I’m not a puker. I never or I should say hardly ever puke. I’ve gagged, choked, even retched, but I rarely puke. I used to tell people I’ve only puked once in my life and he still lives in my house. Suffice it to say I don’t puke often. But now I’m going to have to revise that story or maybe just stop telling it. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
I live about four houses down from Roscoe’s with three other roommates. Our house borders on the alley, and there’s always something that happens there around the closing hours–we’ll always get some hoots and hollers. I haven’t really heard people having sex in the alley, but we’ll hear our neighbor yelling at people–she’s always trying to get some sleep. Every night I go to bed with a little Madonna, a little Whitney, whoever the flavor of that particular night is....
To a lot of people lowriders–the dropped down, tricked out, chrome plated custom cars that cruise the city’s neighborhoods–are a nuisance or a curiosity. But to Jesus Macarena-Avila, curator of a multimedia exhibit inspired by lowriders that opens this weekend, they’re a vital form of artistic expression. “To me, lowrider culture is like hip-hop,” he says. “When you’re part of the marginalized and oppressed, you get creative.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....
PETER KOWALD, HAMID DRAKE & ASSIF TSAHAR Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In 1969, pioneering free-jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler named an album Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe, and today bassist Peter Kowald, percussionist Hamid Drake, and reedist Assif Tsahar practice what he preached: their first tour was in Tsahar’s native Israel this February, and the sight of a German, a Muslim, and a Jew onstage together, improvising with cathartic intensity, drew a deeply emotional response from the locals....
Two literary scholars (Aaron Eckhart and Gwyneth Paltrow) doing research in England on separate Victorian poets jointly discover that these poets–one of them married (Jeremy Northam), the other a lesbian (Jennifer Ehle) with a live-in lover–may have had a secret affair. While chasing after clues, the scholars develop a possible relationship of their own. Oscillating between past and present, this adaptation of A.S. Byatt’s prizewinning novel sounds like it could be too precious for words, but I was wooed by its sexy romanticism all the way through the mysterious and beautiful coda....
River North artistic director Sherry Zunker burst on the scene almost ten years ago with her vivid, stirring, MTV-influenced Reality of a Dreamer. That dance was showcased in an Emmy-winning documentary about the company, which put her jazz-dance troupe and the (then) tiny video firm of HMS Media on the map. Now Zunker is leaving River North (Frank Chaves, who’s been coartistic director since 1993, will take over) to pursue freelance projects; the two performances this weekend are the last in which she’ll be involved....
When Highland Park personal injury attorney Maury Kravitz first read Harold Lamb’s Genghis Khan: The Emperor of All Men in 1954, while he was a private in the army, he was instantly drawn to the story of the Mongol emperor who, in the latter part of the 12th century, rose up to conquer most of central Asia. Upon his death, legend has it, soldiers killed all the mourners at his funeral–and then killed themselves–so that the location of his burial site would never be known....
DUVALL 8/22, BOTTOM LOUNGE I’ve seen Duvall’s newest release, Racine, referred to as an EP, but one new song plus an acoustic version of an old song (“Time Is Gone,” from a 2001 EP) plus a Spandau Ballet cover is what back in the old days we used to call a “single.” That’s not a complaint, though–at least it doesn’t overstay its welcome. Four years ago, when Josh Caterer abandoned the Smoking Popes on account of his salvation, cynics almost choked on the grains of salt....
The Chicago Public Art Group’s list of endangered classics changes frequently. Some murals drop from the list after they’ve been restored, while others disappear due to demolitions and rehabilitations. For now, CPAG hopes to get enough money to restore the following: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Wall of Daydreaming / Man’s Inhumanity to Man by Walker, Mitchell Caton, and Santi Isrowuthakul, 47th and Calumet....
Russian-born pianist Elena Bashkirova is talented enough to be a famous soloist in her own right, but in part because of her two marriages–to violinist Gidon Kremer and pianist Daniel Barenboim–she’s still a relative unknown, overshadowed by her husbands’ celebrity. Kremer was Bashkirova’s spouse and constant collaborator in the 1970s, and during that time both her modernist tastes and her incisive style reflected his influence: she shared his zeal for Soviet avant-gardists such as Alfred Schnittke, and her playing, documented on chamber recordings they made together, was fiery, stringent, and intellectually probing....
