Though hardly a household name, the British-born Bernard Rands is probably the finest active American composer of his generation. He studied with leaders of the European avant-garde–Pierre Boulez, Luciano Berio, Luigi Dallapiccola–in the 50s and 60s, but his academic braininess doesn’t overpower his lyrical heart. While some contemporary composers talk a good game but can’t back it up and others write great music but have nothing to say about it, Rands is both an exquisite composer and a thoughtful and eloquent explicator of music....

This Japanese choreographer and dancer begins what’s essentially a solo performance by flopping around looking spastic, a crumpled heap of body parts all moving independently of one another. One black-socked foot pokes into the floor, the other is pointed skyward; his legs are splayed, his arms pinned behind him awkwardly. Once he stands, his movements look fey and swishy, with the relaxed feet and hands of an untrained dancer. Later in the piece, however, that softness enables a virtuosic fluidity of motion....

I was out walking my dogs here one evening when one of those “tin trucks”–old beater pickups that collect stuff out of the trash–pulled out of the alley in front of me. This particular truck was packed to the gills, totally defying all laws of gravity, with a huge unbalanced load of old brass headboards, bicycle bits, tossed household appliances, etc, stacked high in the back. As it pulled out onto the street I heard muffled screams coming from somewhere deep in the back of the truck, and I started yelling, “Stop!...

On a recent Saturday afternoon Gold Coast residents, tourists, and shoppers caught an odd sight: a flotilla of blue Schwinn Cruisers, two dozen in all, heading up State Parkway north of Division. Bystanders huzzah’d and occasionally wondered aloud what was going on. Jeremy Lewno, a boyish-looking man in a white T-shirt, cargo shorts, and a black helmet, explained to the curious that the group was on a tour conducted by Bobby Chicago’s Bike Hike, his fledgling company....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Tomorrow night, Thursday, October 12, two bands that borrow their sounds from Eastern European Gypsy music play at the Empty Bottle. Beirut is the much-ballyhooed project of 20-year old Zach Condon, a New Mexico native who moved to New York this year, and it’s received plenty of ink for its debut, Gulag Orkestar (Ba Da Bing!). Like many people — myself included — Condon caught the fever for Gypsy brass-band music through the films of Emir Kusturica, and a visit to Europe allowed him to take in those sounds first hand....

“The center never holds,” says MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer in a scene from MC5: A True Testimonial, the much-anticipated documentary about the legendary Detroit band. “And that moment where everything was totally together is only for a minute. The one thing you can count on is everything is gonna change.” The effectiveness of this maneuver won’t be clear for months, but in the meantime it’s really pissed Kramer off. At the beginning of March, he demanded that Future/Now stop using his image and pay him any revenue they’ve generated with it so far....

Sandwiched between bands at the Pitchfork Music Festival opening-night party is master stand-up stylist Todd Barry. Skinny, bald, and pale, Barry looks innocuous, but his material, though clean, isn’t. His voice has an aching timbre, and he mutters jokes with a permanently constipated expression. His timing is deceptively methodical, and he carefully controls his sarcastic tone–he can smirk and still come off bone dry. At the 2002 Friar’s Club roast of Chevy Chase, Barry addressed the challenge of skewering the guest of honor: “It’s not as easy as shooting fish in a barrel....

For sensitive songwriters Vic Chesnutt, Mark Eitzel (American Music Club), David Bazan (Pedro the Lion), and Will Johnson (Centro-Matic) the bad times are never more than one strained sigh away. “Mopey” isn’t the right term to describe them–they’re all too literate, learned, and classy for such a tag–but some synonym of “depressing” still definitely applies. For this tour as the Undertow Orchestra, they’ll take turns backing one another on songs from their own projects....

With its zealous horns, rampaging accordion, circusy swing, and overheated gutter-poet melodrama, this supersize New York punk-cabaret band has something to irritate just about everybody–its cheeky, casually dissolute swagger even manages to make the switchblade-sharp instrumental technique on display seem annoyingly show-offy. But despite all that, the music’s as infectious as a virus (and I can’t imagine the Dresden Dolls doing so well in a world that hadn’t already had World/Inferno in it for years)....

“Hazelwood” Goes to College The issue of October 31, 2000, brought a letter from president Stuart Fagan complaining that the paper “failed to meet basic journalistic standards” and another from the dean of the college of arts and sciences calling an article by Hosty a “collection of untruths.” On November 1 the Innovator’s printer, Charles Richards, heard from Patricia Carter, the dean of student life. Richards later described that conversation in writing: “She told me that Regional Publishing was not to print any more issues of ‘The Innovator’ without first calling her personally and then she, herself, or someone else from the administration department would come to our printing plant, read the student newspaper’s contents, and approve the paper for printing by us....

