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Contemporary Gypsy brass music has its roots in the Turkish military bands that faded along with the Ottoman Empire, but over the last century it has evolved into its own distinct style. This celebratory music is often heard at weddings–and after seeing a couple performances by Serbia’s great Boban Markovich (whose contributions to the sound track of Emir Kusturica’s film Underground helped introduce the tradition to a wider audience) at last year’s World Music Festival, I can attest that it’s just as good at driving a regular party....

I would have broken up with Girlfriend a long time ago if it weren’t for one thing: my wife and daughter love her. Our relationship has never been quite what I’d hoped. Sure, she’s beautiful and athletic, but we’re just not comfortable with each other. I think she’s too loud, and she seems to think I’m a bad guy because sometimes I need a little more space than she does....

Raising Blue –Edgar Allan Poe, “The Conqueror Worm” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Set primarily in Charleston during the Union blockade of 1863-’64, Raising Blue is extensively researched, though–as the program notes–Mills has taken liberties with the actual events and personages involved. He invents a connection between the sub’s chief financial backer and namesake–Horace Hunley, a privateer and speculator–and George Dixon, the young captain who commanded the Hunley’s final mission....

“God, I can’t get enough of these guys!” Gerry Chodkowski sighs and gazes at a video monitor, where a ghostly trio of Chicago blues legends holds forth: Big Walter Horton, perched atop a small amplifier, blows swooping harmonica bends over Floyd Jones’s tub-thumping bass lines. Behind them drummer Playboy Venson, cigar jutting rakishly from his lips, crashes away on his battered old trap. The black-and-white images are grainy and spectral, the audio murky....

This is a bar that appeals to all people. I see girls coming in with their sparkling gold lame tank tops. They always remind me of a night I spent at Cherry Red with my boyfriend, Willie. My best friend invited me to a birthday party there. At first I declined because my boyfriend was supporting me at the time and I didn’t want to come off as the unemployed gay trophy boyfriend....

Some rebellions start with a sword. Anjelika Krishna’s started with a sewing machine. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the fall of 2000, after six months of helping create designs for major stores in Bombay and New Delhi, she rebelled again by coming to Chicago. “The fashion I had been doing before coming here was very practical. Because the Indian market catered to practicality, if you went a little over the marketing point, it won’t sell....

Listening to the radio in rural Madison, West Virginia, in the late 40s, an eight-year-old Hasil Adkins heard the DJ credit some songs to Hank Williams and assumed the country great had played all the instruments. He tried to replicate those sounds with an old water bucket and other household objects, progressing to toy guitars and kazoos. By the time Adkins got his first real guitar in the mid-50s, he’d learned that Hank hadn’t done it all himself, but he couldn’t find any reliable coconspirators....

Room to Grow Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For counsel on the gallery project Rakoncay has turned to Marta Pappert, who ran a similar operation at the Art Institute during the 70s and 80s. The Art Rental and Sales Gallery, operated by the women’s board of the museum between 1954 and 1987, could accommodate about 500 pieces. “Nearly every artist of note in Chicago during that time had his or her work for sale at the gallery,” says Pappert....

The Secret Rapture Hare is a George Bernard Shaw for our time: an intellectual socialist whose work gets criticized as “talky” because it contains ideas and “doctrinaire” because those ideas are left-wing. But Shaw’s time must have been more hopeful than the present, because his work was fundamentally exuberant. Whether critiquing class prejudice or war capitalism or relations between the sexes, it’s clear the playwright thought things could actually change for the better....

I have been seeing a guy for about four months who recently moved to my city from out of state. A contributing factor in his move (although not a major factor) was getting on with his life following the breakup of a long-term relationship. He keeps saying that he does not want a girlfriend, is not ready to be in a committed relationship, and he refers to me when talking to his coworkers as a “friend....

“When you tell someone what you did today, you’re telling a story,” says professional storyteller Doug Elliott from his home in North Carolina. “Narrative is the basic structure of our lives. A storyteller is someone who tries to make that narrative interesting.” Usually, he says, that’s done by finding the universality of the story and paying attention to timing and humor. But a told story is not the same as a written story: “Good literature is usually both too wordy and too succinct to work as spoken word....

