You’d think people would know better by now. If history has taught us anything it’s that a life devoted to rock ‘n’ roll can only end badly. Spiraling success ultimately leads to plummeting failure, and each year of fast living is just another nail in the coffin. But thanks to a new book by Jeff Pike, a few aspiring rockers may learn this valuable lesson and save themselves before it’s too late....
For 13 years Liof Munimula have pursued a craft that’s brought no remuneration, a striking testimonial to their artistic dedication. Michael Zerang (percussion), Daniel Scanlan (electric guitar, trumpet, violin)–who also work together in the Vandermark Quartet–and Don Meckley (shortwaves, various invented noise-generating machines) have elevated free improvisation to the highest level of intuitive interaction. Zerang’s percussion setup is anything but standard, a beautifully jerry-rigged construction that incorporates both traditional drums and all sorts of creatively appropriated percussive devices....
SAM PHILLIPS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Let’s settle this thing once and for all. Sam Phillips is not the second coming of the Beatles. Sure, even a cursory listen to Martinis and Bikinis–the new LP from the former Christian singer-songwriter, who first turned toward secular concerns with 1988’s The Indescribable Wow–will turn up countless moments of Fab Foreplay: irresistible harmonies, indelible choruses, even direct quotations from “Eleanor Rigby” and “Rain....
Lead Story In March in Alhambra, California, Robert C. Lewis, 52, was jailed for four days without possibility of bail after his unlicensed labrador-shepherd dog chased a cat into the street. And two weeks later in Clearwater, Florida, Michael C. Diana, 24, was also jailed for four days without possibility of bail after being convicted by a jury of publishing obscene comic books using a photocopy machine. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Break your own rules, suffer the consequences. So the doctor said OK. Wrote out a prescription. “Give it a try. Give it 30 days to take full effect. Come back in six weeks.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Day 0: Go to the pharmacy. This stuff is expensive–60 bucks for a 30-day supply. What price happiness? I’ve gone this far. Go the rest of the way....
By Leah Eskin Which is why the Guard is eager to expand the range, and why it intended to add two low-level flight corridors leading up to it. Starting roughly over Cedar Rapids and Madison, pilots could drop down, putting in a couple hundred miles of rigorous low-altitude flying and radar evasion en route to bombing practice. On site, they’d get a shot at new angles on old targets. “We’re trying to train smartly, efficiently, wisely,” says Neumann....
Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the Saint Petersburg Chamber Choir Last summer the very talented conductor Valery Gergiev, of Saint Petersburg’s Kirov Opera, brought his orchestra, chorus, and soloists to the Lincoln Center Festival in New York. After the final concert Philips Classics held a reception for the members of the Music Critics Association, whose annual meeting was built around the festival, and Gergiev was produced to answer questions. He stunned many when he said, “Things weren’t so bad in the Soviet Union....
The Education of Maribeth Vander Wheele “It was sort of a deadly beat nobody really wanted,” a former education reporter told us after the collapse. “The stories the desk liked were the ones about the board members shouting at meetings, and maybe they were shouting about finances but that got lost.” Another old beat writer recalled, “I always found myself covering riots and demonstrations and labor crises, and there was hardly any time to devote to education itself....
It was impossible to look at James Jordan and not smile–inwardly at the very least. Here was the fellow who had won the lottery, the working stiff who would never have to work another day in his life. Except for one thing: unlike most lottery winners, James Jordan could claim to have in some way earned his good fortune. He had hit the genetic lottery, fathering a child who could one day become the world’s greatest athlete....
There is a numerology system for the English language that succeeds in linking the word “Hitler” to the famous number of the Beast, 666. If you take A as equal to 100, B to 101, etc, then the letters for HITLER equal 666. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Pretty unusual, I’d venture to say, for any leader whose name doesn’t have six letters in it....
Advertising Overhaul at Art Institute Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Last summer the Art Institute hired LaPlaca Cohen Advertising, a small New York City ad agency whose clients include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the American Museum of Natural History, the Pierpont Morgan Library, and the Boston Ballet. La Placa Cohen’s experience working for museums and other cultural organizations was apparently what drew the Art Institute to the agency....
