When Merce Cunningham’s troupe was here last, in March 2000, I was worried about my critical acumen because, on videotape at least, his dances put me to sleep. I found that seeing them onstage did the same–but decided that the dreamlike state they induced was the point. The 1999 Biped, which used computer-generated “dancers” on a scrim as well as live ones, gave me, between naps, a vision of the ideal and the real....
For a while, it seemed like Mr. Lif might never release an actual album. In June, the Boston MC issued Emergency Rations (Definitive Jux), his third EP in as many years. Weighed down by a clunky conceit–Lif, it is suggested, has been detained by the government for his controversial lyrics–the EP’s criticisms of U.S. government activities since September 11 sounded like the work of a guy who stayed awake till dawn browsing conspiracy theory Web sites....
“I knew after I recorded Dear Louis,” says trumpeter Nicholas Payton, referring to his 2001 big-band tribute to Louis Armstrong, “that I was closing a chapter on the kind of records I wanted to make.” And how. Payton’s new release, Sonic Trance (Warner Bros.), blows the lid off his staid image with a startling new combination of influences (Miles Davis, hip-hop, Herbie Hancock, Afropop) and instruments (samplers and synthesizers). A few missteps aside, he’s layered these new elements into a voluptuous–nay, phat–sound whose throbbing sensuality suits tunes called “Velvet Handcuffs,” “Toys in Babeland,” “Tantric (Lewd Interlewd),” and “Cannabis Leaf Rag” (inspired by Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer”)....
Room to Rock Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In 1999, after more than 16 years of promoting shows at a laundry list of local clubs as well as with the behemoth Jam Productions, Duffy had had enough of the freelance grind, and began working as a sound engineer for live shows. “I didn’t have to make decisions, I didn’t have to put my money on the line, and I didn’t have to worry about someone taking my show, but I was still involved with music,” he says....
When I recall Ryne Sandberg, I see him most distinctly running the bases. In writing about his Hall of Fame credentials, many people mention his base-stealing totals, which were impressive early in his career, peaking at 54 steals in 1985, and came to 344 lifetime against 107 times caught. Yet these numbers don’t capture the way Sandberg moved. Sandberg certainly belongs in the Hall, and after drawing a vote on almost half the ballots cast by the Baseball Writers Association of America in his first opportunity, he could be elected next year....
HIDEOUT WORKERS’ COMP RELEASE SHOWS 11/14 & 15, HIDEOUT The new Hideout Workers’ Comp, a collection of 24 tracks by some of the many musicians employed by the club, is as good an overview of the Chicago scene as anyone could want: there’s dreamy, lovely alt-country and delirious alt-cabaret, aggressive garage and graceful art pop, opera and traditional Irish dance music, old-timey fiddling and mad beat sax blowing, dark-toned folk and freaky psychedelia....
ALUMINUM GROUP 1/10, SCHUBAS This low-key local institution is anchored by Frank and John Navin, whose songcraft is sometimes just so flawless it’s almost revolting. This is a release party for their sixth and perhaps most refined album, Happyness (WishingTree), on which the brothers fashion wry pop that avoids swelling choruses and obvious hooks and conceals bitterness and pain beneath its smooth urbanity. The Navins tastefully deploy a battalion of instrumental talent on record (including members of the Sea and Cake, Tortoise, and the Boas), but where they really shine is in the art of arranging voices so that they carry a load of subtext even at their most deadpan....
BAD EXAMPLES 1/4 & 1/5, FITZGERALD’S I was never a huge fan of the Bad Examples–front man Ralph Covert’s sappy streak might not have been as baby-butt naked as it is on the solo album he dedicated to his daughter, but couched in Beatles-esque melodies it’s in some ways worse. Quite a few people were, though, and the band certainly went out of its way to reward those folks: in 1999, Covert pulled the members from various lineups into a studio in an attempt to capture all the tunes the band had played live but never recorded over the past dozen years, and in 2000 he put on a farewell show whose three sets featured three of the band’s four major lineups....
As they say in the movie biz, Tammy Brody and Diane Falanga “met cute.” “High taxes and terrible schools,” Tammy would respond. Gradually it occurred to Reid that the pair’s conversations were a script waiting to be written. “Tammy is just over-the-top, all the time, over-the-top,” he says. “There’s no middle ground for her, her mood is way up or way down. And Diane has this chameleon quality, she would sort of adapt herself to Tammy’s mood, and it’s funny to watch them go off on each other....
Meet me at the Coffee Connection on Dempster, author and Northwestern University history professor Ken Alder had said. So ten minutes before the appointed hour, after speed-reading his 400-page book The Measure of All Things: The Seven-Year Odyssey and Hidden Error That Transformed the World in an airline seat with a burned-out light, I am cruising Evanston. The Coffee Connection turns out to be as elusive as the subject of Alder’s book....
