Close to midnight on October 22, Morikeba Kouyate was walking a friend home near 72nd and Racine when three men jumped them from behind. Two grabbed the friend and demanded his money, and the third pointed a gun at Kouyate. “I asked him if he wanted my wallet or something,” Kouyate says. “He said, ‘No, I just want to kill someone tonight. I don’t want nothing, but I’m going to kill you....
Last weekend the University of Illinois men’s basketball team was chased out of Assembly Hall in Champaign by the state high school wrestling tournament, only to butt up against the Public League boys’ basketball finals in the United Center. The Fighting Illini took on Northwestern University at 1 PM; then the orange-clad Illini rooters–who greatly outnumbered NU fans–were shooed from the stadium so it could be tidied up for the freshman-sophomore title game at six and the varsity championship at eight....
During a recent ABC television report about how infrequent shark attacks really are, we were told, “Each year coconuts falling from trees kill 150 people.” That sounded absurd to me. Could it be true? If so, what is the cause of death? –Nicki F. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For 20 years scientists have been saying you have a better chance of getting killed by a falling coconut than by whatever lethal life-form they were getting big bucks to study....
There Goes the Bride Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On Enantiodromia, says Youssefi, “I wanted the material to be comprehensible to people. I wanted people to follow it.” The album is chock-full of unusual chord patterns, convoluted rhythmic structures, and dissonant harmonies: the moody melody of “Better End in Time” takes more unexpected twists than “Rikki, Don’t Lose That Number.” But its tunes are still more streamlined than the claustrophobic post-Beefheart roil of Bride of No No, and there’s no doubt you can sing along to them....
They Like Ike Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the rigidly formatted, consultant-driven world of mainstream radio it’s all but impossible for an unsigned artist to get airplay, let alone make it into regular rotation. But Reilly has a special relationship with Minneapolis and with the ABC-owned Drive 105 in particular. “Put a Little Love in It,” the second and final single from Reilly’s debut, had been a local audience favorite, and DJ Shelley Miller says Reilly is “like the station’s mascot....
Rock, Pop, etc. BLUE MONKS, RUBBER, DROP, FREE BEER, BRITISH EXPORT, BOOKSTORE COWBOYS, FIRE Benefit for World Trade Center Disaster Relief Funds. Sun 9/30, 11AM-8 PM, Rosati’s, 185 Lake, Bloomingdale. 630-894-6611. AL CARVER BAND Free in-store performance. Fri 10/5, 8 PM, Borders Books & Music, 15160 S. La Grange, Orland Park. 708-460-7566. BEN FOLDS, CITIZEN COPE Sold out. Wed 10/3, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield. 773-472-0449 or 312-559-1212....
Rock, Pop, Etc. AMERICAN ENGLISH Beatles tribute. Fri 6/20, 6 PM, Millennium Plaza, Galena and Stolp, Aurora. 630-844-4396. JIM BUCKNER Free in-store performance. Sat 6/14, 8 PM, Borders Books & Music, 15160 S. La Grange Rd., Orland Park. 708-460-7566. COBRA VERDE Free in-store performance; see Spot Check. Thu 6/19, 4 PM, Reckless Records, 1532 N. Milwaukee. 773-235-3727. EARTH, WIND & FIRE Fri 6/20, 8 PM, Star Plaza Theatre, I-65 and U....
Rock, Pop, Etc. BEYONCE, BOW WOW, DA BAND, MURPHY LEE & ST. LUNATICS, MONICA, TWISTA See Critic’s Choice. Fri 12/19, 6:30 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison. 312-455-4500 or 312-559-1212. DJS TOUCHMASTER INFINITI, JESSICA HOPPER, BEN FASMAN & MISS MONEYPENNY spin at a benefit for the DJ/electronica program of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls; see Post No Bills. Sat 12/20, 10 PM, Highschool, 1542 N. Milwaukee (third floor). 773-292-9255....
“It’ll be messy in the spirit of the Fluxists and all infantile artists,” says artist and curator Nancy Van Kanegan about Saturday’s Ridiculist Banquet, which will feature food-themed films, music, and performances, as well as oatmeal facials, a fruit mandala, and a mashed potato table where guests can sculpt with spuds. Van Kanegan will also show a map of Rogers Park–made entirely of edibles from that neighborhood. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Has He Got the Goods? “He has passed the information on to the proper authorities, and in four years Peter Zelchenko is the only person who thinks a crime has been committed,” says Granato campaign consultant Tom Carmik. “This guy doesn’t check his facts, doesn’t do any research. This guy has been harassing the al-derman, harassing the alderman’s staff.” He adds that Zelchenko has no proof that the documents are real or that they were in Granato’s campaign office....
