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When minimalist composer Julius Eastman died of cardiac arrest in a Buffalo hospital in 1990, the 49-year-old had been homeless for most of a decade. His obituary in the Village Voice wouldn’t appear till eight months later. He’d lost most of his possessions (probably including his scores) when he lost his apartment, and no commercial recordings of his pieces existed. It became nearly impossible for musicians to play his work, or for listeners to hear it....

When I started volunteering at Odd Obsession Movies as a 23-year-old in early 2006, the store was in its first location on Halsted Street, sitting snugly in a basement storefront opposite the Steppenwolf Theatre. I discovered the store by accident before going to a play one evening, and after that, I began stopping in about once a week. I couldn’t resist the lure of movies that, until then, I’d only dreamed of watching: video works by Jean-Luc Godard never released on Region 1 DVD, features by lesser-known directors of the Japanese New Wave, hard-to-find cult classics like Stephanie Rothman’s The Velvet Vampire (1971) and John Byrum’s Inserts (1975), and experimental films by the likes of Andy Warhol, Pat O’Neill, and Rob Tregenza....

J.B. Priestley’s 1945 chestnut, a staple of the modern theatrical canon, is not what anyone would call subtle. Set on the cusp of World War I, it focuses on the well-to-do Birlings, led by self-satisfied industrialist and politician Arthur, a man singularly devoted to protecting “the interests of capital” and pooh-poohing the burgeoning socialist ideal of “community and all that nonsense.” Into their swank ranks comes mysterious, hard-nosed Inspector Goole to inform them that a young woman’s just committed suicide and left a diary in which several of them are named....

The Latest Sun Is Sinking Fast The films of Melika Bass seem to exist eerily out of time. This local artist, best known for her experimental feature Shoals, avoids onscreen details that might tie the action to any particular era, and because she typically shoots on 16-millimeter film, using only minimal lighting, her films even look as if they were made in the past. In her four-channel installation The Latest Sun Is Sinking Fast, exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center from January through April, Bass uses her uncanny style to address the subject of spiritual contemplation....

In their hip-hop duo Local Nobodies, Chicago rapper Sulaiman and funk multi-instrumentalist Chris Mathien (who also leads the band Mathien) unlock each other’s debonair charms in song. On their self-released second album, the new See What Happens, they embellish their grooves with sophisticated flair, and Mathien’s smooth, subtle production leaves Sulaiman plenty of room to show off the musicality of his voice. On tracks such as “Levels” and “Marmont,” he stretches his words casually and luxuriously, like he’s relishing the sensation of each vowel on its way out....

Cristalle Bowen, best known as Psalm One, has a creative stamina and drive matched by few Chicago rappers. She began carving out a career as a solo artist in the early 2000s, and it became her main focus after her promising underground crew the Nacrobats broke up in 2003. And aside from a brief stint with Minneapolis hip-hop imprint Rhymesayers in the mid-2000s, she’s largely done it without label support—she’s self-released her records and put together her own tours....

Chicago has its share of bands playing country or alternative country, but Thomas Comerford’s lonesome sound is in a category of its own. Comerford straddles the singer-songwriter era of the 1970s and the dusty, deadpan observations of psychedelic iconoclasts such as Bill Callahan. He’s also an independent filmmaker—he teaches film and art history at the School of the Art Institute—and his lyrics accomplish dazzling feats by combining abstract and literal imagery....

All manner of bikes were represented when about a thousand cyclists convened on Daley Plaza on the evening of September 29 to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Chicago’s monthly Critical Mass ride. There were flashy aluminum triathlon cycles, cruisers festooned with Christmas lights, and a “fat bike” with huge tires towing a little girl in a trailer. The Rat Patrol, a punk-rock bike gang known for their custom choppers, was there, including member Yly Coyote, a bearded young man with dreadlocks down to his butt, who was astride a roughly ten-foot-tall bike made of multiple frames welded together....

Q My husband and I are a straight couple in our early 50s, and we’ve been married for more than 30 years. We were raised to wait for sex till we got married—this was back in the early 80s—and we did. Our wedding night was pretty disappointing, since neither of us knew what we were doing. He got off, but I didn’t. We both assumed that there was something wrong with me, because he didn’t have any problem coming, right?...

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. Maxwell changed course in 1967, after a disastrous gig at south-side club Peyton Place, near 39th and Indiana. She sang “Misty,” the signature number of pop crooner Johnny Mathis, and her classical training was still audible in her carefully controlled, somewhat fussy performance, just as it is on “One Thin Dime....

