GRIOT NEW YORK A telling moment comes in a duet called “Spring Yaounde.” Yaounde is the capital of Cameroon, which has nothing to do with this seduction dance for a man and woman dressed only in bikini trunks; the woman’s soft breasts dominate the dance’s image. When it begins, the woman (Valentina Alexander) is in something like a classical ballet position–an attitude derriere en pointe, balanced on one fully extended foot while the other leg is lifted behind and bent at the knee, a position that demands both strength and the willful disregard of pain....

A comment on your welcome WBEZ piece [September 15]. I was a regular ‘BEZ subscriber, increasing my yearly checks toward a painful point, up to 1992, when Ken Davis was eased out as program director. I haven’t chosen to give since, and I’m sure that many others have followed this pattern. With Ken around, everyone had too much freedom and fun; he must have been doing something wrong. Gone is the vitality, pervasive intelligence, playfulness, experimentation (some winners/some losers), variety, and general enthusiasm in the programs....

Raging Slab’s Def American debut, Dynamite Monster Boogie Concert, is rife with fragments of the 70s: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s southern blues boogie, Blue Oyster Cult’s heavy rock hooks, Grand Funk Railroad’s braggadocio, ZZ Top’s riff-drenched electric blues, Bad Company’s pure hard rock. But Raging Slab doesn’t just gorge on the past and spit it back out. They extract a wealth of hooks from these various bands, then punch them into a harder, meaner rock hybrid, injecting it with a shot of serious funk....

JOE LOUIS WALKER 10/20, BUDDY GUY’S On the recently released Blues of the Month Club (Verve) California bluesman Joe Louis Walker continues to streamline his amalgam of soul, gospel, and hard urban blues. His improved singing–dig the convincing grit of “Lost Heart”–comes closer to matching the stunning fluency of his guitar playing, and if ultimately he’s not furthering the tradition much, his punchy execution of the essentials remains top-notch. SPARKLEHORSE 10/20, PARK WEST The brainchild of Richmond’s Mark Linkous, Sparklehorse purveys delicate, gauzy country rock, quavering Neil Young-ish crooning, and cathartic rock explosions....

FILTER, DIE CHEERLEADER 7/7, METRO Following in the dubious footsteps of the laughably stupid Dink, who hail from Kent, Ohio, Cleveland’s Filter have found surprising success with a debut album of post-Nine Inch Nails industrial-flavored rock. That record, Short Bus (Reprise), sets the band’s technological blitzkrieg in a quasi-metal landscape, feeding angst-hungry kids the bubblegum dissatisfaction for which they starve. Without so much as mentioning the word tolerance, “Dose” attacks religious proselytizing with beanbrained lines like “I hate it when you preach your case / It makes me want to stick my dick in your face....

It’s best to have a detailed county map when exploring the beautiful countryside surrounding Spring Green. Otherwise you might never veer off onto the back roads and discover such treasures as the Friendship Historical Wayside on Friendship Drive, about 18 miles north of Spring Green (off highway 23), near Loganville. It’s a restored one-room schoolhouse and picnic site that sits high on a ridge, offering breathtaking views even on a cloudy day....

After yoga I slip into this lethargic trance during which almost nothing can unnerve me. So when Vicky Ortega, the gracious hostess at Chapulin, broke the news about the pending liquor license, I didn’t flinch. A beer might have edged me into a relaxation coma. Once I sampled the work of chefs and co-owners Don Hill and Dudley Nieto, however, I was shocked back into consciousness. This is the real thing: subtle, delightful Mexican cuisine....

The main arteries leading to Bill Veeck Stadium were clogged with traffic before the start of game one of the American League Championship Series. Cars inched their way toward parking lots that were already filled. Ticket holders who had managed to ditch their cars somewhere along the route strutted past the traffic in a way that must have truly infuriated those who were simply, hopelessly stuck. Not me. I parked on Halsted north of 35th, locked the doors, and fed the meter to get it at least close to the 9 PM cutoff....

Ticketmaster Uber Alles Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I wish there were a bit more consideration for the Herculean chore the band cut out for itself–inventing its own concert touring industry, just for starters. And I’m amazed at the misperceptions regarding the lifestyle of someone like Vedder. It’s fair to say that being a rock star is probably the easiest job in the world; Vedder’s trying to do about the hardest thing for someone in his situation, which is to not be one....

If you’re putting on a play in Chicago, Richard Eisenhardt would love to receive your press release. Understand he can’t guarantee he’ll attend your production–his schedule allows him to see only 125 to 200 plays a year–but he’ll certainly publicize it for you and wish you a most successful run. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Eisenhardt manages to churn out between 50 and 150 copies a week of Theater ’93....

