Posts

Hollywood has been disemboweling itself onscreen since the waning days of the studio system: Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950) tells of a once-glamorous silent actress now sealed in amber, and Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1951) exposes an unscrupulous producer. Blake Edwards convinced his wife, Julie Andrews, to go topless in S.O.B. (1981), about a director who convinces his wife to go topless in his new movie, and Robert Altman set a new standard for anti-Hollywood bile with his star-studded mystery The Player (1992), about a studio executive being harassed by a vengeful screenwriter....

Andrea Tomas Prato Ufomammut Regular readers of my Beer and Metal column already know how much I love Ufomammut. I’ve been aware for months that this Italian doom trio had a new album on the way—their ninth studio full-length, at least if you count 2012’s Oro: Opus Primum and Oro: Opus Alter as two. And yesterday the Quietus premiered “Temple,” the first track released from Ecate (in English “Hecate,” a Greek protective goddess associated with entranceways, light, ghosts, and necromancy), which comes out March 31 on Neurot Recordings....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. In seventh grade Holvay formed his first band, the Rockin’ Rebels. Their first gig was at a go-kart shop in Lyons, with Ray Nichols on guitar, Billy Krien on bass, Dale Soltwich on drums, and Holvay on guitar....

Word came today that Lois Weisberg, the former linchpin of nearly everything that’s cultural about Chicago, died last night in Florida, where she’d been living the last few years. She was 90. Weisberg headed the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs in its various incarnations for Mayors Harold Washington and Richard Daley over a three-decade span that stretched from the 1980s to an abrupt departure in 2011. She brought us Cows on Parade, the Block 37 Arts program (now After School Matters, founded with Maggie Daley), and numerous free public music and art festivals, and instituted the original Chicago Cultural Plan....

ARTIST: Ronnie Roe SHOW: Chook Race and Muff Divers at Bric-a-Brac Records on Thu 10/20

Blackbird’s Ventriloquy, a 50-minute solo performed and created by Molly Shanahan, opens on a contrast between image and sound—the wood floor and white walls of Links Hall an empty cavern for a score by Kevin O’Donnell that presents small effects hardly heard—a melody, an engine—under a deceptively uniform layer of water rushing. There are always at least two surfaces to peruse in Ventriloquy, which Shanahan describes as meaning, etymologically, “speaking from the gut,” but which Merriam-Webster lists as an alternate for “ventriloquism,” “the production of the voice in such a way that the sound seems to come from a source other than the vocal organs of the speaker....

It’s hard to imagine what the current state of noise-rock would be like without the existence of the Jesus Lizard. Often imitated but never replicated, the heavily rhythmic and lyrically twisted Chicago-by-way-of-Austin four-piece drew the blueprint for every grimy, misanthropic outfit that popped up in the wake of its 1989 Touch and Go Records debut, Pure. Punk contemporaries such as Metz and Pissed Jeans are frequently compared to the Jesus Lizard, but even the best bands that get that tag come across as mere child’s play when stacked up to the real thing; it takes much more than a heavily distorted guitar and a yelling front man to channel the industrial throb of “Blockbuster,” the bad-vibes sludge of “Then Comes Dudley,” the explosive muck of “Seasick,” or the unsettling beauty of “Pastoral....

Courtesy of Paul Cherry’s Facebook page Paul Cherry Local singer-songwriter Paul Cherry has a gift for making catchy, invigorating pop-rock, sometimes by drawing inspiration from unexpected places—take the swooning “Breadstick Ballad,” an ode to a restaurant with a less-than-stellar reputation, Olive Garden. “Breadstick Ballad” is referenced in the middle of Cherry’s bizarre, NSFW new video for “Cherry Time,” one of the primo cuts off his recent debut EP, On Top....

Comedian Kayla Pulley is tired of the open mike scene in Chicago. As a black woman, she doesn’t always feel very welcome or even safe in the predominantly white, male environment. Even after years of proving herself on stages around the city, she would too often find herself walking into a room and being completely ignored by comedians she saw every day. She would call out the problems with open mikes in the city on stage to zero response....

Welsh producer Kelly Lee Owens arrived at techno from the world of indie: she started the decade playing bass for London dream-pop outfit the History of Apple Pie, and before that she spent time running small music festivals in Manchester, where she’d trained to be a nurse. Her 2017 self-titled solo album (Smalltown Sound) contains all the fixin’s that practically any discerning indie-rock fan would want out of music, regardless of genre; her sounds are warm, and each track contains small details that reveal themselves upon repeated listens—whole chunks of the record can nestle into the back of your mind and emerge in your consciousness during moments of solitude....

