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On Wednesday, November 13, DaWreck of west-side hip-hop group Triple Darkness posted a mini documentary to YouTube about E.C. Illa’s 1994 EP, Live From the Ill. The video E.C. Illa Dissecting Live From the Ill shows E.C. sitting in front of a camera and talking for almost 28 minutes about the creation and history of his EP. When he dropped Live From the Ill, E.C. was one of Chicago hip-hop’s brightest stars, and his recollections of the music, people, and places that filtered into the EP make the video a must-watch for any hip-hop head....

Traditionally, the classic American steak house has been the restaurant of American individualism, or perhaps selfishness. You may share that shrimp cocktail appetizer, or the side of creamed spinach, with your boys in flannel suits, but when it comes down to the main attraction, what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is yours. Keep your paws off my T-bone, dog, or I’ll go for your throat. It starts with the name, GT Prime, the initials standing for Giuseppe Tentori, the longtime Boka Group chef and Trotter’s vet who opened the estimable GT Fish & Oyster in 2011....

I suffer from completist tendencies, which made it difficult to select ten films to preview from this year’s Chicago International Film Festival. Unable to watch every film due to time and availability, I can’t say that these are the best films of the festival, but they’re ten that caught my fancy, either through an affinity for their directors or curiosity about filmmakers and subjects unknown to me. Days A spiritual sequel of sorts to his 1997 masterpiece The River, Tsai Ming-liang’s first narrative feature since Stray Dogs (2013) returns to the real-life health problems of the director’s recurring star and collaborator Lee Kang-sheng....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, October 20, 2016. Hundreds of park water fountains test positive for high lead levels Hundreds of drinking fountains in city parks have high levels of lead, according to a recent wave of testing. The Chicago Park District conducted 2,435 tests at 479 parks, more than 200 of which had water sources with lead levels above Environmental Protection Agency standards. “In response to the testing, 14 of 544 indoor drinking water sources (fountains and sinks) and 445 of 1,891 outdoor fountains were disabled, as they were found to have levels higher than the EPA drinking water standard of 15 ppb,” district officials said in a statement....

The world premiere of Her Story Theater producing artistic director Mary Bonnett’s drama, directed by Cecilie Keenan, explores the little-known role of women in stoking the Ku Klux Klan’s xenophobia and nativism in the 1920s. It’s a fascinating topic worthy of deep exploration given its germination on the heels of women’s suffrage and all-too-real ties to current events. But the production lacks the focus and critical eye necessary to understand how “everyday” people can coalesce around such dangerous movements....

Hmmm . . . a vaguely regional taco-focused Mexican restaurant opens in a neighborhood with an ever-diminishing Mexican population. What do you call it? No, no, no. Lonesome Rose is the name of the latest spot from Land and Sea Dept., the outfit that starting in the aughts conquered Logan Square with Longman & Eagle, Parson’s Chicken & Fish, and Lost Lake before landing downtown at Michigan Avenue’s Chicago Athletic Association reboot....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Various artists, Funeral Dance in the Mountains Speaking of tuned metal percussion, it’s everywhere on this Canary Records collection of southeast Asian rural ethnographic recordings, compiled from LPs released in the 60s and 70s. Low fidelity makes the gongs and bells sound murky and watery, their resonance bleeding at the edges. The competing layers of ritualistic rhythms—sometimes stately and meandering, sometimes frenzied and warlike—divide your mind against itself, suspending it in a trance of blissful forgetfulness....

In 1996, feminist scholar Susan Wendell wrote: “What can I know if I can’t know what I am feeling in my own body? How can I remain connected to a world that denies I am in pain, or dizzy, or nauseated, when I myself cannot deny that I am?” In the same vein, vaginismus is difficult to diagnose due to similar side effects crossing over among various pelvic and vulvar dysfunctions, disorders, and diseases....

Born from the ashes of Rapper Chicks, one of the city’s best and most slept-on rap groups of the past decade, Big Silky reintroduces two members of that crew, Psalm One and Angel Davanport. On their debut EP, Big Silky Vol. 1, written in tribute of former bandmate Henny B (she passed away in 2018, and she’s honored in the liner notes as “executive producer”), the duo deliver music that would’ve made their comrade proud: bold, vicious rhymes and a succession of slick, rat-a-tat rhythms that allude to classic hip-hop composition, courtesy of beat makers Optiks, Budah Tye, Benzilla, OnGaud, and Bionik....

