Approaching the halfway point of 2015, one local hip-hop release has taken up an unexpected slot in my rotation: Ty Money’s Cinco De Money. I say “unexpected” because I initially balked when the rapper dropped this mixtape on May 5. The title and its corresponding release date initially struck me as cheesy, and it took a couple weeks to get past my knee-jerk reaction and give it a full listen. Somewhere down the line I found myself cycling back to Cinco De Money on a daily basis....

No one is better at intimate than Writers Theatre artistic director Michael Halberstam, who made a 50-seat playhouse out of the back of a Glencoe bookstore, grew it over two decades into what the Wall Street Journal has called the best drama company in the country, and is about to move it into a $31 million home designed by starchitect Jeanne Gang. They had wound up in Glencoe by chance. Someone introduced Halberstam to Pat Rahmann, who was a partner in the bookstore and was looking for someone to host play readings there....

Gossip Wolf somehow failed to cover local trad-metal masterminds Satan’s Hallow before they went on hiatus in 2017, but thankfully four of that band’s five members kept going as Midnight Dice. If you enjoy banging your head till it falls off, cutting the sleeves off denim jackets, and making out with a hottie while blasting Dokken, then you’ll dig Midnight Dice’s new five-song EP, Hypnotized. This wolf especially loves the delightfully punishing “Starblind,” with Mandy Martillo’s lacerating vocals and a ripping solo from guitarist Steve “Lethal” Beaudette....

Read this week’s cover story about how the prospect of Illinois coal’s demise sparks fear and nostalgia.

I woke up bright and early Monday morning to discover I’d made the prime time, featured in an attack ad released by Bill Conway’s campaign for Cook County state’s attorney. Daddy Conway has contributed about $10.5 million to Bill’s campaign—hence the money for the 30-second commercial. As though Conway is shocked to hear a grown woman swear. In fact, he’s so shocked, the caption on the commercial reads “bullsh*t,” just to protect us....

Sunday, December 18th 11am – 6pm Plumbers Hall 1340 W. Washington Blvd., Chicago, IL 60607 The Made in Chicago Market is back! It’s a fun celebration of all things DIY—showcasing some of the best apparel, housewares, and food and drink that Chicago has to offer! Shop local and support your neighborhood makers. Free admission! Free parking! You should come! Enjoy some great tunes while shopping with live music from Old Town School of Folk Music (schedule below): Bill Brickey Duo: 11am-1:30pm...

Jane Anderson’s 2018 play retells the oft-dramatized life of Joan of Arc from the point of view of her mother, Isabelle. But though Kate Fry brings flashes of faith, fear, and ferocity to Isabelle, the story itself falls curiously flat, and not just because we know the ending. Fry and Smith have a scene of great tenderness and sorrow before Joan’s death that suggests the emotional depths Anderson could have reached if she’d spent more time really investing in the mother-daughter connection, rather than using it as a clothesline for airing out a story that’s been told many times before....

One of the most exciting aspects of the Abbas Kiarostami retrospective currently under way at the Gene Siskel Film Center (and which runs through the end of October) is that it contains many of the early short films Kiarostami made for Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Youth. Whether or not they feature children (though many of them do), these works showcase Kiarostami’s deep understanding of how children perceive the world around them....

Maria Jacobson, front woman of Chicago indie-rock group Fran, recently did a podcast interview with CHIRP where she talks about how she became more interested in making music while attending Bennington College. “Since I grew up doing theater, it was always doing someone else’s work, and I always felt comfortable doing that,” she says. “There was a shift in college where I really started to resent acting because it felt like I was a pawn in someone else’s idea....

When COVID-19 shut down live music last March, Jon Mueller was among the many musicians who found himself with an empty schedule. The Wisconsin-based percussionist found some time during lockdown to clean out his closet, where he found a box of unmarked CD-Rs that bore recorded evidence of music he’d made in the past and long forgotten. After listening to these artifacts, he started editing their best parts into new tracks, which he donated to a couple of compilation albums, including Pandemic Response Division (on local label Spectral Electric) and We Hovered With Short Wings (on UK label Gizeh)....

Johnny Guitar In his review of Michael Curtiz’s Mildred Pierce, screening this weekend at the Music Box as part of the “Weepie Noir: The Dark Side of Women’s Pictures” series, Dave Kehr calls the film “the archetypal Joan Crawford film,” which it very well could be—I actually haven’t seen it, and I’m also not that sure what constitutes an “archetypal Joan Crawford film.” Crawford’s 45-year career is among the most varied and storied of any Hollywood actress—it transcends multiple eras, stylistic shifts, and industry overhauls....

Mon 11/13 The Reader‘s Peter Margasak writes of pianist and composer Vijay Iyer, playing Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow series at the Harris Theater (205 E. Randolph): “Iyer and trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith will give the local debut of their stunning duo, performing A Cosmic Rhythm With Each Stroke, the centerpiece of their 2016 album of the same name. This shape-shifting seven-movement suite responds to an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art by Indian artist Nasreen Mohamedi, who often blends abstraction and architectural precision in line-based drawings....

The world didn’t shift on its axis when Riot Fest announced its lineup in May, even though it’d landed arguably the biggest prize of the 2019 festival season: reunited riot-grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill. Riot Fest has made something of a specialty out of booking (or even bringing about) unbelievable reunions that fans never expected to see in this time line: the Replacements in 2013, the Original Misfits in 2016, Jawbreaker in 2017....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, February 22, 2016. Update: the bus exploded. pic.twitter.com/Sd0rBYN714 — The Frugal Traveler (@frugaltraveler) February 21, 2016 Bulls beat Lakers in Kobe Bryant’s final Chicago game After nearly 20 years in the NBA, the Los Angeles Lakers’ Kobe Bryant made his final trip to Chicago to take on the Bulls this weekend. He reflected on his long history with the team, which includes playing Michael Jordan and coming very close to moving to Chicago to join the Bulls in 2004 and 2007....

Q: Can I still be considered sex positive if I personally do not have sex? I’ve never had sex or masturbated—all my life, any type of sexual stimulation has been very painful and I’ve been unable to experience orgasm. I simply get a migraine and feel mildly nauseated instead. I am not looking for a possible solution, as I long ago accepted my fate and consequently avoid sex, such as by maintaining only sexless relationships....

Australian multi-instrumentalist Tash Sultana is an expressive performer, and that quality comes through strong in the viral YouTube videos that have helped her transform her from a street busker into a rising pop-rock darling. In her 2016 breakthrough video for “Jungle”—a blustery, woeful ballad filled with spindly riffs, a smooth reggae melody, and sparse hip-hop percussion—Sultana animatedly bobs back and forth while strumming her guitar, reacts to her finger triggering a beat on an MPC like she’s playing drums with her whole body, and contorts her face while singing, even clenching her eyes tight during the most intense vocal lines....

As 2020 comes to a close, it brings with it the gift of hindsight, which I have decided to use to play cinematic matchmaker—instead of recommending merely ten movies, here are 20. Pairing some of the best releases of the year together via a list of double-features allows us to reflect on how 2020 left its mark on the medium. It’s admittedly heavy on the horror—that’s fitting, though, in a year that saw its own share of scares, but also saw the genre strive as streaming replaced a trip to the theaters....

Less than two weeks after the shooting in Orlando that left 49 people dead and 53 injured—with gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Latinx people numbering disproportionately amongst the casualties—Chicago’s still-mourning LGBTQ community will kick off Pride Weekend festivities Saturday with the 20th annual Dyke March. Although once seen as a slur, many lesbians have reclaimed the word “dyke” and now embrace it as a positive term when used by members of their own communities....