One of the best things about Chicago is the city’s magical history, that is, its history as a hub for magicians. For many years, these performance artists have provided Chicagoans a unique and compelling form of entertainment. Rooted in the close-up variety that magicians often performed in bars across the city, the scene has since evolved to include acts that continue to impress. Even in a year when attending a magic show in person wasn’t an option, Chicago’s magicians managed to adapt by adopting a “the-show-must-go-on” attitude....

South Shore senior citizen Josie Conley takes walks regularly to stay healthy during the COVID-19 quarantine. But narrow sidewalks mean that maintaining the recommended six-foot “social distance” from others is kind of like a game of Dodge ‘Em. “My mother doesn’t want to take any chances,” explained her son Shawn Conley, who joins her during his lunch break from his job with the Illinois State Board of Education. He also helps lead the Major Taylor Cycling Club of Chicago, a predominantly Black organization with about 120 members....

You know the story of the brilliant chemist Percy Julian, right? The Alabama-born grandson of a man who’d had fingers amputated as punishment for learning to read and write while enslaved, his discoveries led to everything from water-based paint and a treatment for glaucoma, to firefighting foam that saved numerous lives in World War II. If you’ve used a birth control pill for family planning, you’ve benefited from his work. There’s a high school named for him in Chicago, and a middle school in Oak Park, so his remarkable life should be familiar, but on the chance that it’s not—as it wasn’t for me or most folks I asked—PBS is offering a free stream of Forgotten Genius, its 2007 Nova documentary about Julian, through the month of February....

Last year around this time, hundreds of gallons of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Brand Stout were being distilled at Rhine Hall to make bierschnaps. The spirit originated in Bavaria, where small brewers who owned a still would often distill leftover beer. Despite increasing interest, it’s never really become popular in the U.S. (though several local distilleries, including Koval, Chicago Distilling Company, and CH Distillery, have made spirits from beer). Turning unwanted beer into spirits is a no-brainer; the first step to making whiskey is essentially to make beer, minus the hops....

Time to plan your Mother’s Day weekend. Here are some things we recommend you do (with or without mom): Through 9/25: “Kerry James Marshall: Mastry,” on display now at the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 E. Chicago), is an exhibition of the artist’s paintings from the last 35 years. Sasha Geffen writes, “The subjects’ eyes stand out because their skin is stark, symbolic black: charcoal, ebony, obsidian. Marshall paints human figures with the darkest shade of each composition’s palette....

Italy’s il Tricolore flies proudly above River North’s Te’ Jay’s Adult Books—oops, sorry, it appears over Il Porcellino, the “Everyday Trattoria” next door. The flag is positioned just so as to blot out the porn shop’s sign as you gaze up at the restaurant’s own marquee. Named for the Florentine bronze boar that tourists feed their spare lire for good fortune, Il Porcellino is the restaurant Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises has spawned, apparently by groupthink, to fill the space after retiring Paris Club (and Brasserie Jo before that)....

Eric Garner wasn’t much of a criminal kingpin—an affable cigarette hustler who peddled tax-free cartons of smokes and “loosies” from his chosen corner on Bay Street in Staten Island, New York. He liked it that way (“Felony money for misdemeanor time,” he called his chosen hustle). That low profile might have led the 43-year-old man’s killing at the hands of the NYPD on July 17, 2014, to have gone unnoticed by many outside of Tompkinsville Park....

Q: My wife and I have been married for 14 years and in a committed (I assumed) relationship for 17 years. Sex between us (often kinky) has always been great. We have a wonderful life together and two perfect children. I thought we were good; turns out things were too good to be true. I learned recently that my wife has been unfaithful to me throughout our marriage. She began an affair with an older man soon before we were married, and they were physically intimate for five years, including bondage and a master/sub relationship....

Reader editorial employees (myself included) voted 19-0 today to unionize as the Reader unit of the Chicago Newspaper Guild. The new unit will now elect officers and select a bargaining team to negotiate a contract with Wrapports LLC, owner of the Reader and the Sun-Times. Over the years, the idea of joining a union was raised occasionally at the 43-year-old Reader without gaining any traction. Serious discussions among the staff began after the paper was purchased by Wrapports in 2012 and moved from the building it once owned at 11 E....