Long before Clint Eastwood was urging crooks to read his lips and make his day–and long, long before Batman was redefined as a disturbed dark knight–there was fictional private eye Mike Hammer. Where Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade were downbeat loners trying to restore order to the mean streets of America, Mike Hammer was nuts–a sadistic fascist with a messianic complex in one hand and a .45 in the other. (“I lived to kill so that others could live,” he growls in One Lonely Night, one of a series of novels that also includes I, the Jury and Vengeance Is Mine....

Guitarist Bobby Parker is best known among R & B aficionados for his 1961 hit “Watch Your Step,” which influenced, among others, the Beatles (Lennon credited the song for inspiring the “Day Tripper” guitar riff) and Led Zeppelin (Robert Plant has cited Parker as a major musical role model). Now that Parker’s back in full force on the blues scene, one can understand why he’s been revered by people like these: his lead work tends to start where others leave off–high-treble note bends, screaming tone, and relentlessly ascending melody lines....

CAMELOT You’ll learn nothing from the production of Camelot now playing at the Shubert Theatre. Groomed to suit the limitations of its star, Robert Goulet, this hackwork road show makes one long for the imperfect but adventurous My Fair Lady that played last month at the Chicago. That show was often disappointing–but at least it risked something. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But the audience eats it up, sad to say; they laugh along when Goulet breaks character in a carefully rehearsed “ad-lib” to laugh at Valentine, thus proving he’s a regular guy, and they applaud the past-his-prime star because he’s the one they paid to see....

One of the founding fathers of New Zealand’s fertile punk rock scene, Chris Knox has quietly built up a substantial body of work that clearly establishes his highly unusual but thoroughly persuasive pop smarts. After graduating from the Enemy and Toy Love in the late 70s and forming the legendary Tall Dwarfs with Alec Bathgate, Knox developed a distinctive style that nonchalantly presaged America’s lo-fi movement; his recordings tend to be thrifty affairs, guided solely by creative invention....

When Berlioz, an ardent Shakespeare fan, set Romeo and Juliet to music in 1838, he called his adaptation a “dramatic symphony” for chorus, soloists, and orchestra. Unlike Gounod’s less successful operatic treatment, Berlioz’s version wisely focused on the essentials of the tragedy. The prologue for chorus and soloists sets forth the conflicts between the Montagues and Capulets, the choral finale brings about the reconciliation, and what transpires in between is largely episodic orchestral music interspersed with vocal commentaries....

On their amazing new album Orange (Matador) the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion have their pomo mojo working. While Spencer ultimately failed at merging noise, a “fuck you” attitude, and riffs swiped from the Stones in his old band, Pussy Galore, his new combo with drummer Russell Simins and second guitarist Judah Bauer has gone on an ecstatic slice-and-dice spree through the undergrowth of America’s raunchy prerock musical culture. Inspired by the sounds Sam Philips recorded in the old Memphis Sun Studios, the JSBE evoke the frenzied and reckless attack of proto-rock ‘n’ roll icons like Jerry Lee Lewis and blues giants like Howlin’ Wolf....

MENDACITY The first and best of the four one-acts, Six Neighbors Talk About Lies, outlines a juicy little suburban scandal through six brief monologues. Three couples frozen in portraits of wedded bliss come alive one by one to confess fears, sins, and fantasies. These range from the innocuous (a wife admits that her husband is a disappointing substitute for a white knight) to the venomously bored (a man caught in bed with his neighbor’s wife finds the whole experience tedious)....

Two years ago Shirley Mordine said that she wasn’t interested in making a well-made dance in Edge Mode, a projected three-part work that at the time had only one part. I took her remark rather literally to mean that sections like the “boot dance” were full of an uncharacteristic violence, rough around the edges. Well, she’s still saying a well-made dance doesn’t interest her, but after seeing the unfinished evening-length work last year and hearing her talk about it a few weeks ago, I know she means a deeper, more complete kind of roughness....

Ten years ago hardcore matinees–all-ages daytime punk-rock concerts often held in nontraditional venues–were a dime a dozen. Punk has since mingled with the mainstream, and though groups still play at places like the Fireside Bowl, many would-be matinee bands now play clubs and even arenas. The spirit of this Saturday’s Destroy All Music festival recalls the underground from the days of yore, even if the music itself doesn’t. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Dear editor: In his February 4 Reader article on the Chicago Public Library, Ben Joravsky, quoting a survey by “Chicago Public Library Advocates,” a self-proclaimed watchdog group from two north-side libraries, states that many of Chicago’s neighborhood libraries are “in dire need of renovation or repairs.” Certainly more renovation is needed for the City’s libraries, but the criticism completely ignores a neighborhood library building program which former Commissioner John Duff once described as the most ambitious and successful of any American city....

