Something very interesting happens when a person encounters a Vivian Maier photograph. They stop, look closely, and find themselves asking where Maier was standing when she took this photograph. You start looking for Maier in her photos. Whether it is outside of the picture or inside of it. Often there is a shadow, a reflection, a hand or a finger in the frame if you spend enough time with the image....
My Malayalam is no better than my Polish. But whether you speak the language of the southwestern state of India or not, much like Polish sausages there are some obstacles in Chicago to exploring the vastly diverse food of the subcontinent’s Malabar Coast. For one thing, despite some 50,000 Keralites (or Malayalis) residing in the Chicago region (largely around Glenview, Mount Prospect, Morton Grove, and Des Plaines), there are few places to eat it....
Wm. Bullion directs Sid Feldman’s update of a 1970 Dario Fo comedy about a chameleon-like character who exposes police hypocrisy and corruption. By changing the setting from 1960s Italy to present-day Chicago and the victim from an anarchist to a Black motorist, Feldman and company are able to lob dozens of topical zingers, and the subject couldn’t be more relevant. But is it funny? The answer will depend on how you like your laughs....
Bad Bunny not only helped Latin trap cross over in the U.S., he also established a new beachhead for Spanish-language hip-hop here— and the spike in visibility of these genres undoubtedly helps artists such as Chicago’s Ryen get a little closer to their dreams of mainstream success. He started out as a member of local pop-rap trio the A.S.A. Project, and since going solo in 2017, he’s been polishing a pristine pop style that borrows from EDM, synthy indie-pop, frictionless rap, and any other glistening sound that aims to pluck the heartstrings of the masses....
Chicago foursome Peel play the kind of swashbuckling rippers that demand to be called “rock ’n’ roll” (don’t even think about using the whole “and” in there) and that sound like they could’ve poured out of a jukebox four or five decades ago, depending on the tune. At least, that’s the case on their new self-released EP, Never Not Dead, which they celebrate tonight. The recording follows Peel’s second album, September’s Goes Bananas (get it?...
Foundational British street-punk band Cock Sparrer formed in 1972, but their most recent album, 2017’s Forever, shows the troupe still at the peak of their powers. (Colin McFaull’s voice is roughly a half-octave lower than in the band’s early days, but that’s hardly a quibble.) Aside from Blitz and the Cockney Rejects, the majority of the oi! and street punk that poured out of the UK during the Thatcher era has aged reprehensibly, and from the vantage point of 2019 seems perilously apolitical....
If there’s a harder-working local band than country quartet Dan Whitaker & the Shinebenders, Gossip Wolf doesn’t know ’em! After honky-tonkin’ through one of their two-hour Saturday sets at Cole’s, this wolf is usually tonked out—especially regrettable when Dan and the band go on to play from 10 PM till 1 AM at Bernice’s Tavern in Bridgeport the same night! As if their endurance didn’t do the trick, the ‘Benders prove they’re the real deal with the new LP Truck Ride, which includes bouncing, steel-guitar-laced instrumental “Stony Island Stomp” and barreling barroom belter “Booze Is Good....
So, have you been seeing anyone?” Abigail asked as we sat around a campfire in my parents’ backyard last September. She was a lifelong friend and we hadn’t seen each other in a while, so it wasn’t an unlikely subject. But coming just a day after my last chemotherapy session, the question might as well have been whether I’d gone to the moon lately. That was the pattern that continued with any eligible bachelor familiar with my disease....
Over the last several decades few figures in traditional flamenco have matched the power of native Madrileño Jiménez Salazar (better known as Diego el Cigala), whose appealingly gruff timbre, deep emotional reserves, and effortless range can compare with legendary antecedents such as Camarón de la Isla and Enrique Morente. Though he hasn’t achieved their stature, his deep curiosity and natural versatility make it apparent that he’s on his way to doing so....
Wasting away on a student’s diet of crackers and boiled eggs, young Hannah Arendt (Christina Gorman) subjects her latest essay on neighborly love in Augustine to the chilly scrutiny of her married teacher, Martin Heidegger (Lawrence Grimm). Probably the two most brilliant people in Germany at that time, they fall in love, and in due course find themselves huddled clandestinely together in Martin’s hut in Todtnauberg. At first, Hannah is such a pale bundle of nerves there in her hero’s rooms that it feels playful of Martin to compare her to the mouse she’s seen nosing around her little grubby student apartment....
