Dennis Britton Succumbs to Poor Circulation “I’d asked him to call me if he ever felt there was a time when he needed to make a change,” Simmons said. Now that time had come. At the party she and Britton went into a corner, and last Thursday he announced to a less than flabbergasted staff that he was quitting effective the next day. He’d be moving into the MacArthur Foundation as a “distinguished visitor....
It’s not easy to describe or categorize Gerhard Stabler’s music. Take his druber…, for instance: Scored for “eight active screamers, violoncello, and tape,” the 20-minute work–whose title loosely translates as “beyond”–comments on the act of screaming and the emotions it conveys and evokes. In its first half, the screamers clamor for attention with their primal cries, then a medieval motet is heard amid the inchoate voices, offering an oasis of tradition and order....
By Michael Miner The Morris scandal mesmerized the Times. Whether the nominal subject was Clinton’s speech, the politics of Clinton’s speech, the delegates’ reaction to Clinton’s speech, the TV coverage of Clinton’s speech, or the 16-minute tribute to Clinton preceding Clinton’s speech, Dick Morris is what gripped the correspondents. They filled the paper with yeasty phrases like “a frantic tailspin of damage control,” “long day of political anxiety over the sensational news,” “sex-scandal charges,” “subject of a sex-scandal story,” “potential political fallout,” “advisers moved today to contain the damage,” “frolicked with a Virginia prostitute,” and “biggest political bombshell of 1996....
Tell me what you think of this opening line: In any case, I smoked all the time. I started before breakfast–I skipped breakfast, actually–and kept it up till bedtime, sometimes beyond. I wasn’t literally a “chain” smoker, because I didn’t light each new cigarette with the butt of the last one. I used matches. But the reasons for this were more aesthetic than practical. I allowed myself no appreciable pause between smokes....
“You want the $20 tire or the $35 tire?” yells Ralph over the roar of traffic. A customer hovering over a flimsy wooden counter reaches for his wallet, lifts his head, and inquires, “What’s the difference?” Hector, who is tinkering with the rim changer and eavesdropping on the exchange, advises Ralph in Spanish before Ralph obliges the customer. “Fifteen dollar,” he deadpans. “I’ll go with the $20 tire,” the customer responds....
The heartfelt quaver and keening lilt in the singing of Raul Maio, the Cuban American frontman for Miami’s Mavericks, is a remarkable sound: a striking blend of pathos, sensuality, vulnerability, and raw sexuality. Frequent comparisons to singers like Roy Orbison and Elvis Presley are no stretch. The third and most recent Mavericks album, What a Crying Shame (MCA), includes a sublime piece of pop craft called “I Should Have Been True” that frames Maio’s luminescent, arching vocals with lushly arranged strings and melodramatic tympani rolls....
Lead Story Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A man not identified in newspaper accounts was arrested in Memphis after robbing a bank when he sought refuge in a building nearby that, unknown to him, housed the Memphis police department. Police had heard of the robbery on the radio and watched from an upper floor as the man fled the bank, ducked into an alley, hid the money, and innocently approached the front door of their building, where a phalanx of officers was waiting for him....
More than 40 years ago a man named George Stephen had had it with battling wind and rain every time he wanted to barbecue in his open brick grill. So Stephen, a metalworker at Weber Brothers Metal Works for about a decade, invented a covered metal kettle that was easy to start, regulate, and maintain in any type of weather. Today you can find Weber grills in backyards and on decks and balconies all over....
EUGENIUS 3/11, LOUNGE AX The pedigree of this Glaswegian four-piece traces back to the Vaselines, a semilegendary band with a posthumous reputation that rests largely on Nirvana’s cover of its song “Molly’s Lips.” Eugenius also possesses musical ties to both fellow Scots the Pastels and the Olympia, Washington, trio Beat Happening, combos that crafted killer hooks with naive, punky simplicity. Lisped, lilting, lethargically delivered bubblegum melodies spill from leader Eugene Kelly’s lips and cascade across a bed of chunky guitars and breezy rhythms to form irresistible, disposable summertime pop....
BAD LIVERS 8/12, LOUNGE AX On their second album, Horses in the Mines (Quarterstick), these Austin oddballs continue to breeze through bluegrass and old-timey music with a punkish irreverence and energy. This fast-moving banjo, guitar, and double bass trio escapes the dreaded rootsy jokehole syndrome epitomized by yahoos from Mojo Nixon to the Rugburns with its surprisingly fluid, buoyant, and lyrical playing, both on traditional material and some striking originals–I’d rather ignore the “wacky” punk covers....
