Irwin Keller was such a nice, polite, presentable suit-and-tie homosexual when I met him 20 years ago. Then a University of Chicago law student, the Niles native was an earnest young activist who helped draft the city’s landmark gay-inclusive Human Rights Ordinance before heading to San Francisco to work for an AIDS assistance agency. But Sodom by the Bay prodded Keller to move in a new direction–from legal eagle to cross-dressing musical artiste....
With all due respect to Chicago, the most fertile spot on the planet for dance music right now is Cologne, Germany. The main reason: it’s the home of Kompakt, the label chiefly responsible for codifying the wriggling sonic minutiae and serene emotional overtones that have come to be bunched under the term microhouse and the source of a striking number of the best dance records of the last few years. Outstanding even among these is Immer, a 2002 DJ set by Michael Mayer (who, together with tonight’s coheadliner, Reinhard Voigt, runs the label) that encapsulates much of what makes the Kompakt aesthetic so seductive....
Last weekend I watched a “fusion” troupe massacre African (and flamenco and Middle Eastern) dance in the name of the Luvabull-ish Las Vegas-ization of our culture. It gave me a new appreciation for those who at least try to preserve the integrity of ethnic forms despite transplantation. In our city, no group has done that longer, more diligently, or better than Muntu Dance Theatre. Instead of creating a “global community” by smushing together numerous unrelated traditions, Muntu seeks to appreciate our differences....
James Emmett Jankowiak wonders why hip-hop got a bad rap. “People assume hip-hop is all bad,” he says. “The hip-hop music I grew up with didn’t mention guns or violence. ‘Rapper’s Delight’ talked about improving yourself as a person.” Even when a song glorified guns, “it didn’t make me want to go out and buy one.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As a teenager in Back of the Yards, Jankowiak became a tagger....
There’s more than a touch of Krautrock hypnosis in the huge, ultrarepetitive riffs and rhythmic patterns banged out by Oneida, but the Brooklyn trio also goes beyond the minimalism of Neu! and early Kraftwerk. Their forthcoming album, Secret Wars (Jagjaguwar), artfully balances speaker-shredding bombast and lean precision, complicated by a variety of catalytic elements–a whiff of ethereal melody or an extroverted, overdriven organ solo. They’ve been finding new ways to oscillate between calm and chaos since they formed in the late 90s, and the results are getting better with each release....
This self-styled “convergence of Chicago artists,” running through April 26, is presented by Performing Arts Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Boasting Chicago first lady Maggie Daley as honorary chair, the avant-garde festival features more than 100 multidisciplinary presentations. All shows take place at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport; the sprawling arts complex is a hive of activity, with simultaneous performances and installations in its four studio theaters as well as lounges, hallways, stairwells, and other spaces....
Hi! I’m a straight guy, but I have a lot of stereotypically “gay” qualities, i.e., I’m sensitive, caring, and I like shopping, cooking, and Madonna. I developed a lot of these qualities because that’s what I thought women wanted in a man. But ever since I can remember I’ve always had problems attracting women. I’ve only had one serious girlfriend, and I haven’t had sex in over a year and a half....
I’m a 35-year-old straight male, and my sex drive is all but dead. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » My other area of concern is that I go weeks without masturbating. And when I do it’s hard to keep my mind from wandering. I’ve had my testosterone checked; it’s normal. I don’t do any drugs and am in very good health and shape. There was a time when just about every girl I saw turned me on, stretch marks, cellulite, bad breath, and all, so I know there’s something wrong....
Bob Fisher’s playwriting aesthetic owes a lot to the artifacts of his youth: comic books, Alfred Hitchcock’s British suspense films, ultra-low-budget horror flicks, and everything else Frederick Wertham warned parents to keep their kids away from. But there’s no denying that his continued entanglement in the throes of arrested adolescence can make for riveting theater: his best work with the Mammals finds a breezy medium between junk culture and theatrical ingenuity....
Watching the three minutes of the Paris Hilton sex tape available online and any three minutes of her new reality show, The Simple Life, it’s clear that at least one aspect of the TV show is real–that too-blank-to-be-believed stare of hers. The fisheye she gives the camcorder during sex with Rick Solomon is the same one she gives Farmer Leding when he tells her she’s got to get a job....
