Ever have the urge to visit another time, another place, another state of mind? If so, Louisville’s Bodeco is your tattered, sweat-soaked ticket. There’s no shortage of “rockabilly” bands, but Bodeco aren’t just another bunch of mock-greaser history majors tricked out for the evening in bad clothes and phony snarls; like that 5,000-year-old hiker found frozen in the Alps a few years ago, they’re freakishly authentic. They hark back to that era when hillbillies recorded tinny, scratchy, mono 45s for long-gone labels....

Body & Soul, Head Lemming Theatre Company, at A Red Orchid Theater. John Mighton’s entertaining but sketchy, undeveloped script typifies the problems with contemporary playwriting. He takes a handful of mildly controversial social topics–the collapse of the institution of marriage, the glorification of self-appointed expert/gurus, sexual fetishization–and combines them with thinly drawn oddball types (Jane, the lead character, is a necrophiliac mortician) to create a series of punchy, occasionally fascinating scenes that rarely go anywhere, least of all into emotional complication....

AUGUST The second edition of the Oatmeal Journal, an art and comics magazine, gets unveiled tonight at 6:30 at Quimby’s Queer Store. Contributors such as Jason Bell, Greg Cook, Margaret Catania, Sara Peak, and Kari Percival will be on hand to sign copies, and as an added attraction, organizers are raffling off a winter’s supply of oatmeal and a free page in the next Oatmeal Journal. Quimby’s is at 1328 N....

In the jazz age of the 1920s, local crowds thrilled to the “crazy music” of Sally Kaye Rosemont. She was billed as “Boop-boop-a-doo Girl” at the Chicago Theatre in 1929–two years before the first Betty Boop cartoon. Now, at 83, she’s holding an exhibit of her artwork and jazz memorabilia. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Born in Chicago to Polish immigrants and raised in Bucktown, Salomea Janiak mastered piano and accordion by the time she was 11....

Coffeehouse Organ Asch knows this stuff. He’s an owner of Scenes, the theater-oriented cafe on Clark Street. And he’s publisher of the free monthly Strong Coffee. Just beginning its fifth year, Strong Coffee, edited by cofounder Martin Northway, is the same savory blend of quirky voices as the cafes where it’s distributed. “What we wanted to do,” says Northway, “was create a medium where you’d meet the regulars, a few surprises, and everything was up for discussion....

The Contemporary Chamber Players enter their fourth decade without the sure-handed guidance of founding director Ralph Shapey, who retired last year. Under the redoubtable Shapey, this estimable new-music ensemble embraced eclecticism, showcasing with conviction established works and the latest trends, especially those certified by academia. What’s next? At least for now, the programming and performers remain pretty much the same. Harvey Sollberger, the well-known flutist and composer based at the University of California at San Diego, is the guest maestro in this survey of pieces written in the post decade by experimentalists who are over 50....

By Neal Pollack When Mary first opened Abby’s Let’s Pet 18 years ago, it was a grooming and pet-supplies shop at Halsted and Cornelia. Since then Abby’s Let’s Pet has been located at Belmont and Racine, Lincoln and Irving, and its current location near the corner of Ashland and Roscoe, indicated by a big clapboard out front that reads PUPPIES. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “It’s not really Abby’s, it’s just Let’s Pet,” explains Mary, who says she added “Abby’s” because it places the store first in the Yellow Pages....

Critic’s Choice This third in a four-part video series is worth seeing for two of its tapes. Though Gordon Matta-Clark’s Clockshower (originally shot on film) isn’t very well made, it should fascinate those familiar with the filmmaker’s bizarre interest in architecture: in other works he actually took buildings apart. In this video he climbs to the top of a New York clock tower and uses a stream of water coming from one of the clock’s hands to wash, shave, and brush his teeth....

Estonian-born composer Arvo Part, who turns 60 this year, is an archdeacon of the neomedieval movement. Like many others in the movement, including Henryk Gorecki and John Tavener, he started out infatuated with serialism, then saw its limitations and turned to medieval and folk music for inspiration. Part has developed a distinctive style he calls “tintinnabuli” for its preponderance of bell-like sounds that evoke a monastery. His choral pieces, many of which set traditional texts, are subtler than Gorecki’s and more chaste than Tavener’s....

