Posts

Not only is 2020 the Year of Chicago Music, it’s also the 35th year for the nonprofit Arts & Business Council of Chicago (A&BC), which provides business expertise and training to creatives and their organizations citywide. To celebrate, the A&BC has launched the #ChiMusic35 campaign at ChiMusic35.com, which includes a public poll to determine the consensus 35 greatest moments in Chicago music history as well as a raffle to benefit the A&BC’s work supporting creative communities struggling with the impact of COVID-19 in the city’s disinvested neighborhoods....

A pop of color in the shape of a Telfar bag has become a common sighting gracing the outfits of stylish Chicagoans. Made by Queens-based Liberian-American designer Telfar Clemens, the vegan leather totes come in three sizes, multiple colors, and fairly affordable prices ($150 to $257). Since the bag, dubbed the “Bushwick Birkin,” quickly sells out, those willing to partake in the trend are advised to subscribe online for a restock alert at shop....

Normally it bothers me how Christmas invades every facet of life the day after Thanksgiving. The tinsel, lawn ornaments, and other signifiers of the season aggressively underline the point that Jewish people like me have a religious and cultural heritage different from the majority of the country. But my irritation has had an unintended side effect: over the years, I’d grown so annoyed by the jolly chintz that soundtracked my December grocery-store runs that I’d also closed myself off to the strange, compelling, and outright great music that uses the holiday as a framing device....

Ex Libris: The New York Public Library, the 41st documentary feature by Frederick Wiseman, bears a close resemblance to its subject. It’s huge (197 minutes) and incredibly varied, with something new and interesting popping up every time you turn the corner. And as with a public library, the sheer magnitude of the movie can make you a little drowsy. Wiseman is a master editor, capable of sustaining a documentary for two, three, or even four hours, but compared, for instance, to his 1997 masterpiece Public Housing, which also ran about 200 minutes, the new film can feel static and self-indulgent, the work of an octogenarian (born in 1930) who thinks he’s earned the right to relax and enjoy himself....

Why did Clare Barron’s success bring her so much shame? The performer-turned-playwright received widespread acclaim after the 2015 debut of her play You Got Older, but this didn’t lift her spirits and she needed to know why. The big twist in Dance Nation is that the members of the middle-school dance troupe who are determined to make it to a national competition in Tampa Bay are played by adult actors covering an age range of nearly 50 years—a decision made to illuminate how teenage experiences shape adults....

As Cook County state’s attorney Kim Foxx’s first year in office has drawn to a close, a group of independent justice system observers have published a new report evaluating her leadership thus far. Foxx ran against former state’s attorney Anita Alvarez on a reformist platform, vowing to institute a variety of changes to the prosecutor’s office, from greater data transparency to changes in criminal charging practices. The report found that she’s making progress on some of her promises, but there’s plenty of room for improvement....

With Kumiko, the Treasure Hunter, Austin-based writers David and Nathan Zellner have constructed an engaging, even surprising feature around just a few jokes. Their understated approach goes a long way toward keeping these jokes fresh—no matter how many times they’re deployed, one rarely sees the punch line coming. An even more valuable asset is Rinko Kikuchi’s nuanced lead performance; on paper the title character sounds like a cartoon, yet Kikuchi (Norwegian Wood) transforms her into an enigma—heroic, childlike, pathetic, and touching....

The world premiere of this Northlight Theatre- commissioned work, written by Sharyn Rothstein and directed by Jess McLeod, presents a wonderfully complicated female relationship anchoring a larger story of income inequality and abuse of power. Christine (Leah Karpel) is a single mother struggling to find a home and keep herself and her daughter afloat, all while getting away from a destructive ex named Poet (Julian Parker). Lying about her situation, she rents an apartment from Marti (Shanesia Davis)....

Tampering with an artist’s memory can be dangerous business: In 2011, Gregory White Smith and Steven Naifeh published Van Gogh: The Life, an acclaimed biography arguing, among other things, that the Dutch painter’s gunshot death in July 1890, in the French town of Auvers-sur-Oise, was no suicide, as scholars had agreed for years, but homicide at the hands of a local bully. The blowback from Van Gogh fans and art historians was severe....

The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art announced Friday that its board and leadership has given up on Chicago as a site for the museum and will build in California instead. No specific California location was named. Here’s the mayor’s full statement: “No one benefits from continuing their seemingly unending litigation to protect a parking lot,” said George W. Lucas, founder and chairman of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. “The actions initiated by Friends of Parks and their recent attempts to extract concessions from the city have effectively overridden approvals received from numerous democratically elected bodies of government....

