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Almost three months after Francisco “Frank” Cruz, 58, was fatally struck on his bicycle by a hit-and-run van driver in West Garfield Park, police still haven’t made an arrest. That’s despite the fact that a security camera captured an image of the vehicle that hit him, which was marked with the phone number for a local real estate company. On October 12 the personal injury firm Disparti Law Group filed the wrongful death suit against Advanced Realty and the unnamed van driver in Cook County circuit court on behalf of Isabelle Cruz....

French multi-instrumentalist James Kent, who makes music as Perturbator, has a lifelong history with synthesizers—his parents were in a band that used them—and he negotiates the possibilities of his instruments as fluently as a native tongue. Though Kent has a background as a black-metal guitarist, he prefers to work alone, and as he told Tunecore in 2016, he found electronic music to be the best genre for that. Kent burst onto the scene in 2012, dropping two Perturbator full-lengths and three EPs in one year....

The four films playing this month in the Gene Siskel Film Center’s Umetsugu Inoue series represent only a fraction of the Japanese director’s work. Inoue, who died in 2010 at age 86, directed more than 100 theatrical features and 300 television productions. Yet the series does spotlight his prolificness—three of the four selections were made in 1957—as well as his versatility. The films include a backstage melodrama (The Stormy Man), a boxing picture (The Winner), a nautical adventure (The Eagle and the Hawk), and a family musical (The Green Music Box)....

Boise native Eilen Jewell has been recording Americana and roots music for close to 15 years, and she continues to find new material and new approaches; in concert, she’s as likely to launch into a rousing Loretta Lynn cover as a down-and-dirty blues jam. Her most recent album, 2017’s Down Hearted Blues (Signature), focuses on the latter. In a strolling version of “Down Hearted Blues,” Jewell’s stripped-down washboard and banjo arrangement and her nasal near yodel make the tune sound more like Jimmie Rodgers than Bessie Smith, who made it famous with her 1923 recording....

Fire can heal. It’s an idea that has been the center of ArtReach’s practice since the introduction of Project Fire in 2015, its flagship glassblowing program focused on serving young Chicagoans dealing with violence-related trauma. Since 1990, ArtReach has existed in one form or another to connect traumatized communities in the city to arts education and practices. Now, in its 30th year, the Garfield Park-based organization is changing its name to Firebird Community Arts and focusing further on the flame....

These two purveyors of experimental electronic music based in Cologne, Germany, have forged a dynamic partnership over the last two decades, bridging differences in age, musical backgrounds, and the hardware they prefer to produce music of uncanny visceral power. Lehn’s analog synthesizer mastery is rooted in free improvisation, while Schmickler’s digital synthesis has a foundation in techno. Working together, they find a elusive yet thrilling common ground. On last year’s terrific Neue Bilder (Mikroton) their fast-moving, rapidly morphing collisions defy identification....

About a year ago, I was standing on a corner near the Reader‘s River North offices, picket sign in hand, pleading with passersby to help save the publication. The paper’s editorial employees, my colleagues, were well into a second year of contract negotiations with management, and things were looking pretty gloomy, to say the least. So let me pause from my usual rage against the machine to thank the readers in Readerland who signed our petitions and offered words of support....

Attitude is essential to selling a punk play, but Nothing Without a Company’s production of Sharon Krome’s Throatpunch doesn’t deliver on the promise of its aggressive title. Flat performances plague this tale of three young punks holed up in a small apartment in 1983 Chicago, where they play bad music, experiment with drugs, and hook up in different configurations. The script demands a level of intensity that the ensemble fails to reach, and the actors are still at the line-reading stage rather than fully embodying characters....

Part three of this year’s countdown begins below. You can read about picks 40 through 31 here and picks 30 through 21 here. 16. Kendrick Lamar, Damn (Top Dawg/Interscope) On his latest album, Kendrick Lamar strips down the layers of samples and beats that usually support his complex rhymes, leaving behind something simpler and more direct, with more overtly head-nodding grooves—but otherwise his music remains as dense, confrontational, and lyrical as ever....

No song from the early years of Chicago hip-hop occupies a place quite like Sugar Ray Dinke’s “Cabrini Green Rap.” It’s not the first Chicago rap record—depending on whose story you believe, that honor goes to Casper’s 1980 EP Casper’s Groovy Ghost Show (reputedly recorded by a New Yorker visiting Chicago) or Eye Beta Rock’s 1982 12-inch “Super Rock Body Shock.” Dinke’s single didn’t come out till 1986, but it can lay claim to another first: unlike the handful of local records that preceded it, “Cabrini Green Rap” combined Chicago-centric subject matter with modest success outside the city....