Every day at noon an air siren blasts the calm in downtown Kempton, Illinois, population 235. The horn is tested in part to serve as warning for approaching tornadoes, but David Hatcher Childress says there’s no need for that. “Towns nearby here have been hit by tornadoes,” he explains. “Kempton never has. In fact there’s kind of a legend that Kempton will never be hit by a tornado. People claim that Kempton is like a vortex area or like a power point....

Playwright Thomas Gibbons raises some fascinating questions about storytelling, authenticity, and race in this play about an editor and her troubled relationship with a reclusive author. The script has probably initiated hundreds of intelligent postshow discussions. But as a work of drama it too often teaches when it should be telling an interesting tale. Big chunks of the second act are devoted to a long argument that’s half Socratic dialogue and half Crossfire-style harangue, addressing among other issues whether a middle-aged white man has the right to tell the story of an elderly African-American woman....

Blues harpist Charlie Musselwhite grew up in Memphis, where he learned to play by hanging out with old-timers like Furry Lewis and Will Shade. In 1962, at age 18, he moved to Chicago, where he met his most important mentor, Big Walter Horton; after he released his debut in 1967 on Vanguard, he quickly became a leading light of the late-60s blues-rock movement. In recent years, though, he’s been ranging further and further from his beloved 12-bar blues, adding strains of rootsy country and introspective, noirish folk, and the new Sanctuary (Real World) is his darkest and most adventurous album yet....

CHICAGO’S ONE OF the more cycling-friendly cities in America, from its profusion of park paths and marked bike lanes on major thoroughfares to a host of activist and support organizations to the wide availability of affordable parts. The city’s own transportation department site, which includes a frequently updated map (www.egov.cityofchicago.org/Transportation/bikemap/keymap.html) of marked lanes, is a good place to start planning your routes. For an exhaustive guide to biking, including info on shops, activism, safety, and more, see the well-maintained portal bikechicago....

Some albums are so perfect for driving they’re dangerous. I once drove a third of the way across Indiana listening to Kraftwerk 2 before I realized I was going the wrong direction, and another time Surfer Rosa got me a speeding ticket in North Dakota–by the end of its 30-odd minutes I was 50 miles out of Montana, with its “safe and reasonable” speed-limit policy. So next time I road-trip I’m packing Electrelane’s Axes (Too Pure)....

John Porterfield was tracing an air leak through a Chicago attic the other day when his cell phone rang. “I need you to come over and give me some help with my attic,” the caller said. “Not right now,” he replied. “I’m in someone else’s.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Porterfield and Kidd are firm believers in “building science,” a still-accumulating body of knowledge based on thousands of obscure studies of how buildings use energy....

Going to the Mat for the Bad Guys The journalist who revealed last July that Plame was an undercover CIA officer is syndicated columnist Robert Novak. He acknowledged talking to two “senior administration officials.” Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson, accused the Bush administration of getting back at him through his wife for his essay early last July in the New York Times that accused the government of distorting intelligence to hype its claim that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq....

Third Street in Terre Haute, Indiana, is an unremarkable stretch of road that leads from I-70 into the city’s fading downtown. Little distinguishes it from any other busy commercial street in any small midwestern town–you could be on Milwaukee Avenue in Niles or Mannheim Road in Rosemont. There’s a Denny’s, a Wendy’s, and a Phillips 66 station; there are realtors, car dealerships, lube shops, and a house with a cracked glass door and a sign advertising “therapeutic massages....

With his new album, Idols of Exile (Arts & Crafts), Broken Social Scene guitarist Jason Collett emerges as a prime mover in Toronto’s ongoing creative boom–the album’s crammed with great pop hooks but sounds so effortless it’s tempting to think he made it in his sleep. Fact is, he had a lot of help: Collett interacted with like-minded colleagues as the organizer of an ongoing Toronto songwriter showcase, Radio Mondays, and he’s joined on the album by members of (among others) BSS, Apostle of Hustle, Metric, and Stars, as well as Leslie Feist, who headlines this show....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Media Matters’ inventory of 1,377 dailies — 96 percent of all there are, it says — led it to 201 syndicated columnists. And though it categorized 79 of them as “progressives,” 75 as “conservatives,” and 47 as “centrists,” it advised: “The truth is that conservatives have a clear and unmistakable advantage. Conservative columnists appear in more papers than progressive columnists do, and conservatives reach more readers....