Friday 28 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » TIM LEE BAND In the 80s the south was a haven for great guitar pop (the dB’s, R.E.M., Let’s Active), and my favorite also-rans from that scene were Mississippi’s Windbreakers. Bobby Sutliffe and Tim Lee, the band’s two key members, have put out decent solo records since parting ways in 1991, but neither has matched the ultrahooky folk-rock of their old band....
Who’d have thunk it’d only take 25 years for the mainstream music press to change its take on Bauhaus from universal disrespect to almost unanimous reverence? This spring the band reunited to steal the show at Coachella, and now fawning magazine articles litter their path like rose petals; encouraged, the band may even put out a new album, more than two decades after Burning From the Inside. The inexorable clockwork of the retro mill should certainly get some of the credit–goth’s pallid corpse is due its second day in the sun any minute now–but even in the early 80s these fey princes of darkness deserved better than to be dismissed as preening poseurs....
In a new 20-CD audio release, one of the most infamous characters in world literature is played by former teen heartthrob Luke Perry. “Whomever I kiss, he is the one. Seize him and lead him away safely,” the former Dylan McKay instructs the high priest’s goons in the Garden of Gethsemane before approaching Jesus. “Rabbi, Rabbi.” Smack. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In addition to producing commercials, soundtracks and radio dramas, Cerny is an actor and writer who has built a successful, if not exactly lionized, career in stage productions, industrial films, and a handful of features—but mostly in radio and TV commercials, notably playing the silent Cheer detergent man....
ESG first emerged in the late 70s and excels at the kind of joyous, polyrhythmic pop confections that are perfect for dancing and sampling. But as the title of one postreunion 1992 EP says, Sample Credits Don’t Pay the Bills. While a whole generation of hip-hop and indie-dance artists has amassed piles of cash on borrowed beats, the Scroggins sisters are still scrabbling to get by–and to keep playing. Drummer and former MTA worker Valerie Scroggins is embroiled in a workmen’s comp case; if she’s well enough to drum, they say, she’s well enough to drive a bus....
Last August the Department of Health shut down Harold’s Chicken Shack No. 2, and a sign went up indicating it would reopen under a new owner. This was upsetting–the dingy little storefront on the 3100 block of South Cottage Grove was my first and favorite Harold’s. It remained one of my favorites even after I’d eaten chicken at 34 other Harold’s this past year. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
The Free Associates’ new fully improvised one-act, which pokes fun at Anne Rice novels, follows the company’s usual formula for parody. As in shows like Cast on a Hot Tin Roof and BS, the cast steep themselves so thoroughly in the material that parts of the show could pass for a stage adaptation, though a somewhat twisted one. This technique yields some interesting and entertaining insights into Rice’s fiction, most notably her tales’ hothouse homoeroticism....
Twenty-four-year-old schoolteacher Martin Kimbell blew into town from upstate New York in 1836. Andrew Jackson was president, the Potawatomi had been fought out and bought out of northern Illinois, and footloose young Yankees were turning Chicago into a go-getter city. Kimbell supposedly rejected land at Dearborn and Lake as “a damned mudhole”–the story’s so good I fear for its truth–and instead staked his claim to 160 acres five miles northwest. There he raised a crop of hay, the gasoline of the 1836 transportation system, and that was the start of what we now call Logan Square....
In the 70s Seijiro Matsumoto hewed closely to the rules of kaiseki when he headed up the kitchen at the Hakata Tokyu Hotel in Fukuoka on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. But at his new namesake restaurant he’s willing to be a bit more playful. Kaiseki, Japan’s version of haute cuisine, originated as a light meal served as part of a traditional tea ceremony. It follows a formal structure with distinct themes for each of the many small courses, and the aesthetics and order of the courses, which incorporate fresh, seasonal ingredients and are meant to reflect the elements of the natural world, are as important as the preparation....
Trauma victims often report a disturbance in their perception of time–even in memory their ordeal crawls by in terrible slow motion. Khanate’s excruciating antimusic is like doom metal afflicted by that same sort of temporal dilation, each song drawn out into an irregular 10- or 20-minute series of isolated impacts–four seconds apart, five seconds, fifty–so that it’s almost always impossible to brace yourself for the next concussion, the next rumbling blast wave, the next hateful, terrified shriek....
This world premiere combines the talents of two Brits–playwright Stephen Jeffreys and director Terry Johnson–and Steppenwolf ensemble members John Malkovich, Yasen Peyankov, and Martha Lavey. Malkovich plays Kristof, a moody Hungarian count (modeled on real-life statesman Mihaly Karolyi) recruited to lead his nation to democracy in the wake of World War I. Peyankov plays the nobleman’s military-officer rival; Lavey portrays Kristof’s prim, steely sister, who runs the family vineyards but has no real power in this male-dominated society....
