Joe Swanberg‘s new Chicago-set Netflix show Easy highlights a lot of the city’s nooks and details that will likely delight locals. While binging on the eight-episode series, I began jotting down all the Chicago-centric references. In episode five, the one starring comedian Marc Maron, I heard this very paper get name-checked. Oh, and for the record, we have no 12-year-olds on staff.
A few weeks ago saw the rerelease of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing on the occasion of the film’s 30th anniversary. In addition to being one of the great American films, it’s also one of the movies that best captures the feeling of summer heat. Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson, when I interviewed him a few years ago, explained that he and Lee achieved this effect by eliminating any “cool” colors from the film’s palette and by using the brightest lights they could find to shoot the daytime scenes; the mounting feelings of anger and frustration become palpable through the filmmakers’ aesthetic choices....
I sometimes wonder if Mr. Bungle have been trolling their fans since day one. Their self-titled debut full-length, released in 1991 by Warner Brothers, is a blur of funk, ska, world music, and death metal that flips from Morbid Angel-influenced riffs to zany circus music and back on a dime. Formed by high school friends in Eureka, California, in the mid-80s, these legendary genre hoppers (the understatement of the century) introduced the world to wildly prolific vocalist and composer Mike Patton, though he got famous first with Faith No More—he’d landed a side gig with that better-established band in 1988, and when they broke out, it helped Mr....
UPDATE Saturday, March 14: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. To get an idea of just how convoluted the legal and moral attitudes toward sex work are in the United States—the self-professed global leader of civil liberties—consider the 2017 trial of Jeffrey Hurant. Under arrest for his role as CEO of RentBoy.com, Hurant stood before a judge in federal district court, who praised his contributions to the queer community, namely, providing a safer avenue for escorts to manage their own business....
Pipeworks partners Kaighan Pigott, Gerrit Lewis, and Will Johnston Like a lot of Chicago beer weenies, I got pretty heated up about Pipeworks Brewing in their early days. Heck, I started writing about them almost two years before anybody could buy their beer—first to review their appearance at Goose Island’s Stout Fest in March 2010, then again in December of that year, when they were raising funds on Kickstarter. In June 2011, I included Pipeworks in the Reader‘s Best of Chicago issue, declaring them the Best Craft Brewery That Doesn’t Exist Yet....
Twenty years ago, rye whiskey was all but dead in the U.S., having long since fallen out of favor. In 2009 Imbibe magazine published a prescient piece titled “The Comeback Kid: Rye Whiskey,” noting the spirit’s current lack of popularity and predicting its imminent return. In the article, a representative for Heaven Hill distillery—which at the time was making three brands of rye, including the now much-beloved Rittenhouse—was quoted as saying, “We spill more bourbon in a day than we sell rye in a year....
It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 years since Madison stoner giants Bongzilla dropped a studio album—surely at least a few people rocking out to their brand-new Weedsconsin LP were in diapers back then. The band, formed as a four-piece in 1995, had a lengthy run as one of the midwest’s finest purveyors of slow, sludgy metal before going on hiatus in 2009. They reemerged as a trio in 2015 and have put out a few compilations and a self-titled box set of their previous albums—but Weedsconsin is their first new recording since then....
In 2017, celebrated Malian Wassalou singer and activist Oumou Sangaré released Mogoya, her first new album since 2009. During the intervening eight years, she’d largely stepped away from the spotlight to pursue a variety of business ventures, including establishing agricultural projects, opening a hotel, and launching a new car, the Oum Sang. For Sangaré each of them has offered the chance to support and empower the Malian people—proceeds from the Oum Sang, for example, benefit a scholarship fund....
This year’s Lollapalooza was a sweaty, rainy, and eventually sunny four-day extravaganza that offered something for almost everyone. Photographers Alison Green and Bobby Talamine were in Grant Park for the Reader, and thanks to their tireless efforts, we can share this slideshow from Lollapalooza. Lollapalooza 2016
It’s not restaurants, music, or even comedy that Kyle Kinane misses most: it’s the chatter of a crowded bar. “Eavesdropping is my entertainment,” the comedian says. “When I’d get off the road and be back in LA, I would go to whatever bar by myself just to eavesdrop and listen to somebody else tell a story to their friend. If somebody’s telling a funny story, they don’t care if someone is eavesdropping and laughing, that gives them more fuel to tell the story even more flamboyantly....
The day before Protomartyr played at Schubas, I had a meltdown at the Pitchfork Music Festival. I had a ticket to see Ex Hex at the Bottle that night but was too thrown by what had happened earlier to want to leave the house. Protomartyr was to play the next day at the festival, then go across town to Schubas. I made myself go back outside to see them. When I got home, I scanned the sketches and uploaded them to my website....
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Europe was way ahead of the United States with Alice Merton: Her 2016 single “No Roots” made it to number two on the German charts in 2017 and charted all over the continent—including in France, Italy, Belgium, and Poland—before finally hitting the American market hard last year. If you’ve heard the song’s opening riff and percussive chorus, you know why the Germans call it an Ohrwurm: “I’ve got no roots / But my home was never on the ground....
Chicago trio Dehd are a meeting of the minds between two singer-songwriters: bassist and singer Emily Kempf, who performs as Vail and has been in Lala Lala, and guitarist and singer Jason Balla, who fronts Ne-Hi and Earring. (Eric McGrady plays stand-up drums.) Their most recent slab of wax, an LP that smashes two previously released tapes together on one disc, is hazy, confessional postpunk with a dreamy throb and beautiful vocal interplay....
Singer-guitarist Wyatt Grant launched Pool Holograph as a solo endeavor a decade ago, and around 2015 he brought in a few friends from Loyola University to turn it into a band: Zach Stuckmann on bass and brothers Jake and Paul Stolz of local indie rockers Discus on drums and guitar, respectively. Pool Holograph became a collaborative outfit, with everybody pitching in on songwriting, and they’ve remained active even though Grant left Chicago earlier this year for Asheville, North Carolina....
This past Wednesday the owners of Volumes Bookcafe in Wicker Park launched an Indiegogo campaign asking book lovers and community members for a little support: the storefront was on the verge of its final chapters. For the Georges, being a community hub meant hosting book signings, author readings, and open mikes. The co-owners keep events free, Kimberly says, because they “didn’t want it to feel forced,” but their generosity led to low funds....
In January, Pedro the Lion released their first album in 15 years, Phoenix (Polyvinyl), though in some ways it enjoys that distinction in name only. Anyone who’s followed Pedro the Lion front man David Bazan since the long-running indie-rock group hung it up in 2006 knows that he’s continued to record similarly tender, thoughtful music, often tapping into his extensive network for new collaborators. He’s released this material under a few different names: Headphones, Lo Tom, and (most frequently) his own....
