It’s possible that in future years the debauching of Soul Asylum will become one of rock’s great cautionary tales. In the 1980s the band was a live powerhouse whose winsome, bashy albums certainly deserved wider attention. The Minneapolis foursome agreeably went the major-label route, eventually scored themselves a platinum record (Grave Dancers Union), and became the first of their 80s indie fellows to find themselves on the cover of Rolling Stone....

Dept. of fine distinctions. The Northfield-based retailer of a negative-ion generator says the product “is not cleared by the FDA, so we do not make any health claims for it.” Yet the advertised dial settings include “fewer colds and flu” and “reduced recuperation time.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Hate crimes in Chicago, although they are almost a daily occurrence, continue not to be newsworthy,” according to Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess, reporting on media coverage from January 1 to November 16, 1993–unless, of course, the victims are white....

“Hey, what are you doing here?” “Is it your first one?” It is spring and a young man’s fancy turns to, oh, never mind. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I laid out a five and the cashier handed back a bucket of balls and two quarters. They’ve all gone up by a buck or so. The guy sees the shake of my head, so he adds, “They plan to make improvements....

Bobby Broom’s distinction lies in the subtle eclecticism of his playing. In his choice of notes and even in the tone he coaxes from the jazz guitar, he blends hints of blues and funk, and goes so for as to suggest a working familiarity with acid rock. Broom doesn’t perform in those genre’s per se; instead he uses a whiff here, a pinch there, to spice the stew. He also brings to the guitar a bursting, somewhat diffuse energy....

Aurora and Joliet are close enough to Chicago that if you drive to either one to gamble you can come right back the same evening. That’s good news, because neither town offers much else to do anyway. But if you’re still stuck on the Vegas ethos, you can re-create a small part of it by driving half a day to get to a casino, the way people in southern California do....

Columbus Chicago Dance Connection at the Skyline Stage, Navy Pier, August 19 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It was also appropriate, because the dances tended to be personal. Craig-Quijada even made a solo for her husband, Physical History. Philip Brooks’s bio reads, “He is not a dancer or choreographer. But he married one. Thus, his appearance here tonight.” Craig-Quijada seems to have been motivated to heal, not exploit: Brooks begins by whispering, then announces out loud that this is “the secret physical history of my family....

The DanceAfrica festivals, put on by the Dance Center of Columbia College, have always been high-energy affairs; often it seems the audience wants to dance too. And occasionally that’s happened–a child will jump out of the audience during a drum jam to dance next to the lead drummer. In these traditional pieces the dancers often adopt a low, almost crouching posture in the middle of a circle of drummers who play continually through the performance; sometimes the men whirl into the air in wild leaps, and the women sink to the ground in contortionist moves....

ENSEMBLE KALINDA CHICAGO & SONES DE MEXICO ENSEMBLE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Project Kalinda, the scholarly arm of Columbia College’s Center for Black Music Research, probes for African influences in the folk traditions of Latin America and the West Indies. Ensemble Kalinda Chicago gives concerts meant to illustrate the linkages, which can be detected in the rhythms, repetitive structure, and tribal euphoria prevalent in Latin American and Caribbean music....

Ann Magnuson It’s easy to forget that there was once a time when little girls didn’t dream of becoming stars, when women weren’t allowed onstage at all and female parts were played by men–centuries before Andy Warhol and John Waters. It wasn’t until the turn of this century that significant numbers of women dared venture onto the public stage; they were considered little better than prostitutes for plying their craft. Moving pictures and the ascent of Hollywood changed all that, at least theoretically, and within a few quick decades the middle class went from scorning the brazen hussies of stage and screen to worshiping them as icons of ideal womanhood....

Sirs: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As if having to deal with the impenetrable whinings of film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum weren’t enough, now we have filmgoers like Harris Meyer (December 2 Letters), crying about Rosenbaum?! Give me a break. Why anybody in their right mind would go to a movie, hoping for a “postmodernist cinematic breakthrough” is completely beyond me. Movies are entertainment. Period....