It opened in April for a five-week run, but Chicago just wouldn’t let it go away, even when its theater space was sold out from under it. The Seanachai Theatre Company’s production of Ann Noble’s And Neither Have I Wings to Fly may have moved to the Griffin Theatre but it’s lost none of its warmth, humor, or romantic magic. The story involves two sisters, one high-strung and low-key, who seek their fortunes in the repressive society of 1950s Ireland–a search complicated by the men they love, the men who love them, the men they must leave behind, and a ghost who will not depart until all affairs are in order....
By Ben Joravsky In many ways, Einhorn’s story symbolizes the conflict. He moved to the area (roughly bounded by Kedzie, Halsted, Grand, and Lake) about 11 years ago, a 23-year-old college grad looking for cheap space to start a photography business. He found what he wanted on the sixth floor of a run-down warehouse. “I got 4,000 square feet for $700 a month,” says Einhorn. “What a dump. The elevator didn’t work, there were transients in the hallway....
When the mainstream media focus on modern New Orleans jazz, they rarely see past the Marsalis clan and friends; this explains why you may never have run across the members of Astral Project–five of the Crescent City’s best and most versatile players. The rhythm section has worked together for almost two decades, appearing on dozens of albums, and has attained a portable, instant swing that fits into (and ensures the success of) a variety of genres: John Vidacovich, the drummer, allows a shadow of classical New Orleans syncopation to creep across almost all of his rhythms from bebop to fusion, while bassist Jim Singleton drives the music without clutter, always playing a note or two less than you expect....
BAT to BAT The years have not tarnished Tesser’s hypothesis. But the BAT’s surly origins are long forgotten, and today it stands as simply the highest accolade many a sportswriter can hope to achieve. The Cupronickel BAT–as Tesser’s original Golden BAT was renamed two years ago in deference to the era of homelessness, joblessness, and shrinking standards of health, education, and morality from which baseball distracts us–is an unalloyed alloyed honor....
Eleven years ago, Charlie Vernon sold me my house. One year later, he made his last dance—until now. The monthlong Link’s Hall Homecoming Series opens with a weekend of new works by Link’s Hall founders; Vernon was one of them, and his Exit Plans covers all the bases of his past life: his experiences as a choreographer, performer, father, and real estate salesman. The charm, intelligence, and fey sense of humor that I’m sure have done wonders for him as a salesman also inform this dance, which includes a thoughtful, witty text on the nature of homes, of selling, of safety and self-protection....
Friday, October 11 The most famous and perhaps most effective propaganda film of World War II, with Greer Garson as a suburban British housewife gallantly going about her tasks as her husband (Walter Pidgeon) is called to war. The film (and Garson’s stiff-backed Academy Award-winning performance in particular) has dated very badly; it’s difficult now to see the qualities that wartime audiences found so assuring. William Wyler directed; with Teresa Wright, Richard Ney, Dame May Whitty, and Henry Travers (a sequel, The Miniver Story, was released in 1950)....
The monthly edition of “Face the Music” at the HotHouse is like a smorgasbord: the servings are hefty and varied, and there’s something for just about everyone. November’s menu, prepared by Gene Coleman and divided into four sections, is filled with novelties and surprises. As appetizer, Coleman and instrument maker Hal Rammel will direct a group of like-minded and facile-fingered colleagues in assembling sounds created on a menagerie of ad hoc “instruments” like tables and frying pans....
My favorite Douglas Sirk film–made in Germany in 1936, when he was still known as Detlef Sierck–is a dazzlingly cinematic, fast-moving melodrama built around classical music; it’s alternately perverse, exalted, and delirious. Shuttling back and forth between New York and Berlin with an ease that suggests those cities were in closer proximity to each other in the 30s than they are today, the opening sequences present a destitute widow (Maria von Tasnady) recovering her will to live by listening to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” on the radio, broadcast live from Germany, where the conductor (Willy Birgel) is coincidentally in the process of adopting her little boy....
FOURPLAY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One of the best-selling bands grouped under “jazz” in the CD racks, Fourplay has turned a hefty profit by trafficking in unexceptional dance grooves and contemporary harmonic blandness. But to summarily dismiss the quartet forces you to deny the undeniable musicianship of its members–and the fact that they make this form and format more listenable than practically anyone else....