Rotting flesh and chemicals aren’t exactly what you might consider “cute,” but that was the reaction of Defibrillator Gallery director Joseph Ravens when he initially heard the term “Bubbly Creek.” This nickname describes the part of the Chicago River on the western border of Bridgeport where gases still occasionally bubble at the riverbed from animal waste dumped more than a century ago. Once Ravens learned where the nickname derived from, he said he was “both disgusted and delighted....

Blue Over You Francis can’t find his wife, Mitzi. She was gone when he came home from work yesterday, didn’t sleep at home last night, and hasn’t called in. So now he’s rooting around in her stuff, searching for clues. Maybe she lit out for Phoenix. Maybe she ran off with Joey, the macho maintenance engineer at the school where she teaches first grade. After a few minutes with Michael Joseph Mitchell’s Francis, though, you might suspect that she just couldn’t take his loopy, manic style anymore—his best-gay-friend asides (“Don’t you just love Angela Lansbury?...

v N inety percent of independent music venues are in danger of closing in the next few months, according to a new survey by the National Independent Venue Association (aka NIVA). We’ve already seen two spaces shutter in Chicago: Crown Liquors closed in April and California Clipper called it a day less than two weeks ago. More closures could irreparably damage Chicago’s music ecosystem. These venues give local “unknowns” their first breaks, and legitimize the artistic endeavors of countless musicians who may never play outside the city....

On a road trip last weekend I listened to a recently released reissue on the German imprint Shadoks, one of the premier purveyors of obscure global psychedelia. As you can see above, the cover of Turkuz Turku Cagiririz! by the duo of Mazhar ve Fuat is pretty irresistible, but I have to admit that I had never heard of the group. It turns out they were core figures one of Turkey’s most successful and long-lived rock bands: Mazhar Fuat Özkan....

On August 19, rapper Phonte Coleman posted album art for May the Lord Watch (Imagine Nation Music/Members Only/Empire), a previously unannounced full-length by his North Carolina hip-hop duo, Little Brother on Instagram. It’d been nine years since the last Little Brother album, 2010’s Leftback, but Phonte and fellow MC Big Pooh didn’t try to heighten the suspense with a long lead-up: they dropped May the Lord Watch at midnight that same night....

The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with The TRiiBE that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them. Written by Arthur E. Haynes IIPhotography by ThoughtPoet Video by Alex Y. DingShot at Nat King Cole Park, 361 E. 85th Except for his production on “BMO,” a single from Ari Lennox‘s new Shea Butter Baby, fans haven’t heard from Omen for almost four years—not since December 2015, when he contributed fan favorites “48 Laws” and “Caged Bird” to the Dreamville label compilation Revenge of the Dreamers II....

The earth didn’t rumble when a new Italian restaurant opened in Logan Square in mid-April. Saba Italian Kitchen & Bar barely said hello through the usual channels (Twitter, Instagram, etc) as it took over a corner spot on Milwaukee across from the Harding Tavern and De Noche Mexicana/Cafe con Leche and next to Red Star Liquors and the Walk In, the latest outpost joining the others in the growing mini empire belonging to homeboy Esam Hani and his One of a Kind Hospitality....

The joke goes that someone could win the caption-a-cartoon contest in the New Yorker every week by going with “Christ, what an asshole.” That sentiment captures the Sherlock Holmes in Charles Marowitz’s 1984 play, Sherlock’s Last Case, now in a stylish and witty revival at suburban First Folio under Janice L. Blixt’s direction. Kevin McKillip’s Holmes is an insufferable prat, prone to verbally abusing his Scottish housekeeper, Mrs. Hudson (Belinda Bremner), and casually putting down Dr....

On every recording it seems like singer Sam Amidon eagerly shares new insights, knowledge, and experiences he’s gained since his last work. Throughout his career he’s consistently stretched the boundaries of folk music to the breaking point. Much of his repertoire is based upon or borrows from artifacts in the public domain—expertly gleaning universal truths conveyed through oral transmission and folk song—but everything he does feels explicitly alive and charged by the world around him....

Robert Marovich grew up Catholic, and he didn’t encounter gospel music for the first time till he was in his early 20s. It was January 1984, and he was earning a degree in American studies at Notre Dame University. “I was flipping through the dial on the radio, and I happened upon a Cosmopolitan Church of Prayer radio broadcast on a Sunday evening,” he says. “It just blew me away.” That south-side Chicago church, founded in 1959 and still active today, has a famous choir called the Mighty Warriors....