I haven’t gone to many shows since the election in November—honestly, I’m doing great if I make it out of the house. And over the summer I missed Ghost, Inquisition, and Rotting Christ, all of which would’ve been great. But I still saw a metric fuckton of excellent metal in 2016—the top-shelf acts that didn’t make my final five include Vektor, Obituary, Tribulation, the Melvins, Behemoth, Babymetal, Grave Miasma, Pallbearer, Cloud Rat, and Gorguts....
Max Blumenthal is the editor of TheGrayzone.com and the author of several books including The Management of Savagery (Verso, 2019). During the early days of the crisis around Wuhan, Chinese authorities took some ham-fisted measures to suppress public discussion of the outbreak. Perhaps Beijing was in denial about the gravity of the epidemic, or terrified of its societal ramifications. It was not long, however, before the Chinese government made the genome of the virus public, shared detailed information about the virus with the international community, and provided intelligence to the WHO, which relayed it to the U....
Volta is Cirque du Soleil’s 41st production since 1983 and, like all the others before it, struggles mightily to be unique. The show’s imagineers (reportedly 16 in all under the guidance of “director of creation” Jean Guibert) have fabricated another Cirque wonder, bursting with gorgeous costumes, carefully crafted spectacles, and virtuosic displays of acrobatic prowess, all performed under a retro big top filled with perfectly calibrated state-of-the-art machines of joy....
The catalog for Shakespeare 400 Chicago is officially out now, both online and in print. As festival producer Doreen Sayegh promised when I talked to her the other day, it is, indeed, possible to experience Shakespeare in some form every day from now until December. Puck: The Beer. Enjoy this limited edition release by North Coast Brewing after your Culinary Complete Works meal. It’s described as “a sharp and spritzy petite saison, with a delicious flowery, spicy dry-hop aroma,” which is just how you’d imagine a beer inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream to be, right?...
Born in Austria, based in Spain, and inspired by Chicago footwork and UK instrumental grime, Zora Jones has been making music for a decade but only just released her debut album, Ten Billion Angels (Fractal Fantasy). Its music is glossy, sensual, and alluring in its artificiality, and it pairs nicely with the cover art—a digitally drawn woman whose naked body is immersed in translucent liquid in ropes and streamers that bind and strangle her....
Before Black Lives Matter was a movement, Black lives mattered in the work of Dr. Charles Smith. A Vietnam vet and prodigious self-taught artist, he’s spent decades recreating the Black American experience in figurative sculpture, from the time of the slave ships to Harriet Tubman, MLK, and beyond. “God said, ‘Use art. I give you a weapon,’” Smith told me then. Granddaughter of the Kohler Company founder that the Art Center’s named for, and daughter of the former Chicago Tribune “women’s” editor that she was named for, Kohler II was the Art Center’s director from 1972 to 2016....
Since its founding in 2001, Steep Theatre has spent most of its institutional life in the shadow of the Red Line—from its first long-term venue by the Sheridan stop (where the honky-tonk music from the bar next door would bleed through the theater’s walls on the weekends) to its current home nestled next to the Berwyn station. For Steep’s artistic director Peter Moore and executive director Kate Piatt-Eckert, the announcement was not completely unexpected....
It’s been a year of surreal events. Nothing trumps Trump (or the Cubs), but as always, the cultural front offered its own oddities. You might think this could only happen in 17th-century Salem (or the 20th-century Soviet Union), but if you’re a tenured faculty member at NU unpopular with your colleagues, you could find yourself defending your sanity. After complaints from her department, political science professor and activist Jacqueline Stevens was banned from campus and sent to a shrink for assessment....
Time to plan the week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Wed 5/18: Full Spectrum Features hosts a fund-raiser and launch party at Headquarters Beercade (950 W. Wolfram) for Chicagoland Shorts Vol. 2., a touring collection of short films. 7 PM
In the face of uncertainty and fear, some people would rather climb back into the proverbial womb. For Shame vocalist Charlie Steen, “the womb” was a nickname for a tiny laundry space that had been converted into a bedroom in the apartment he shared with guitarist Sean Coyle-Smith. It proved itself the perfect place for him to draft lyrics for the UK postpunk band’s second album, Drunk Tank Pink, named for the supposedly calming shade of paint on the room’s walls....
