Opeth recorded two albums last year. In March they’ll release the less evil twin, the supposedly mellower Damnation. But what we have on our hands now is Deliverance (Koch), which finds the Swedes gnashing their death-metal fangs. Like its fantastic predecessor, 2001’s Blackwater Park, it was coproduced by Porcupine Tree’s Steven Wilson (who also contributes backing vocals, guitar, and mellotron) and combines a progressive sensibility (mellotron!) with a primal metal aesthetic that burns away all the twee paid-by-the-noteness for which prog is dreaded....

During her gender-blending performances, Patty Elvis might croon seductively into a woman’s ear one minute, then pantomime going down on a man the next. And those Ed Sullivan Show cameramen who shot Elvis Presley from the waist up in 1957? They wouldn’t know what to do with Patty Elvis’s upper half, which sports a pair of queens the King would have appreciated. When she’s Elvis, Manning–a 40-year-old Catholic-school graduate from the northwest side–is a pop culture-drenched, big-sideburned riot....

Just what sexual pleasure could a gay man possibly derive from another gay man inserting a fist into his rectum? So long as this act is performed by gay men, straight people will never approve of gay relationships. What is wrong with you people? –Normal Straight Male Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Thank you for being frank about what shitheads AIDS educators can be....

By Michael Miner Which is why the 17 million photographs and negatives that make up the Bettmann Archive will be buried this fall in a former limestone mine in western Pennsylvania–a cool, dry, dark place where the pictures will survive for centuries, though possibly at the expense of the here and now. The argument raged. A second filer called Gates a “predator” and surmised that he’s burying the archive “to drive up the leasing/usage price of his photographs…by making them scarce....

The chickens have come home to roost. The members of Sticks and Stones–alto saxophonist Matana Roberts, bassist Josh Abrams, and drummer Chad Taylor–became acclimated to one another at the Sunday evening jam sessions Fred Anderson hosts at his jazz club the Velvet Lounge. Roberts and Taylor now nest in New York, but Sticks and Stones’ current tour includes two Chicago gigs, and for the first Anderson will join them as guest tenor saxophonist....

The Beta Band made one of the grander entrances into the American mainstream when John Cusack’s lovelorn record store owner in High Fidelity announced, “I will now sell five copies of The Three E.P.’s by the Beta Band,” and proceeded to do just that, as the irresistible long-fade chorus of “Dry the Rain” drove one customer after another up to the front counter to ask about the song. At their best, the three British EPs contained on that disc–1997’s Champion Versions and 1998’s The Patty Patty Sound and Los Amigos del Beta Bandidos–found a middle ground between the moody naturalism of British folk (complete with pots-and-pans percussion) and the electronic hypnosis of trip-hop....

Dear Sirs, Although each of these experts proceeded from his or her own unique cultural background and method of analysis, it is interesting to note that they all approached the classification of religion with similar criteria. Basically, they looked for three general characteristics: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Based on these criteria, every scholar to examine Scientology has concluded that it has the requisite elements for a religion....

The Civil War Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Songwriter Frank Wildhorn says he wrote his latest work, The Civil War, for his 14-year-old son. “He was studying the war in school, and I never thought the textbooks he was reading were inspiring the kind of passion they should,” he says–a passion very much in evidence lately. Ironically, this traveling version of Wildhorn, Gregory Boyd, and Jack Murphy’s musical opened its tour in Charleston, South Carolina, the week that controversy began to rage over whether to fly a Confederate flag over the state capitol, strengthening Wildhorn’s commitment to this project despite its failure on Broadway last spring....

When Michael and Helen Cameron opened their coffee kiosk inside the Century Mall almost 12 years ago, there was just one snag: Chicago didn’t offer a business license for coffee carts. So the Camerons finagled an arrangement with the Chicago Department of Health, which “agreed to let us share a three-compartment sink and a hand sink with a restaurant in the mall,” says Michael. But they still had problems. “They’d threaten to close us down every time an inspector came by who wasn’t familiar with our arrangement....

Unci Laura came to tell the children stories that looped back and made points you didn’t think you were coming to. She was small, and her voice was on Valium. It talked around things instead of describing them, or even more rare actually saying them, and it squeaked, just the teeniest bit. She was old, we all knew, and had survived the boarding school system. It must have been hard for her to work with the all-white camp staff....