When Philadelphia’s Beach Slang first appeared in 2014 with a couple of EPs, I was fully obsessed. Fronted by former pop punker James Alex Snyder, who spent the 90s cofronting Weston, the band produced hook-filled brilliance by summoning the heartfelt, clean-channel warmth of punks-turned-alt-rock-icons such as the Replacements, Hüsker Dü, and the Lemonheads and adding a big tip of the hat to radio-ready acts such as Goo Goo Dolls and the Gin Blossoms....

Paul Burch is a musical time traveler: four years ago he released Meridian Rising, a pristine concept album in the voice of Jimmie Rodgers, the greatest pop star of the Great Depression era. The choice made sense, since Burch likewise is an expert stylist who meshes past popular genres but always manages to sound like himself—he can even stand out when working with artists who are distinctive in their own right, such as art-country collective Lambchop and Chicago country-punks the Waco Brothers....

In 1987, British punk and postpunk pioneers Wire pulled an unforgettable power move: After a few years’ hiatus, the band reconvened and announced a comeback tour. However, they were only interested in their new electronic material and refused to perform any of their beloved early songs. So they booked a Wire tribute band, the Ex-Lion Tamers (which included Chicago music critic Jim DeRogatis), to open for them and play their iconic 1977 album Pink Flag in its entirety....

Fashion, for many, is all about fantasy. In normal circumstances, this week we would have spent several days picking apart the outrageous outfits of celebrities attending the Met Gala (the theme would have been About Time: Fashion and Duration). But instead, at least here in Illinois, we’re left to contemplate a future with a mandatory, less-than-fantastical item: the face mask. Roger Rodriguez from Jugrnaut is also getting creative with materials, in part because fabric stores have closed....

Cumbie front man Aaron O’Neill says his three-piece isn’t a “real band”—they’ve only ever performed publicly once—but on their new self-released debut, EP, they rock like road-tested veterans. O’Neill started writing the record’s sleek, rowdy songs a couple years ago, when he lived in Saint Louis (he played in several bands there, including Shady Bug, a touring indie-rock group on respected indie label Exploding in Sound). To realize the material he was creating for Cumbie, he recruited bassist-vocalist Reid Maynard, who still lives in Saint Louis, and drummer Zach Simmons, who lives on a farm outside Bloomington, Illinois....

Three new shows this season celebrate defiance and derring-do, from the poetic grit of Saul Bellow to the feminist sass of six famous wives to a pioneering thrill-seeker. “He’s taken this extraordinary 400-page novel and turned it into a play,” he says. “If you know the novel and the language, you think, ‘How the hell is this going to work onstage?’ He was brilliant in many ways, one of which is that he’s translated all the events into language that sounds like real people, yet at various moments, particularly for someone who is voiceless or powerless or unable to speak, he then used direct quotes pulled from the novel for what we now refer to as ‘the Bellow music....

A show called Support Group For Men? Written by a woman? At this particular juncture in the life of the nation? I’d expect a bunch of smug white, cisgendered, y-chromosomed assholes getting their privilege-and sundry other parts-handed to them on a pike, to the roar of the woke masses. Fairey’s script is far too pat and ingratiating to matter much. It’s also dated, referencing old Chicago news like the gentrification of Wicker Park....

Q: I’m a woman who married young (21), and I’ve been with my husband for seven years. Within the last year, I’ve realized that my falling libido probably comes from the fact that I am not turned on by our boring vanilla sex routine. I had some great casual sex before we met, but it turns out I’m into BDSM, which I found out when I recently had a short affair....

Sometimes an anniversary celebration can also be the perfect time to end a chapter. Such is the case with strident UK rock band UFO, who turned 50 this year and are on the road with what they’ve claimed will be the last tour with their one constant member, gritty-voiced vocalist and front man Phil Mogg. Mogg has announced he’ll retire following this jaunt, and in an official statement he says he hopes folks don’t call this a farewell tour—though UFO have named it Last Orders....

Sun-Times Print Collection Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, chapter one The New York Times reported the other day that 2015 is the 150th anniversary of the first publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Americans are celebrating too. The president of the Lewis Carroll Society of North America said the Alice books—Lewis Carroll published Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There six years later—are “likely the most frequently quoted works of fiction in the English-speaking world,” rivaled only by Shakespeare....