s Delmark label, a quintet set with Cincinnati trumpeter Brad Goode (himself a former Chicagoan) that reprised a format they’ve often played in together over the past couple years....
I want Deerhoof to do a sound track for a monster movie–and I want the monster to be a smiling, fuzzy Barney-like creature who destroys a Japanese city with cuteness, flooding the streets with strawberry icing and using the people as stuffing, Wicker Man-style, for a colossal panda straddling the harbor. Even the title of the San Francisco band’s new EP, Green Cosmos (Menlo Park), could be read as a reference to its schizoid amalgam of adorable kitsch pop and stomping prog metal: when Johns Hopkins astronomers averaged the visible light from 200,000 galaxies, they discovered that despite all the celestial violence that surrounds us–furiously spinning pulsars, blinding supernovas, supermassive black holes–the color of the universe is a soothing mint green....
Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Taken into custody in Chillicothe, Ohio, in January for her possible involvement in a shooting, 41-year-old Victoria Lundy was charged with improperly discharging a weapon and two other gun offenses after she sat down on a bench in a holding cell, accidentally firing the .25-caliber pistol she’d allegedly smuggled into jail in her vagina. No one was injured....
In a world filled with hyperreal digitized images, it’s amazing that anyone would attempt the archaic form of shadow puppetry. But this showcase, which rides a nearly constant current of live music, brings the modern world to a screeching halt, inviting us into a quieter, more imaginative place. Curator Jennifer Friedrich, who presents two pieces from a series, sometimes highlights shadow puppetry’s clunkiness: the squeaky unwinding of a scroll in her Victorian-style “kranky play” can be distracting....
With the recent death of Max Roach, it’s tempting to characterize Randy Weston as one of the last living links to the golden era of modern jazz. But though that would be accurate enough, it underplays the 81-year-old pianist’s singular style and undimmed vitality. His ongoing fascination with African music–particularly that of Morocco’s Gnawa people–continues to inform his writing and soloing, and while last year’s superb Zep Tepi (Random Chance) contained only older compositions, it confirmed that Weston still brings substance and power to anything he plays....
Camping in Illinois is often a disheartening experience. Most campgrounds consist of unshaded grassy expanses, and though Starved Rock State Park boasts scenic gorges, its campgrounds are amid fields and woods a few miles away, where the views are mostly of RVs. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Chain O’ Lakes State Park (Spring Grove, 847-587-5512) is popular thanks to its rowboat rentals, bobber fishing, and proximity to Chicago, which attracts campers with loud stereos and crowds on summer weekends....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Although it’s traditionally overshadowed by the Chicago Jazz Festival in Grant Park, the annual African Festival of the Arts in Washington Park remains one of the season’s most interesting events, largely serving the African-American community with a diverse array of music. Jazz, soul, hip-hop, funk, and African music are all amply represented by some of the leading names in each field, even if some of them are well past their peaks....
Lately the Chicago Blues Festival has been taking heat for booking so few big-name artists, and the Mayor’s Office of Special Events seems to have noticed: this year celebrities like Buddy Guy, John Mayall, Mavis Staples, and Koko Taylor are playing the Petrillo Music Shell. Also at Petrillo are several less famous but equally important figures–former Howlin’ Wolf sideman Hubert Sumlin, neotraditionalists Billy Branch and Erwin Helfer, and still-vital Chicago veteran Jody Williams....
Cindy Lou Johnson’s play begins with a bride assaulted by a curiously apologetic thief only hours before her wedding. Over the next 16 years, she and her family struggle to make sense of the events in their lives–the marriages, divorces, and funerals, which are likewise obstructed in ways that are often absurd as well as painful. Johnson has nothing but compassion for those who forge on despite life’s unpredictability, but her A....
Willie Davis is best known for his work on recent discs by Willie Kent, Bonnie Lee, and Larry Taylor, but he’s been playing in Chicago since 1964, when he moved here from his native Mississippi. In the late 60s the guitarist co-led a group called the Soul Blasters, which sometimes backed Byther “Smitty” Smith; in the late 70s he joined Kent’s band, the Gents, beginning a relationship that continues to this day....
In her new book, Job Hopper: The Checkered Career of a Downmarket Dilettante, Ayun Halliday recalls a Sesame Street gig she scored early in her Chicago theater career. “Is it OK if I take a picture, Bert?” shouted a diaper-bag-toting mommy at the suburban department store. Practically blind inside her giant Muppet head, Halliday struggled to control her claustrophobia while screwing up the courage to clutch the squirming, shrieking infant through the thick yellow gloves that engulfed her hands....
