Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. The Lisa Simpson sweatshirt she borrowed from her “kinda boyfriend.” “I was told by one of his close friends that he must really like me if he’s letting me wear that sweatshirt,” Kayla Garcia says. “I don’t really watch The Simpsons, but he does, and it reminds me of him. He always offers it when I’m cold....
1790s: Sans Culottes French revolutionaries who rejected the knee breeches of the aristocracy and adopted long trousers in solidarity with the peasants and craftsmen. The first step in eliminating class distinctions through styles of clothing. 1860s: Artistic Dress Inspired by artist and designer William Morris’s dictum “Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful,” artistic dress favored clean lines based on the natural form of the body, as opposed to the corsets and crinolines that were popular at the time....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, December 23, 2016. Happy holidays! Outgoing senator Mark Kirk says the GOP is now “one and the same with Donald Trump” Republican senator Mark Kirk is getting ready to leave office after losing his seat to Democratic U.S. representative Tammy Duckworth in the November election. A longtime vocal critic of president-elect Donald Trump and a self-proclaimed member of the “moderate middle,” Kirk says that the Republican Party is changing....
In recent years Jayhawks front man Gary Louris has found increasing success writing songs for other artists, both on his own and with a slew of collaborators. In 2006 he composed four tunes with members of the Dixie Chicks for their album Taking the Long Way Home, and he’s since penned songs for that group’s lead singer, Natalie Maines, as well as for country and folk performers such as Carrie Rodriguez and Ari Hest....
Jeff Tweedy’s new solo album is a family affair. He made Love Is the King with his two sons: his eldest, Spencer (already a longtime musical collaborator), plays drums and organ on most of the record, while his younger son, Sammy, sings harmony on five of its 11 tracks. They recorded the album in April at Wilco’s studio and storage facility the Loft, after the Illinois shelter-in-place order put their regular spring plans on hold....
While your attention may have been diverted by the circuslike governor’s primary, activists have been methodically working behind the scenes to deal with the biggest state issue of our time: fair taxes. I realize this isn’t half as interesting as, say, Governor Rauner’s curiously Nixonian aversion to legalizing recreational marijuana, as though it’s a demon weed driving our country crazy. Or we could search for progressive ways of raising taxes and implement a fair tax, as the responsible budget coalition would put it....
Remember the Lil Wayne of 2008 and 2009? He constantly boasted that he was the “greatest rapper alive,” and you know what? He actually was. The 2008 album Tha Carter III, released about ten years into his career, was a full-blown landmark. It gave the world a string of smash singles, including “Lollipop” and “Got Money,” which showed Wayne’s knack for infectious pop hooks. And on “La La,” “You Ain’t Got Nuthin,” and the legendary “A Milli,” he solidified his reputation as an unstoppable MC by hammering out some of the fastest, cleverest, most skull-rattling wordplay ever committed to tape....
In another time and place, Kristin Hayter might have been opera’s darkest diva, but in this universe opera companies shy away from harsh noise, guttural growling, and samples of interviews with convicted serial killers. Instead of making her art subservient to a formal institutional setting, Hayter draws from her classical training and background in church music, metal, and literature to create confrontational, borderline industrial soundscapes as Lingua Ignota. Extreme music has an unfortunate history of misogynist themes, and Hayter, a survivor of domestic abuse, flips the script to create what she’s called “survivor anthems....
David Corio/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images Junior Murvin As many have already pointed out, Bandcamp has increasingly become a destination for seeking out new music. A cursory glance at the audio player’s homepage this morning led me to a gem: an early cut by the late, great reggae singer Junior Murvin. While he’s perhaps most famous for Police & Thieves, his album-length collaboration with Lee “Scratch” Perry that also produced the title track famously covered by the Clash, Murvin had a small-stakes music career for a few years before that....
I’ve been enjoying the virtual aspects of my art-viewing experience the past few months. People got a little experimental; they had to think outside of the box to get folks to view work. I, by no means, plan to attend opening receptions or risk my health to commute around the city to check out art on a wall, but now that physical spaces are reopening I will travel to a gallery or two to see a show if proper regulations are put into place (like I did with Western Exhibitions)....