One evening at Bascule Wine Bar, after happily working our way to the bottom of a dish piled with cheesy polenta and braised wild boar, my tablemates and I discovered a Twinkie-size cheesecloth-wrapped lump that had been camouflaged among the shredded meat. Though it appeared to be some variety of medical waste, we quickly realized it was the spice sachet employed in the braise. No big deal, we told our mortified server....
For the past 26 years, Public Narrative (previously known as the Community Media Workshop) has honored storytellers across the city who center the people of Chicago in the work with the Studs Terkel Awards, presented annually at the Community Media Awards. This year Reader copublisher and co-editor in chief Karen Hawkins was among the esteemed honorees, all of whom “exemplify the values of Studs Terkel’s journalism, by taking risks in covering social issues....
Manglehorn Ben Sachs has four stars for Eden, the latest from French director Mia Hansen-Løve; check out his long review. And we’ve got capsule reviews of: Domestic Life, a fictional chronicle of four French suburban housewives; Dope, a teen comedy about a self-described “black geek” who must reinvent himself as a gangster; Guidelines, a Canadian documentary about juvenile delinquents; Infinitely Polar Bear, starring Mark Ruffalo as a bipolar man trying to care for his two young daughters; Krasno, a Czech drama about two middle-aged guys who return to their hometown and try to solve a mystery; A Little Chaos, with Kate Winslet as a landscape designer hired to help build the gardens at Versailles; Macaroni and Cheese, a French comedy about three gal pals whooping it up at the Locarno film festival; Manglehorn, starring Al Pacino as an aging locksmith still pining for his lost love; The Overnight, an indie sex comedy from executive producer Mark Duplass; and They Are We, a documentary about the Banta tribe in Sierra Leone....
Opening this Friday at two local theaters, the 2014 documentary Lambert & Stamp looks at the pair of aspiring filmmakers who, in 1964, adopted a fiery but directionless R&B band in North London and molded it into the guitar-smashing pop-art sensation we know as the Who. Kit Lambert, son of classical composer and conductor Constant Lambert, encouraged the band’s creative ambition, eventually taking over as the Who’s record producer and prodding guitarist Pete Townshend to create the career-transforming rock opera Tommy....
It’s not often that I praise Donald Trump, but recent circumstances force me to do just that, so . . . But don’t kid yourself into thinking Trump released Blago out of compassion for the Blagojevich family. C’mon, people, you’re too smart for that. As we all know, compassion is not a Trump thing. Three: Trump wants to legalize extortion—at least the extortion he apparently commits all the time. I mean, the guy’s as fit as a fiddle....
Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney. Trump may well deserve to be impeached for inciting a riot, even though his trial in the Senate will be largely symbolic as it won’t take place until after he has left the White House. But the focus on Trump as the villain will allow other culprits to avoid scrutiny. For example, the assault on the U.S. Capitol was planned for weeks out in the open on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube....
First things first. The gyil is a traditional West African xylophone with dried gourd resonators hung below most or all of its hardwood keys. (A similar instrument is called a “balafon” in Francophone Africa.) It’s usually tuned pentatonically, and its full, luminous tone is haloed with a cicada-like buzz, created by vibrating membranes made from spiders’ egg cases and pasted over small holes cut in each resonator. If you saw Badenya—La Freres Coulibaly at the African Festival of the Arts in 2001 or SK Kakraba at the World Music Festival in 2016, you already know what one looks like....
It’s been heartening to see a wave of country artists who have rejected the hat-act simplicity and cornpone sentiment that’s tarnished the genre now verging on becoming the new mainstream. Among this rising crop of players is Margo Price, whose surprise success with her 2016 debut, Midwest Farmer’s Daughter (Third Man), hasn’t altered her sober worldview or her admiration for the 70s country sound of Loretta Lynn, Bobbie Gentry, and Dolly Parton....