Usually, we use this space to extol the demonstrable virtues of a musician or group; every so often, though, we just cross our fingers and hope that a previously unheard venture delivers on its promise. With the exception of the one audience that witnessed an accidental teaming of these musicians two years ago, nobody knows exactly what to expect from this trio, whose members hail from three distinct regions of the Chicago jazz landscape....

Fogel’s Maneuver Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Fogel’s announcement struck CSO musicians as a peculiar development at the very least, and speculation as to his reasons was rampant. Late last week, as the orchestra prepared to leave on a tour of the east coast and Europe, Fogel issued a terse “no comment” when asked through a spokeswoman about his decision to sit out the talks....

Appearances can lie. Peacocks are nasty, roses -have thorns, and Cindy Crawford could be rotten to the core. I’m not saying she is, mind you; just that it’s possible. There are perfectly understandable standable reasons for wanting to believe Brownmiller et al. For one, beautiful people form a natural elite, elites are undemocratic, and we live a democracy–at least on paper. For another, ranking people on the basis of their looks makes for hurt feelings, as anyone who’s been to high school knows....

Based on a true story, Ken Loach’s powerful and disturbing British drama about a single working-class mother with four children from four different fathers is made unforgettable both by stand-up comedian Crissy Rock’s lead performance and by the filmmakers’ determination to make the story as messy and as complex as life itself. After many abusive relationships, Maggie, the heroine, settles down with a gentle Paraguayan refugee (beautifully played by Vladimir Vega), but then has to contend repeatedly with the state taking away her children....

Cole’s Back Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » With Love Story, his second Rykodisc album, Lloyd Cole completes his transition from fervid rocker to adult crooner. Looking back, you can see that this romantic Scot’s work with his original backing band, the Commotions, and his first solo album, were of a piece; his second solo outing, the aptly titled Don’t Get Weird on Me, Babe, paired a beginning suite of normal rock tracks with another of languid torch songs, complete with strings scored by Paul Buckmaster....

PJ Harvey To Bring You My Love is awash in references to mothers and children, and the most immediately arresting thing about it is Harvey’s voice. Her tunes will quickly insinuate their way into your memory, her arrangements will soon reveal their ingenuity, and her lyrics will eventually sink their awesome claws into your consciousness. But the thing that will hit you in the face like the wet kiss at the end of a hot fist is the sound of her voice....

On Sunday nights the Empty Bottle undergoes a subtle transformation. Some patrons play a lazy game of pool in front of the stage, which is dark and empty. Others hold quiet conversations at the tables in front of the bar. In a corner a DJ mixes records behind two turntables. The hypnotic, beat-driven bass-heavy music pumping through the speakers is a mixture of reggae, rocksteady, dub, jungle, and dancehall. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Over the last four decades, jazz’s version of the power trio–the tenor/bass/drums alliance pioneered by Sonny Rollins in 1957–has launched a thousand flights of freedom: the exclusion of piano opens up the group timbre, and it also helps cut the music loose from its traditional harmonic moorings. In his Ritual Trio, drummer Kahil EI’Zabar loosens things further, altering the percussion side of the triangle, which profoundly changes everything. El’Zabar concentrates on his favorite percussion instruments–the conga drums and various African thumb pianos–in providing a dancing, distinctly Africanized beat; even when he moves to the trap set, he maintains a relatively soft and spacious profile, and thus manages to expand even further the format’s open-sky sound....

Dances of the Diaspora One of the most gratifying aspects of folk dance–whether African, Eastern European, or Taiwanese–is the ability to unite people. It’s a subtle force, yet “Dances of the Diaspora,” Muntu Dance Theatre’s Spring Festival of Dance offering, shows that it works in deep, powerful ways. You could say that traditional African rhythms were the glue that kept Africans together in a society that tried to divide and break them....