“Why Isn’t the G.O.P. Trying Harder to Beat Donald Trump?” asks the headline over a short piece of political analysis by Benjamin Wallace-Wells posted online this week by the New Yorker. But Stevens observes that Trump’s opponents are letting him have his way. Wallace-Wells writes, “When Trump turned on the Pope, no religious leaders were brought in to point out that this was an attack on the notion, essential to politics in South Carolina, that faith ought to be present in the public square....

While electric guitarist Dan Phillips spends most of his time in Bangkok, Thailand, where he teaches music at Silpakorn University, he heads back to Chicago every year to visit family and reconnect with a music scene that shaped his aesthetic sense. Most of his local gigs this time have been with shifting four-piece lineups that pit his liquid tone and fluent phrasing against a series of extroverted horn or keyboard players....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Few people I encounter are more qualified to talk about trends than Chelsea Perryman. As visual manager at a major clothing retailer, she’s responsible for leading a team of merchandisers who style mannequins and create eye-catching in-store displays. With spring on the horizon, “denim is back and so are the 70s, satin neck scarves, and lots of suede....

Bryan Murray Myra Melford The final concert of the season in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series happens on Monday night, marking the end of the curatorial efforts here by Anna Clyne and Mason Bates. The pair have functioned as Mead Composers-in-Residence at the CSO for the past five years, and part of the job involves programming this new-music series—they’re going out on a high note, with work by some composers who deftly straddle the worlds of jazz, improvised music, and new music....

Did you know there’s a simple way you can save up to $1200 a year right now? It’s called cutting the cord – or ditching traditional cable TV for streaming alternatives – and it’s easier to do now more than ever. Streaming lets you watch the same shows, movies, and sports that are on traditional TV, but using the internet instead of cable. And most streaming services offer original content you can’t get on cable....

Hector Berlioz died in 1869 without ever seeing a full production of the project dearest to his heart—his grand opera, Les Troyens, which he had completed in 1858. Part one deals with the infamous Trojan horse attack by the Greeks, agonizingly foreseen by Cassandre and unwittingly facilitated by Aeneas. Part two finds Aeneas and his soldiers in Carthage, where he falls in love with the widowed Dido, but abandons her because he’s destined to travel to Italy and found Rome....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, March 17, 2016. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! How the south side made BJ the Chicago Kid BJ the Chicago Kid may have moved from Chicago to Los Angeles at age 19, but his hometown remains instrumental to his music, as demonstrated by his new album, In My Mind. The frequent collaborator with other Chicagoans including Kanye West and Chance the Rapper tells LA Weekly: “That’s what makes me who I am....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. But what happens to the memory of war in places where entire families were racked by nightmares through the years: returned soldiers, their wives, their kids, their parents, all jerking awake to overwhelming fears of an impending firebombing? The feelings of scarcity and hunger, the memories of random cruelty and betrayal that become common among people in primal survival mode don’t just fade when a war ends....

Trumpeter Jacob Wick grew up in the Chicago area and now lives in Mexico City. Like his contemporaries Birgit Ulher, Peter Evans, Axel Dörner, and Nate Wooley, he employs extended techniques that enable him to produce sounds very different from conventional brass playing. His vocabulary encompasses coarse-grained ribbons of frayed wind, rhythmic puffs that resemble a steam engine in action, fluttering snatches of nascent melody, and the occasional brazen trad-jazz lick; with his command of circular breathing, he can keep a steady stream of sound going for upwards of 20 minutes....

From January 30 through February 3, John Mulaney returns to his hometown to take over the Chicago Theatre for a string of shows featuring material from his forthcoming special, Kid Gorgeous. The self-proclaimed “tall child” and former Saturday Night Live writer has released three albums of upbeat observational comedy (The Top Part, New in Town, and The Comeback Kid). He starred in the short-lived 2014 sitcom Mulaney, which was vaguely reminiscent of Seinfeld but ultimately felt to critics and fans alike as an inadequate platform for Mulaney’s humor....

Seeing examples of corporate welfare in other cities and states also helped answer a question I used to hear all the time. “Ben,” they’d say, “this TIF stuff sounds bad, but don’t other cities do the same thing?” People were particularly obsessed with New York City. As though, if New New York’s wasting money like we’re wasting money, then somehow it’s not so bad that we’re wasting money.

Jon Moritsugu’s grungy biker flick Mod Fuck Explosion (1994) must have been the epitome of cool two decades ago, when it debuted in town at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Screening this weekend at Music Box in a pair of midnight shows, the movie has crossed over from cool to cute, but like the teenage heroes, it goes its own way. A retro plot about warring gangs of mods and rockers collides with Moritsugu’s more timely exasperation with Asian stereotypes in U....

Watch out U. of C.! Northwestern is gaining on you! Give the north siders a few years, and there’ll be purple shirts covered with the names of Nobel Prize winners, too! Stoddart has been a member of the Northwestern faculty since 2008; he was at the University of Birmingham in England when he developed the rotaxane. (He has also taught at the University of Sheffield, also in England, and at UCLA....

Fans at Lollapalooza 2018 were greeted by a towering digital sign that displayed, in between set times and beer ads, the message “You make Lolla great! Look out for each other!” It was a public service announcement from Our Music My Body, a local sexual violence prevention campaign launched in April 2016. It encouraged ticket holders to “let our staff know if you feel harassed or threatened in any way.”...

SG Ali’s new video for “Drank on the Block” opens with wistful, wordless melodic vocals over stills of what Chicago’s Cabrini-Green Homes once looked like—old photos of the high-rises, the last of which was torn down in 2011, and of the row homes that remain. The video for “Drank on the Block,” directed by A Savage Film Ali’s story is deeply intertwined with that of Cabrini-Green. Born Aujahnee Wright, the 22-year-old grew up in the complex’s William Green Homes, referred to as the “whites” due to their pale concrete exteriors....

The Reader‘s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. The only instruction Krakow gave the guitarists was to play in the key of E. There was chaos. Raymer wasn’t sure if it was magick, but he did experience something. Half out of curiosity and half out of journalistic duty, I made an effort to participate in what I guessed might be a spiritual way—I let myself go and, as the hippies say, “got free” in the music’s flow....

L ast week I opened a review by calling An Enemy of the People the current Ibsen of choice, given the number of productions and adaptations it’s fostered in Chicago over the last few months. I had no idea how right I was. You know what Lydia R. Diamond’s latest, Smart People, turns out to be? That’s correct. Still, none of that has sobered him. Au contraire: opprobrium just makes him double down....

In the late 90s, Racetraitor were a hardcore phenomenon in Chicago and beyond, famous at least as much for their aggressively radical onstage political stance as for their records. That said, their lone full-length, 1998’s manic and blastbeat-ridden Burn the Idol of the White Messiah, still strikes like a white-hot fire iron. Metal-tinged guitar squeals and Mani Mostofi’s tortured yowls curdle inside a nonstop series of towering double-kick breakdowns, challenging you to push through....

Mary Chapin Carpenter’s twangy, peppy hits bounced up the country charts in the 90s, but their cowboy boots always seemed like they pinched a bit. Twenty-some years later, Carpenter’s records have eased into a more comfortable idiom, scuffing up their coffeehouse folk with a bit of rock. On The Dirt and the Stars (Lambent Light), her voice has lost a lot of its snap and range, but its ragged edge fits well with her confessional, resolutely earnest approach....