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Leonard C. Goodman is a Chicago criminal defense attorney and co-owner of the newly independent Reader. The differences between Democrats and Republicans on issues like abortion and gay rights are important to be sure. But the areas of agreement between the two parties— both parties favor the interests of corporations over their workers and the environment— are also important. And these issues don’t get discussed because there is no disagreement. It is just accepted by both parties that a lawyer must be business-friendly to qualify for a federal judgeship....

Boy, oh boy, the residents of tiny Gilead, Wisconsin, need some hope. Good thing they’re living in a musical. You see, greedy loggers swooped in a while back and cleared out all the mature trees in the local forest. Then the quarry where many residents worked shut down. But since dramatizing the effects of a sweeping regional economic downturn is patently beyond the reach of this quaint 2001 musical’s creators (music and book by James Valcq, lyrics and book by Fred Alley), they pin the town’s crippling despair on the disappearance of the town’s favorite son during the Vietnam war a couple decades back....

As with all crazes and phenomena, I was slow to “feel the Bern.” I was watching him on The View—I know, the things I watch—and as a gag they had him shooting baskets. And I realized—holy shit, this thing’s for real. I still don’t think he’s going to beat Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, but he’s clearing tapping into a deep and righteous rage over a system that’s rigged....

Oscar Wilde wrote “most people are other people . . . their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” Such it is for Alfie Byrne, the self-effacing lead in Terrence McNally’s A Man of No Importance (based on the 1994 film starring Albert Finney), who lives locked away with his books, quoting Wilde and producing amateur theater at his small Dublin church. Alfie literally and figuratively lives in a closet, his plays providing a sense of control, until he is forced to grow up and face the reality he has avoided so long....

Again, as it has been for 41 summers, it’s “once more into the breach” for the Chicago Theatre Softball League and its unique Chicago brand of this goodly sport of the weighted orb. Who will emerge crowned with the leafed wreath of starry triumph? The Starving Comedians, wunderkinds of wit; the steeled spirits of Writers Theatre; the risk-taking Strawdogs company; the cloak-and-dagger suspects of Murder Mystery; the Factory’s stalwarts; the sturdy Blue Man Group; or the ever-inventive iO (once known as “ImprovOlympics)?...

On Sunday night the Morton County Sheriff’s Department escalated its conflict with Standing Rock Reservation protesters opposed to the North Dakota Access Pipeline by spraying crowds with water cannons in 26-degree weather. Since April, when protesters established the Oceti Sakowin Camp in support of the Standing Rock Sioux (whose reservation straddles the North and South Dakota borders), resistance to the NDAPL has steadily grown—now more than 1,000 protesters live in the encampment, hoping to stop the imminent construction of an oil pipeline that the Sioux say will threaten their water supply and thus their health and home....

On December 8, Chicago’s outstanding sludge doom-metal quartet Pale Horseman started another apocalypse with the release of their fourth full-length, The Fourth Seal (Black Bow). The album finds new drummer Jason Schryver, who joined the band in 2016, adding muscular propulsion to the solid team of bassist Rich Cygan and twin guitarist-vocalists Eric Ondo and Andre Almaraz. Pale Horseman’s live shows are generally pulverizing—and riff monsters like the record’s leadoff track “Final War” will be devastating onstage—but what really gives them depth is their ability to go beyond formula....

Chicago foursome Ovef Ow evolved out of Me Jane, a postpunk band that specialized in the kind of chilly, danceable melodies that emanated from Manchester in the 1980s. For the name of their new project, bassist-vocalist Marites Velasquez and drummer-vocalist Sarah Braunstein took an angular logo Timothy Breen had designed for their old band and turned it upside down—the results looked like a couple nonsensical words, “Ovef Ow.” Rounded out by Kyla Denham on synths and Nick Barnett on guitar, Ovef Ow transplant the cold aura of Me Jane to the beach; on their latest EP, Crash the Party (Midwest Action), they build surf-rock vibes out of bright, shout-’em-out vocal harmonies, choppy Farfisa lines, and riptide guitars....

The Body of an American Paul Watson, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for his photograph of Somalis dragging a dead American soldier through the streets, has witnessed innumerable atrocities while covering war zones around the globe; he’s left with a crippling case of PTSD. Dan O’Brien, who’s written some poems and plays you’ve never heard of, has a brother who, as a teen, jumped from a third-story window and landed safely in a snowbank; as a result, O’Brien’s still upset....

There are at least three editions of the album Blackboard Jungle Dub by reggae provocateur Lee “Scratch” Perry, each one with a different track listing (and sometimes a different title). It’s arguably the world’s first dub album, but whether that distinction is accurate or not, it does serve to delineate Perry’s exploration of a recording studio’s possibilities. Four years after the release of the album’s earliest incarnation, 1973’s Upsetters 14 Dub Black Board Jungle, the Jamaican producer scaled even greater technical heights when he helmed the sessions for the Congos’ Heart of the Congos, setting the vocal trio within a sonic context that reached well beyond reggae, dub, and R&B to approach some sort of billowing psychedelic apex....