Count Sidi Touré among the billions of people around the world who’ve had to revise their plans in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Malian singer-guitarist’s previous album, Toubalbero, was recorded live in Bamako’s best studio in order to best showcase his band’s vibrant combination of electric guitars and traditional regional instruments. But between the virus and the volatile political situation in Mali, which recently resulted in a military coup, Touré has had to scale things back: his only accompaniment on the new download-only release Afrik Toun Mé (“Africa Must Unite”) is a second acoustic guitar (played by Mamadou Kelly) and a gourd drum called a calabash (played by Boubou Diallo)....
Looking over Chicago magazine’s latest “Power 50“—the town’s top movers and shakers—it could be that only an old ink-stained wretch would notice what I did: Number seven is Rocky Wirtz. He’s the liquor distributor who owns the Blackhawks. “Winning the Big One with any sports franchise confers power—and produces big profits,” explains Chicago. Wirtz’s Hawks have won three. “The team has sold out every game since 2008 and has the fourth-highest local cable TV ratings....
John Corbett describes the artwork on display at “Monster Roster: Existentialist Art in Postwar Chicago”—an exhibit he cocurated that opens this weekend at the Smart Museum—as “a howling, terrified, introspective whorl of penetrating angst and disoriented subjectivity.” Elsewhere in his essay Corbett proposes Thelonious Monk’s “Ugly Beauty” as the theme music for the show, and that song title is as apt a description as it gets. Most of the members of the Monster Roster studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and were profoundly influenced by Kathleen Blackshear, who told them to go to the Field Museum and draw Oceanic and Native American artifacts....
The first time I saw Bad Religion, I was a young teen and they were on their 2000 tour in support of their Todd Rundgren-produced 11th album, The New America. I remember marveling at how dudes so old were still ripping so hard, but I recently had a weird crisis when I did the math and realized that lead singer Greg Graffin was only in his mid-30s at the time, a mere two years older than I am now....
On the new double album Miss Universe (ATO), British singer Nilüfer Yanya straddles the line between indie rock and pop. It’s catchy, hip, and radio ready, with a perfect production sheen that helps the music’s disparate influences slide smoothly one into another. “In Your Hand” sounds like it came from the new wave era of the 80s, with crunchy guitars and Yanya singing with clipped robotic precision—and occasionally breaking into an equally robotic falsetto yodel....
When Robbin Carroll bought a home in Englewood with plans to turn it into a center for promoting peace, she was met with skepticism from some in a community that had been hit hard by poverty and violence. She did that in part by hiring a local contractor not only to fix up the house but to train Englewood residents in carpentry. “I couldn’t sit back and watch people in this city be OK with poverty and violence day after day,” said Carroll, who worked in jewelry sales before becoming a yoga teacher and starting I Grow Chicago....
Before cofounding Chicago ska band Heavy Manners, singer Kate Fagan released the 1980 new-wave single “I Don’t Wanna Be Too Cool” b/w “Waiting for the Crisis”—a bouncy, rollicking call-out of drugged-up hipster trash backed with one of the Reagan era’s catchiest paranoia jams about the military-industrial complex. After the record’s second pressing burned in a house fire, it became something of a collector’s item, and this week Brooklyn label Manufactured Recordings is finally reissuing the seven-inch (with two unreleased bonus tracks)....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, February 25, 2016. Belmont Cragin high school newspaper rescued by alumnus Hugh Hefner The student newspaper at Steinmetz High School in Belmont Cragin gave Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner a start in media. Now he’s making sure future generations of Steinmetz students have the same opportunity by personally financing the Steinmetz Star‘s print edition for the next five years. [DNAinfo Chicago]
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, August 1, 2016. University of Chicago student to represent Haiti at the Rio Olympics University of Chicago student Naomy Grand’Pierre will be the first female swimmer to ever represent Haiti at the Olympic Games. Grand’Pierre’s parents were born in Haiti and she’s a dual citizen of the U.S. and Haiti. “It is something that has never been done before, and it makes me incredibly proud to represent my home country,” she told the Sun-Times....