New Russian Art Andrei Karpov’s Self-Portrait, which almost fills the frame with the painter’s figure, has a combined sensuality and ethereality reminiscent of Russian icon painting but also includes other, more “modern” elements. The painter’s figure is round and plump, Botero-like (though a nearby photograph shows him as thin). And in the tradition of many female nudes, he’s seen reclining luxuriously with a cigarette and drink beside him, with several softly painted female nudes on the wall behind....
For the last four years an uneasy alliance has existed between Uptown Recycling and the Daley administration. During that time the city paid Uptown an average of $50,000 a year to send vans from house to house on the north side, collecting bottles, cans, and newspapers to be recycled. But Uptown’s operators never shied from criticizing the administration’s long-range recycling plans, and city officials privately grumbled that the not-for-profit was operated by a bunch of ideological ingrates who used their press contacts to make Daley look bad....
ME’SHELL NDEGEOCELLO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Now think about the African American women in music with natural hair. Nina Simone. Cassandra Wilson. Joan Armatrading. Sweet Honey in the Rock. Tracy Chapman. They all play musical hybrids, often with self-composed, political lyrics. They often have problems fitting neatly into music industry categories, and of course their commercial appeal doesn’t come close to Jackson’s or Houston’s, though their overall talent surpasses both....
Charles Barkley called it “the greatest basketball game I ever played in.” Let it reflect on Barkley that it was an awkward, ugly, scrapping battle, the sort that routinely results when two teams are not given adequate time to travel long distances between games in the National Basketball Association finals–the sort, also, it should be pointed out, that the Bulls have managed to win the last two years. The Bulls have typically marshaled their concentration if not their strength in such situations, and that has usually been enough to win; on this evening they did not....
Many people have tried to convince me chocolate is toxic to dogs. I even heard a news report warning people to keep dogs out of the Halloween candy for that reason. However, my four dogs have stolen chocolate cakes, pies, and candy bars without ill effects. What gives? –Jason Eshleman, Berkeley, California Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You and the mutts got lucky. Chocolate is one of the most common causes of poisoning in dogs, according to the National Animal Poison Control Center at the University of Illinois’ College of Veterinary Medicine....
Trib Buys Out Writers, Sells Out Readers This is, by and large, a story of fortune smiling generously. Cawley and Povich are both in their late 40s. Both were being recalled to Chicago and neither wanted to come. “I want you to understand I have no animosity to the Tribune. It’s just a matter of I wanted to stay in New York,” said Cawley, sounding blissful. “This little window of opportunity opened....
Guitarist W.C. Clark came of age in Austin during the 50s and 60s, when the blues scene there was eclectic and sizzling. Everyone from Big Joe Turner to young renegades like Albert Collins and Freddie King came through frequently, and Clark absorbed their musical flash and their stylistic diversity. He played with Joe Tex in the 60s, immersing himself further in the burgeoning soul sound, and eventually became part of the 70s-era Austin-based blues revival that fused the expertise of seasoned players with the youthful energies of artists like the Vaughan brothers....
SHORT CUTS With Anne Archer, Bruce Davison, Robert Downey Jr., Peter Gallagher, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Lemmon, Lyle Lovett, Andie MacDowell, Frances McDormand, Matthew Modine, Julianne Moore, Chris Penn, Tim Robbins, Annie Ross, Lori Singer, Madeleine Stowe, Lili Taylor, Lily Tomlin, Fred Ward, and Tom Waits. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ross recorded a comparable version of this song well before Altman got around to making Short Cuts, and his use of this tune as a kind of impressionistic clothesline on which to hang some of the movie’s images, feelings, and themes recalls the lovely instinctual use he made of a few Leonard Cohen songs in McCabe and Mrs....
“I’m waitin’ for ’em to build that supercollider and break down an atom farther than it’s supposed to be brought down–and the whole fuckin’ universe is gonna unravel,” says Chris. “That’s what scares me.” “This is a seedpod, man. We’re supposed to outgrow this planet and go explore the rest of it,” Chris insists. “And instead we’re like delving into our navel with a supercollider, OK? Instead of going out and actually seeing this stuff....
Friday 23 The Great Chicago to Milwaukee Bike Ride, which raises money for Thresholds, the psychiatric rehab center in Lincoln Park, is actually two bike rides: one 100 miles in length, the other 35. The first begins at the Glenview Train Station, 1116 Depot in Glenview, at 7:30 this morning (check- in starts at 6:30). But if that’s too far for you, you can watch the beginning of the race, hang out for breakfast, check in at 10, and then catch the 10:53 Amtrak to Sturtevant, Wisconsin, 35 miles from the ride’s terminus at Lake Park in Milwaukee, and pedal from there....