Loudon Wainwright III is the renegade uncle who your family deplores but you harbor a soft spot for. It’s practically guaranteed he’ll ruin Thanksgiving dinner by blurting some sexist quip or leaking some unsavory secret, but his egotism charms you, if only because you’re beyond the reach of his carelessness. Wainwright’s occasionally true to assholic form on the new Here Come the Choppers! (Sovereign Artists)–on “Make Your Mother Mad” he attempts to rob the cradle of an old flame–but more often he sounds old and justifiably scared....
Besides the shows below, MOBfest features panels with music industry professionals on Friday and Saturday, June 24 and 25, at Metro, 3730 N. Clark: Friday at 2 PM, Marketing, Promotions, and Strategies; Friday at 3:30 PM, Behind the Record and the Machine: Finding and Utilizing Exposure Vehicles; Friday at 5 PM, Record Companies: Finding a Home; Saturday at 2 PM, Building a Solid Team; Saturday at 3:30 PM, Press, Publicity, and Brand Marketing; and Saturday at 5 PM, Demo Listening Panel....
This is one of the most diverse clubs on Halsted Street–boys can be girls and girls can be boys. About the fourth year I’d been coming here (it’s almost eight now) I started working as a DJ. I like to come in and hang out with the staff and drink even on nights when I’m not working, and one night, as is often the case after a couple cocktails, I saw a really beautiful boy at the end of the bar....
For more than 25 years the overeducated fools of the Reduced Shakespeare Company have been taking tomes and epic histories–the Bible, the Ring Cycle, the history of Western civ–and boiling them down into frantic, physical, highly concentrated 90-minute comedies. Their first show, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), gave them their name and made them internationally famous. They’ve been touring for years, with extended runs in Washington, D.C., and London, where for ten years they had three shows running in repertory....
On their first two albums, Swedish rock chicks Sahara Hotnights showed a fondness for the power-pop side of punk, nicking the Real Kids’ look (jean jackets, sneakers, Bert-and-Ernie striped shirts) and sometimes sounding like a superbutch Holly & the Italians. Singer Maria Andersson’s sweet, muscular voice is the perfect instrument for delivering pop hooks, and on the new Kiss & Tell (RCA) the band goes so far as to pair it with one of those Go-Go’s synths that sound like a marimba (and wouldn’t you know it, they’re wearing upturned preppy collars and pointy shoes)....
Eyeball tacos built Viliulfo Andablo’s new Berwyn restaurant, El Chimbombo. Those are tacos de ojos, warm tortillas wrapped around chopped and seasoned orbs plucked from steamed lamb heads. For five hard years, Andablo has hawked them at a buck and a quarter from a stand in the new Maxwell Street market, along with tacos de trompas, lengua, cachetes, and sesos–lips, tongue, cheeks, and brains. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Friday18 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » ALVIN YOUNGBLOOD HART Critics peg Alvin Youngblood Hart as a rootsy bluesman, but rootsiness can be a complex thing. Robert Johnson spiced his performances with everything from polkas to pop tunes, and Hart’s oeuvre accommodates western swing, electric urban blues, and covers of the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Captain Beefheart. An inventive guitarist, he regularly improvises on blues chord structures and scales, and as a singer he’s capable of shifting away from the swampy sensuality of down-home tradition....
Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age The image of the pirate as romantic outlaw and rebel has had a hold on our hearts since the 17th century. But historians’ views on pirates have been more nuanced, seesawing between portrayals of pirates as rebels or radicals and pirates as brutal men no different from, if better dressed than, common thieves. In Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates (1996), British historian David Cordingly expressly set out to contrast the popular image of pirates with what he saw as the decidedly less attractive reality....
All the News We Feel Like Talking About Today He noticed that Warner, “the kind of guy who’d use Armani to polish the silverware . . . was definitely suffering a panache deficit.” Kass asked Warner about his suit. “Guess what I paid for it?” said Warner. “It only cost me $150.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Reading these two columnists made me hungry for more....
While last spring Chicago hosted two art fairs the same weekend, this year there are five at once–three of them new. The same amount of contemporary art will be shown, but it will be scattered among the two large fairs near the lake and two smaller ones, each with about 35 exhibitors, featuring younger, edgier artists from alternative spaces. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Tom Blackman’s Art Chicago, now in its 13th year, reached a peak of more than 200 dealers a few years ago but more recently has suffered from increased competition worldwide....
