Chicago these days finds itself in a literally fretful situation: the city is awash in lively and imaginative jazz guitarists. With Bobby Broom, Henry Johnson, and John McLean all appearing on recent CDs–and Fareed Haque and Dave Onderdonk both busy around town (and poised to release their own new discs)–perhaps the least visible of the bunch has been John Moulder. That changes this weekend, when he presides over a party celebrating the release of his new album, Awakening....
With the lines “Pouring no lies / No suits-n-ties / No need to rush / We love to fuck time,” New Kingdom dispense with all notions of finesse from the get-go of their joyously grueling debut Heavy Load (Gee Street). This wiggy New York hip-hop duo celebrates chaos and heaviness, carefully occupying the stylistic space between seriousness and dumb yuks. As comfortable sampling the James Gang and Grand Funk Railroad as more expected R & B sources, they recall the over-the-top mayhem of the Beastie Boys, alternating delivery of their rhyme-deconstructing lines between hoarse shouts, gentle whispers, and brash sneers....
It was a heady spring for the fire-eating leaders of the business revolution. First there was Wired magazine, seeking to bring the uprising to new media shores with the launch of a book-publishing branch and simultaneously to enlist support from more conventional mercantile powers with an initial public offering. The official release that accompanied the Wired IPO will no doubt someday be remembered as one of the essential documents of the 90s: assuring investors that “none of the Company’s employees is represented by a labor union,” it credits the business with “creating compelling, branded content with attitude....
GO TO BLAZES 2/17, LOUNGE AX The new album by Philadelphia vets Go to Blazes, Anytime…Anywhere (ESD), surges with a genuine swagger straight from the hips of the old Rolling Stones. Equally informed by country–the quartet started as a faux bluegrassy combo–and drunken R & B, GTB’s music demonstrates how to make rock, something thought dead by so many, bristle with life. They’re not out to change the face of rock (although how many of the whippersnappers who do have that task on their agenda make a dent?...
One of the few women directors working in Hong Kong today, Clara Law has emerged as an acute observer of the realm of the senses for whom story line is almost secondary. While most of her films concern the differences between cultures and generations, it’s betrayal and temptation–both visceral and emotional–that interest Law the most in Temptation of a Monk. The story, adapted by Lilian Lee from her own Tang dynasty epic (she also coscripted Farewell My Concubine and Law’s The Reincarnation of Golden Lotus), concerns the moral dilemma of General Shi (Wu Hsin-Kuo): defending the feeble prince he serves or siding with the prince’s brother in mutiny....
It’s impossible to distill the essence of rock-trivia expertise. So much relies on those tiny chromosomal circuits that drive the mainsprings of our personality that it’s difficult to say why one person can live an entirely normal, well-calibrated life–healthy relationships, balanced meals, a new pair of shoes now and again–while another person feels compelled to spend hours scrutinizing the liner notes to a Mott the Hoople LP on the slim hope of discovering who supplies the backup vocals for “Jerkin’ Crocus....
Conventional wisdom says that there are no second acts in American lives–which makes Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women all the more remarkable. After a dry spell of nearly two decades, during which play after play of his fizzled, the playwright everyone had written off wrote a play with much of the power and insight of his groundbreaking early work; it even won him a Pulitzer. The rebellious rage of Zoo Story and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?...
Robert De Niro plays a presidential spin doctor spurred into action after a sex scandal threatens to destroy his boss’s chances for reelection. He flies to southern California, engaging a flamboyant Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman, reportedly lampooning Robert Evans) to help fake a war in Albania that will make the president shine again. Hilary Henkin and David Mamet’s script is gleefully hyperbolic without ever straying from its political target–the gulf war is repeatedly cited as the conspirators debate what the American public will swallow....
To Jim DeRogatis: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I’m a fan of the Fiasco. They’re a refreshing change from the generic crap that alternative radio and MTV shoves down our throats. A Wesley Willis Fiasco show celebrates the excess of rock in all its glory with a most unique and enthusiastic front man. When Wesley asks the crowd “Those demons want me to smash my CD player, should I do it?...
Revelers Distressingly, the one character who inspires sympathy in Beth Henley’s comedy of theatrical types gathered to mourn the passing of their friend and mentor Dash Gray is the only one who has nothing to do with the theater. Bob Gray, the simpleton brother of the deceased–played by the always splendid Marc Vann in Center Theater’s world premiere–wanders about the stage empathizing with the forlorn, shying away from the spotlight, and feeling a profound sense of responsibility for even the most trivial of his actions....
