Cold rain tapped sporadically on the pavement under the elevated tracks on Wabash. It was perfect bookstore weather. Gray skies and wet streets are supposed to have the same effect on bookstores that the full moon has on psych wards. But few people were in the old Kroch’s & Brentano’s last Thursday, when the remaining bits and pieces of the venerable bookstore were sold at auction. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

The Isley Brothers Featuring Ronald Isley Mission to Please (Island) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Isley Brothers hit their stride in the 70s, evolving from a vocal trio into a self-contained, self-produced (for their own label T-Neck) six-piece funk band by adding three younger family members who later broke off to form the group Isley Jasper Isley. The present-day Isley Brothers lineup features original lead singer Ronald Isley, younger siblings Ernie and Marvin, and Ronald’s wife Angela Winbush (formerly of the 80s R & B duo Rene and Angela), who serves as a writer, producer, programmer, and singer....

Mary-Arrchie Theatre, Angel Island, 731 W. Sheridan, 871-0442. August 19 through 21: Friday-Sunday, according to the schedule below (which is subject to lateness, cancellation, and who knows what other possible mishaps). Tickets: $5 per admission (allows you to come in once and stay as long as you like); $10 for a one-day pass (allows you to come and go at will); $25 for a pass to the full festival. Opening Ceremonies...

Laudably, none of the composers on this Chicago Sinfonietta program is a household name; in fact the only work with a familiar ring is the Carmen Suite, a clever arrangement of themes from Bizet’s opera by the Russian modernist Rodion Shchedrin (who wrote it for his wife, the ballerina Maya Plisetskaya). Jan Vorisek was a Bohemian organist who befriended Beethoven and Schubert and helped shepherd the nationalist romantic movement; his Sinfonia in D is said to be akin to one of Schubert’s middle symphonies....

When an artist’s music has thrilled and delighted you, you’ll forgive a few missteps, but Chris Whitley sure makes it difficult. He waits more than three and a half years before releasing a follow-up to his glorious debut, Living With the Law, and when he does (Din of Ecstasy, slated for release next month) it wholly abandons its predecessor’s hushed grace and haunting Unforgettable Fire-type atmospherics for the corrosive power of scagged-out blues-metal....

Presidents of the United States of America Mailer probably isn’t a big fan of the Presidents of the United States of America, a Seattle grunge-rock trio fronted by a gangly bald freak. The lyrics to their big hit “Lump” mean nothing as near as I can tell–they’re about a girl named Lump who’s stuck in the singer’s head and who also might be dead. Their other songs tackle such heavyweight topics as kitties, peaches, and dune buggies....

MAVERICKS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The countrypolitan sound–its epitome was perhaps Tammy Wynette’s “Stand by Your Man”–was defined by its mixture of country twang, lush pop orchestrations, and overt emotionalism, though in its most denatured form it nearly did away with the twang altogether. The primary architect of the Nashville Sound was guitarist and industry honcho Chet Atkins; indeed, some detractors cynically referred to the movement as the “Chet Atkins compromise....

DOWN THE ROAD Triumvirate Productions at Cafe Voltaire Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The play hinges on what Reach will tell and when. When it opens, Dan and Iris are holed up in a hotel ten miles from the maximum-security prison where Reach is. It seems that they’re a pretty happy couple–all they have to do is work on the book and try to conceive a child....

The last few years have been troubling times for the City Colleges of Chicago, and for Ron Gidwitz, the colleges’ chairman of the board. Gidwitz was out of the country and unavailable for comment, but the college press office responded to my questions by sending a fact sheet that praises him for leading “a top-to-bottom cleanup of the City Colleges–possibly the most comprehensive such effort in the nation.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We’re broke! Look what happened outside Gary just recently. We’re so cheap we can’t widen a one-track bridge to two. We can’t get slow trains rolling on existing rails, let alone the 22nd century “gee-whiz” projects Moberg describes. Locally, we are considering using Elgin, Joliet, and Eastern and Wisconsin Central tracks for new passenger lines. And I’m sure there are many more similar ideas around the country....

