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For improvisers, familiarity is a double-edged sword; if musicians get too comfortable with each other, inspiration can turn into habit. But there’s nothing quite so thrilling as the near-telepathic rapport of a group whose players know each other’s strengths and try to push each other to greater heights. The members of Extraordinary Popular Delusions have had plenty of time to get to know one another. The quartet, which consists of Jim Baker (electric piano, synthesizer, viola), Mars Williams (reeds, percussion, zither, toys), Brian Sandstrom (double bass, electric guitar, trumpet), and Steve Hunt (drums, percussion, waterphone) have sustained a weekly gig at either Hotti Biscotti or the second floor of the Beat Kitchen since 2005, and everyone except Baker played together in the NRG Ensemble in 1980s and 1990s....

Mr. Jukebox (Third Man) is the title of the debut album by Nashville singer and fiddler Joshua Hedley, but it’s also his nickname—a walking encyclopedia of country music history, Hedley plays requests at the drop of a cowboy hat. On this album, his devotion to classic country is clear: there’s the faux-Nudie suit he sports on the cover, pitch-perfect arrangements recalling the glory days of producers Owen Bradley and Chet Atkins, and melodies of the kind that George Jones and Conway Twitty would elevate into works of art....

In a darkened room, four overhead projectors snap on. A picture of a street in Bronzeville slides onto a movie screen. Behind one of the projectors, Jyreika Guest and Eunice Woods drop two paper cutouts onto the glass surface and move them back and forth. Onscreen, the silhouettes of two well-to-do white women circa 1950 stroll down the street. “Is this it?” they coo. “Is this where the Negro poetess lives?...

Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont lived a revolutionary life in revolutionary times. He began his singular career under Louis XV as both secretary to the Russian ambassador and undercover spy. After a stint as a French dragoon, he became minister plenipotentiary to the British court (while also covertly helping to plan an invasion of England), a position he lost six months later due to insolent behavior. When the king ordered him home, he refused, and after escaping multiple attempts at kidnap and arrest, he published a volume of his diplomatic correspondence, exposing state secrets and turning himself into a celebrity....

It’s been said a trillion times: Chicago is a city of neighborhoods. With some 246 of them, it would stand to reason that the task of choosing the city’s worst would be nigh impossible. After all, what makes a particular neighborhood worse than any other? Is it the crime rate? Underperforming schools? Undesirable housing stock? Lack of cultural amenities? As I chewed the question over, I kept landing on the same answer: Chicago’s worst neighborhood is the one that is least representative of the city—demographically, politically, culturally....

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.

The pseudonymous Jane Martin (long rumored to be director Jon Jory or a collaboration between Jory and his playwright spouse, Marcia Dixcy), first birthed Keely and Du in the early years of the first Bill Clinton administration, when the culture wars were at a fever pitch (unlike every other time in U.S. history, I guess). But much like Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, current grim events conspire to make this play about a pregnant rape victim held captive by Christian extremists to prevent her obtaining an abortion feel relevant all over again....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Bjork‘s video for “Arisen My Senses” I love the visuals for Bjork’s 2017 album Utopia: the utopia they imagine is sensual, messy, feminine, androgynous, synthetic, and animal. I’m equally touched by the collaborations that helped make this utopia: drag makeup by Hungry, silicone headpieces and masks by James Merry, music videos by Jesse Kanda, and coproduction by Arca....

Coya Paz is an associate professor of Theatre Studies in The Theatre School at DePaul University. She is the artistic director of Free Street Theater and a Public Voices Fellow through The OpEd Project. But for all of our creativity as artists, the cultural sector as a whole is caught in an ever-repeating pattern. Accolades, be they awards, newspaper reviews, or Best Of lists, go to the usual suspects. Funding and audiences follow, creating a closed circuit that serves the same people over and over again and leaves the rest of us to wonder when—or if—our stories will ever really matter in our country’s national narrative....

