Posts

This morning the city announced the lineup for the Millennium Park Summer Music Series, which is a new name for a familiar program—the free concerts at Pritzker Pavilion. The series effectively replaces Downtown Sound, which covered a variety of different styles last year, and the Made in Chicago jazz concerts. If you’re already agnostic about genre, the name change might not mean much, but if you’d only attended Downtown Sound or Made in Chicago, the Millennium Park Summer Music Series might surprise you with unfamiliar sounds or artists....

Q: I’m a 32-year-old straight guy. My wife and I have been married for four years and together for nine. We have a great marriage and all is well. We have been quarantining at home since March. During this time, we have been exploring things sexually, which has been really fun. We have also been talking more about our kinks and fantasies. One thing my wife really wants to try is an MMF threesome....

The Invisible Institute’s Jamie Kalven will receive the George Polk Award for local journalism for his coverage of the killing of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police in October 1014. His winning article, “Sixteen Shots,” was posted online by Slate in February of last year. Kalven is being honored not only for what he reported but for what he predicted. At the time he wrote, the police video of McDonald being shot repeatedly by Officer Jason Van Dyke had not been released....

Chicago has many independent hip-hop labels, but few maintain rosters as multigenerational as that of Machine Wash Music. Rapper Daryl “Decay” Stewart cofounded Machine Wash after he had an unsatisfying experience putting out his 2008 album, The Unlikely Hero, through Molemen Records—he wanted a more mutual artist-label relationship. “The process wasn’t the same and I didn’t enjoy making that record as much,” Stewart told Voyage Chicago in 2018. “I went back to my friends and felt we needed to help artist [sic] realize their dream without taking their control....

In Adam “Amine” Daniel’s breakout video for “Caroline,” the Portland rapper goofs around with pals in the parking lot of a classic drive-in burger joint, in a car—and on top of said car while it’s in motion. He also drops a skit into the middle of the video (which has amassed more than 200 million YouTube views since 2016), an absurd bit in which he asks about the bananas scattered behind him in the car that, according to the driver, are for “decoration....

Benji Espinoza played a key role in promoting early Chicago house music to a global audience, both as founder of Quantum Distributors and by working in sales, distribution, and artist management for the pioneering D.J. International label. On Thursday, October 22, he passed away at age 57. Footage from a 1988 D.J. International showcase in the Netherlands In spring 1985, Espinoza was working at a record store called Baby O’s in West Chicago....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Released in 1955 by the Checker imprint of Chicago’s Chess Records, “Country” just scratched the R&B charts, helping Barge secure booking through the Shaw Agency—which handled some of the era’s biggest R&B stars, including Ray Charles....

In the midst of numerous allegations of sexual misconduct and abuse within the emo and pop-punk community this fall—particularly the ones against Brand New front man Jesse Lacy—Say Anything front man Max Bemis announced on Twitter his group would no longer play their spritely, soul-influenced track about sexual impropriety, “Wow, I Can Get Sexual Too.” Bemis wrote that the song, a B side from the 2006 reissue of their uncompromising 2004 rock opera, ....

I’d like to punch him in the face. —Donald Trump, referring to a protester at his Las Vegas rally, February 22, 2016 My favorite movie of the year, Embrace of the Serpent, came out of nowhere and apparently went back. If you ever track it down, prepare yourself for a tale that will make you think hard about your relationship to the planet. The same goes for Seasons, a French documentary that chronicles the history of the forest across the last 20,000 years....

Sean Graney directs a revival of the most commercially successful play ever. Since Agatha Christie’s comic whodunit The Mousetrap premiered in 1952 in London, it has never stopped running. So what can a new production add? For the very few theatergoers (like me) who have never seen the play before: A group of guests arrive at a newly opened inn while a murderer is loose in the countryside. A snowstorm leaves them isolated and one of them may be the murderer....

Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beeholder In a postapocalyptic world, nothing will grow except honey, and the best and brightest are trained to become beekeepers. That’s the premise of Beauty Is in the Eye of the Beeholder at the Annoyance Theatre & Bar. The nemesis in this screwy tale is a giant mutant hornet that wants to kill scientists offstage with its big stinger. If this sounds hokey, that’s because it is....

