Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (PDF) isn’t buying Mayor Daley’s claim that the city has committed “$40 million in new money” for affordable rental housing and rental assistance. Policy director Julie Dworkin says the city is “just recounting existing resources.” Says the press release: “This $40 million includes $13 million in state rental subsidies . . ....
A glance at the Reader’s live music listings makes it plain that navigating the scene here can be tough. Rock, jazz, blues, hip-hop, international, folk, country, and experimental music are all well represented here year-round, and up-and-coming and veteran locals can be seen in bars across the city on any given night. Touring national acts play a smaller selection of venues. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Schubas (3159 N....
Though he only just turned 22, pianist Taylor Eigsti can almost pass as a jazz veteran. His latest CD, Lucky to Be Me (Concord), is his fifth release, and on it he does what veterans do: tries out different material and new approaches that refresh what has already become a distinctive instrumental voice. The album features all-star sidemen as well as a sympatico guest soloist (the even younger guitarist Justin Lage, from Gary Burton’s quartet), and it captures Eigsti engaging with a horn section for the first time....
But one alderman dares to tell the mayor he can’t do what he wants? Look out, mama — Katie bar the door. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Witness how Daley reacted to rookie alderman Brendan Reilly (42nd), who after weeks of community meetings decided to go with the majority of his constituents and oppose the mayor’s plans to move the Chicago Children’s Museum to Grant Park....
Audience members barely outnumbered performers at this super-sized remount of Dirty South Improv’s franchise piece, a no-holds-barred mix of hip-hop and improv comedy. Director Jay Olson–taking over the reins from the show’s originator, Zach Ward–has doubled the size of the ensemble and split it into two groups, each accompanied by a beatboxer. Unfortunately a lot of the longer, slower, more edgy scene work of earlier versions has been shelved in the race to keep things fresh, fast, and furious....
In this early play, Rainer Werner Fassbinder depicts the obsession a spoiled fashion designer, Petra von Kant, has with ambitious, self-absorbed model Karin. When Fassbinder filmed his play in 1972, one critic said he treated it with such languorous, moody reserve that it turned into a “lesbian slumber party.” Wisely, Trap Door Theatre directors Beata Pilch and Krishna LeFan don’t follow that path in this production (though they emulate the film’s beguilingly anachronistic Weimaresque costumes)....
Last year Americans bought 325.7 million songs as digital downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan–a major leap from the 2004 figure of 140.9 million. What was each of those songs worth? The easy answer is 99 cents, the standard price at the iTunes Music Store, and the price from which cheaper rates seem to be discounted: Wal-Mart charges 88 cents, Yahoo! Music Unlimited charges 79 cents, and indie-music site eMusic (which I write for) sells monthly packages of 40 MP3s for about $10....
Steve Albini on Touch and Go, the Stooges, and how his analog work ethic is It’s been more than two decades since guitarist and recording engineer Steve Albini emerged as the gadfly of the midwestern rock underground. In his 20s he led the notoriously abrasive, crowd-baiting bands Big Black and Rapeman, but he’s since mellowed considerably–though his current outfit, Shellac, is hardly warm and cuddly, at 44 he no longer goes out of his way to make himself a lightning rod for controversy....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “‘Women were given the right to vote.’ This is what we are taught. The statement is often framed as such, implying that non-women–i.e., men–gave them that right. The reality of why women can vote here and in many other countries does not match this rather tepid statement. In order to win the right to vote, women have defied husbands and fathers, spoke publicly, started organizations, created newspapers, held massive protests and marches, petitioned lawmakers, were jailed for protesting, went on hunger strikes, were force-fed and sometimes died, rioted in the streets, set fire to houses of anti-suffragists, and sometimes defied the law not allowing them to vote by forcibly inserting their votes into ballot boxes....
What the Judge Said Page’s columns painted Thomas as a vindictive “Republican party heavyweight” from a hostile political camp in the western suburbs. According to Page, when the supreme court met to choose Gorecki’s punishment, the chief justice was “pushing hard for very severe sanctions–including disbarment.” But in the end the court took away her law license for four months. “Ah, yes. Politics,” Page wrote. “The four-month suspension is, in effect, the result of a little political shimmy-shammy....