Tonight local promotion company Phantom Note kicks off the three-day Phantom Note Phinale at Quenchers Saloon. Cofounders Sam Edgin and Josh Hastert launched Phantom Note five years ago, and eventually found a home base at Quenchers. They decided to throw in the towel in November. “The production business is a very hard one to maintain and make money,” Edgin says. For Edgin it’s a big change. “It’s hard,” he says. “I’ve been booking at this point longer than I haven’t, and it’s the main thing I’ve known....

A sewing machine whirrs and an iron pumps out steam. A small band of women sorts a pile of donated fabrics into reds, whites, blues, and golds of varying shades, removing pinks, greens, and purples. Then this group, joined by an occasional man on ironing duty, will sew the patriotic fabrics into quilts for American veterans and service members at monthly Quilts of Valor sew-ins at the National Veterans Art Museum in Portage Park....

Peter Holderness/Sun-Times Media Danny Solis, pictured at his meeting with the Sun-Times editorial board on Monday As chairman of the City Council’s zoning committee, 25th Ward alderman Danny Solis has the power to approve or block new developments in Chicago. So it comes as no surprise that developers and those embedded in real estate are among his most generous campaign supporters. Structure Management Midwest LLC donated $5,000 to Solis. It’s owned by Fred Latsko, who recently became a partner in the development of a $65 million River North apartment tower....

The through line of Spektral Quartet’s first studio release in four years, Experiments in Living, is that there is no through line—at least on the surface. The double album covers 150 years of history, from Brahms to living lions such as George Lewis, but rather than foist a chronological or thematic flow onto the recording, the Chicago ensemble encourage nonlinear pathways and heavy use of the “shuffle” feature. Preorders of the album through their site even come with a deck of tarot-like cards with collages from Danish artist ØjeRum; each card corresponds to a different track, so that every reading reveals a distinct playlist....

When COVID-19 forced Chicago’s concert venues and DIY spaces to shutter in March 2020, the timing was especially bad for local punks Spread Joy. Because they wanted to have a tight set worked up before they played live, they put in several months of intensive rehearsal before scheduling their first gig—and then gigs stopped happening. Spread Joy still haven’t played a single live show, but instead of losing their momentum, last summer the four of them—bassist Nick Beaudoin, drummer Tyler Bixby, singer Briana Hernandez, and guitarist Raidy Hodges—spent a whirlwind two days tracking a batch of songs with Doug Malone at Jamdek Recording Studio....

Salvation awaits at The Total Bent, the bitingly irreverent musical satire from Haven Theatre. Papa Joe is a gospel preacher and singer hell-bent on saving souls through televangelism. His son, Marty, is the real talent, though, a radical singer-songwriter during the tumult of the civil rights era. Enter Byron, a British record producer who wants to capitalize on their music, and the passions that divide father and son grow, pitting religion against revolution....

Barney the Elf As a non-Christian, I have no brief for Christmas. But the Other Theatre Company brings a whole chorusful of gold lamé briefs to this oddly compelling holiday tribute. I say “oddly” because the 90-minute show sure as hell doesn’t follow the usual path to yuletide cheer. Santa Claus has died, to start, leaving behind a widow and one grown son, Junior, who’s expected to follow in dad’s footsteps....

This story was originally published by ProPublica Illinois. ProPublica Illinois is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. Sign up for The ProPublica Illinois newsletter for weekly updates. Federal and state officials said Tuesday they want to close loopholes that allow families to get need-based financial aid they would not otherwise receive by giving up guardianship of their college-bound children. The move, they said, could end “potential student aid fraud” when parents turn over guardianship of their children in hopes of obtaining a tuition break....

I’m not a homesick Brit, but I’ve read enough English novels, both historical and contemporary, to feel like I could be one. There’s probably a German word to explain the feeling of nostalgia for things you’ve only read about but never experienced in real life, and I felt a wave of this the first time I went to Spencer’s Jolly Posh, when the cafe was still in its original location on Irving Park Road....

As your faithful correspondent, I was compelled to read Governor Bruce Rauner’s recent essay on why he vetoed the state budget. The piece was conveniently located on the editorial page of my Chicago Tribune, home delivered as always. Two questions immediately popped into my mind when I read that passage. First of all, when did Rauner start referring to his administration in the third person? And second, is Illinois’s economy really in decline?...

Young Thug doesn’t need to prove himself to anyone anymore. In the early 2010s he emerged from the hotbed of Atlanta, the city that’s largely set hip-hop’s tone this decade, and his every heart-wrenching warble and hair-raising screech seemed to add speed to his ascent. His fluid flow has inspired some of Atlanta’s latest rising rappers, some of whom have released music through his YSL Records label—and three of whom, Gunna, Lil Baby, and Lil Keed, appear on Thug’s latest full-length, August’s So Much Fun (300/Atlantic)....