Films by Abbas Kiarostami Five of the Kiarostami features have shown at the Film Center before, but everything else is a Chicago premiere. In many respects the short films–many of which I first saw last August at the Locarno film festival–are the real revelations in the series. Most of these works are conceptual and experimental pieces having something to do with children, and many of them have a fascinating relationship to Lehrstücke, or “learning-play,” a form closely identified with Bertolt Brecht....

It’s a typical day for Carmen Velasquez, executive director of the Alivio Medical Center. Her phone rings madly as she searches through a neatly stacked pile of papers on her desk, looking for a document explaining how much it will cost to expand the center at 2355 S. Western. She’s talking to this reporter after just concluding an interview with another. She’s got a staff meeting after lunch and a business meeting with funders after that....

To the editor: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I became depressed in my late teens, in the 60s. The professionals who treated me evaded or ignored my questions about what depression is, what causes it, and what the probable outcome is. They did not explain their approach to depression, and they were frustratingly laconic and passive with me. It seems axiomatic that a depressed person cannot be treated in isolation, but they weren’t interested in whether my family was supportive toward me in my illness....

Breaking the Waves With Emily Watson, Stellan Ever since I first encountered Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves in Cannes, where it won the grand jury prize, I’ve been debating within myself about it, because I find it simultaneously shameless, boldly original, contrived, highly affecting, transparent, cynical, hopeful, ironic, sincere, ugly, beautiful, and downright baffling. In a way, my debate isn’t so different from that of Bess (Emily Watson)–the innocent and high strung (or unstrung) young heroine who lives on the northwest coast of Scotland in the early 70s and for much of the film carries on a furious internal debate with “God,” speaking her own part in a squeaky high voice and God’s in a patriarchal low one....

WEST SIDE STORY In an interesting coincidence, two of the summer’s major musical revivals climax with the same tableau: a woman kneels over her prostrate lover, just felled by a bullet. The image sums up the telling contrasts between West Side Story and A Little Night Music. In the first show the scene is tragic–almost remorselessly so, though the creators of this jazzy juvenile-delinquent version of Romeo and Juliet pull their punches by having Maria, unlike Juliet, survive her lover Tony, shot dead by a rival gang member....

The mysterious British band Pram is obviously preoccupied with the sea. Their forthcoming album Sargasso Sea (Too Pure/American) has songs called “Eels” and “Sea Swells and Distant Squalls,” and artwork for previous releases has included plenty of underwater photography. The band’s slippery and at times hallucinogenic music even sounds muted by water. Centered on the riveting, childlike voice of leader/keyboardist Rosie (yep, Pram is one of those bands with no use for last names), it’s a skewed mix of oddly swinging drums, distended bass lines, queasy keyboards, palsied horns, and various other virtually unidentifiable sources of sounds, including a homemade theremin....

Let’s hear it for rotting organic matter! “Fertilizers are best when they come from the yard itself,” according to Ken Dunn of the Resource Center, who has been known to give away compost bins for yard waste at North Park Village Recycling Center on North Pulaski. “The yard then becomes like the rain forest whose lush vegetation is supported in rather poor soil, but feeds on ample nutrients from the decaying plant matter of previous seasons....

“It’s a common assumption that people are not convinced about the importance of vaccinations,” says Dr. Cai Glushak of the University of Chicago Hospitals Pediatric Immunization Program, quoted in the Joyce Foundation’s October report “Testing Strategies to Raise Immunization Rates.” “But we didn’t find that” in CHA’s Robert Taylor Homes. “Instead, we found that parents are confused about the complexity of the schedule or don’t know that kids are lacking specific immunizations....

Are there any jokes in the Bible? I look for humor in nearly everything, but I’ve never been able to find any in the Bible. I realize most current humor is either sexually oriented, scatological, and/or disparaging to some group or other, all of which is quite antithetical to the Bible’s purpose. But no humor at all? It’s a long book and theoretically speaks to every aspect of the human condition....

Tori Amos began her professional pop career in the unfortunately named bad hard-rock band Y Kant Tori Read; she’d become pretty twisted in a life spent swaying ambivalently between child musical prodigy and naughty street girl. She reemerged in 1992 with a lush and interestingly appointed album, Little Earthquakes. On its best tracks–my favorite was the roaring single “Crucify”–her wound-up ballads found a middle ground between new age and rock ‘n’ roll....