“It’s like van Gogh,” River Grove painter Cherie Salerno cracks about the trouble she’s had with her right ear. A tumor in Salerno’s right eardrum turned that ear deaf and required two major surgeries, but that hasn’t kept music from being the primary inspiration for her whimsical semiabstract paintings. Salerno is synesthesia in action–she hears a tune and sees colors–and her approach sounds like a corrective for conceptual art: she just turns on the music and goes where it takes her, “like conducting an orchestra with paint....
I can’t think of a more intrepid band of collaborators than the Ex. Already this year the Amsterdam-based quintet have toured with English saxophonist John Butcher, Congolese thumb-piano ensemble Konono, and French sound poet Anne-James Chaton. Over the years they’ve recorded with Sonic Youth, Tortoise, Kurdish folk singer Brader Musiki, Belgian comedians Kamagurka and Herr Seele, and too many Dutch free jazzers to list. But regardless of whom they share the stage or studio with, certain elements of the Ex’s sound have been more or less constant....
The French title of Jacques Becker’s 1953 gangster thriller translates as “Hands Off the Loot,” but a much better English title used for this film is Honor Among Thieves. Jean Gabin wasn’t yet 50 when he starred as a big-time, high-style gangster hoping to retire, but he still looks pretty wasted, and this pungent tale about aging and friendship, adapted from a best-selling noir thriller by Albert Simonin, would be hard to imagine without his puffy features....
Rock, Pop, etc. BLACK CROWES, OASIS, SPACEHOG Sun 5/20, 6:30 PM, Tweeter Center, I-80 and Harlem, Tinley Park. 708-614-1616 or 312-559-1212. BUMPUS performs at “After Hours” museum tour and party. Thu 5/17, 5:30-9:30 PM, ballroom, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan. 312-575-8000. DOOBIE BROTHERS Benefit for Sacred Heart Schools of Chicago. Fri 5/18, 8:30 PM, A. Finkl & Sons, 2011 N. Southport. 773-262-4446, ext. 345. DAVIS GAINES Benefit for Jane Addams Hull House....
“Bread in the U.S. has no taste. It is very fat, uses very much sugar and shortening,” says Thierry Dieu, master baker at the Greektown cafe/bakery Artopolis. “It is not bread.” Dieu’s bread centers around the flour, and his ingredients meet exacting standards. Since Artopolis opened just over a year ago, his work has attracted so much attention from other food professionals that in early February the cafe’s owners will open a 5,800-square foot wholesale baking facility at LaSalle and 46th....
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir Bloodsworth: The True Story of the First Death Row Inmate Exonerated by DNA Chronicles, Volume One Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Obviously, this is not the definitive Bob Dylan story. But it’s undeniably his best work of prose, full of sly humor, colorful language, and sharp observations that prove he was and is much more aware of the world at large than we might’ve expected....
The Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, now in its 20th year, continues Friday through Sunday, October 31 through November 2, at City North 14; Facets Cinematheque; and the Vittum Theater, 1012 N. Noble. Tickets are $6 for children and adults, $4.50 for Facets members; various discounts are available for ten or more tickets. Professional actors will be on hand to read subtitled films. For more information call 773-281-9075 or 773-281-2166. Programs marked with an * are highly recommended....
Founded 30 years ago, the Chicago Moving Company has never shied away from current events–though its approach is seldom predictable. Two of the three new pieces on this program, “Threads,” were inspired or influenced by the events of September 11. Founder-artistic director Nana Shineflug offers Altered, a piece for five dancers and one runner, who jogs in place at a corner of the stage throughout. A highly visceral response to crisis and tragedy, Altered is often agitated, though there are also supportive group tableaux....
The American Plan Greenberg ups the ante by setting most of The American Plan in 1960 at a Catskills resort among privileged Jews, haunted by their own contingent sense of existence even when nothing explicit threatens them. The playwright doesn’t seem completely at ease with his Jewish identity, and the script’s tone shifts randomly from Philip Roth to Arthur Miller to J.D. Salinger. But the issue of extermination remains a constant, always threatening to breach the surface....
Eddie King Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Guitarist Eddie King isn’t the kind of innovator who can create a new style out of whole cloth, but he’s hardly a by-the-numbers imitator either: with his original approach to tried-and-true blues idioms, he’s found a distinctive sound, combining grit-and-gristle vocals, stripped-down funk rhythms, and string-bending guitar leads. An Alabama native who moved to Chicago as a teen, King played in some of the busiest bands on the west side in the late 50s and early 60s, most notably the groups fronted by late harpist Little Mac Simmons....
