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Harry Houdini is sitting cross-legged playing a flute at the entrance to the Tunisian Village at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair. With his curly hair, it takes just a little dark makeup and a white, robelike wrap to transform the 19-year-old, who was born to Jewish parents in Budapest, into a Hindu fakir attracting visitors to the exhibit. When he’s not performing in costume, Houdini wanders the Midway Plaisance, swallowing and regurgitating sewing thread and needles to amazed audiences for tips....

On January 5—one of the coldest days of the winter—mayoral candidate Willie Wilson showed up at the Jefferson Park el stop to shake hands with the early-morning commuters. That’s right: the ultimate outsider almost went to work for the ultimate insider. It just goes to show you there’s nothing more surreal than the stuff that happens all the time in Chicago politics. Over the last few years, he’s found his way on and off the payrolls of SEIU, the Cook County Board, and the suburban village of Bensenville....

For 2013’s Olive Juice, Brooklyn singer-songwriter Emily Reo made detailed, intimate songs with what sounds like a small symphony of toy instruments powered by nine-volt batteries. She went even bigger with her third album, the new Only You Can See It (Carpark): though Reo has retained her home-recorded approach, she’s fleshed out a full-band sound while playing almost every note herself. The percussion thunders louder; heavy, distorted guitar steps into the foreground; and her glimmering voice is multitracked in pristine layers worthy of radio pop....

At this outlier moment in our history, every story is about coronavirus—even last week’s perfectly staid announcement that Chicago History Museum president Gary T. Johnson will be retiring at the end of the year. The museum, founded in 1856, is the oldest cultural institution in the city, and it had retained its original name: the Chicago Historical Society. Johnson was dismayed by the fact that many people thought it was a private club—a problem the board had long been debating....

Progressive symphonic metal group Mechina are based in Chicago’s western suburbs, but I wouldn’t blame you if their inhumanly technical sci-fi sound convinced you they weren’t from Earth. For nearly 15 years, with album after album and single after single, Mechina have built an intergalactic narrative so complex that their most devoted fans can’t follow it—even the person diligently assembling a Fandom wiki explaining Mechina’s evolving chronicle admits that the task is beyond them....

Deborah Bowen is a makeup artist and the lead singer for the group Bushoong, who have been performing together since 2000. So I was under the impression that I was coming over to his apartment to meet the rest of his band and do some background vocals, and it wasn’t until I got there that I realized that I was auditioning for a lead part. I probably would have talked myself out of it had I known that before I came....

The gig poster for this week celebrates the tenth anniversary of a local social series that celebrates LGBTQ+ Chicago with dance music and a party atmosphere. Founded by friend of the Reader and former staffer Kristen Kaza, Slo ‘Mo began by hosting music at the Whistler in Logan Square and has since branched out into comedy shows, wellness classes, and more in various locations across the city. The outdoor Slo ‘Mo event “I’m Every Woman: Divas Through the Decades” celebrates the group’s decade of queer party programming and heralds the return of the free Millennium Park summer concert series....

When Garbage broke out with their self-titled debut album in 1995, their alluring but abrasive sound—dark power-pop melodies topped by Shirley Manson’s alternately growled and whispered vocals—enticed listeners like sweet pink candy with a messy center. Their second album, 1998’s Version 2.0, expands on this recipe of fuzzed-out guitar and distorted vocals with multilayered tracks and slick production, and it helped them attain even more commercial success—including a gig recording the theme song for the 1999 James Bond movie The World Is Not Enough....

After seven days of testimony and a week’s breather from a trial as surreal as the artwork at its center, international art star Peter Doig has won a resounding victory. According to expert testimony during the trial, if Doig said he had painted the work then it could be sold for somewhere in the range of $6 million to $8 million. Last year a larger Doig work went for $25.9 million....

Hey, how are you holding up? Did that question in itself seem like a threat? Yeah, we’re at that part of Chicago winter where people start to get a little antsy, and of course it doesn’t help that many of us are still waiting on vast vaccine distribution in order to feel completely comfortable socializing with groups, going out to stores, and even traveling on public transportation. We’ve purchased the cutest masks, learned how to use all the video conference software, and subscribed to a ton of Patreons and we’re still feeling ugh....