The Newberry Consort Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So it was a particular pleasure to hear a women’s vocal trio performing some unfamiliar early music when the Newberry Consort presented the second concert of its 12th season. Only one official member of the consort, director Mary Springfels, was part of this second annual “Daughters of the Muse” concert (“Ladies’ Night at the Newberry”), which focused on music written for women singers in Italy and Spain between 1580 and 1640....

Into the Woods, Touchstone Theatre. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Like a standup comic, the tale must sense . . . the fears and hunger of its audience,” writes British literary critic Marina Warner in From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers. Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s brilliant musical weaves together the stories of Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Jack the Giant Killer, aiming at the deepest yearnings and anxieties they suggest....

NEWBERRY CONSORT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Music from the distant past deemed worthy of scholarly investigation and revival tends to be either sacred or courtly–works originally written and performed for the elite. The focus of the Newberry Consort’s season opener, however, is on the popular music of Paris in the late 1400s and early 1500s, when a thriving professional class, rejecting the ossified allegories favored by aristocrats, demanded its own, more secular entertainment....

Lead Story Richard Shane Collins, 22, escaped from a police holding cell in Manassas, Virginia, in November by squeezing through a ten-by-ten-inch opening used to pass food and papers to prisoners. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Police in Key West, Florida, were called to a house in September to quell a loud argument in which a 28-year-old woman was accusing her 29-year-old female friend of attempting to steal her strap-on deluxe model vibrator, which she said was valued at $90....

RED DEVIL GREEN DEVIL Terrapin Theatre Company Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The two title characters begin as friends, Green inviting Red to Tea, and Red arriving accompanied by a froglike baby (or a babylike frog, if you wish). All is harmonious until Green carelessly lights a match, which so distresses the apparently pyrophobic Red that it brings out well, the devil in him....

By Craig Keller A passel of swaggering 12-year-olds do their best to evoke the brash hustlers of Damon Runyon’s Broadway. But halfway through the song, a miscue leads to a moment of confusion. Steps and voices falter. Frank Loesser’s masterpiece threatens to implode. “The place was like a magnet for kids in the theater,” says critic and teacher Albert Williams, a camper and counselor at Harand in the mid-60s. “But some of them were disappointed because Harand didn’t try to be a professionally oriented place....

MOLLY McGUIRE 11/18, METRO With their furious but precise grind, piling slabs of numb guitar aggression atop a relentless rhythmic drive, this young foursome from Kansas City, Missouri, suggest a less interesting, less daring Drive Like Jehu. Their fairly impressive musical concision is undercut by their lack of songwriting ability and Jason Blackmore’s monoemotional wail. They open for the Ex-Idols and Mariana Trench. FOSSIL 11/18, SCHUBAS Just beyond the competent but cloying pop-rock on this New York-area quartet’s debut EP, Crumb (Sire), is a song called “Prurient Bess....

MEXICO 70 9/9, BEAT KITCHEN Slick, seamless, sappy British guitar pop from a band led by former Felt member Mick Bund. On their lush, lilting U.S. debut, The Dust Has Come to Stay (Big Pop), Mexico 70–named for the 1970 World Cup held south of the border, duh–sound a lot like some of Bund’s admitted influences, most notably Lloyd Cole, Prefab Sprout, and the Blue Nile. BLIND VENETIANS 9/9, METRO Competent, thoroughly average local pop rockers, the Blind Venetians fill their second album, The Wreck of the Lolly Wilson (Big Jaw), with passable variations on hard-strummed guitar attacks–and a few irritating descents into wah-wah hell....

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 7 Palms Floundering Wes Craven resurrects Freddy Krueger one more time, and for the first hour at least he gleefully wreaks havoc on the all-too-familiar conventions of the series. The stars from the original film are back, only this time they play themselves: Craven is rumored to be preparing a script for a new Nightmare on Elm Street sequel, but everything he puts down on paper comes horrifyingly true for the cast members, especially Heather Langenkamp, the actress who played the heroine in the original film....

TRANSYLVAN STRING QUARTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In a season already blessed with visits by renowned and emerging European string quartets, the local debut of the Transylvan String Quartet surely qualifies as the most unusual. Very little is known about the foursome except that its members are quite young (early 30s) and have been anointed as a quartet worthy of being subsidized by the government of Romania, a country that has bred legions of capable stringers trained in the sentiment-laden central European tradition....