Last fall Gossip Wolf fell for indie-rock outfit Man’s Body via their debut EP, Found. This transcontinental band consists of Los Angeles scene vet Greg Franco, also of Rough Church (guitar, vocals), and two Chicagoans, Marco Obaya (guitar, bass) and J. Niimi (guitar, drums)—you may know Niimi from Chicago-Australia pop group Ashtray Boy or his Reader music writing in the 2000s. On Friday, July 13, Man’s Body drop their first full-length, Put Your Family in It, on Franco’s Beautiful Workhorse label, and that night they celebrate with a show at Debonair Social Club....

A few months back I picked up some reissues of albums that jazz bassist Gary Peacock made in Japan in 1971, all featuring remarkable pianist Masabumi Kikuchi, who died last summer in his adopted home of New York at age 75 (he moved there in 1974). Kikuchi became known during the last few decades his life for his fruitful musical relationship with drummer Paul Motian—they put out several releases in the trio Tethered Moon, which also included Peacock....

Popcorn as a late-night snack is generally made in a microwave these days, but bartender Jenn Fink of Pub Royale and her friend Matthew Jannotta, manager of the club bars at Soho House Chicago, have a different tradition. “We’re known to, late night, go back to the crib after the bars and make all types of popcorn—bacon fat, butter, regular salt,” Jannotta says. Better Than Garrett’s 2 oz butter-washed Balcones Baby Blue corn whiskey ½ oz simple syrup A couple dashes of Fee’s barrel-aged bitters Orange peel Popcorn

For the past few months, Mayor Rahm’s been acting like he’s the teachers’ best friend, calling on them to put aside their past differences and join his effort to win more school money from the state. The daughter of Ed Sadlowski, the longtime steel-union labor leader, her family’s been battling various Democratic bosses on the southeast side for decades. “It was an unpaid leave—so it wasn’t like I was double dipping,” says Garza....

In a year that’s been especially tough on immigrants, the arts can foster a sense of community that provides relief. Hairpin Arts Center is rising to the occasion with the monthlong LatinxArts festival, featuring free workshops, exhibitions, and performances—among them, the one-night-only Movements: A Show of Work by Three Immigrant Dancemakers. In all, Movements “encourages the audience to look at each choreographer’s work with fresh eyes considering the ongoing national debate around the value of contributions by immigrants to our society,” says Hairpin’s performing arts director Kacie Smith....

In the summer of 2009, at the height of Mayor Daley’s push to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, I had a conversation with an alderman that resonates with me to this day. “And if you’re wrong?” I asked. My aldermanic buddy was by no means the only silently skeptical Olympic flag-waver back then. And the perverse thing is, they all knew Daley’s Olympic dreams were folly. They knew they would saddle us with unspeakable debt....

Fatour Seidi Ghali is surely not the first person to become enamored of an older sibling’s guitar. When she was about ten, her older brother, Ahmoudou Madassane (who currently plays rhythm guitar for Mdou Moctar), brought a guitar from Libya back to their home in Illighadad, Niger. Since Tuareg girls aren’t encouraged to pick up the instrument, she had to dodge disapproving parental eyes to give it a try, but she proved to be a natural....

In June, the label arm of the Chicago-born Teklife footwork collective released its first flexi disc, “Juke Me Baby” by Reginald Cosper Jr., aka Sirr TMo Sama. Cosper builds the track on an ascending, bone-dry percussive pattern, weaving in a few different vocal samples and several drum loops; he never lets up on the gas, which gives the song’s ever-shifting, palpitating drive enough energy to power a midsize city. Cosper understands footwork with an intimacy that draws from his time as a producer, DJ, and dancer—he’s so good on his feet that last year the Chicago Dancemakers Forum gave him one of its four Greenhouse Awards to develop new work....

The Soulection Radio Tour is not your average concert. There isn’t some big-name rock band, pop singer, or rapper leading the audience on a transcendental musical ride. Rather, Soulection Radio cofounder-host Joe Kay crafts a perfectly curated set list of dusties, alternative hip-hop and R&B jams, and mainstream hits from a DJ booth in the middle of the stage, operating in a fashion similar to Soulection, the online radio show produced by his LA-based independent artist collective Soulection Radio....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. The Trap Set podcast I’ve been obsessed with The Trap Set podcast lately—it’s not just for drummers, it’s also by drummers. Host Joe Wong interviews some of the best percussionists of the past and present about their personal stories and spiritual and emotional connections to the drum set, rather than geeking out over gear, techniques, or chops....

