Hard times can make hard people. Which is why Clifford Odets thought decent folks had to break free from the pull of money and of things, had to find a good that connected rather than divided. Louis Contey’s riveting revival of this 1935 depiction of a Depression-era clan that’s failing for lack of love is a potent antidote to false nostalgia. The superb ensemble is as tight as the material deserves....
A filmmaker named Eric told me a story about scattering the ashes of his older brother into a creek, one of their favorite boyhood haunts. Late one winter afternoon, Eric popped the lid, shook out the crumbs and pieces, and watched the current take them away. He said a prayer. That night, as if God wanted the story to be just right, the weather in the northeast sharply turned bitter and the season’s first snow fell, delicately, like a benediction....
CHIRGILCHIN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Over the last decade or so, regular tours by ensembles like Huun-Huur-Tu have blunted the novelty of khoomei, the throat-singing tradition native to the remote, mostly rural republic of Tuva, between Mongolia and Siberia–but the otherworldly beauty of its polyphonic chants and melodies remains undiminished. Chirgilchin is a quartet of young musicians–all still in their 20s–assembled in 1996 by Alexander Bapa, a percussionist and producer for Huun-Huur-Tu who sometimes plays with the group; on both its fine albums, Chirgilchin brings a windswept charm and folksy elegance to strictly traditional material....
COIN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Plenty of bands are cashing in on the 80s revival with kitschy synth-pop, but although the sounds Coin uses are recycled from that era, the place you most likely heard them back then was your local video arcade. The main mind behind the Tucson-based act is Thermos Malling, Bob Log’s partner in the defunct junk-blues band Doo Rag, and on his second album, Architects of Character (on the Terre Haute avant-fun label Anal Log), he arranges snippets of vintage video-game sound tracks into catchy, carnivalesque space-disco ditties....
There is no such thing as film production. It is a joke, as much as the production of literature, pictures, or music. There are no good years for films, like good years for wine. A great film is an accident, a banana skin under the feet of dogma; and the films that we try to defend are a few of those that despise rules. –Jean Cocteau, 1949 Obviously, DVDs aren’t a perfect source for film history....
The new album Casa (Sony Classical) unites Brazilian cellist Jaques Morelenbaum and his wife, Paula, with Japanese composer and pianist Ryuichi Sakamoto, who’s collaborated with the cellist on and off since the early 90s; the program comprises compositions both famous and obscure by Antonio Carlos Jobim, and it’s steeped in atmosphere and history. In the 50s and 60s, Jobim practically defined the emergent bossa nova style, and of his roughly 300 songs, enough have become worldwide standards to give him the status of a Gershwin, Berlin, or Arlen....
A naked woman stood stock-still in a racquetball court, clenching a lit candle between her teeth. Three men and another woman, all naked and armed with small plastic squirt guns, surrounded her and took aim at the flame. Several squirts hit the woman’s chest, then her cheek. She laughed, struggling to steady the candle. Soon the entire group was laughing, and finally the candle went out. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
A buddy of mine lives just down the street. We both used to be graffiti artists. A wild graffiti story: I was leaving a loft party the police had broken up, and I did a quick tag on a paddy wagon and the cops saw me. I took off running and they chased me into an empty lot. They knocked me down, kicked me, rolled me over, cuffed me, and threw me in a squad car....
This story started on a flight back to Chicago from Vegas. The gentleman across the aisle a row behind me told me later that it was the way my thigh was crossed. It was my skintight white Edwin jeans that caught his eye. We talked on the flight, but we did not become mile-high-club members. We did exchange phone numbers at baggage claim. He called a couple of nights later and asked, “Do you remember me?...
SWAG Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Swag began a couple years ago as a side project for keyboardist Jerry Dale McFadden (of the twee Sixpence None the Richer) and guitarist Robert Reynolds (of pomo countrypolitan stars the Mavericks). Eventually a few other rockers with time on their hands–including former Wilco drummer Ken Coomer, Cheap Trick bassist Tom Petersson, and solo artist Doug Powell–joined the Nashville-based party, and with the release of the recent Catchall (Yep Roc), Swag has evolved into a genuine working band....
It’s your basic girl-meets-town story. Percy’s spent five years “buried alive” in prison. Paroled, she heads straight for Gilead, Wisconsin–a backwater outside Prairie du Chien–just because it looks good in a picture. The sheriff finds her a job at the eponymous diner, and the citizenry takes note. Hannah, the crusty old widow who owns the Spitfire, is initially wary too–but warms to Percy’s simple virtues. As it happens, Hannah wants to sell the Spitfire....