On a frosty day in February, Dr. Nora Rowley sat on the floor of the mustard-yellow playroom in the Marjorie Kovler Center in Rogers Park helping five-year-old Oscar* push a dump truck around the room. The boy had recently come to the city with his mother from Guatemala, and Rowley asked him what he thought of his new home. Oscar said he didn’t like the wind and winter here. “My daddy,” Oscar replied....
Rejoice and be glad, oh ye Chicagoans, for a miracle has occurred: for the first two months of the season, both the Cubs and the Sox were in first place! And in honor of that miracle, ticket prices have gone up, so that a day at Wrigley Field could, hypothetically, set a family of four back $400. (A day at U.S. Cellular Field costs less, but find one die-hard Cubs fan who’d rather watch the Sox just to save a few bucks....
Q: You’ve said that everyone is entitled to a “zone of erotic autonomy.” I was wondering if you thought that “zone” extends to sending thousands of dollars to a “FinDom.” I’m a 33-year-old straight woman and I love my husband and we have a great (or so I thought) sex life. He’s very dominant and controlling in bed and I’m very submissive and I thought we were well-matched sexually. So it was a shock for more than one reason when I stumbled over evidence that he’s been sending money to a female sex worker who calls herself a FinDom....
Maintain Wume, the Baltimore-based duo of Al Schatz and April Camlin, have released a new music video from their upcoming record on Ehse Records. Originally formed here in Chicago, the band dominated the weirdo basement scene, sharpened their spacey sound, and released an LP on Rotted Tooth Recordings before relocating out east a couple of years ago. On today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Ostinaut,” the two return to craft a hazy, psych-Krautrock epic, with Schatz’s layered, oscillating, blooping synths anchored in tight, locked rhythms by Camlin’s meticulous, syncopated drumming....
As if it weren’t bad enough that President Obama felt compelled to saddle us with Mayor Rahm Emanuel in 2011, he’s doubled down and endorsed him for a second term. For the anti-Rahm crowd—and I know you’re out there—that’s the glimmer of good news in this latest development. I rushed home to find two e-mails from the mayor’s campaign bragging about the endorsement. Apparently, Emanuel and his aides were so gleeful they mistakenly sent the same message twice....
In one of my first weeks of high school, my freshman English teacher provided our class with a short passage to introduce a discussion of literary tone. The passage was a straightforward description of a walk through a public park, with details of trees, benches, and such. Then, in the penultimate sentence, the narrator mentioned seeing two men stabbing a third man to death; the passage concluded with another bland line in keeping with the earlier sentences....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, October 6, 2017. Chicago adds undercover police for the Bank of America Chicago Marathon The city has decided to increase security for the Bank of America Chicago Marathon Sunday, placing more undercover police officers in the crowd. The changes were made in response to the Las Vegas mass shooting that left 58 dead. “It’s going to be an open event, as it always is,” Anthony Riccio, the chief of the Chicago Police Department’s Organized Crime Bureau, told reporters Thursday....
Composer, multi-instrumentalist, educator, and conceptualist Anthony Braxton was born in Chicago on June 4, 1945, and the celebration of his 75th birthday has taken a major hit from the COVID-19 pandemic. At least nine 2020 events have been cancelled so far—the only live performance that hasn’t yet been stricken from the calendar for this year is a concert by Kobe Van Cauwenbergh’s Ghost Trance Septet that’s scheduled for Luxembourg in November....
On Monday afternoon, four black teenage girls, followed by more than 1,000 protesters, shut down traffic in the middle of Chicago in the name of Black Lives Matter. “We grew up reading about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in history books, but what’s happened over the last year has made us realize that this isn’t just history,” says Lewis. “It’s been a shock to our generation. We want to end this so no generation after us has to go through what we did....
Keyboardist Rob Clearfield’s ubiquity on Chicago’s jazz scene says plenty about his talents and adaptability. He’s a musician who can lend sophisticated harmonic support to any setting—I’ve especially admired his simpatico contributions to bassist Matt Ulery’s Loom. While his ardor for fusion and prog rock—where he busts out his digital keyboards—leaves me cold, his touch on piano is another story. He’s just dropped his second solo album, Wherever You’re Starting From (Woolgathering), an impressive extension of its 2009 predecessor A Thousand Words in forging a feathery jazz-classical hybrid with often weightless lines of gossamer beauty....
