Posts

The Victory Monument on King Drive near 35th Street honors Black Chicagoans who fought in France during the First World War. Nearby is a plaque for their former commander, Colonel Franklin A. Denison. Beloved by his troops, Denison was removed from command before he could lead his men into battle. He subsequently came under the attention of the Bureau of Investigation, the precursor of the FBI. Its Chicago office identified Denison as “the chief individual agitator” of the 1919 Chicago race riot....

Jay Janner/AP Photos A guy who thinks the military is going to overtake Texas The recent order by the governor to the Texas State Guard to keep an eye on U.S. Army maneuvers in the vicinity should be contemplated by serious Chicagoans with a twinge of envy. Illinois doesn’t have a state guard. A pity. So he pointed out “the ‘militia’ in colonial America consisted of a subset of ‘the people’—those who were male, able bodied, and within a certain age range....

Tonya Crowder is a good cook, and last Christmas was extra special. She expected to have her fiance, Roosevelt Myles, join her at home for the holiday for the first time. So she drew up a menu: greens, chicken and dressing, macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, pie, caramel cake. “According to everything that I see, the only decision that [the judge] can make is either ‘Come home,’ or even if he does continue to start the hearing, they should release him because he was wrongfully sentenced,” she says of her mind-set before last year’s hearing....

On September 15, 1991, Steven Svymbersky opened the Wicker Park zine and comic-book shop Quimby’s (named after the local-art mag he’d created six years earlier in Boston) on the corner of Damen and Evergreen. Vegetarian haven Earwax Cafe had opened in the neighborhood just a year earlier, indie coffeehouse Urbis Orbis was going strong, and artists were taking over warehouses in the then run-down part of town. According to Svymbersky, in that environment it took just a few weeks for Quimby’s to attract a following....

Pennsylvania singer-producer Adam McIlwee says he doesn’t like emo, but he’s anchored to the genre. For close to a decade, he fronted Tigers Jaw, one of the brightest acts in the fourth-wave emo scene, and his yearning vocals lent the band’s music a hard-to-measure bittersweet allure. McIlwee left the group in 2013, though, and pulled a creative 180 with Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, where he grafts crestfallen ballads onto trap percussion and foggy synths....

About two-thirds of the way into Ash Is Purest White, the latest triumph by Chinese master Jia Zhang-ke, the heroine, Qiao (Zhao Tao, Jia’s regular leading lady), meets a strange man on a train heading north from the central province of Hubei. Qiao was recently released from prison after serving a five-year term; after tracking down her boyfriend, who didn’t bother to meet her upon her release, she discovered that he had taken up with another woman while Qiao was in jail....

All the World’s a Stage Andrew Park’s original musical for Quest Theatre Ensemble takes inspiration from Shakespeare’s soliloquy breaking down the seven stages of life, and borrows from its cast’s real-life stories as examples. Scott Lamps’s music is too schlocky to resonate beyond pleasantness; I still left a blubbering mess—earnestly relayed life experiences about addiction, marriage, and loss cut through any of the softness. There’s a genuine feeling of compassion throughout, and any of these monologues would hold up to the best episodes of This American Life....

Since releasing an EP by adventurous Chicago producer Mojek in January, local multimedia and events outlet 119 Productions has been focusing its energies on a forthcoming compilation called Countdown 2 Midnight. The comp’s first single, “Vices” (with drill mastermind King Louie, Save Money rapper Dally Auston, and producer-turned-crooner the Mind), came out in July, and the second arrived on Monday. “Counterfeit” features the dream team of Noname, Saba, and Phoelix—the same young trio that decamped to Los Angeles in June to work on two of the best local hip-hop releases of the year, Noname’s Telefone and Saba’s Bucket List Project....

Emily Cross started Cross Record in Chicago as a solo experimental-pop project and morphed it into a full band shortly before moving to Austin. But soon after Cross Record put out their debut full-length, 2016’s Wabi Sabi (Ba Da Bing), front woman Cross decided to give the group a rest. She became a death doula, providing holistic support for people in the last moments of life, and formed the folk-leaning band Loma with Shearwater’s Jonathan Meiburg and her husband, Dan Duszynski (also her chief collaborator in Cross Record)....

A man wearing an American flag slung around his shoulders like a crude superhero cape handed a street vendor named Cot a $20 bill. In exchange, Cot gave flag man a replica of the red “Make American Great Again” hat made famous by a certain celebrity billionaire turned inexplicably popular presidential candidate. Trump dismisses Obama as a joke of a president whom foreign leaders don’t respect, but turns debates into self-promotional infomercials blended with comedy roasts of his flailing Republican opponents....

