While it might seem that anyone who can play a lick of banjo is likely to sell a bundle of records at the moment, in truth nearly all the bluegrass artists who’ve rolled into the limelight on the rails laid by the O, Brother sound track are deserving–from grand masters like Ralph Stanley to Nashville backsliders like Dolly Parton on down to young crossover acts like Nickel Creek. In his liner notes to One More in the Cabin (Overcoat), the third album by Pennsylvania indie bluegrass band Jim & Jennie and the Pinetops, writer Michael Azerrad goes on far too long about how the group appeals to both devoted bluegrass fans and “hard-partying hipsters,” a dubious compliment that at this point could as easily apply to Stanley or Del McCoury....

Toronto-based DJ and producer John Acquaviva cofounded Plus 8 Records in 1990 with minimal-techno god Richie Hawtin, but though Acquaviva’s been just as prolific as his partner, he’s nowhere near as famous. That’s partly because he’s produced fewer tracks of his own–most of the releases bearing his name have been mix CDs, including 1996’s Transmissions Vol. 1, 1998’s Skills, 1999’s Cream, and three volumes of From Saturday to Sunday, the most recent of which came out this year....

Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » According to government data published by the Environmental Working Group, the federal farm-subsidy program, established in 1933 to help struggling family farms, now allocates 73 percent of its funds to 10 percent of America’s farmers, almost all of them well-off. Since 1996, $38 million has gone to a man in Elaine, Arkansas, who owns a tractor dealership, among other businesses, and lives in a 13,000-square-foot mansion....

OKROS ENSEMBLE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Okros Ensemble isn’t as well-known as Muzsikas, but it does straight-up traditional Hungarian folk music better and more faithfully than any other group of the sort. The string quintet–two violas, two violins, and an upright bass–is essentially a preservationist organization, learning its deep repertoire from old recordings and studying with master musicians like the marvelous Gypsy fiddler Sandor “Neti” Fodor, who performed with the group in Chicago in the fall of 1999....

“The purpose of this show is to establish a benchmark for what are the finest, most beautiful objects of Himalayan art,” says Pratapaditya Pal, the visiting curator who developed the Art Institute’s new exhibit, “Himalayas: An Aesthetic Adventure.” Including 187 mostly religious pieces from Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, Pakistan, Kashmir, and northern India, the show is the largest ever of objects from the region–many from private collections and previously unexhibited–and is the first comprehensive look at the art produced by its many interrelated cultures....

I can only say I have mixed feelings about any CD that [Liz] Phair has released [“Just Like All the Rest,” June 27]. All of them, including the much heralded Exile, were average musical releases at best. Phair is the ultimate musical tease, an artist who creates an atmosphere of intrigue but fails to deliver the promise of an earth-shattering musical statement. Exile in Guyville at least had the advantage of sounding as raw as her talent was…there was not a lot of production to cushion the impact of the stark, untuneful singing and the basement ambience of the music....

San Francisco choreographer Robert Moses has a strong feeling for music. The rocking motions of his ritualistic Lucifer’s Prance echo the repetitions of the score, excerpts from Philip Glass’s Akhnaten, and the crossing lines of dancers in this piece for ten recapitulate Glass’s counterpoint. In a visual and aural joke, when bells ring two women are carried upside down, their legs straight up in the air and dropping one after the other in sync with the chiming....

Christmas has come early. A crackerjack Chicago cast ably directed by Bob Tomson backs up screen star Richard Chamberlain in the U.S. premiere of a stage version of Leslie Bricusse’s 1970 film musical, starring Albert Finney. Here Dickens’s tale of a miser’s redemption is spelled out in songs that leave no subtext behind: numbers like “Thank You Very Much” raise the energy but dilute the urgency. As if conceding the ballads’ melodic sterility, Chamberlain as Ebenezer speaks as much as he sings them....

“Never so weary, never so in woe, / Bedabbled with the dew and torn with briers, / I can no further crawl, no further go; / My legs can keep no pace with my desires.” At midnight on a sweltering night last July, 100 people took those four lines of iambic pentameter from A Midsummer Night’s Dream and ran with them–at times literally. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Participants in the 5 x 8 Video Festival, started in March by friends Adam “Atom” Paul and Sean U’Ren, pay $15 to $20 for the chance to make a five-minute video in eight hours flat; tapes are due back to the organizers when the time’s up–no exceptions–and the results are screened the following night for an audience of participants, festival judges, and curious bystanders....

THE SIXTEEN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Since conductor and musicologist Harry Christophers formed the Sixteen in Oxford, England, more than 20 years ago, he’s only had to dismiss two singers, even as the choir’s roster has grown from 16 to more than 20. He’s assembled a crew of quick learners with flexible temperaments and perfectly complementary voices, and his aesthetic guidance has elevated the group to the very top of its field....

