This is my fifth year rounding up box sets for the Reader‘s gift guide, and during that time the music business in general—and the CD business in particular—has continued to decline. But music remains a gift that keeps on giving, and box sets are more fun to unwrap than digital downloads. Plus, instead of just taking up a bit of space on a hard drive, they can occupy prime real estate on your mantel, bookshelf, or, um, floor....
Q: I’m positive you’ve written something about this in the past. I have searched your archives but have only managed to find people arguing in the comments when what I want is your advice. My 16-year-old son is stealing our sex toys. My son took my husband’s handheld toy several months ago. I found it where it shouldn’t have been and let my husband know. He talked to our son and told him these are personal items, like a toothbrush, and that he needed to stop taking them....
Jimmy Katz Rudresh Mahanthappa Like so many of today’s most interesting jazz musicians, the saxophonist Rudresh Mahanthappa regularly creates disparate contexts, hybrids, and concepts to develop new music. The son of Indian immigrants, he’s explored the music of the subcontinent in multiple environments: some have been explicit, such as the remarkable 2008 album Kinsmen (Pi), where he collaborated with the Indian classical-music saxophonist Kadri Gopalnath; others have been more subtle and integrated, such as the 2006 duets collection Raw Materials (Savoy) he made with pianist and fellow Indian-American Vijay Iyer....
The torrent of “best of 2017” content started last week, with album lists at Rolling Stone, Paste, and Consequence of Sound. Like Christmas lights and “Winter Wonderland,” these lists seem to arrive earlier every year—and I can’t say I look forward to scrolling through a “year in review” list as I digest Thanksgiving dinner. December is usually a quiet month for new music, but there’s some precedent for dropping great music then....
Vivre Sa Vie Starting this week and running all the way through March, the Gene Siskel Film Center is hosting a partial retrospective of Jean-Luc Godard films. Titled “Godard: The First Wave,” it includes most of the films from his seminal New Wave period, plus a small collection of later-period stuff, including Hail Mary and Every Man for Himself. The series runs concurrently with the master director’s latest film, Goodbye to Language 3-D, making its long-awaited Chicago debut with a monthlong run at the Film Center....
As the Chicago’s Public School system heads towards teacher layoffs and a possible strike, Governor Rauner flew home from his vacation in the Moroccan desert to continue his fight with Mayor Emanuel. Fired up from the camels and the tents, Rauner called Rahm “tone deaf” for resisting investigations into the police and law departments. The mayor also told reporters that Rauner’s using the schools as pawns in his political game against House Speaker Michael Madigan....
Viceland, Vice Media’s TV channel, debuted at the end of February, and last week its music program, Noisey (which shares its name with Vice’s music site), dedicated a 45-minute episode to Chicago’s hip-hop scene and the city’s violence epidemic. If the premise feels familiar, it should: in 2014 Vice debuted Noisey: Chiraq, an eight-part video documentary series on the local rap scene. At best the series sketched the characters central to the drill sound, which consumed most of the oxygen in Chiraq even though other kinds of Chicago hip-hop had made their presence felt on an international scale by that time....
I prefer to call myself a runner rather than actually engage in the act of running. I’m a latecomer to the sport, and not always an agreeable participant. For most of the past four years, I’ve run five kilometers outdoors every other day, though that’s not accounting for those frigid months when there’s a good chance I could slip on a hard patch of ice. I put my body through this unpleasant routine partly for the alleged health benefits, and more specifically to counteract my ridiculous sweet tooth....
Chicago hip-hop label Closed Sessions is gearing up for another banner year. Late last month House Arrest, the distribution wing of important Mississippi indie label Fat Possum, announced it had struck a deal with Closed Sessions; earlier this week, Pitchfork Music Festival announced that this year’s gathering will feature one of the label’s marquee artists, Kweku Collins. The Evanston MC makes a guest appearance on Cocoons, an EP by Closed Sessions’ latest signee, Ajani Jones; the label announced it signed the Chicago rapper last week, on the day it released Cocoons....
—Activist Jessica Disu Until that moment on Fox News, Jessica Disu hadn’t considered herself a police abolitionist. But on July 11, she was on national television, surrounded by 29 other people convened by Megyn Kelly to discuss the recent killings of Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, and several Dallas police officers. “I was under the impression that it would be a robust and productive conversation, even though it was Fox News,” says 27-year-old Disu, who identifies herself as a “humanitarian rap artist and peace activist” and is involved with various organizations serving youth on the south side....