At least for the moment, it appears the Jerry Lewises of the world have tired of attempting to argue that women aren’t funny. But local comedian Kelsie Huff says it can still be a challenge for women to break into the stand-up realm. “Women feel like they have to be perfect,” she says—and in stand-up, you’re going to blow it once in a while. The class is open only to people who identify as women, but Huff says the stipulation isn’t “antimale....

Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic when one lives alone can be difficult enough–but when a couple or family are involved, there are distinctly different dynamics and hurdles to navigate. Evette Cardona: I had started to work from home while Mona retired so, in that way, it sort of worked. We were pretty fortunate. I’m blessed to be in a job where I could work from home. [Cardona is vice president of programs at Polk Bros....

Pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach, saxophonist Evan Parker, and percussionist Paul Lytton are all members of the first generation of musicians from England and Europe to respond to the example of American free jazz with proposals of their own. Each man has attained singular mastery of his instrument, and between them they’ve stripped the jazz vernacular out of their musical language, added junkyard sounds, and mapped out the connections between jazz and 12-tone classical composition (to name just three of the creative strategies they’ve pursued)....

Even with school back in session, there’s plenty of summer fun to be had this weekend. Here’s what the Reader recommends: Sat 9/10: An international invasion sweeps into Chicago this weekend for the kick-off of the 2016 World Music Festival. For night owls or insanely early risers, make sure to catch Anjna & Rajna Swaminathan at 1:30 AM at Preston Bradley Hall (78 E. Washington St.) as part of Ragamala: A Celebration of Indian Classical Music....

Welsh producer Kelly Lee Owens begins her sophomore album, Inner Song (Smalltown Supersound), with an instrumental cover of Radiohead’s “Arpeggi.” Her version is all about effervescent electronics, and it can evoke the feeling of being underwater—isolated from the rest of the world with only your thoughts. When Owens’s vocals arrive on the following track, “On,” it sounds like she’s surfaced to announce a hard truth she’s discovered: “Can only love as deeply as you see yourself, and you don’t see me....

Who do we blame? And what do we do now? That’s what’s so demoralizing about last week’s election—America spoke. And now we have the worst of all worlds: a frightening message of discontent, and a frightening new president to react to it. As far as I’m concerned, this generation can’t take over the world soon enough. I stood a watch over a “special weapons” hold with a loaded .45. Whatever horrors filled that hold, the president’s arsenal dwarfs them....

All Creatures Here Below A desperate young couple at the end of their financial rope flee across country after the wife abducts an infant. Collin Schiffi directed. 91 min. Showing as part of the Midwest Independent Film Festival’s monthly event. Preceded by a reception and a panel at 6 PM. Tue 9/3, 7:30 PM. Landmark’s Century Centre NThe Case of Hana & Alice Celebrated Japanese director Shunji Iwai (Love Letter, New York, I Love You) turns to animation in this lilting, piquant 2015 prequel to his 2004 live-action high school rom-com Hana and Alice, opting for rotoscoping rather than the ubiquitous anime style of wide-eyed waifs that derives from manga....

Most of the world was introduced to ASAP Ferg by his verse on “Kissin’ Pink,” off ASAP Rocky’s breakthrough 2011 mixtape, Live. Love. ASAP. It was clear that Ferg had something special right from the jump: in the hypnotic, psychedelic haze of the record, his stylish, smooth, soulful rap-singing stood out. Each member of the ASAP Mob collective has a larger-than-life persona, and though Rocky has since moved on to actual superstardom, Ferg’s five official releases have proved him to be the crew’s biggest talent....

Here’s why this matters: More than 650,000 people are released from prisons every year, and more than half of them are re-convicted within three years, according to the study. But when the Northwestern team examined the actual performance of the hired ex-offenders, it found that they were no more likely than anyone else to engage in workplace misconduct. (The study doesn’t provide definitions for misconduct since the data, culled from employers, is coded by general descriptions of HR-tracked events in an employee’s history, such as misconduct, without specifics about what happened in each individual case....

It’s a dangerous thing to marry a stranger: the beautiful girl passing through town; the impetuous boy taken with her at first sight. My parents discovered this, to their eternal regret. But that’s another story. The story at hand is The Light in the Piazza—a rental production of Adam Guettel’s rapturous musical adaptation (book by Craig Lucas) of the 1960 novella by Elizabeth Spencer in a holiday-season run at the Lyric Opera House....