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In the 1970s, KC & the Sunshine Band and George McCrae recorded in Miami, but the bustling hit factory that launched them produced more than disco stars—it also gave the world Latimore, the sensuous soul-blues singer who broke out with a swinging cover of the blues classic “Stormy Monday” and followed it with a sultry, slow-simmering ballad of his own, the 1974 R&B chart topper “Let’s Straighten It Out.” Latimore Sat 6/8, 5:15 PM, Jay Pritzker Pavilion...

I’ve watched Lil Nas X seduce and murder Satan probably a dozen times now. And I’m not done. In fact, I may never be done. The video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” directed by Tanu Muino and Lil Nas X I remember when people would tell me they were fine with me being gay if I wasn’t too over-the-top. If I was still “one of the guys,” it was OK....

As gale-force winds whipped the city last week, two former firefighters stood in front of a Chicago Public Library branch in far-northwest-side Norwood Park, toeing the electioneering boundary. One—incumbent 41st Ward alderman Anthony Napolitano—was surrounded by a posse of aides who helped him pass out flyers to early voters heading inside to cast their ballots. The other—aldermanic candidate Tim Heneghan—tried to get the voters’ attention with help only from his wife, Stacy....

Paige Wynne Asado Coffee at 22 E. Jackson Asado Coffee began roasting beans and serving up potent espresso last fall at its third location, 22 E. Jackson, thought to be the site of one of the Loop’s oldest and tiniest buildings. Tucked away at the end of a nine-foot-wide private alley known as Pickwick Place, the 19-by-19-foot structure was built, according to city historian Tim Samuelson, a few years after the Great Fire of 1871 destroyed a stable on the site owned by Henry Horner, the grandfather of the Illinois governor of the same name....

Trombonist Papo Vázquez had plenty of reasons to feel reflective this past spring. He was about to record Breaking Cover, his tenth album under his own name, and he’d spent more than 40 years performing with some of New York’s top Latin ensembles, among them Jerry Gonzalez’s Fort Apache Band and the Fania All-Stars. The pandemic turned recording into a formidable challenge, and the horrifying impact of COVID-19 on the ability of people to safely congregate threatened to make the dances and concerts he typically worked a thing of the past....

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. At that point Mabon was managed by Chicago DJ and promoter Al Benson, who launched the Parrot Records label in 1952. Willie Mabon & His Combo debuted on wax late that year with the Parrot single “I Don’t Know” b/w “Worry Blues,” where Mabon’s wheezy harmonica, classy vocals, and boogie-woogie piano are joined by Ernest Cotton’s tenor sax, Bill Anderson’s bass, and Bill Stepney’s drums....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Friday, January 29, 2016. It’s our last news briefing of January! Inside the world of Latino punk music Chicago is central in the Latino punk music scene. Local musician Benny Hernandez started the first Latino punk festival in 2006 when no Chicago venues would book their bands. The local and national scene grew out of being left out of the mainstream punk culture....

One nice thing about being in your late 40s—there actually are a few—is that you’ve been alive long enough to fall in love with an album, drift in your tastes and sell your copy of it, forget that the band who made it ever existed, and then get surprised 25 years later by a reissue. My music collection no longer includes much that’d sound remotely appropriate on a mixtape for a crush, but Brough’s “Down in Splendour” feels engineered for the purpose....

Gossip Wolf is sad to report that Laura “Lulu” Callier—who performs as local synth jammer Gel Set and half of duos Simulation and God Vol. 1—is leaving town for Los Angeles at the end of the month. Bummer! She’ll play a characteristically idiosyncratic final Chicago show at Near North space Savage Smyth (920 N. Franklin) at noon on Thursday, June 23; opening are noise dudes Andy Ortmann, Jeremiah Fisher (Oakeater), Anthony Janas, and Peter Speer....

Sometimes the most effective songwriting doesn’t attempt any artifice grander than capturing half a day in somebody’s mental process. On this month’s I Need to Start a Garden (Mama Bird), promising Portland singer-songwriter Haley Heynderickx sometimes sounds like she’s simply thinking out loud. The strummy “Oom Sha La La” accelerates and decelerates in fits and starts, summoning the loose, squirrelly vibe of early Modern Lovers, and Heynderickx keeps repeating “The milk is sour,” as though she’s been holed up at home for too long and she’s going stir-crazy....