This story was originally published in The Appeal. Missing from that list was one item that reform activists have long been waiting for—the installation of civilian oversight of the police department, a key issue Lightfoot campaigned on when she ran for mayor. A caller to WBEZ asked the mayor a week after her speech what she was doing about the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability ordinance that was supposed to establish this oversight and that’s been stuck in the City Council’s public safety committee for almost two years....
Adrianne Lenker was in the throes of a breakup this spring when she holed up in a one-room cabin in Western Massachusetts and spent a few weeks crafting the paired albums Songs and Instrumentals (both on 4AD). While Lenker is primarily known for her folk-rock band Big Thief, her comparatively pared-down solo work is equally striking. Her guitar playing is intimate, her light, soft voice is comforting, and her music exudes a mystical quality—it sounds ready-made to be played during early-morning strolls through the fog....
If you want a reminder of the cowardly cautiousness of mainstream Democrats, check out this moment from the Great Debate. Ifill said, It’s nice that you agree on something, and they went on to another subject. Generally, they’d go off the record to tell us that they had nothing against reefer. In fact, they may have—chuckle, chuckle—smoked some over the weekend. But, you know, don’t want to get too far ahead of voters....
[This article contains spoilers.] Yet in the hands of Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, Daly becomes a tyrant on par with Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump while behind the controls of his own video game. What initially seems like a harmless escape from daily drudgery turns disturbing when we discover that the characters who populate the high-tech simulation aren’t merely programmed to obey Daly’s every command and regale him with constant praise—they’re virtual slaves whom Daly has physically tortured, blackmailed, or transformed into hideous monsters and stuck on some lifeless alien planet as punishment for falling out of line....
When I walk into Supa Bwe’s two-story Humboldt Park apartment, his big-screen TV is displaying a pause screen from the postapocalyptic shooter Fortnite—already hugely popular, it got another bump last month when Drake streamed it on Twitch with local gamer Ninja. The 28-year-old Chicago rapper (his stage name is pronounced “Supa Boy”) likes to spend as much time at home as possible, and when he’s not working on music in his basement studio he often burns hours gaming....
Calling itself “The Most Instagrammable Alley in Chicago,” The 12 brings art into the alley of the Tri-Taylor neighborhood. Named for its zip code, The 12 is a housing development built by Home& where each unit has an artist-painted garage door. The developers reached out to Sara Dulkin, owner of Chicago Truborn gallery, to curate the project and bring on the artists. The project, located at the 2500 block of West Polk Street, is on former Chicago Public Schools land....
Guitarist-vocalist Julia Steiner and guitarist David Sagan met as first-year students at the University of Notre Dame in 2010, and they’ve since become ingrained in Chicago underground rock. Under the name Ratboys, they made themselves a home in the emo scene in the mid-2010s, playing country-flecked indie songs and drawing in a couple prolific collaborators to fill out their live sets: drummer Marcus Nuccio of Pet Symmetry and Mountains for Clouds and bassist Sean Neumann, who makes delightful indie pop as Jupiter Styles (he’s also a Reader contributor)....
Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Shawn Coleman, professional cuddler. “Clients get in touch through my website, and I e-mail them back and get a sense for what they want from the session. I do take safety precautions when interacting with people I’ve never met before. Thankfully, I have quite a few friends who live in the area and are happy to have me call them before and after the session....
When you read this, I have no idea what the weather will be like. Terminal Town: An Illustrated Guide to Chicago’s Airports, Bus Depots, Train Stations, and Steamship Landings, 1939-Present, by Joseph P. Schwieterman At Home In The Loop: How Clout and Community Built Chicago’s Dearborn Park, by Lois Wille In six thoughtful and well-arranged sections, Condit takes readers through the basics of the Chicago Plan of 1909, which would eventually bring us the Magnificent Mile and iconic cultural institutions such as the Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium....
It’s not often that a bar manages to be both restrained and over-the-top, but Prairie School manages it. The West Loop spot from Heisler Hospitality and nationally recognized bartender Jim Meehan is inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie style, which itself was inspired by the flat prairie landscapes of the midwest. Meehan built his reputation in New York with the speakeasy PDT, but he grew up in the Chicago suburbs and is making a return to his midwestern roots....