Rock, Pop, etc. BLUE OYSTER CULT, MOTHER ROOT Fri 6/21, 7 PM, Skyline Stage, Navy Pier, 600 E. Grand. 312-595-7437 or 312-559-1212. JIMMY BUFFETT Sat 6/22, 8 PM, Tweeter Center, I-80 and Harlem, Tinley Park. 708-614-1616 or 312-559-1212. BEN FOLDS & A PIANO, DIVINE COMEDY All-ages show; sold out. Fri 6/28, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield. 773-472-0449 or 312-559-1212. HIP NOZ Free in-store performance. Fri 6/28, 8 PM, Borders Books & Music, 15160 S....
Rock, Pop, etc. DANNY BLACK Free concert. Fri 5/17, 12:15 PM, Randolph Cafe, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington. 312-744-6630. DOLLY VARDEN, CHRIS MILLS See Critic’s Choice. Fri 5/10, 8 PM, Old Town School of Folk Music, 4544 N. Lincoln. 773-728-6000. STEVE KOUBA performs keyboards and guitar as part of Frump Tucker Theatre Company’s performance of Trust. Thursdays and Fridays, 8 PM, and Saturdays, 5:30 and 9 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N....
A few minutes before 10 AM on June 13, 1998, a sunny Saturday, Sophia Latuszkin had just started walking across Harlem Avenue at the corner of George Street in Elmwood Park when a teal pickup truck swerved toward the curb and struck her head-on. The pickup was going so fast she was thrown 143 feet. She landed in the street, her arms and legs broken, her spine dislocated. “Then you know why we are here,” said Mieszala....
It’s almost lunchtime in room 801 of the Daley Center, and Les is busily flipping through six inches of court documents in the file of a medical-malpractice lawsuit. “Let’s see what happened with this guy,” he says, tearing off a mouthful of bologna on toast. “Colon cancer!” He picks at the document with a staple remover, feeds each page into a portable scanner, then recollates, restaples, and refiles the pages....
Crushing poverty, civil unrest, and random gunfire were–and still are–the norm in the Kingston ghettos where dancehall star Bounty Killer grew up. He was singing in front of crowds before he was ten, standing out in the street in front of a booming reggae sound system; his early rhymes became local hits without ever being recorded. Earning his name (“Bounty Hunter” at first) in a never-ending series of MC battles, he gradually adopted his current populist-gangster persona, boasting of his hyperviolent exploits while denouncing the corruption he sees as responsible for the plight of the Jamaican people....
Like lots of high school kids, John Backderf’s friend Jeff was painfully shy and socially awkward. Alienated and lonely, he got drunk before school to defend himself against the relentless humiliation of the Revere High School jocks and pretty boys, and spent most of his spare time collecting roadkill and cultivating his budding interest in dissection and dismemberment. Thirteen years after graduation, Jeffrey Dahmer would become infamous as a necrophiliac who murdered and cannibalized at least 17 young men and boys and stored their remains in his Milwaukee apartment....
The field of conducting, despite decades of progressive rhetoric and collective soul-searching, is still very much dominated by men. I can count on my fingers the number of internationally prominent women conductors (Eve Queler and Jane Glover leap to mind), and in Chicago, only Barbara Schubert has a regular gig (with several U. of C. ensembles). With any luck, more time will help correct this imbalance: currently more than half the university composition departments in the Chicago area are headed by women, and where composers go, sooner or later conductors will follow....
Adecades-old charter gives the little-known Illinois Medical District Commission a virtual kingdom on the near west side. The commission is a low-profile seven-man board whose members are appointed by either the governor, the mayor, or the president of the Cook County Board. Founded in 1941, its original purpose was to oversee the construction needs of the area’s major hospitals, Stroger (formerly Cook County Hospital), Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s, and the UIC Medical Center....
Eros in Thanatos and Down in the Mouth, Dramatist Revolutionary Army, at Wing & Groove Theatre. The second of these two one-acts is too fragmented to work, but at least playwright Dominique Gallo makes a serious effort to communicate. Jaimie-Lee Wise’s direction is sharp and rhythmic, particularly in the comic and largely wordless first half. To the haunting accompaniment of Mr. Music (Fazal Miles), a woman (Ashley Simone) sleepwalks through her day typing random numbers....