Buttressed by Arnold Johnston’s sharp new translations of the songs, this well-wrought tribute to the Belgian cabaret genius feels brighter and more vibrant than the better-known revue Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Returning Brel to his raunchy roots, the peppy rouser “Marathon” becomes the perilously misogynistic “Flemish Wives”: grimly dancing through life, they remain young while their men die off. “When We’ve Nothing but Love” is a truer title than the more famous “If We Only Have Love,” and Brel’s love/hate affair with his native Flanders erupts in “The Flat Land....
On their Sub Pop debut, Everything All the Time, Band of Horses tread on some of the turf occupied by labelmates the Shins, particularly with Ben Bridwell’s dream-pop vocal melodies and the chiming minor chords he and Mat Brooke layer beneath them. But where the Shins favor tidy resolutions and airtight hooks, Band of Horses let their songs dissolve and fade into a reverb-drenched afterworld. Brooke and Bridwell, the core duo of this Seattle group, write simple but dazzling songs charged with melancholy, yet even in their most volcanic moments there’s something delicate and trembling hiding behind the walls of guitar; it’s like they have to muster every ounce of mettle they’ve got just to find the nerve to bash a little....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “The American Library Association Web site for Banned Books Week does not list one single book that has been banned by any government entity in the United States of America in 2006. Some books are challenged every year, usually by parents who are concerned that a particular piece of literature is not appropriate for the children or young people to whom it is being taught or made available in the library....
Charlie Hunter Trio INFO 773-728-6000 or 866-468-3401 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At 40, Hunter shows no signs of abandoning this vagabond spirit. Without a doubt the most experimental of his projects is the frequently exhilarating and occasionally bewildering duo-plus-one called Groundtruther, with drummer and composer Bobby Previte. The two have created a trilogy of albums for the intrepid Thirsty Ear label, each featuring a different guest musician....
Since flamenco is historically a cultural fusion, it’s weird to debate what its “pure” or “authentic” manifestations might be. Apparently the only thing people can agree on is that it should be highly seasoned: the artists experienced, the performances spicy. Chicago’s Ensemble Espanol Spanish Dance Theater opens the dance-focused portion of the Flamenco 2006 festival with a program featuring only flamenco (the first time the 30-year-old company hasn’t also offered Spanish classical and folkloric forms)....
Contrary to the prevailing wisdom, not everybody making flossy, disco-derived pop in the 80s was a clueless dip. Vince Clarke is a songwriter of the first water who helped found three of the most important bands in synth pop–and unlike, say, Henry Rollins, he kept making interesting music as a grown-up. Extravagant and sentimental, Erasure splits the difference between Clarke’s other two big-name projects, combining the overheated melodrama of Depeche Mode with the boinky bubbliness of Yazoo....
Of the estimated 125,000 Indian immigrants living in the Chicago area, approximately half hail from the western state of Gujarat. To celebrate the autumn Hindu festivals of Navratri and Dussehra, Gujaratis perform a dandiya raas, or “dance of swords,” in which actors use wooden sticks to re-create the battle between goddess Durga and demon Mahishasura. The dance is generally performed to upbeat folk music dominated by traditional percussion instruments like the dhol, but Falguni Pathak has become India’s “dandiya queen” by adding Western instruments....
Frankie J’s: Wet at Last Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last time we checked on Frankie Janisch, nearly two years ago, the comic, crooner, and Culinary Institute of America-trained chef was reeling from a badly botched attempt to get the neighborhood around his Uptown restaurant and theater, Frankie J’s and the MethaDome, to go wet. Thanks to a mistake by the city clerk’s office, Janisch had conducted a vigorous campaign for yes votes on a referendum when in fact he needed no votes to reverse the area’s longtime dry spell....
Beef. College football. Nebraska wasn’t known for much more than that until the public caught wind of Saddle Creek, the Omaha indie label founded by Justin and Conor Oberst in 1993. Within a decade Conor’s group Bright Eyes hit the national radar with the album Lifted, Saddle Creek bands the Faint and Azure Ray were opening for acts like No Doubt and Moby, and other bands on the label started selling out their own concerts....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Today at 3 PM, she’ll be at Prairie Grass Cafe in Northbrook for a sold-out book signing with appetizers served. She’s signing her new book, The Art of Simple Food: Notes, Lessons, and Recipes From a Delicious Revolution, at the Michigan Avenue Borders tomorrow at 7 PM. At 6 PM Friday, Waters is the featured guest at a reception and five-course dinner at Kendall College to benefit Slow Food Nation and Slow Food Chicago....