Born George Meares in 1934, Harmonica Khan spent much of the 50s and 60s shuttling between his native North Carolina and the urban northeast, working day jobs and various gigs as a nightclub entertainer. He moved to Chicago in the late 60s, where as “Harmonica Kid” he sat in at venues such as the Trocadero on South Indiana and Pepper’s on 43rd. But when he wasn’t working he was getting in trouble....
Over the last decade or so the computer has become the default instrument in experimental music. But judging from the proliferation of interchangeable laptop jockeys, this development has weakened the field far more than it’s strengthened it. French sound artists Jerome Noetinger and Lionel Marchetti, however, have by and large eschewed digital technology–for them innovation means more than merely keeping up on the latest software. They’ve had to learn how to generate new sounds and approaches with microphones, tape machines, speakers, and various homemade electronic devices (although in interviews they’ve dismissed such technical information as irrelevant to the appreciation of their work)....
JOE LOVANO TRIO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I can’t complain for a moment about the trio that saxist Joe Lovano brings to town for his annual Jazz Showcase visit. His drummer, Idris Muhammad, has a deceptively messy, soul-smeared kit sound that never quite obscures the precision of his backbeats or the crisp chatter of his cymbals; powerhouse bassist Cameron Brown plays with such depth and fervor that he could legitimately stand in for Charles Mingus, in Mingus’s own band, after the master died in 1979....
I had my nephew Jason with me one early evening here. He’s from the suburbs. We came here to play basketball. All of a sudden we saw this big thing out of the corner of our eyes–it looked like a fountain. Then we both took a second look. It was a lady totally bent over relieving herself with her head between her legs. You couldn’t even tell what it was–it was like projectile stuff....
Chicago playwright Will Kern claims to have discovered this long-lost work during an archaeological dig in China, and in a program note he advances a winning crackpot theory about William Shakespeare’s sojourn at a Shaolin temple. On the face of it, a postmodern appropriation of dialogue from all of Shakespeare’s plays staged in the context of a martial-arts costume drama seems a surefire hit. But despite the show’s proficient fight choreography and high production values, the seams in Kern’s patchwork remain glaring....
Somebody called Karen Finley the “ultimate black sheep.” Somebody else called her “America’s problem child.” She’s famous as the chocolate-smeared woman Jesse Helms used as a prime example of the depravity subsidized by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. She’s also famous as one of the NEA Four, who sued the endowment when it got scared and tried to rescind those grants. I’d say she’s always been pretty interesting–and my perspective on this goes as far back as Evanston Township High School circa 1970, where Finley participated in what may very well have been her first messy performance piece....
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....
C.J. CHENIER & THE RED HOT LOUISIANA BAND 1/11 & 1/12, FITZGERALD’S In rock ‘n’ roll, sons of legends will almost always let you down–call it the curse of Julian Lennon. But C.J. Chenier’s father, Clifton, was one of the proud few responsible for bringing zydeco to the masses, and in his death in 1987, he passed the torch (and his band) into capable hands. The burly, tattooed accordionist with wicked taste in suits isn’t the traditionalist you might think–he’s sat in with Paul Simon and the Gin Blossoms, and on his releases for the Alligator label he integrates funk, R & B, and pop in ways that make some purists wince....
33 Fainting Spells September September’s central idea is that nostalgia is a trap, while paradoxically the piece’s central mode of expression is allusion to things past. In the course of the evening, choreographer-performers Dayna Hanson, Gaelen Hanson, Peggy Piacenza, and John Dixon go through a catalog of 20th-century popular culture: the Charleston, tap, and swing; the strobelike flickering of silent-era films; Rudy Vallee singing through a megaphone; Rudolph Valentino vamping; Chaplin’s mechanized movements in Modern Times; the mirror ball and upthrust arm of Saturday Night Fever; the back arched over the chair seat of Cabaret....
Howard Bailey, Paul Bolger, and Philip Rathle, owners of the Wicker Park record store Beat Parlor, have jumped on the nightclub-restaurant hybrid bandwagon with SLICK’S LOUNGE, a Goose Island lair that pays as much attention to the fare as it does to the scene. A wood dance floor takes up most of the room, with a few dozen tables on the raised platform surrounding it; tunes pulsate at a level conducive to conversation during the dinner hour....