The problem with celebrating Songkran, the Thai New Year, in Chicago is that it’s too cold for a water fight in mid-April. One of the popular features of Songkran in Bangkok originated as a ceremony offering blessings to your elders by anointing their hands with scented water, but the custom’s evolved into a friendly no-holds-barred mass water fight, a euphoric respite from the withering heat that essentially takes over the city this time of year....

When the COVID-19 lockdown first hit in March, a lot of companies whose mission focused on theater for young audiences found their digital shelves mostly bare. But they quickly ramped up their offerings with short films, workshops, and other activities designed to give kids and their families a break from the monotony of screen time routines. New stories, averaging 12 to 15 minutes in length, are added weekly every Sunday at 6 PM CST, and they can all be found on the YouTube channel for Northwestern’s Wirtz Center....

Mark Schafer Lena Dunham is Hannah Horvath—and the other way around. With its portrayals of obsessive-compulsive behaviors, blundering social skills, and cringe-worthy sexual encounters, Girls remains one of the most subversive shows to come out of the mainstream. Dunham, however, isn’t without an accomplished sense of irony. Earlier in the fourth season, Hannah’s fellow graduate students discuss her writing during a workshop, and point out how she routinely writes about a character that’s undistinguishable from herself....

The cover of Caterina Barbieri’s 2019 album Ecstatic Computation (Editions Mego) is composed of two eyes digitally layered over a photo of grayish fog. Its retrofuturistic aura is an apt representation of the Italian composer’s music and what she strives to accomplish through it. Drawing largely upon the works of German musicians such as Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, Barbieri uses modular synthesizers to explore perception and memory. Her contemporary take on progressive electronic music sometimes resembles that of local ambient musician Steve Hauschildt....

Back in ye olde early aughts, “freak folk” ruled the land. Championed and perhaps encouraged by photogenic weirdo Devendra Banhart, artists influenced by elegiac or subliminally psychedelic folk acts from the 60s and 70s—Tyrannosaurus Rex, the Incredible String Band, Michael Hurley—started coming out of the woodwork. For a hot strange minute, indie record bins were dominated by worshipers of UK folk (Espers, Nick Castro & the Young Elders), delicate and idiosyncratic singers (Joanna Newsom, Scout Niblett), and sublimely earthy fingerpicking guitarists (Jack Rose, James Blackshaw)....

It was only a few years ago that 21-year-old Los Angeles singer-songwriter/producer Omar Banos, aka Cuco, began messing around with music software after school. He quickly hit on an original and unexpectedly successful style of bedroom dream pop, with lyrics that mix Spanish and English and meander nonchalantly between passionate Latin balladry and sly, hip humor. His signature song, 2017’s “Lo Que Siento,” has a cheesy synth groove and casually corny lyrics (“I hope you know I miss you / From my head I can’t dismiss you”) and ends with a gorgeous mariachi horn coda....

As a sign of how relatively little I have to complain about when it comes to national politics, I’m going to complain about a recent Washington Post headline above an article that explained why I have relatively little to complain about. With that headline, the Post hits the trifecta. It’s patronizing, demeaning, and sorta, kinda accurate. All at once. The Washington Post turns it around. And somehow when they’re done explaining, it’s all part of a larger plan by Biden to tame the left by cooing sweet nothings into our ears....

When you enter the Chopin Theatre for The Ruse of Medusa, it may sound like a half-dozen wild monkeys are performing a musical cacophony on piano, strings, and horns because they are. Settle in for an hour of wild antics, visual and aural stimulation, screaming (both human and monkey), and total silliness. Written by Erik Satie in 1913, this lyrical comedy is one of the first plays to contain absurdist and surreal elements predating the start of dadaism....

This week I went back and forth with friends about the possibility of Chicago Public Schools actually having in-person classes this fall, and all we could determine is that sitting around and solving the world’s problems is not as satisfying when talking to each other via Skype. And then I made a concession to health by trying to use Greek yogurt as a dipping sauce, and while it’s tasty with chocolate chip cookies, I don’t feel like I’m doing it right....

T he upcoming, empowering poetry anthology The BreakBeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic, edited by Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, and Chicago poetry staple Jamila Woods, quickly manifested itself from a short conversation between Browne and Kevin Coval, one of the editors of the first BreakBeat Poets anthology, a collection of hip-hop poetry that came out in 2015. Although it’s billed as a sequel, the book-which will be released in paperback on April 3 and is available as an e-book now-can stand by itself: its dense, entrancing, necessary works by more than 60 black women poets create a black-girl-centric world of their own....