The Builders Association, a New York-based experimental company founded by former Wooster Group dramaturge Marianne Weems, made its Chicago debut almost two years ago with Xtravaganza, a trippy homage to producer Florenz Ziegfeld, director Busby Berkeley, dancer Loie Fuller, and designer Steele MacKaye. For her troupe’s return engagement Weems has joined forces with designers Keith Khan and Ali Zaidi, collectively known as the British “performance spectacle” team Moti Roti. But this time Weems’s troupe focuses on legend, not history....
It’s a testament to the tenacity of Kim Deal’s musical vision that, despite the nine-year wait, the Breeders’ new Title TK (4AD/Elektra) sounds so much like a wonderful sequel to 1993’s Last Splash–the platinum-selling album that produced the alt-rock hit “Cannonball.” For years a new Breeders album, let alone a good new Breeders album, hasn’t even seemed worth hoping for. Since 1994 they’ve been sidelined by drug problems, aborted recording sessions, and a series of unstable lineups–the only members left from Last Splash are Deal and her sister Kelley, who both sing and play guitar (they pursued their own projects, the Amps and the Kelley Deal 6000, throughout the mid-90s)....
AUGUST Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The folks running the show at the Woodstock Mozart Festival are turning the spotlight on their own talent this final weekend of the annual event. Artistic adviser Mark Peskanov will conduct and play violin in tonight’s concert, which also features trumpeter Matthew Lee, flutist Robin Fellows, and oboist Deborah Stevenson. The program includes Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto no. 2 and Mozart’s Diverti-mento no....
By now Ed Wilkerson has taken his place in the long line of great Chicago tenor players, including some he listened to closely on the way up: Von Freeman, Fred Anderson, Ari Brown. Like Freeman or Eddie Harris, he favors a gruff, back-of-the-throat growl–welcome relief from the shellacked-reed shrillness too many tenor players picked up from Saturday Night Live. Also like Freeman, he can stretch a note like Silly Putty or turn it into a question, teasing the pitch....
In ’97, having already founded an assortment of avant-garde tap dance troupes, punk-pop bands, and experimental orchestral groups, French scenester Fred Bigot put together an electronic act involving noise washes and an 808 drum machine. Seven albums and a handful of singles and remixes later (all as Electronicat), he’s one of the most prolific artists you’ve never heard of. Impersonating Suicide is practically a subgenre of electronica, but Bigot’s version is an improvement on the original....
Previously produced by the Aardvark theater company, this third annual festival of women’s theater has been taken over by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs in conjunction with Prop Thtr. Running through May 10, the festival features artists in the fields of theater, performance, poetry, dance, and music; scheduled participants include Karen Finley, Stephanie Shaw, Margi Cole, Laura McKenzie, Jessica Thebus, Susan Nussbaum, Tekki Lomnicki, Nana Shineflug, Teatro Luna, and Babes With Blades....
Or “I Was a Teenage Yakuza.” Japanese director Takashi Miike scored his first big American success with the erotic suspense film Audition (1999), but he already had 18 films to his credit in 1996, when he made this masterfully executed and hilariously hyperbolic gangland drama. Ten years after seeing his brother murdered by his yakuza father, the teenage Riki Fudoh (Shosuke Tanihara) mounts a secret war against the organized-crime families who ordered the killing, employing a pair of ten-year-old hit men and two gorgeous classmates....
When I saw this show in its first run a year ago, I was overwhelmed by Blindfaith’s fidelity to their source. It’s no mean feat to bring something as distinctively pagebound as the chilly humor of Edward Gorey across onstage, but making it sing with the master’s voice is truly remarkable. Now as then, immense credit is due the production team. William Crowley’s inky sets and props, combined with Jill Van Brussel’s high-contrast costumes, precisely conjure up the imaginary isle between old and New England where most of Gorey’s vignettes seem to take place....
Not long after moving into their Wilmette home in 1972, nature lovers Charlotte Adelman and Bernard L. Schwartz decided to plant some shrubs to attract birds. “What we put in had berries and thorns,” says Schwartz, “but it wasn’t native to the area. At that point we weren’t really informed. But they did attract more birds than what we’d had.” These days the pair of retired attorneys–he was a Cook County public defender; she specialized in divorce work–are advocates of native prairie vegetation, and last year they coauthored and self-published the Prairie Directory of North America (available at www....
Last summer, the same bright idea occurred to two Chicago-area theater professionals who make their home in the northern reaches of Lake County. Jeff-winning actor Doug McDade (a member of Chicago’s Shattered Globe Theatre ensemble) and director Mark Heller (former artistic director at Waukegan’s Bowen Park Theatre) independently approached Gurnee mayor Donald Rudny to suggest that the town was ready for its own theater company. Rudny introduced them and together they rounded up local sponsors, got affiliated with the park district, scored a sweetheart lease on a 10,000-square-foot space in Gurnee Mills Mall, and founded the Gurnee Theatre Company....
