Posts

Live Nation Entertainment is the biggest concert promoter in the world—and it was even before it merged with the monolithic Ticketmaster in 2010 or bought a controlling stake in C3 (the company behind Lollapalooza) in 2014. These days, according to the New York Times, Live Nation operates more than 200 venues globally and manages 500 musical acts (including U2 and Jay-Z), and last year it presented more than 30,000 shows and sold half a billion tickets....

Tuesday, October 1, marks the 70th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, a milestone that Hong Kong—under British rule at the time—doesn’t share. In the 48 years before the colonizer turned the island back over to the mainland and up until the present, Hong Kong has maintained its own identity, not a small part of which is its standing as the world capital of Cantonese food—probably the most internationally recognizable regional Chinese cuisine among so many....

“But in a case like TMIAS’s, where the issue is ongoing and the subject is over 55,” said Dr. Winter, “a typical evaluation would include a PSA blood test (a prostate cancer screening test), as well as testing for STIs (such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, and herpes), along with a urinalysis to check for blood in the urine and urinary infections. If those tests were not revealing, I would consider doing an ultrasound or MRI of the prostate and surrounding organs, as well as putting a camera up the urethra (called cystoscopy) to check out the plumbing....

Good luck slapping a label on Gary Clark Jr. The Austin native won a Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance in 2013, but his music cuts across genres, including blues, rock, and hip-hop. In the 2015 Rolling Stone mini documentary Gary and Eve, Clark says he once imagined following in the footsteps of a soulful group such as Boyz II Men but found himself drawn to the rebelliousness of rock ’n’ roll....

Q: I’m a nearly 80-year-old straight male with undiminished libido. I have no problem with it, just a persistent curiosity. Like, why now? And why so various? And is it common among us old geezers? Male and female? I’m more sex-obsessed than ever before, including adolescence. Until my 60s, tits were my sexual focus, and other body parts were strictly subsidiary, whether I was looking, fantasizing, masturbating, or fucking. Now butts, bellies, assholes, cunts, legs, arms, shoulders are equal turn-ons....

If you’re vaxxed and eager to return to movie theaters, I can’t imagine a better film to see this summer than In the Heights. Years before Lin-Manuel Miranda found earth-shattering success in Hamilton, he wrote and starred in In the Heights, the Tony Award-winning musical portraying New York City’s Washington Heights neighborhood and the people who call it home. On June 11, director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) brings the simultaneously grand and intimate story to the big screen....

When I graduated from Brookline High School in Massachusetts in 1989, my art teacher, Osna Sens, gave me an oversize monograph of Ivan Albright paintings as a present. I was a depressed, lonely kid whose only true outlet was painting and drawing. Perhaps Ms. Sens thought Albright’s ghoulish pictures might strike a chord. I didn’t know then that I would make Chicago my home, but Albright’s lurid, often nightmarish portraits were an early introduction to one of the more unusual artists our city has produced....

This year’s edition of “Noir City: Chicago”—the Music Box Theatre’s annual weeklong festival of classic and obscure film noir titles—started with a bang this past Friday night with a 35-millimeter revival of In a Lonely Place (1950), one of director Nicholas Ray’s greatest achievements. (If you missed the show, the film is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection.) Eddie Muller of Turner Classic Movies introduced the screening, shining light on how the film was a personal project not only for Ray, but for star Humphrey Bogart....

Q: Over the years, I have consumed what I believe to be an average amount of porn for a 44-year-old hetero guy. I have never paid for it, and I am now facing a troubled conscience for that fact. I could obviously just subscribe to some site or other now, but that would benefit only one company and/or set of performers. Is there a Dan Savage–approved charity relating to the adult film industry to which I could donate?...

When punk musician Neil Berthier sat down for a Better Yet Podcast interview at the beginning of 2019, he was halfway through a yearlong stint in Chicago; he’d moved here after a short stay in Nashville following the 2017 dissolution of his rambunctious, stylistically slippery New Orleans indie-punk band Donovan Wolfington. Berthier was still coming to terms with his band’s breakup when he talked to Better Yet host (and Reader contributor) Tim Crisp, even though he already had an established solo project, originally called Neil O’Neil....

