When COVID-19 took a wrecking ball to live music in March, digital retailer Bandcamp did a kindness for the independent artists and labels whose work it sells: for a 24-hour period, the site passed along its usual cut of revenue, which is generally 10 to 15 percent. On the first “Bandcamp day” the platform racked up $4.3 million in sales, which convinced it to make the initiative a regular thing—it’ll continue to waive its cut on the first Friday of every month till at least the end of the year....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, August 26, 2016. Top Republican donors in Illinois don’t agree on Clinton v. Trump GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump isn’t having much luck winning over Illinois’s top political donors. Of three major Chicago donors to Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign—Ron Gidwitz, Dan Webb, and William Kunkler—only Gidwitz is fund-raising for Trump. Webb has given money to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and Kunkler refuses to help either Clinton or Trump, calling the election a “bad situation....

In Greek mythology Tiresias was a blind seer who was turned into a woman for seven years as punishment for hitting some sacred snakes. That doesn’t happen in Jaime Mire’s “kinda-sorta adaptation” of Antigone—receiving its world premiere at the Organic Theater Company—but many, many other portentous events do. This is a play with a lot on its mind and not quite enough time or lung capacity to tell it all....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. Sergeant and Edginton spoke to several people who had been involved in the case, including U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark and Ray himself. Their story was filled with details like this: The authorities certainly couldn’t be accused of a lack of vigilance regarding King’s visit to Memphis....

A friend was eating lunch with family in Kuala Lumpur a few weeks ago when he received a tweet announcing a brand-new Malaysian restaurant had opened in Chicago. It came with a photo of the restaurant’s mango chicken—a sweet-spicy stir-fry of poultry, bell peppers, and onions served in a hollowed-out mango. As the phone was passed around the table loaded with homemade dishes, the family had a good snort. That’s Malaysian food, eh?...

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, November 16, 2017. Chicago Police Department superintendent Eddie Johnson is expected to announce Thursday that Englewood shootings and homicides “are on pace to reach historic lows in 2017,” according to the Sun-Times. Recent data refutes Englewood’s reputation for being one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city and even in the U.S. There were only 158 incidents of gun violence reported in the neighborhood as of October 31, compared to 302 during the same time period in 2016....

In the past two weeks alone, I’ve found myself at Wrightwood 659, the Renaissance Society, the Leather Archives & Museum, and the Smart Museum. All varying in public prominence, I feel lucky to know these spaces, to really get inside of them, to see show after show come in and out. And these are just a few of the hundreds of impressive DIY spaces, commercial galleries, and large museums that we have in this City of the Big Shoulders....

There are certain very specific types of art I cling to, like Eva Hesse’s fiberglass and latex work and Lynda Benglis’s wax sculptures. Their choice to work with carnal, fleshy, and corporeal materials makes their pieces evoke the fragility and vulnerability of the body. The Smart Museum of Art’s “Allure of Matter” taps into those characteristics that scratch my creative itch and takes to a whole new scale. The Smart-commissioned piece Civilization Pillar is something that you can smell when you enter the exhibition space....

Nina (Jazzma Pryor) and her estranged father, Kenyatta (Marc A. Rogers), a former activist in the Black Liberation Movement, face a volatile reunion following the death of her mother in Dominique Morisseau’s stunning play. He comes seeking access to valuable letters his wife wrote to him while he was incarcerated, but also to repair his relationship with Nina. Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre’s production, directed by Tim Rhoze, is driven by the passion of the three actors, who together embody the characters’ desires to transcend their circumstances....

What We Do in the Shadows What We Do in the Shadows, a vampire romp written by, directed by, and starring New Zealand clowns Jemaine Clement (HBO’s Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi (Boy, Eagle vs Shark) may be the best horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead. It opens Friday at Music Box, and our long review is here. Also in this week’s issue, Ben Sachs recommends Wild Tales, an Argentinian feature collecting stories of chance and revenge....

Indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt has made a career out of the saying “Wherever you go, there you are.” A naturalist at heart, she observes her characters intently as they roll into new environments, size up their surroundings, and try to conquer them. Her breakthrough film, Old Joy (2006), follows two old pals on a road trip to a wilderness hot spring, where their friendship blooms again, and back to the city, where it withers....

Power Trip have long produced crossover thrash for the tattered, sleeveless Cro-Mags T-shirt wearer in all of us—and with their recent sophomore album, the Dallas dudes prove it. Since its release in February, Nightmare Logic (Southern Lord) has been universally regarded as a triumph of dystopic metal, a record that has brought together all adrenaline junkies who require a little grime and sweat in their riffs. Its core message is that the world is a few nudges away from resembling a scorched and abandoned industrial compound, with track titles like “Executioner’s Tax (Swing of the Axe)” and “Waiting Around to Die” playing into that mantra....

courtesy of the artist John Patitucci Back in the early 90s, when I was a clerk at Jazz Record Mart, all I knew about bassist John Patitucci was his fusion work, both on his own and as a member of Chick Corea’s band (in fact, all you had to know about Corea’s work at the time was that he spelled the group’s name the Elektric Band). Unfairly, I pretty much wrote the bassist off until he turned up as a key member of the Wayne Shorter Quartet, for which he remains a crucial member, playing upright bass....

Ms. Jody is one of the leading lights on the southern soul-blues circuit, but she’s virtually unknown among mainstream fans in other parts of the country. A large part of the singer’s appeal, at least in the south, is her deft balance of provocativeness and propriety. She’ll tongue-bathe the microphone with a lasciviousness that might make Tina Turner blush: “I take that joystick into my hand, y’all—and I like to call it a joystick because it brings me so much joy....

A figure in black caresses a length of paper mounted on the wall with both hands. Two hands take sticks of charcoal to apply smoky curls, then lines that outline and defines first the frame of the page, then a life-size human figure. As he continues, his body seems to multiply: shadows on the wall echo the motions of the curves on the page. He adds translucent strokes of black paint, then tosses on opaque splatters in white....

Rhinofest turns 29 this year and remains one of the only fringe festivals in the US that actively curates its acts instead of selecting them through a lottery. This year artistic directors Jenny Magnus and Beau O’Reilly have chosen 41 different plays, cabarets, dance performances, workshops, and other things that defy classification. Of course Reader critics have opinions what’s worth seeing. The festival runs through February 25 at the Prop Thtr (3502-04 N....

Now in its 31st year, the Chosen Few Picnic & Festival has been one of the largest house-music events in the world for more than a decade, but it started as an informal Fourth of July barbecue. In the late 1980s, brothers Tony and Andre Hatchett would join their family at a holiday picnic behind the Museum of Science and Industry. Tony and Andre have belonged to pivotal house-music DJ collective the Chosen Few since 1978 and 1981, respectively, and in 1990, they invited the rest of their crew—at the time Wayne Williams, Jesse Saunders, and Alan King—to spin at the Hatchett family picnic....

Darryl Holliday and Erik Rodriguez’s “How to survive a shooting” was published in the Reader in 2013. We live in a world where you can run but you can’t hide. A colleague says a perplexing letter just came in the mail to her husband. As he’s someone “who basically scoffs at the Internet,” she told me in an e-mail, “I am wondering what list they got his name and address from....

On Friday, March 16, Vic Mensa takes over Lincoln Hall to launch his charitable foundation, Save Money Save Life. Mensa is no stranger to activism, having joined street demonstrations after the release of the Laquan McDonald dashcam video in 2015, traveled to Standing Rock to protest the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016, and written a Time op-ed in January connecting American racism to the oppression of Palestinians. His new foundation aims to combat systemic injustice by funding three programs: one will train first responders for underserved Chicago neighborhoods, another will send therapists to public schools to help students who lack access to mental health care, and the third will support artistically inclined youth on Native American reservations....