DR. DIDG 2/15, MARTYRS’ Trancey fusion jams, pale funk grooves that last forever, whale-song sounds and hearts-of-space effects, a leader who’s played with Mickey Hart and the String Cheese Incident…none of which is out of the ordinary on the jam-band circuit. What distinguishes these guys is the use of didgeridoo–that amazing, throaty king of all wind instruments. Graham Wiggins, aka Dr. Didg himself, also plays keyboards and sampler; he formed his first band–the acclaimed Outback, signed to Hannibal by Joe Boyd, who spotted them playing on the street–while getting his doctorate in physics at Oxford....

LORDS OF ACID 2/4, VIC The latest release from this never-say-die My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult tribute band is largely–surprise!–remixes, by Frankie Bones, Robbie Hardkiss, Rob Swift, God Lives Underwater, members of KMFDM, and others. It also includes the group’s really annoying hit “Am I Sexy” from the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me sound track. I guess my biggest problem with these folks has always been that their flabby, unfocused grooves never live up to their own hype–I mean, I don’t know what their idea of “Rough Sex” really is, but Critter’s “All Night Grinder” remix and the Joey Beltram “Whip” mix of the tune give me about as much of a rise as that fifth-grade French kiss in my parents’ basement....

Surprise Ingredient Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On April 24, the local Thrill Jockey label released All Natural’s sophomore album, Second Nature, and it’s one of the smartest, most musical hip-hop records to emerge so far from Chicago’s underdeveloped scene. But it probably won’t get the attention it deserves: About a year ago Kelly converted to Islam, and some Muslims believe that Muhammad frowned on music making....

So I guess everyone’s agreed that John Kerry personally blew away a VC in ‘Nam 35 years ago. My question is, have we ever had a killer for president? I’m not talking about generals like Grant and Eisenhower, who were indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of Confederates and Germans, or combatants using long-distance weapons like a Kennedy torpedo or a Bush Sr. bomb. I’m wondering about somebody getting whacked face to face, mano a mano, up close and personal, with a gun, knife, club, or pointy stick....

Friday 3 MODEST MOUSE A scouring of my CD shelves on November 3 and the days after turned up few appropriate posttraumatic sound tracks–most of my 2004 faves sounded irrelevant or, well, too sure of themselves. (Oh, Rock Against Bush Vol. II, will we ever meet again?) But because Modest Mouse’s dogged persistence is rooted in crankiness rather than optimism, Good News for People Who Love Bad News (Epic) struck just the right petulant tone....

Rock, Pop, etc. BEAUSOLEIL, MARCIA BALL Sold out. Fri 9/28, 8 PM, Mainstage, Harold D. McAninch Arts Center, College of DuPage, 425 22nd St., Glen Ellyn. 630-942-4000. JIMMY BUFFETT & THE CORAL REEFER BAND Thu 9/27 and Sat 9/29, 8 PM, Tweeter Center, I-80 and Harlem, Tinley Park. 708-614-1616 or 312-559-1212. GOV’T MULE Sat 9/29, 8 PM, the Vic, 3145 N. Sheffield. 773-472-0449 or 312-559-1212. MILLS BROTHERS Fri 9/21, 2 PM, and Sat 9/22, 6 PM, Drury Lane Theatre, 2500 W....

Bassist and guitarist W.C. Clark came of age in Austin in the mid-50s, a particularly fertile period for Texas blues. Young Turks like Freddie King and Albert Collins were adding a new intensity to the linear, hornlike guitar style they’d learned from T-Bone Walker and his generation of gulf coast fret men; at the same time, roadhouse veterans like Big Joe Turner still toured through the area regularly, keeping the jump-blues and boogie traditions alive....

Wishful Reporting “With your contacts and my brains,” he said, “we can save journalism from the journalists. All you need to do is introduce me to a press baron who knows a visionary when he sees one.” The duty of a reporter, I said, is to be always original but never too. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » He touched my sleeve–he’d spotted red lights blinking overhead....

The House That Pita Built Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A former Iranian air force pilot, Amiran emigrated with his wife and three children in 1985. “I decided I wanted an easier life for my kids,” he says. They moved to Chicago, where he started an import business in Mediterranean food products. Located in Elk Grove Village–for its proximity to the airport, the highway, and rail lines–Golden Foods began by selling items like chickpeas, tahini, and rice to Middle Eastern restaurants around the city....