The Benny Hill Show of Shakespeare comedies kicks off Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s season. This sprightly, well-cast staging by artistic director Barbara Gaines is set in early colonial times, and James Noone’s set neatly captures the play’s complacent mercantile tone. (Shakespeare allegedly wrote the piece to please Queen Bess, who wanted to see Sir John Falstaff strut and fret his hour–or three, in this case–upon the stage.) The autumnal set and costumes allude to the story’s (imagined) midlife romances....
When the Vandermark 5’s players aren’t navigating their leader’s rigorous compositions, they play in groups that offer plenty of elbowroom. Four of the performances on Triage’s new album, Twenty Minute Cliff (Okkadisk), nudge the ten-minute mark, and none of them feature the complex voicings and sudden time changes that mark the 5’s work. But the disc is hardly a one-dimensional blowing date. Alto and tenor saxophonist Dave Rempis, drummer Tim Daisy (who both play in the 5), and bassist Jason Ajemian have a knack for starting in one place and ending up somewhere very different, but their trips–the journey from abstract harmonics to melodic free bop they take on “Leo’s Leaving the Room,” the evolution from sparse meditation to brawny blowout on “Portrait of the Stone Age”–feature more gentle curves than sharp turns....
Because Sea Change forgoes the cheeky postmodernism that has been his calling card since Mellow Gold, a lot of writers have decided that we’re finally getting a glimpse of the real Beck Hansen. If that’s true, he’s one ho-hum dude. Rolling Stone master of hyperbole David Fricke writes, “It’s the best album Beck has ever made, and it sounds like he’s paid dearly for the achievement.” The price of greatness? Getting dumped by a longtime girlfriend....
Before It Hits Home, Congo Square Theatre Company, at Chicago Dramatists. Half of this show is exceptional–Congo Square Theatre Company, a new group, bears watching. But after a surefooted setup, the play loses its way. A bisexual African-American jazz musician contracts AIDS, and no sooner is the revelation made to his family than everyone begins to shout and sob–and they all continue to do so for the rest of the evening....
Set among the matrilineal merchant class of Osaka in the early 20th century, this 1960 family drama by Kon Ichikawa follows the son of a prosperous family (Raizo Ichikawa) as he fathers only boys with various wives and geishas, much to the chagrin of his manipulative grandmother and mother. Ichikawa wrote the script with his wife and frequent collaborator, Natto Wada, and despite its sharp satirical jabs, it carefully notates the hero’s ambivalence and regret toward women....
Savage choice. “I don’t understand being more afraid of John Ashcroft than Osama bin Laden,” advice columnist Dan Savage tells Reason’s Sara Rimensnyder (January). “Personally, I prefer Christian fundamentalists to Islamic fundamentalists.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Now will you pay attention? Johannesburg, South Africa, is considering turning its old gold-mine shafts into catacombs. “This year we will bury about 20,000 people,” cemetery official Alan Buff told NewScientist....
Here today, gone tomorrow. According to a Catalyst Chicago (November) analysis of school board data, 18 percent of teachers hired by Chicago Public Schools in 1996-’97 quit the system within two years. That figure ballooned to 31 percent of teachers hired in 2001-’02, even though the job market slumped and teacher attrition numbers elsewhere remained constant. Reported problems include a lack of mentoring and a lack of support from principals....
Born in France in 1953, Bernard Weiss studied Western music until his early 20s, when his obsession with Arabic classical music prompted a move to Damascus. Mastering the kanun (a trapezoidal zither), Weiss formed the highly regarded Ensemble Al-Kindi in 1983 and converted to Islam in 1986, changing his name to Julien Jalal Edinne. The group’s recent CDs each focus on a particular Arabic musical tradition; the most recent, this year’s Aleppian Sufi Transe (Le Chant du Monde), samples the repertoire of the Sufi Qadiriyya brotherhood....
Copenhagen Copenhagen and A Skull in Connemara at first seem as different in content as they are visually. A deeply serious philosophical drama, Copenhagen takes place in a sleek, sterile, brightly lit, bleached-wood lecture hall–an academic’s vision of heaven or limbo or Valhalla–in which the spirits of three long dead friends reenact and ruminate on key events in their lives. Raucous and sometimes raunchy, A Skull in Connemara is mostly set in a dark cemetery in the dead of night, where three men–very much alive and as earthy as the soil they shovel–disinter old bones to make way for new corpses....
The CollaborAction Theatre Company’s second annual festival of short plays features 16 world premieres, including sketches by David Mamet, Eric Bogosian, Brett Neveu, Regina Taylor, Beth Henley, and Wendy MacLeod. This “progressive mixed-media festival” also features visual art (environmental design by Wesley Kimler as well as a display of drawings by local artists, including Ed Paschke and Tony Fitzpatrick, which will be silently auctioned throughout the festival); DJs creating soundscapes 45 minutes before each performance; and a live video Web broadcast on closing night....
