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The sad fate of Jazz Record Mart has provoked plenty of tributes and memorials in the press and on social media, all of them richly deserved. The venerable store closed on Monday, and its remaining inventory and fixtures (as well as the business’s name) were purchased by online retailer Wolfgang’s Vault in Reno, Nevada. Countless record shops, each with their own quirks and personalities, have vanished over the past decade, but few could match the status of JRM, which billed itself as the largest jazz and blues store in the world....

This past summer, a few articles appeared that called the Fate of Movies into question. “Why has this summer blockbuster season been so bad?” asked Benjamin Lee of the Guardian. “Could this be the year that movies stopped mattering?” pondered Wired’s Brian Raftery. The May-to-September season was indeed underwhelming, especially for comic book fans, and a string of disappointing reboots and superhero movies (Deadpool was a surprise exception) strengthened the argument that 2016 has been a subpar year for film in general....

Since Leela James put out her debut album, 2005’s A Change Is Gonna Come, the soul siren has released a steady stream of music, exploring new stylistic elements while staying remarkably focused. In a press bio from 2010, she said, “My sound today may be different than where I was five years ago, but my core is always the same.” More than a decade later, that still rings true. On the new See Me (BMG), the production by Rex Rideout and Jairus “JMo” Mozee, which features lots of electronic samples, might be the most experimental yet on a Leela James record....

Photo by C.T. Zex When I wrote about the new Raydios single in April, I called their front man’s old group Teengenerate “the best punk band in the world.” To mitigate the boldness of that statement, I qualified it: “I’m not referring to ‘punk’ in the ‘bondage pants and great big pointy haircuts’ sense,” I said, “but rather to an in-the-red descendent of undomesticated 60s garage rock.”

The first time I saw Orkesta Mendoza was at SXSW about five years ago, and the group had already perfected an enormous, vintage Latin big-band sound and intense, punk-like sensibility unparalleled in the Latin scene. Led by bandleader, singer, and guitarist Sergio Mendoza (a longtime member of Calexico and Devotchka), the Tucson indie mambo group cross and recross the southern border of the U.S. on their new album, Curandero (Cosmica Artists), topping a foundation of 60s boogaloo with blends of rock, pop, and cumbia and adorning the whole thing with mariachi-infused, mambo-influenced horns....

Last year pianist Ethan Iverson announced he was leaving the Bad Plus, the singular piano trio he cofounded in 2000 with bassist Reid Anderson and drummer Dave King. Together they forged a new jazz paradigm, bringing postpunk concision to a style of music famous for its expansiveness. They attracted some derision for building a repertoire largely from pop, rock, and electronica hits, but anyone who was paying attention figured out that their interpretations were both sincere and inventive....

It’s not often that an editorial in the way-too-conservative-for-me Tribune makes me laugh. But the other day they ran one about an elected school board that had me howling. As the city’s foremost authority on editorials—probably because I’m the only person who reads them—I can assure you that there’s not much difference between the Tribune and the Sun–Times. On local issues. Like the Tribune did. Both papers have been more or less sighing with relief since Richard M....

Most of the music I listen to isn’t responding to a society-shifting event that’s literally just happened—in fact, most music isn’t even trying to do that. I often struggle to string together coherent thoughts about everyday injustices without repeating myself or, more commonly, repeating the words of other, smarter people. With that in mind, I don’t expect musicians to crank out work constantly in order to comment on everything that happens....

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. Mick Dumke on Bruce Rauner (and Pat Quinn, his 2014 opponent) and on the “grass gap” between blacks and whites

On August 1, Crain‘s reported that Bookworks (3444 N. Clark), my favorite bookshop, would be closing on October 15, after 32 years in business. Bookworks has been an oasis on that particular stretch of Clark Street, just south of Wrigley Field. It’s a bibliophilic haven. It can be a lot of work, but when a customer comes to the register with a book that you happened to shelve recently, having put it in the perfect place, and she’s just thrilled to have found just what she was looking for, your heart sings....

Although clarinetist John McCowen is a founding member of the Chicago art-rock band Wei Zhongle, I only encountered his playing long after he moved to California for graduate studies at Mills College. Earlier this year his contributions to a tape by the Vibrating Skull Trio knocked me out; his overblown lines push things into the red and pulse with intense energy. I’m even more impressed after hearing the stunning new Solo Contra (International Anthem), a deep dive into the microscopic qualities of the contrabass clarinet....

During the loneliest stretches of pandemic isolation, when I spent ages eternal locked in my studio apartment eating canned chili and descending into my most feral state, I missed a lot of things. Thrift stores. Dinner parties. Riding the el. But the thing I missed with the most startling acuity, as if a vital organ had been ripped from my body: small talk. I’m talkin’ tiny talk. Miniscule dialogues with Uber drivers or baristas or nail techs....

Last week I saw a new video featuring two young retro-leaning Brazilian rock bands covering the classic Milton Nascimento song “Saidas e Banderas No. 1.” In the past both Boogarins and O Terno have demonstrated a love for vintage jams from their homeland, particularly the wiggy psychedelia of tropicalismo faves Os Mutantes. The 1972 album Clube da Esquina, where that Nascimento track originally appeared, is much more chill and elegant than anything Os Mutantes ever released, but its mix of psychedelic folk and jazz harmony definitely gets expansive and trippy....

About four years ago, the Gage Gallery at Roosevelt University mounted an exhibition of photographs from the Reader’s black-and-white era, which ended in 2004. The gallery is small, maybe three rooms, and on opening night, it was packed with old Reader people, many of whom had flown back to Chicago from wherever they’d moved to in order to be there. Afterward, there was a party at the Hideout that spilled out onto the lawn....

More than 120 features screen at the 31st edition of the Chicago Latino Film Festival, which continues this week at multiple venues around the city and suburbs and concludes on Thursday, April 23, with Chus Gutierrez’s musical comedy Ciudad Delirio at River East 21. Following are selected films screening in the festival’s second week; here are reviews of films screened during week one. —J.R. Jones The Incident Like Philip K. Dick’s Time Out of Joint and certain episodes of The Twilight Zone, this Mexican SF parable (2014) has two concurrent story lines....

Time to plan Easter weekend. Here’s some of what we recommend: Sat 3/26: WBEZ’s Tony Sarabia talks with legendary singer, poet, and author Patti Smith at the Old Town School of Folk Music (4545 N. Lincoln). 4 PM

John Prine remains one of the greatest songwriters the U.S. has ever produced, but he’s not a poet—the marriage of melody and words is integral to his art. That also help explain why he takes occasional detours to make albums of songs by other people. For Better, or Worse (Oh Boy), released in September, is a kind of sequel to his wonderful 1999 record In Spite of Ourselves—both consist of duets with a slew of strong female singers....

In 1980, toward the end of a press conference on the state of the census count, Dianne Feinstein, then the mayor of San Francisco, turned toward Census Bureau director Vincent Barabba with a harsh warning: if he didn’t recognize her requests, she said, “We may see you in court.” In the years leading up to the 1980 Census, the bureau conducted an apology tour of sorts. “We didn’t do as good a job counting black people as we should have,” Barabba conceded to the New York Times in 1974....