Q: I have a significant collection of sex toys from earlier years. I’m thinking of getting rid of most of them, and it seems such a waste for them to end up in the landfill. What’s an environmentally responsible way to dispose of dildos? I wish there was a place I could donate them where they could be used again. Many of them are quality silicone types, they’ve never been used on a person without a condom, and they’ve been thoroughly cleaned....

Antonin Scalia has fallen. Many liberals are cheering. I am not. If you offer up Donald Trump as the heir to the arch-nemesis throne, I will laugh in your face. Trump is a semisentient honey badger we startled out of his decades-long nap when we opened the lid of his tanning bed, where he lay dozing on a dimly understood copy of Atlas Shrugged. If history remembers him at all, it will be as the air-horn blast triggering the cultural avalanche that sends us plummeting into the Idiocracy-style dystopia we deserve....

At 5 PM Saturday, March 21, Governor J.B. Pritzker’s COVID-19 Executive Order No. 8, aka the Stay at Home order, took effect. Here’s a daily-ish journal of how Reader staff, our friends, family—and our pets—are spending our time. Buffy Sainte-Marie’s shaggy bangs Model Jessy Parr’s cool waves Putting a bowl on top of our head and seeing how it all plays out What we’re tweeting: This would be a good time to reaffirm that my tweets are my own thoughts and not necessarily those of my employers, lovers, or food delivery drivers....

Yesterday hip-hop collective Treated Crew and footwork outfit Teklife released Live From Your Mama’s House, a collaborative EP helmed by Treated Crew rapper Mic Terror. The MC got the idea for the collaboration after his collective performed with the late Teklife leader DJ Rashad during a Pitchfork Music Festival set in 2013. “I was sitting there listenin’ to Rashad’s whole set, and I was listenin’ to it like how he was flippin’ ‘C....

Killing Joke front man Jaz Coleman has cast such a ferocious shadow across metal, postpunk, goth, industrial, dance, and more that the shape of contemporary music would be incalculably different if he and the band had never written a song. As Steve Taylor wrote in the 2006 book The A to X of Alternative Music, Killing Joke have inspired “all dark music since 1981.” In addition to his career with Killing Joke, he’s also recorded some of the world’s most masterful traditional musicians, and as a self-taught classical composer he’s worked with many great orchestras, including the London Philharmonic and the Prague Symphony Orchestra....

Anne Petersen The behemoth Chicago Craft Beer Week saturates the city May 14-24, providing a multitude of excuses to drink more beer than anyone reasonably should. Now in its sixth year, CCBW offers a mind-boggling range of beer-centric happenings, including tap takeovers, brewer meet-and-greets, special releases, homebrew competitions, and fests within the fest. The 15 events below are good bets, but there are hundreds more listed at chibeerweek.com. Fischman Liquors and Tavern pours Legends, Rarities, and Vintages (aka rare beers) from Colorado’s Avery Brewing, including several that are 17 to 18 percent ABV: Uncle Jacob’s barrel-aged imperial stout, Tweak barrel-aged imperial coffee stout, and a 2011 vintage of a strong dark ale called the Beast....

A couple years ago, Chicago archival label Numero Group launched Cabinet of Curiosities, a compilation series focused on fringe private-press releases of yore. A lot of the strange music they’ve reissued under this banner intensely evokes the eras in which its creators lived, and Cabinet of Curiosities comps are unified less by genre than by spirit. The 1980s electronic sounds on 2018’s Escape From Synth City, for example, include glacial new age (“Konya” by Al Gromer Khan), chintzy boogie (“Intellectual Thinking” by New World Music), and progressive house (“Whirr” by Reader contributor Frank Youngwerth); the LP sleeve looks like a classic NES cartridge, a theme that Numero took further by creating an Escape From Synth City side-scrolling video game....

Wednesday’s Tribune was full of opinion, but Ron Grossman, the editorials, Garrison Keillor, Richard Longworth and Jack Rakove, and Catherine Rampell were all about the same task: We think about Donald Trump so John Kass doesn’t have to. “The CIA is now the left’s champion of truth and beauty,” said Kass. And the Russians are now the bad guys, the same Russians we once championed against the “war-mongering conservative troglodytes” who never trusted them....

The Back Room Deal features radio personality and longtime Reader political writer Ben Joravsky arguing local Chicago politics with Reader staff writer Maya Dukmasova. With sharp wit and stinging analysis, Joravsky and Dukmasova cut through the smokey haze of the elections to offer you a glimpse of the current Chicago races—ward-level and, of course, mayoral. Will these historic elections be determined in back-room deals, like so many in Chicago’s past? Let Ben and Maya talk you through it....