Suppose that one day the president of the U.S. announces that although he was born in the U.S., is older than 35, and has been a resident for more than 14 years, he is a humanoid of an extraterrestrial species and hopes that this trifling difference will not prejudice Americans against him or his politics. I note that the relevant part of the Constitution, article II, section 1, paragraph 5, begins “No person except…”...

Rock, Pop, etc. AMERICAN MUSIC DRIVEWAY TOUR Jay Mathes and other artists perform in local driveways and parking lots through mid-October. Sat 9/7, 1 PM (with Roy G. Biv, Second Hand Bicycle, Something Ordinary, Elenie Dimoulis, 3 Man Quartet, Morningside Drive, and the Red Jacket), the Kellners’ driveway, 9 S. 530 Clarendon Hills Rd., Hinsdale. Sat 9/14, 7 PM (with Something Ordinary and Elenie Dimoulis), parking lot, Northwest Church of God, 6333 W....

Blah Blah Blah, Asylum 137, at the Chopin Theatre, and My Impending Death, at the Chopin Theatre. The buffoonery of Asylum 137 falls somewhere between Grand Guignol and the Ringling Brothers, its whimsy often verging on performance art. Blah Blah Blah presents us with Mel, an insecure angel sent to fetch home a box, and Mr. Kroup, a devil who alternately encourages and dissuades her. By the time they part company, the shy Mel has learned to express her anger and assertiveness, the cynical Kroup has experienced remorse and affection, the box has been smashed and reassembled, and we have been chastised for our passivity....

Dear Sir/Madam: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Arabs began immigration in the early 1900s. They often went to work in industrial jobs (hence the largest concentration of Arab-Americans in Detroit), saved and began small businesses for their livelihoods. Recent immigrants may have brought monies from their native countries, or cooperated to finance businesses. Perhaps their immediate environment is not conducive to success, as many are burdened with small children without support, alcoholism, and general malaise....

The ninth annual Chicago Underground Film Festival continues Friday through Wednesday, August 23 through 28, at Landmark’s Century Centre. Tickets are $9, $6.50 for programs before 5 PM. A $30 pass admits you to five films. For more information call 773-327-3456. Films marked with an * are highly recommended. A Chronicle of Corpses The documentary Our Nation: A Korean Punk Rock Community (2001) tackles a fascinating topic: the mid-90s emergence of punk rock in Seoul....

On his grandiose and schizophrenic U.S. debut, Fantasma (Matador, 1998), Japanese pomo pop star Cornelius drove wildly different genres together in the sampling equivalent of a demolition derby. Bits of bossa nova, cartoon music and sound effects, drum ‘n’ bass, garage rock, and sunny pop collided in a delirious mix–but especially in the context of his perfectly video- and choreographed live show, his craftsmanship shone through. Cornelius (whose real name is Keigo Oyamada) has changed course dramatically on his new album, Point, although it reveals a similar level of craft....

The Coughs, a bottom-of-the-barrel noise sextet, were drawn to one another two years ago by their mutual lack of musical skill or experience. Enthusiasm has won out over ineptitude, however, and at this point they don’t sound sloppy so much as unhinged. On their self-released Bent Babies EP, the sax squeals when it shouldn’t, and guitar and bass lines are just openhanded slapping; a few songs seem to be scored for pots, pans, and alarm clock, and there’s a dull atonal wash over all the tracks....

Live Bait Theater’s showcase of one-person performances features old and new work by a slew of fringe artists, among them Stephanie Shaw, Lotti Pharriss, David Kodeski, Mark Gagne, Judith Harding, Karin McKie, Susan McLaughlin Karp, and Kristin Garrison. The festival climaxes with a salute to the late James Grigsby, whose solo show Terminal Madness was Live Bait’s first production in 1988. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The seventh annual Fillet of Solo Festival runs through August 25 at Live Bait Theater, 3914 N....

Along with Ralph Stanley and Earl Scruggs, singer and guitarist Jimmy Martin is one of the few icons of early bluegrass still active today. These days Stanley keeps the highest profile of the bunch, contributing to the multiplatinum sound track of O Brother, Where Art Thou? and earning a spread in the New Yorker, but most of his performances seem as scripted as that movie: they’re technically superb, but they lack spark....

The kindest thing I can say about Liz Phair’s eponymous new album–her first in nearly five years–is that it’s easy to forget. Produced primarily by the Matrix, the trio of former pop musicians (including a refugee from Haircut 100) responsible for Avril Lavigne’s hits, the disc’s relentlessly radio-friendly tracks are as mundane as advertising jingles but nowhere near as memorable. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Phair told Entertainment Weekly that she wasn’t happy with the reception Capitol execs gave the record’s first draft, which was produced by Mr....