With her band Saicobab, semilegendary Japanese noise weirdo YoshimiO (Boredoms, OOIOO) has taken a sharp left turn in a career of sharp left turns. The group, which also includes Yoshida Daikiti on sitar, Akita Goldman on bass, and Motoyuki Hamamoto on percussion and gamelan, perform deconstructive surgery on Indian music, revealing (or forcing) a connection with Japanese classical traditions. On their 2017 debut, Sab Se Purani Bab (Thrill Jockey), the result is something like noise-punk raga or “The Boredoms Do Bollywood”: fractured bursts of South Asian melodies sped up and interspersed with YoshimiO shrieking, hissing, and yipping....

This week we here at the Reader faced something we haven’t had to deal with in months: in-person events. It started an interesting discussion—if we don’t feel comfortable sending our critics to cover, say, Judy and Liza at the Greenhouse Theater, should we tell our readers to check it out? While some of us pondered adding disclaimers to events—things like “we do not think this is a good idea” and “ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING?...

Bob Dylan has famously and relentlessly toyed with the melodies and arrangements of his voluminous repertoire, using his songs as perpetual works in progress despite the iconic status of many of them. His open-ended mind-set makes his ouevre particularly well suited for treatment by veteran soul singer Bettye LaVette, who in 2005 rebooted a largely moribund career by putting an indelible mark on songs by Dolly Parton, Aimee Mann, and Lucinda Williams on her now-classic record I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise....

Gossip Wolf is sad to report that Haki, one of Chicago’s best young bands, broke up after a show in Pilsen on Fri 5/8. Drummer Ruby Dunphy posted the news on the group’s Facebook page Saturday, and explained Haki’s sudden demise: “Our advice to make a long lasting band is don’t date someone in your band.” Dunphy also wrote that all four members of Haki will continue making music in other contexts—this wolf hopes that whatever comes next is as killer as Haki’s Big New EP and last year’s ace full-length Positive....

In an addendum to the liner notes of a reissued 1993 album of the first recordings of music by Galina Ustvolskaya, scholar Art Lange offers corrections and new revelations about the reclusive Russian composer. At the time of the original release, just after the era of glasnost had ended in the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ustvolskaya’s work was just beginning to reach the West, but very little was known about her life or the full range of her compositions....

Anthony Tournis’s new farce is based on the premise that televangelists are hypocritical crooks who fleece their faithful flock. This once-startling insight might have carried some shock value back in the 1980s, when religious-talk-show host Jim Bakker’s career was undone by revelations of his sexual and financial misconduct. Today, not so much. Set during the Reagan era, when “greed is good” became a national catchphrase, Prophet$ concerns three buddies who establish a TV ministry in a small Texas town....

As an admirer of Michael and Peter Spierig’s previous feature, Predestination, I had high expectations going into their latest, Winchester, which is now playing in general release. Predestination told a tricky, engaging tale that involved time travel and multiple identities; I hoped the Spierigs would create another fun puzzle narrative around the fabled Winchester mansion, a former farmhouse that owner Sarah Winchester transformed, through constant renovations between 1886 and her death in 1922, into a multi-story building with mazes and secret passages....

On Wednesday, October 26, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved an amendment to county tax rules making clear that all musical performances—including most DJ sets—should be considered “art” for the purposes of assessing the county’s amusement tax. Regardless of their relevance to the tax exemption, Richardson’s comments shocked the music community. The county drew harsh criticism in local and national publications for attempting to define art or elevate some genres of music as more worthy of a tax break than others....

As time goes on, it seems more obvious to me that Donald Trump would fit right in with all the regulars of the local Democratic Party. And Alderman Ed Burke—who’s facing federal corruption charges—helped Trump save millions in property taxes by appealing the assessment on Trump Tower to the Cook County assessor’s office, which was then headed by Joe Berrios—another Chicago Democrat. Madigan says he did nothing wrong. Says he doesn’t dictate who ComEd hires....

There was no way that Sick Gazelle weren’t going to be good. This trio of recording engineer and Veloce mastermind Eric Block on guitar, Yakuza and Bloodiest front man Bruce Lamont on saxophone, and Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley on drums could’ve ventured down practically any musical path imaginable, and any one of them would’ve been exciting—not least because Shelley has made a career of holding everything in place in the midst of musical chaos....