Early in his career Ben Allison wisely realized that recognition would come easier if he banded together with similarly inclined players. So in 1992, taking a cue from the AACM, he cofounded the Jazz Composers Collective; since then, each member has developed a sublime fluency in the others’ work. Allison is uniquely skilled at making conflicting musical ideas work together: his compositions feature contrasting melody lines, sharp rhythmic shifts, and more convoluted conceits–a piece on an early album was in two keys simultaneously....

I wasn’t impressed with Andrew Marin’s “disapprove of the sin but love and don’t, at least not overtly, judge and try to convert the sinner” compromise to “bridge the gap” between gays and Christian fundamentalists [“His God Doesn’t Hate Fags,” August 18]. This is a slightly watered-down version of the condescending “love the sinner but not the sin” position that “kinder and gentler” fundamentalists have adopted. I’m curious about why some gays want to go down this road....

Nearly everything I’ve read about 24-year-old Texas singer-songwriter MICAH P. HINSON spends more time pulping up his backstory than discussing his work. Lurid though his press-kit bio is (evil model girlfriend, drug abuse, jail time for prescription forgery, homeless at 19, yada yada yada), you don’t need it to appreciate his debut full-length. Micah P. Hinson and the Gospel of Progress (Overcoat) is at heart a breakup album, full of melancholy resignation and hopeful hindsight....

With their skeedly-whompus guitar and furiously intricate drumming, these Tokyo hard-rock vets sound too indulgent for Estrus Records, who recently put out the band’s first U.S. album, The Essential Sounds From the Far East–the label’s aesthetic has always leaned toward the pared down and boneheaded. But DMBQ (short for Dynamite Masters Blues Quartet) share a common ancestor with stateside neo-garage bashers: they back up through Sabbath and the MC5 and don’t stop till they reach old-fashioned psych, whose hairy, primitive wildness crouches in the dark subbasement of every decent rocker’s brain....

Gary U.S. Bonds’s early-60s hits–“New Orleans,” the epic “Quarter to Three,” “Dear Lady Twist,” and a few others–exemplified the rock aesthetic at its most jubilantly unhinged. As the band brayed deliriously behind him, Bonds rasped, mewled, and bellowed tales of debauchery and lust, the rough production muddling his vocals to the point of semicoherence. Thankfully, Bonds doesn’t try to recapture his raucous youth on his new disc, Back in 20 (M....

Although Greg Davis has spent his life in or around two major American metropolises, his music has always been distinctly pastoral. A native of the Chicago burbs and a graduate of DePaul (where he studied jazz composition), Davis later moved to Boston to attend the New England Conservatory of Music. It was there that he combined his interest in field recordings with his affinity for the work of Brian Wilson, John Cage, Aphex Twin, Stevie Wonder, and the Native Tongues posse in a series of home-recorded Pro Tools experiments....

Playwright Todd McCullough sets the classic story of the ambitious usurper attempting to dethrone a king in a midwestern small town and makes the “king” a television weatherman and his rival the local anchor. The prize may be as trivial as a new fishing boat or a coveted spot in the county fair’s dunk booth, but McCullough plays the material straight and never sneers at his characters’ aspirations. Neither does the Laboratory Theatre Project, a new troupe that helped the playwright bring this 2001 work to its current form....

Dear editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Yep! I just made sure of that by listening to the only MC5 CD I have, Kick Out the Jams. I am writing this letter for two reasons: (1) to respond to any poor soul out there that thinks that maybe MC5 was this really great band that never got its proper recognition and now I have to waste my time and money finding and buying an MC5 CD, and (2) to respond to the historical revisionism going on with some people in the general media industry....

Lawyers from the city of Chicago and StubHub Inc. stood before the Illinois Supreme Court Tuesday and argued a case whose results could transform Chicago’s ticket-selling industry. The current price of a ticket to a sporting event, concert, or theatrical performance in Chicago includes a 12 percent amusement tax: the city gets 9 percent and […] New slugger is the definition of hit or miss The Cubs had their lowest attendance in nine years Monday....

My fetish is pretty unoriginal, but it hasn’t received much attention in your column. I have a breast fetish. More specifically, I like bigger-than-your-head breasts. Could you find out why all the huge-breasted porn stars of the mid-90s (Tiffany Towers, Wendy Whoppers) left the industry and why there aren’t any new ones replacing them? And more importantly, how do I find a partner who’s willing (and eager) to get her breasts enlarged to epic proportions?...