For the last 30 years or so American jazz fans have had little trouble cozying up to Brazilian vocalists, no matter how thin their jazz credentials. Even Brazil’s pop music has so much of what jazz listeners seek, in terms of rhythmic complexity and harmonic imagination, that it can carry many singers past their own weaknesses. As a result, we tend to shrug off the idea of a true jazz singer from Brazil–but that’s where Leny Andrade comes in....

When I saw Muntu’s Woloba in December 1994, it happened to be on the same weekend I caught the Ruth Page Nutcracker at Arie Crown. Both were full-length narrative ballets suitable for family viewing, but the values they revealed about their respective cultures couldn’t have been more different. Perhaps because ballet is an inherently aristocratic form, The Nutcracker celebrates regal isolation and the selfish love of indolence and luxury. Woloba (“The Great Forest”), a dance-opera inspired by a Senegalese folktale and performed in the Mandingo language, promotes more democratic values–work, community, good parenting, nonmaterial wealth–through the story of a baby girl who’s captured by a forest demon, released several years later by a good hunter, mistakenly married to a rich man, and finally wed to her true love....

Tuesday, November 19, 11:30 PM Saturday, November 23, 11:30 PM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Dispatcher: Unit in the area, shots fired, 1429 Fairfield, check out the area. OK, we’re also getting 1445 California now, shots fired, 1445 California, shots fired. We’re getting shots fired 3269 Palmer, we’re getting shots fired. And we’re getting 2109 Spaulding, 2138 Spaulding, shots fired….We got shots fired, 3269 Palmer, 2109 Spaulding, 2138 Spaulding....

Raising a Stink “I’m not saying we’re dying of cancer or anything, but it’s annoying,” says John Whitfield, a Spanish teacher who’s pushing the administration to eliminate the problem. “It comes and it goes. You might go a week without noticing it. Other weeks it will be two days in a row or a couple times in a day. I have to stop the lesson and open the windows and open the door until it goes away....

Sometimes I feel like making a gigantic bonfire out of all the press releases and programs in which artists explain what their work is “about” or what they’d like to accomplish–they rarely say anything worth knowing, and often they’re misleading, pretentious, or both. Fortunately for Maureen Janson, artistic director of Smartdance, her work really is smart: it has a visceral impact distinct from any meaning she or the audience tries to give it....

By Ben Joravsky The May 7 and 9 shows are the talk of the surrounding Englewood community; Lufrano has mailed invitations to civic groups and senior-citizen centers throughout the area. Rumor has it that Lynn St. James and Paul Vallas, the board’s top two officials, will be coming, maybe even bringing Mayor Daley with them. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But in recent years, as many of the area’s top students were drawn to schools with a greater emphasis on the liberal arts, Lindblom’s reputation faltered....

It started out as a case of mistaken identity, and concluded with four lives ruined and a legal morass. As first reported in New Times of Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. marshals David Dains and Garry Grotewald were hunting for a 69-year-old man named Mickey Michael on April 7, 1988. The marshals turned up at the Phoenix residence of Bill and Virginia Span, aged 74 and 72, looking for Michael. The Spans had a son of that name, though he was only 39....

Proficiency test. Computer repair technician Yvonne Miller on her first day of work at south suburban Moraine Valley Community College (Applause Applause: 1994 Employee Awards): “My boss, Jay Torrens, said, ‘Here’s your office. There’s your computer. By the way, the computer doesn’t work so you might as well fix it.’” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “As a populist stick to beat the corporations, the campaign against corporate welfare is well-timed and powerful,” writes David Moberg in In These Times (April 17)....

THE TEMPEST All this abstraction evokes a shipwreck that is frighteningly real to the imagination. But more important, the scene focuses on Prospero’s relationship to the calamity he has created. Prospero alone is lit, and we see his delight as he brings his enemies, those who conspired to overthrow his dukedom and banished him to an island, to their knees. But he also seems troubled by his action, as if dimly aware of the great lesson in forgiveness he will learn by the end of the play....

America’s Music: The Roots of Country Robert Oermann, the writer of America’s Music: The Roots of Country, a six-hour series that will be reshown in its entirety this Saturday on cable network TBS from 11 AM to 5 PM, doesn’t exactly sail through the dilemmas of scope and prejudice, but he doesn’t entirely stumble over them either. He tries to dole out coverage based on merit and significance. Ultimately, though, he’s bit off more than he can chew, so the results are unsatisfying....