Jennifer Kim’s mom keeps a bottle under her kitchen sink containing knobby, gnarly roots and a continually replenished volume of clear, high-proof spirit. “I’m extremely upset,” she says. “We’re taking time to mourn and grieve but we’re also taking time to celebrate because there’s been this great untethering.” Kim is a onetime pharmacy student who switched tracks and came up in the kitchens of a handful of One Off Hospitality restaurants—Nico Osteria, Avec, Blackbird—before making her name at the short-lived cured seafood-focused microdeli Snaggletooth....

As if we needed another reminder of the catholic sensibilities of country auteur Jim Lauderdale, on August 3 he’ll drop a pair of disparate albums on Yep Roc that casually reveal his easygoing range and natural curiosity. Jim Lauderdale and Roland White is a previously unissued session he cut with the titular bluegrass picker of Kentucky Colonels fame in the basement of Earl and Louise Scruggs’s house in 1979, not long after Lauderdale had arrived in Nashville determined to make his mark....

It might seem bizarre to call Lucki the best conscious rapper in Chicago, given that the city is also represented nationally by the likes of Chance the Rapper, Saba, and Common. But hear me out. Conscious rap, which is loosely defined by the social commentary at its core, comes in two clearly identifiable forms: preaching and storytelling. Preaching is more common, and conscious rappers who deliver their commentary in this style typically state their topic, explain all the reasons it’s a problem, and (if we’re lucky) tell us how it can be fixed....

It’s always sad when an important artist passes away, but it’s sadder when that passing goes unnoticed. Today I learned that great Chicago drummer Robert Barry died on January 8 at age 85, at Chalet Living and Rehab at 7350 N. Sheridan. And as far as I can tell, aside from his obituary nothing has been written about it—the only reason I can imagine for this state of affairs is that the people in a position to publish something just don’t know he’s gone....

In the midst of his crusade against house speaker Michael Madigan, Governor Bruce Rauner recently played the property tax-assessment card. Rauner’s assault on Madigan’s tax-appeal practice is part of his larger campaign to prove that he, the governor, is a lone crusader valiantly battling the evil Cook County Democratic machine in the fight for “reform,” which happens to be union-busting legislation. Property tax payers can try to lower their taxes by appealing their assessments to Cook County assessor Joe Berrios, the three-member Cook County Board of Review, or both....

Based on S.R. Bindler’s 1997 documentary of the same name, this 2012 Broadway musical focuses on an annual Texas endurance competition in which contestants vie for a pickup truck by touching it. Whoever keeps a hand on longest wins. Meaning you end up with a musical where all the major characters spend most of the show standing around within arm’s length of a pickup truck. But in contemporary American musical theater, even doing nothing presents fine excuses for uplifting lessons in constancy and devotion....

Whether or not you’re familiar with the beloved British humor of the Monty Python universe, Spamalot is guaranteed to be a rollicking good time. Adapted from the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the musical version follows King Arthur in his quest to assemble the Knights of the Round Table and find the Holy Grail, and the plot quickly takes a hard left turn into silly “fisch-schlapping” madness. Bawdy, yet never offensive, this jolly show is a comedy master class, combining wit, satire, absurd non sequiturs, lowbrow humor, slapstick, corny puns, and impeccable comic timing into a dizzying madcap great evening....

With his instantly recognizable voice—stark, blustery, and heartfelt—Billy Bragg has always had a no-frills musical style. His innovativeness manifests mostly in his career path. Also a historian and lefty activist, for the past two decades Bragg has often worn all of his hats at once, whether re-creating unfinished Woody Guthrie songs in collaboration with Wilco, Natalie Merchant, and Guthrie’s daughter Nora; writing new lyrics for Beethoven’s Ode to Joy; mastering the Spotify playlist format as a sort of front porch; or collaborating with Joe Henry on an album of old-time railroad songs (recorded at train stations during a cross-country journey)....

This review contains spoilers. Joe’s soldiers—a race of bald-headed, white-painted grease monkeys known as the War Boys—are one of the movie’s most ingenious innovations. Brainwashed into devoting their entire lives to the army, the War Boys power Joe’s fleet of military vehicles literally with their own blood—in this future hell, bodily fluids are used interchangeably with gasoline. (This detail suggests a comic literalizing of the protest slogan “No blood for oil....

This past weekend the Gene Siskel Film Center screened Patrick Wang’s two-part feature A Bread Factory, likely the most original and ambitious American movie to play in Chicago so far this year. (If you missed it, Northwestern University’s Block Cinema is bringing it back on Saturday, May 4.) Part of what makes Bread Factory so daring is how Wang incorporates devices associated with theater—eloquent soliloquies, actors breaking the fourth wall, a chorus that comments on the action—in a manner that feels distinctly cinematic....