For the first time since it burst onto the scene 16 years ago, there will be no DanceAfrica Chicago this fall. Columbia College, which has produced the festival since the beginning, is looking to leave it on the doorstep of another institution in less-than-healthy condition. The school has, however, promised an undisclosed amount of financial support for the next three years if an appropriate new home can be found. Michael Warr, whose post as executive director was dissolved in August, has been trying to arrange an adoption, and last week a transition committee sent a recommendation to president Warrick Carter....

Ken Dunn One of the city’s earliest recycling advocates, Dunn founded the Resource Center, which has long run the kind of effective programs the city hasn’t. He’s also a leader in the more comprehensive field of sustainable development. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Rebecca Stanfield An environmental attorney and the state director of the research and advocacy group Environment Illinois, Stanfield is a regional leader on clean air, clean power, and green public policy....

Where did the idea come from that the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple? Genesis just says “fruit.” Does Jewish tradition have it as an apple, or is it strictly a Christian thing? Come to think of it, the fruit of discord of the Greek goddess Eris was also an apple. Why are apples considered to be the troublemakers of the produce world? –Sluggo, via e-mail...

Friday 20 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE This local quintet, which features members of Rise Against, Shai Hulud, the Hope Conspiracy, the Killing Tree, etc, etc, is so posthardcore it’s like hardcore never happened. The chugging songs on last year’s Lost in Landscapes EP (HeWhoCorrupts Inc.) have an angular grandeur and an unpunk kind of priggishness–the music’s crisply recorded and almost coldly perfect–but front woman Emily Schambra defiantly commands the top of the mix with her humanizing wail....

Suggesting at different moments a backstage musical, a failed love story, a surreal comedy, and even a cartoon fantasy, this beautiful, corrosive, visionary masterpiece by Jia Zhang-ke (2004) is a frighteningly persuasive account of the current state of the planet. Set in an eerie Beijing theme park–a kind of Chinese Las Vegas, with scaled-down duplicates of the most famous global landmarks–it follows a bunch of workers as they labor, carouse, couple, and uncouple, but it’s really about propping up extravagant illusions through alienated labor....

If you want to know why taxes are going through the roof, check out the city’s latest propaganda about tax increment financing. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As for the primer itself, I’ll read it so you don’t have to. It’s set up as a Q and A, starting with the basics: “What is TIF?” The answer: “TIF stands for Tax Increment Financing.” Well, at least they got that right....

At the rehearsal I watched, artistic director Jawole Willa Jo Zollar said she was “cleaning up” the company’s new work, Walking With Pearl, adjusting her dancers’ timing and spacing. The process was fascinating, like the unraveling and reweaving of a piece of cloth. Though Zollar attended to such details as flexed or pointed feet, she seemed to care less about the look of the dancing than about how it felt: lifts and other interactive moments had to both suit the dancers and have the emotional and kinetic energy she wanted....

Look at the PR photo above from Southland Tales. If you find it at all intriguing or seductive, for whatever reason—the plasticene glaze of Dwayne (formerly “the Rock”) Johnson’s discombobulated hero, the implied commentary on presidential candidates (or are they all simply androids?) of our immediate telegenic future, the body-doubling shadowy shadowlessness of the cartoon image—then Kelly’s new movie, a “controversial” hit-and-miss satire of airbrushed political dada and contemporary Hollywood glam, is probably for you....

The Beaux Arts Trio, the world’s preeminent piano trio, is celebrating its 50th anniversary. It’s maintained a very high standard through several personnel changes because of the one constant, pianist Menahem Pressler, an impeccable artist who still sounds great. These days he’s joined by cellist Antonio Meneses (since 1998) and violinist Daniel Hope (since 2002), and their recent CD of Dvorak’s Dumky Trio and Mendelssohn’s D Minor Trio is excellent, even though it doesn’t top the recording made during the Pressler, Cohen, and Greenhouse era–the Mendelssohn is gutsy, lush, and tender in all the right places, and the Dvorak is passionate, though at times the strings are a little scratchy....

TO UNDERSTAND POLITICS in Chicago, you start with one basic fact—there’s one all-powerful mayor and 50 very wimpy aldermen. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Daley lets the aldermen control the little stuff in their wards, while he directs the big stuff—budgets, patronage, promotions, construction projects, and housing and education policy. The mayor’s control of the big stuff has been responsible, in recent years, for the hideous rehab of Soldier Field, the construction of the vastly overbudget Millennium Park, the destruction of a municipal airport under cover of darkness, the continued rise in property taxes, the overpriced and much delayed Brown Line reconstruction (which is causing long delays on the Red Line), and the Pink Line addition coming at the expense of other services on the west side, as well as sweeping education and public housing policy changes that allowed Daley appointees to hold thousands of kids back or kick thousands of families out of their homes....