Dear Chicago Reader, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Gabriella Filisko [Letters, February 14] is probably right to claim that there is a mountain of support for the Freed development in Uptown, and can’t be faulted for expecting Women & Children First bookstore to compete against Borders like good little capitalists. However, she ignores two essential points driving both the affordable-housing groups and the Plymouth Hotel preservationists in their pursuit of a competing plan, perhaps because Joravsky spent little time addressing them in his article: that Uptown residents overwhelmingly vote in nonbinding referenda to use TIF money to support preservation efforts and the development of low-cost housing, and that Freed’s development, funded by TIF dollars, achieves neither....

Friday 8/24 – Thursday 8/30 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Greta Garbo and John Gilbert weren’t just acting during the passionate love scenes in the 1926 film Flesh and the Devil; according to Gilbert’s daughter’s 1985 biography, Dark Star, the pair kept at it long after the cameras stopped. They went on to make three more films together–1927’s Love, 1928’s A Woman of Affairs, and 1933’s Queen Christina....

The Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, now in its 20th year, runs Friday, October 24, through Sunday, November 2, at Biograph; Carson Pirie Scott, 6th floor, 1 S. State; 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....

You don’t have to die to go to musical heaven. You can go whenever Jackie Taylor revives her 1995 hit, a strut-your-stuff tribute to the singers and girl and guy groups of the 1950s who pioneered rock ‘n’ roll with doo-wop. Black Ensemble Theater’s brilliant band and combustible ensemble, Thomas Washington’s awesome arrangements, and Jimmy Tillman’s unimprovable direction jubilantly bring to life the greatest hits of the Mills Brothers, Platters, Moonglows, Chantels, Shirelles, Heartbeats, and Skyliners, with special emphasis on Chicago guy groups like the El Dorados and the Flamingos that struck gold....

For a split second this summer, Devin Johnston and Michael O’Leary thought their ship had come in. The pair, who run a shoestring independent press called Flood Editions, got an E-mail from a judge for this year’s National Book Awards who was interested in one of their titles–poet Ronald Johnson’s final book, The Shrubberies. Could they submit a copy for consideration? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Through their various endeavors they’d developed a loose web of contacts around the country; both magazines had published work by Pam Rehm, who won a National Poetry Series award for her 1994 book To Give It Up....

A. LaVonne Brown Ruoff started teaching a composition class for Native Americans at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the fall of 1972, at a time when Indians were demanding greater self-determination along with better government services. Some of her students had grown up on reservations and were grounded in traditional tribal culture, while the students who’d grown up in Chicago knew little about their heritage. Some were older and uncomfortable with younger students....

The cool restraint that pervades the work of Joao Gilberto makes him an unlikely candidate for World’s Greatest Living Musical Revolutionary. His case rests largely on his work in 1957, when he and composer Antonio Carlos Jobim made the first bossa nova record. Slowing down the rhythms of the samba to a mesmerizing stroll, distilling jazz harmony to a sketch and pop vocals to an impassive whisper, bossa nova was a triumph of minimalism....

“Banana Karenina…the tragic injustice of it all! Unlike our poor heroine, you may have the object of your desire with society’s blessing. Chocolate pavlova with caramel banana pudding, roasted bananas, banana chips and hot fudge. Steer clear of the tracks.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pastry chef Christine McCabe Tentori, who hails from kitchens at Gabriel’s in Highwood and Charlie Trotter’s and did a short stint at Joel Robuchon in Paris, is responsible for the artfully plated sweets....

Lead Stories British Antarctic Survey personnel brought two Lynx helicopters to the Falkland Islands in November specifically to study whether or not penguins topple over when following the path of an aircraft overhead. A team of researchers from the At-Bristol center found that 20 of 25 Parliament members surveyed were more physically aroused by the sight of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher than by the sight of British celebrity Denise Van Outen in a skimpy dress....

Identical twins Martha Williams and Mary Heater were best friends while growing up in Elmhurst. But things began to change in high school. “There was a point where we needed to have different friends,” says Martha, who started studying photography around that time as part of an effort to “be my own person.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Things changed again four years ago when Mary–then a junior in college–got married, moved back to the suburbs, and gave birth to a baby girl....