Robin Wang–never mind the anglicization of his given name, Luo-bin–is one of China’s premier ethnomusicologists and folk performers. Born in Beijing in 1913, he studied Western music with German and Russian professors in college. But in 1937 he journeyed to China’s Muslim-dominated northwestern provinces and became so taken with the tangy, nonpentatonic music there that he uprooted himself and settled in Xinjiang, the vast central Asian province that borders both Kazakhstan and Tibet....

Think of Sheila Jordan’s voice as a (thankfully, miraculously) wayward child who has managed to resist even the most benign adulterations. That’s how it retains an odd power to recast traditional notions of beauty and merit. Like Billie Holiday–whom she resembles in spirit though not in style or manner–Jordan rejects the merely pretty. Instead she finds the improvised notes that nobody else wanted and revels in the naked purity of her unorthodox instrument....

PICTURED FROM RIGHT TO LEFT But young choreographers Peter Carpenter, Marianne Kim, and Cynthia Reid use dance to explore something more than just dance: in “Pictured From Right to Left” their subjects range from 24-hour supermarkets to the writing on bathroom walls to gay love. Their styles and interests vary, but they share a strong sense of theatricality and a talent for noticing the unusual amid the ordinary. All three judiciously employ props, text, and color to provide a rich, meaningful context for their movement....

BLUE MURDER 5/13, VIC Guitarist John Sykes, formerly of Tygers of Pan Tang, Thin Lizzy, and Whitesnake, knows something about banging his head against the wall–in both senses of the phrase. Now a bandleader in his own right, he does it all over again in Blue Murder, playing rote hard rock completely free of the “flavor of the week” mentality that afflicts so much rock; actually, it’s free of flavor altogether....

SUGAR RAY 6/16, METRO Whites in America have a long history of co-opting the music of blacks and assimilating it into the predominant culture with little grace. Back in the 60s the folk-blues revival inspired scads of heavy-handed rockers to borrow blatantly from the blues, tarnishing a once-pure form with gobs of overwrought self-indulgence. Today hip-hop is the source for larcenists like Sugar Ray, the latest in a generic line of quasi-metal bands to sport a hard-funk tinge and a convoluted hip-hop sensibility....

Ever since its founding in 1979, the Toronto-based Tafelmusik has maintained a well-deserved reputation as the most invigorating yet graceful of period-instrument ensembles. Its members–most of whom are renowned Canadian baroque and early-classical specialists–play with intelligence and quiet authority, often achieving a beautifully balanced sonority uncommon for baroque orchestras. In violinist Jeanne Lamon Tafelmusik has a leader who’s first among equals, an engaging pro who knows how to put together a program of entertainment informed by a strong sense of history....

Poetic, sexy, humorous, and haunting, this nonverbal performance piece showcases a fine quartet of young artist-athletes from Montreal, the DynamO Theatre. Employing a variety of movement vocabularies–including modern, jazz, and break dancing, ballet, and circus tumbling–the ensemble portrays the social and sexual evolution of four youngsters, from school-yard games (increasingly violent in their competitiveness) to emerging sexuality to a fascinatingly ambiguous finale in which the cast is literally swallowed up by a mysterious pyramid....

By MICHELLE HOLCENBERG Now that’s his job. “You can’t control for the intimidation factor,” said Lawrence Marshall, a professor at Northwestern University’s law school. Marshall helped free Rolando Cruz from death row last year after Cruz was wrongfully imprisoned for more than a decade, largely because of a coerced statement. “We could be here awhile,” Oakey says, recalling that Harris was recently made to wait a couple of hours to see her client because the desk sergeant was eating his dinner....

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Adapted, staged, and designed by artistic director Rick Helweg, the Chicago Actors Ensemble’s The Master and Margarita faithfully captures the depth if not the verve of Bulgakov’s corrosive satire, charting a clean course through a novel filled with digressions and diversions. This production may fail to move us, but it can’t help but impress, with its intelligent homage and occasional visual richness....

The Sound Gallery (Scamp) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But it’s Mr. Light’s work in the 1960s of which I am most enamored: his crusade to popularize what the liner notes to his Discotheque–Dance…Dance…Dance (Command Records, 1964) call “the Dynamic NEW Sound and Beat of Discotheque.” No, this is not the disco of Saturday Night Fever; this is, rather, the discotheque of countless 1960s movies–the music of dance clubs given over to the jet set in all their glamour and mystery....