Some things haven’t changed in the southern Wisconsin town of Cambridge. Peter Jackson, Jim Rowe’s former partner, has spread the bug to nearby Edgerton with his Rockdale Union Stoneware, 1858 Artisan (608-884-9483 or 800-222-0699), and there’s also Woodfire Pottery, just east of Cambridge, and Hands End, 137 W. Main (608-423-4151). Surrounding towns such as Edgerton, Jefferson, Lake Mills, Fort Atkinson, Milton, and the adjacent Rockdale may be dead as far as offering sushi or Daniel Barenboim at the CSO, but for what they are they seem far from dying....
La vida breve, the first and most important opera by 20th-century Spanish composer Manuel de Falla, has a convoluted performance history. Winner of a contest in Madrid in 1905, the lyric drama was not produced as promised. So a frustrated and impoverished Falla left for France, where he polished up the opera’s score, expanded its obligatory dance number, and had the libretto translated into French. In 1913 the revised version was given its first performance in, of all places, the provincial city of Nice....
Howard Stern Fired…and Hired Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The decision by WCKG general manager Mike Disney to take Stern off the air, after less than seven months in the classic-rock station’s morning-drive slot, was unexpected. Just two months ago Stern was in hot water for some tough words against Wert. “I hope you’re in a men’s room in a gas station,” said Stern in part, “and some guy comes in, a very effeminate guy, but powerful, pushes you over the sink, pulls your pants down, gives you the hot beef injection, and delivers the deadly AIDS into your system....
French-born, Oakland-based composer Laetitia Sonami strings together a fascination with artistic process, integral knowledge of new electronic and computer music technologies, the delivery of a great monologuist, the narrative drive of a born storyteller, and a subversive spark that undoes things when they begin to get too obvious. Once a student of composers Robert Ashley and David Behrman at Mills College, Sonami comes armed with an electronic lady’s glove–a customized version of the device first developed by Michel Waisvisz–that has pressure, motion, and space sensors that respond musically (via samplers, a MIDI mixer, and synthesizers) to her physical gestures....
Dear Editor, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I must address the recent review of Frank Booth in the Blue Velvet Lounge [October 27] at the ImprovOlympic. I again seem to be hearing in the review the oracular voice of the Reader theater critic(s) in a contentious attitude toward improvisation, even more specifically “long form” improvisation. Reviews of shows in the last year (one exception noted–The Armando Diaz Experience) from Virgil’s House of Dig to Carl’s Closed, have disparaged both the sum of the parts and the whole....
RHINOCEROS Next Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Rhinoceros premiered in Germany in 1959 and subsequently enjoyed tremendously successful runs in Paris, London, and New York. It has often been interpreted as an allegory about the spread of Nazism through Europe. But in his staging of this highly stylized play, Next Theatre Company director (and translator) Dexter Bullard strives to play up the universality of Ionesco’s vision....
RING-S AROUND ROSIE ETA Creative Arts Foundation Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » George Caldwell is a proud man: the deed to his Pasadena home is displayed prominently in the foyer, and a potted cotton bush sits in the living room–both exhibited as reminders of the family’s progress. His teenage daughter Joyce Marie speaks of black pride (the play is set in the 60s), dresses in dashikis and wears an Afro, and is making plans to attend an all-black college....
Only a fool would neglect to investigate further the abundant flora of the world for the presence of new drugs that will benefit not only the world, but also the fool. –Norman Farnsworth Soejarto grew up in Indonesia, on the island of Java. A Dutch botanist at his agricultural college first got him interested in plant taxonomy, and a graduate professor at Harvard in the 1960s turned him toward economic botany and ethnobotany–studying not just the difference between one kind of plant and another, but their value to people as well....
In the good old days before the world got complicated, you could take your tennis racket over to the public courts at Waveland and the lake and play for hours without charge. Many other tennis players at Waveland agree; their gripes are yet more fallout from general superintendent Forrest Claypool’s plan to turn Park District operations such as parking, tennis, and golf over to professionals. Best of Chicago voting is live now....
Banquets we’d like to see. According to Purdue agriculture professor Al Heber, chair of the First International Conference on Air Pollution from Agricultural Operations, which is set for February, “Forty-five of the papers, three of the workshops, and two banquet speeches will be associated with the technical and regulatory issues of livestock odor.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “The government’s involvement in National Consumers Week is doubly ironic because government itself is often the consumer’s worst enemy,” contends Joseph Bast of the Palatine-based Heartland Institute in a news release....