When the general director steps out onto the stage before the curtain rises at Lyric Opera, it’s not a good sign. The audience for Wednesday’s matinee performance of La Traviata, Giuseppe Verdi’s 1853 tearjerker extraordinaire, was not pleased to see Anthony Freud or to absorb his message: celebrated soprano Albina Shagimuratova—the star attraction in this production—was down with laryngitis and would not be appearing as Violetta, the Parisian prostitute with a heart of gold....

Attracting new listeners to contemporary classical music is an ongoing struggle, but in recent years a number of music presenters, including Liquid Music in Minneapolis and Ecstatic Music in New York, have pursued a novel path of spearheading collaborations between pop groups and new music ensembles. In some ways this makes sense—plenty of musicians across the divide are fluent and interested in both, and among these various projects, there have been some successes, such as the winning joint effort between adventurous rock band Deerhoof and Chicago’s Ensemble Dal Niente....

During the 80s, Austin-based songwriter Daniel Johnston began recording fractured, innocent, childlike pop genius onto a boombox. As he passed the tapes around, he caught the attention of alternative acts like Built to Spill, Sonic Youth, and Nirvana—Kurt Cobain famously introduced the mainstream to Johnston’s music by wearing a T-shirt with the cover art for Johnston’s 1983 album Hi How Are You to the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. Praise from the punk giants allowed Johnston (now considered an outsider legend) some notoriety in the 90s, and he graduated from making albums with a single microphone and a rickety piano to recording them in actual studios with backing bands....

Let’s get this part out of the way first: Oyster Bah is a very dumb name for a very good restaurant. It’s akin to Rich Melman’s Boston cousin opening a steak house called Da Beef. The staff at Oyster Bah know it is a dumb name. This is likely why they refer to the restaurant as, simply, Oyster. As in, “Welcome to Oyster. I hope you enjoy your meal.” Since they do it, I will too....

Anthony Quintano/NBC News Rachel Dolezal appeared on the Today show Tuesday. Rachel Dolezal is the best op-ed topic to come along in a long time. She’s not just hot copy; she’s actually significant. She raises some really good questions. She’s one of those occasional subjects that remind the lowly pundit what fun it is to think for a living. Yet where does that leave us with the former Bruce Jenner (whose situation has made Dolezal’s twice as interesting)?...

Imagine a giant, adorable seal demolishing a village and a barbarian killing an evil version of Santa Claus. Imagine Steve Bannon and Mitch McConnell having a face-off in which their faces literally slide off. If you can’t imagine such things, veteran comic-book writer and artist Mike Norton can. His Eisner-winning Battlepug will be available in a massive “Compugdium” January 23 from Image Comics, which also published a collection of Norton’s Trump satire Lil’ Donnie last year....

The Pew Research Center has put its finger on something that Clinton supporters and Trump supporters agree on. It isn’t that it’s high time for the Cubs to win a World Series. Pew says its latest study shows that differences between the two groups of voters run so deep they “even extend to disputes over basic facts.” In other words, they don’t agree on reality. But everyone knows this. Pews says 81 percent of the Americans it polled “say that most supporters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump not only disagree over plans and policies, but also disagree on ‘basic facts....

You might have heard something about a runoff election for mayor between incumbent Rahm Emanuel and challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia. Or maybe you’ve heard far more than you’d like and wonder if anything they’re saying is true. Here’s a primer on what’s really going on. The short answer is that a lot of voters don’t like his style, which is often seen as imperious, dictatorial, arrogant, nasty, vindictive, shallow, deceitful—...

As the populist question goes, “If work’s so great, how come they have to pay you to do it?” That attitude provides the jumping-off point for Working, the musical based on Studs Terkel’s 1974 book of interviews where “people talk about what they do all day and how they feel about what they do.” Originally adapted in 1978 by Stephen Schwartz and Nina Faso, the show got a revision several years ago from writer-director Gordon Greenberg....

CHICAGO—The Chicago Reader has announced that the Oak Park-River Forest Community Foundation will serve as the newspaper’s fiscal sponsor as it goes through the process to become a full 501(c)3 nonprofit. The Reader, an L3C company founded in 1971, publishes a biweekly newspaper serving the city and suburbs, plus daily content online and on social media. The Reader covers politics, culture, and produces in-depth investigations. “We are excited about this partnership during our time of transition to a nonprofit journalism model,” said Tracy Baim, publisher of the Reader....