In Long Way Home, the theater group Q Brothers Collective creates a contemporary mix on Homer’s epic the Odyssey: instead of hypermasculine white men slaying mythical creatures or stirring grandiose battles, five black actors spin Homer as hip-hop verse. Long Way Home is a landmark for both companies: It will be the choir’s first theatrical performance since 2012, mixing acting with vocal performance. It will also be the largest cast Q Brothers has ever worked with; they typically use micro-casts ranging from five to fifteen actors, many performing multiple parts....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Useless Coordinates by Drahla Harold Budd, The Pavilion of Dreams I discovered composer Harold Budd through his 1986 project The Moon and the Melodies with members of Cocteau Twins. The 1978 release The Pavilion of Dreams has an all-star cast that includes Gavin Bryars and Brian Eno (who also produced). Opening track “Bismillahi ‘Rrahman ‘Rrahim” (Arabic for “In the name of God, the beneficent, the merciful”) features the gorgeous harp of Maggie Thomas and the serene saxophone of Marion Brown....

“A lot of people hate canned tuna,” says chef Mark Hellyar of Momotaro. “It gets a bad rap.” He himself hated it growing up, he says, “because tuna casserole, that’s disgusting.” He thinks that Jimmy Papadopolous, chef at Bellemore, was trying to trip him up by challenging him to create a dish with canned tuna. “Little does he know that I eat canned tuna a lot—had some yesterday.” “It’s pretty dead-on,” he said after trying it....

Colombian producer Lucrecia Dalt worked as a geotechnical engineer before she made crafting experimental electronics tracks a full-time endeavor. In May, Dalt, who now calls Berlin home, released her sixth album, Anticlines (Rvng Intl), which is named for the archlike geological feature of folded sedimentary layers. The album’s minimal, echoing sounds encourage anyone listening to decipher what exactly brought each note to light, to guess what each little detail could mean or reference, and to consider the sonic possibilities and unheard histories in the spaces around them....

Update: To help slow the spread of COVID-19, this show has been postponed until a date to be determined in the future. Contact point of purchase for refund or exchange information. Are Possessed a band or a hive of slavering meat puppets inhabited by time-traveling demons from the future? The case for the latter is strong. The Bay Area band’s 1985 classic, Seven Churches (Relativity/Combat), was death metal before death metal had chewed its way out of heavy metal’s womb....

The Shadows and the Light, the new album from Chicago drummer Quin Kirchner, is an eclectic collection of freewheeling studio performances with a diverse range of sounds. On its second track, “Batá Chop,” the album features influences of West African batá drum and traces of Afro-Cuban drumming (which Kirchner learned as a teenager while studying in Havana), but elsewhere there are bebop flourishes and interplanetary adornments originally stylized by the mystical jazz mad hatter, Sun Ra....

Chagrin Falls The premise of Mia McCullough’s tragicomedy would fit snuggly in the Coen brothers universe: the residents of a depressed Oklahoma town where the only employers are a prison and a cattle slaughterhouse—have their lives uprooted by a visiting Boston journalist on the eve of a death-row execution. Alcoholics experience war flashbacks, young dreamers fantasize Chekhov style about escape, and everyone engages in the futile task of trying to keep secrets under wraps in a rural community....

Life isn’t about avoiding pain but plumbing its depths and managing the results wails Another Kind of Love, a female-driven punk-rock masterpiece by Crystal Skillman, now receiving a debut production from InFusion Theatre Company. Maybe masterpiece isn’t quite the right word—it suggests something lofty and out of reach, where this play banks on raw and accessible if festering emotions. But an artistic achievement it is. Skillman jokes that while in rehearsals for her 2012 play Wild, the crew used to tally the show’s F-bombs—more than 300, they estimated....

Much like a player on a scoring streak in NBA Jam, basketball cards are on fire. “When The Last Dance came out, that just brought everything to this outrageous level,” Holloway says. “[The amount of sales] hasn’t stopped since.” Elite is one of two shops in the city. Tim’s Baseball Card Shop on North Western Avenue is the other, specializing in baseball boxes and vintage cards—think rare 1950s and 60s-era cards....

Now in his early 70s, John Primer continues to deliver high-quality sets rooted in postwar blues but spiced with originality. He’s an eloquent songwriter, and even when he plays other people’s material, he avoids the overcooked chestnuts (“Sweet Home Chicago” et al.) that cliche-­weary fans have taken to calling the “set list from hell.” To say that Primer stands on the shoulders of giants isn’t empty rhetoric—his list of early mentors and associates reads like a partial roll call for the Chicago Blues Hall of Fame....