QYesterday I found my five-year-old son putting things up his butt in the bath. This isn’t the first time—and it’s not just a “Hey! There’s a hole here! Let’s put things in there!” kind of thing. The little dude was rocking quite the stiffy while he did it. I’m well aware of how sexual kids can be (I freaking was!), although I wasn’t quite expecting to be catching him exploring anal at this young age....

My natural skepticism rose when I heard about How Did I Find Myself Here? (Anti), the first new Dream Syndicate album in 30 years. While the band’s 1982 Velvets-infused debut The Days of Wine and Roses remains one of my all-time favorites, the albums made in its wake, as original members Kendra Smith and Karl Precoda left, delivered diminishing returns until the group disbanded in the late 80s. Leader Steve Wynn went on to pursue a solid if unspectacular solo career, and Smith formed Opal with guitarist David Roback and released a couple of sublime solo albums in the early 90s before stepping away from music....

What is it about the Atlanta-based Waffle House chain that makes many Chicagoland residents wish the 24-hour greasy spoons existed here? But in a Parts Unknown segment, Anthony Bourdain eloquently nailed what makes Waffle House special. “Its warm, yellow glow a beacon of hope and salvation, inviting the hungry, the lost, the seriously hammered, all across the south to come inside. A place of safety and nourishment, it never closes. It is always, always faithful, always there, for you....

On Bajas Fresh (Drag City), Chicago’s Bitchin Bajas’ first noncollaborative album in three years, the band members offer a trenchant summary of their interests and strengths that feels more profound and mature than anything else they’ve accomplished. Recent partnerships with Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Natural Information Society have conveyed the collective versatility of bandmates Cooper Crain, Rob Frye, and Dan Quinlivan, but the new album articulates the group’s weed-powered vision in Technicolor splendor....

Classically trained cellist Alison Chesley is a Los Angeles native who got her start in Chicago’s 90s rock scene, pairing up with Jason Narducy for the indie duo Jason & Alison, which later morphed into a full indie-rock band called Verbow. Those endeavors were solid, but since Verbow called it a day in 2003, Chesley has taken her career down much stranger, more fascinating paths. As an in-demand session musician and onstage collaborator, she’s worked with a stunningly diverse array of artists, including Broken Social Scene, Anthrax, and Russian Circles....

Chicago saxophonist Dave Rempis grew up outside Boston in Wellesley, Massachusetts, son of a Greek father and a mother he describes as an “American mutt from Indianapolis.” He absorbed traditional Greek music at weddings and church functions, as well as through an AM radio show his father liked that featured a family friend on clarinet. He knew his family was different from his classmates’, but at that age he didn’t realize how rare it was for a native-born white American to belong to a minority community held together by that sort of social and cultural glue....

Split Single front man Jason Narducy can mold a bit of guitar distortion and a sweet melody into a lifeline. On “Bitten by the Sound,” a standout on Split Single’s new third album, Amplificado (Inside Outside), Narducy’s sheer but ironclad guitar embodies the white-hot energy of rock, which has mystified him since childhood. As a fifth grader in the early 1980s, he cofounded Evanston hardcore band Verböten, which inspired future rock icon Dave Grohl to pick up drums and provided the source material for a contemporary musical, also called Verböten; Chicago playwright Brett Neveu enlisted Narducy to write the songs for the stage show, which debuted two months before the pandemic....

One of my biggest disappointments from this year’s World Music Festival was the fact that the scheduled concert by veteran Ghanaian singer Pat Thomas didn’t happen. Slow visa processing forced his band to cancel their entire U.S. tour—a sadly familiar story for foreign musicians trying to play in this country. Thomas has enjoyed revived fame in recent years, a result of falling in with the same Germany-based crew that’s helped terrific Ghanaian guitarist Ebo Taylor (an early collaborator of Thomas) achieve international acclaim....

The last year has seen a call to defund the Chicago police and reallocate funds to mental health and community services. And while that call has not been answered, it has placed the city’s budget under a magnifying glass. Residents want to have a say in where the money goes and participatory budgeting is a process that gives them that power. Participatory budgeting began in Brazil in 1989, when residents of the city of Porto Alegre voted on how to spend the mayor’s budget to address community needs....