It’s been more than 38 years since the Flesh Eaters released their acclaimed second album, 1981’s A Minute to Pray, a Second to Die. But the classic version of the ragtag rockabilly group that made that recording—which included founder and front man Chris Desjardins (aka Chris D.), John Doe and DJ Bonebrake of X, Dave Alvin and Bill Bateman of the Blasters, and Steve Berlin of Los Lobos—returned to the studio last year to produce a new full-length, I Used to Be Pretty (Yep Roc)....

NICK THIENEMAN Sweet Cobra Tonight local heavy-metal stalwarts Sweet Cobra celebrate the release of their new LP Earth at the Empty Bottle, and they’ve just released a fresh music video to go along with it. The clip for “Future Ghosts,” today’s 12 O’Clock Track, is a wild, mesmerizing trip that splices shots of the trio performing in giant paper masks together with drugged-out, face-melting animations. The nonstop fast-paced editing borders on stimulation overload, the furious, outrageous images flashing along with the song’s massive D-beat frenzy....

While strolling south on Clark Street, I stopped momentarily to peer into the window of one of the neighborhood’s sports bars to see what baseball feat had prompted a deep roar from the thousands packed into Wrigleyville on Wednesday night. The night of game seven truly did feel like an ethereal dream, and not just because the Cubs won the World Series for the first time in more than a century....

“The truth is never in good taste.” —War Paint Which is too bad, because that narrative is pretty fascinating. But then the function of “If I’d Been a Man” isn’t to get at a truth about our protagonists. As far as I can tell, it’s meant to soften them up some so they don’t come across as complete monsters. A really damning representation of Rubinstein and Arden would first of all be seen as politically backward, and, second, offer the show’s stars no opportunity to ingratiate themselves....

The evolution of Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s filmography has been one of the more encouraging cinematic developments of this decade. The most internationally successful Turkish filmmaker since Yilmaz Güney, Ceylan was a still photographer before he became a writer-director; his early features (among them Clouds of May and Distant) speak to the influence of his first medium, trading in landscapes, fixed perspectives, and extended wordless sequences. Though consistently lovely to look at, his films soon grew stale on a thematic level....

Lincoln Park venue-slash-bar Tonic Room is no more—technically. When the space reopens later this month, it’ll be called Golden Dagger, after an actual knife that a previous owner found inside the 127-year-old building’s walls. Though it will still be a venue once it’s safe and practical to host live music again, to start it’ll be a coffeehouse first and a bar second. Owner Donnie Biggins, who also sings and plays guitar in the Shams Band, says he’s wanted to transform the venue since he bought it in 2016, and he decided to make the best of the COVID shutdown and finally start renovations....

Artistic inspiration often occurs unexpectedly. In 1979, Tseng Kwong Chi, born in Hong Kong, educated in Vancouver and Paris, and at the time living in New York City, went to meet his parents for dinner at the top of the World Trade Center. He had nothing formal to wear, so Tseng, a carefree prankster, improvised: he put on a Mao-style suit that he’d bought in a thrift store. Yet instead of being treated like a commie, he was accorded the respect of a foreign dignitary....

Chicago reedist Dave Rempis is well established as one of the city’s finest improvisers, a player who can adjust and adapt to fluid, unexpected musical situations with stunning alacrity, sensitivity, and ingenuity. But his ability to live in the moment doesn’t mean he’s not a thinker and a planner. Rempis has developed a strong practice as a musician through years of toil and focus, and he looks at the big picture with wide-eyed vision....

“Did you know? There are many States where you can get certified for a medical cannabis card online, including Illinois. The process is quick, simple and HIPAA compliant. Learn more here. The process is quick, simple and you need not leave the comfort of your home. Follow these 5 steps to get your Illinois medical marijuana card … Go to https://leafwell.co/medical-card/illinois/. Register online with Leafwell and speak to an Illinois-licensed physician or qualifying health professional (such as advanced practice nurse or physician’s assistant)....

In Danny Boyle’s new film Yesterday, a struggling musician named Jack (Himesh Patel) wakes up after being hit by a bus during a 12-second global blackout to discover he is the only person in the world who remembers the Beatles. After a brief will-he-won’t-he, Jack relaunches his failing career to stunning success by claiming the songs of Lennon and McCartney as his own. Immediately, it was apparent to me that our new home was different....