“‘Ball of Confusion’ by the Temptations really set the pace for rap,” says Chicago writer Scoop Jackson of the 1970 hit. “It was the structure of the song, the speed, the repetitive lyrics. They were verbalizing and rhyming at a pace that really hadn’t been done before. The politics behind the lyrics stood out. The tone of the song is a lot angrier than anything the Temptations have ever done. I mean, they’re screamin’ on the church, politics, and education....

New Orleans’s vaunted tradition of musical eclecticism very likely originated among the early brass ensembles that marched in street parades–bands capable of everything from funeral hymns to syncopated, collectively improvised barn burners. The ReBirth Brass Band, despite the members’ relative youth, boasts a musical lineage that extends directly back to those original masters. All the timeless Crescent City embellishments are here: gutbucket growls and tailgate trombone slurs, Armstrong-like tonal brilliance, molar-rattling tuba blasts, and always that irresistible second-line beat–the distinctively New Orleans rhythm that grew from the early fusion of African and European cadences and eventually evolved into shuffles, swing, and funk....

ASS PONYS, 1/21, THURSTON’S The hypnotic pop of this undeservedly obscure Cincinnati quartet builds from the chiming, interwoven guitar patterns of Chuck Cleaver and John Erhardt; their songs slowly develop with an absorbing momentum that reaches nearly mantralike power. On the other hand, the Ass Ponys avoid formless trance-out modes, punctuating the sonic swirl with clearly defined, infectious folk-rock melodies. Amid this dynamic churning action floats Cleaver’s warm warble delivering edgy lyrics with a subtly humorous sting (“You’re like a race car / With all of the tires flat”)....

Goodman Theatre. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Santo Loquasto’s sumptuous provincial villa is impeccably detailed and awesomely spacious and elegant. His fashion-plate costumes all but create the characters. James F. Ingalls’s lighting puts sun and moon to shame. But never has a more splendid frame held an emptier canvas. Succumbing to sitcom sterility when it doesn’t erupt in histrionics, Robert Falls’s alternately broad and shallow Goodman production has little to add to a seminal play and in fact subtracts much....

Unplugged A woman’s no longer an oddity in the press boxes of America, but the July 14 visit by the Tribune’s sports editor was historic. Down on Comiskey’s greensward the Sox battled Cleveland for first place. Upstairs, the boys found it hard to focus on the game. We reached Solomon last week just before he vanished in Alaska. What (in God’s name) did you have in mind? we wondered....

WHAT WE LIVE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » On its first two recordings the San Francisco-based trio What We Live has quickly set an impressive standard for flexibility, gracefully bridging the gap between a highly nuanced free improvisation and a sometimes brawny but always expressive freebop. Drummer Donald Robinson, bassist Lisle Ellis (the Canadian expat best known for his stellar duo with pianist Paul Plimley), and saxophonist Larry Ochs (a longtime member of the ROVA sax quartet) truly perform as a unit, conveying a deep sense of intuition and empathy....

Feld Ballets/New York Eliot Feld has such good taste sometimes it makes you want to scream. I think it makes him want to scream too. Fortunately for him and us, a man of his experience–he’s choreographed 86 ballets in 28 years and has danced with American Ballet Theatre, with the company of African-American choreographer Donald McKayle, and in the cast of West Side Story, on Broadway and in the movie–can let go whenever he wants....

Frontier Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A common tactic connects acts as diverse as Tortoise, Brise-Glace, Flying Saucer Attack, Main, Jesus and Mary Chain, and This Heat: take a massive, merciless beat–bass and drums in hard pursuit of groove–then superimpose sheets of electronic noise, be it fuzzed, phased, or flanged. Chicago’s new foursome Frontier makes a full-fledged methodology of this technique. Drummer Michael Tsoulos worships at dub reggae’s snare-drum shrine, whacking with a reverence reminiscent of On-U skinsman Style Scott but retaining a mean rock punch; meanwhile bassist Kevin Ireland sets down a rubbery bottom end....

Jake Austen’s favorite monkey scene takes place in the film The Son of Kong. “At the beginning they go to a bar and monkeys are playing music,” he says. “There’s one on violin playing the melody, two drummers, and a dancing monkey doing flips that’s dressed like a belly dancer. The violinist plays badly and hits the wrong notes, and the drums are not on the beat. It looks like they’re really playing....

Sometime in the next few weeks Lou Pardo will oversee the registration of his 100,000th voter–surely a record, even in a city obsessed with politics and campaigns. Pardo makes no secret about his most immediate goal: he wants to help ignite a grass-roots political movement that would unseat Mayor Richard Daley–the same kind of movement that carried Harold Washington to City Hall. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In many ways, Pardo is the last of a breed–a lifelong labor, civil rights, and political activist radicalized by the Depression and World War II....

If you believe Peter Pan, clapping your hands will bring fairies back to life. And at the Pansy Kings’ Cotillion ’95, you might just get an encore out of them too. Billed as “the ultimate sampler pack of Chicago’s gay male performance scene,” this annual homopalooza proves just how much life the gay community has, even in this archconservative second decade of AIDS. Unfortunately, fairy godmother and cotillion curator Dave Awl lost the Queen of the Pansy Kings only a month ago, when Dominic Hamilton Little, last year’s tuxedoed-and-panty-hosed host, moved to New York City....

Mahler’s Eighth Symphony Leif Segerstam The Eighth is so long and diffuse that most conductors end up not so much interpreters as traffic cops. A maestro doesn’t have much chance to show off his individual style when this unmanageable horde of musicians must somehow be held together for more than an hour and a half. Without an iron grip, the endlessly shifting combinations of choirs and instruments wander out of phase; none of the many, many crescendos registers as more than an indistinct blare; and the long stretches of development sink into a kind of becalmed bustle....

Dear Reader: A friend and I held a yard sale not long ago in Roscoe Village. Around noon, a small boy marched up and presented an item he had pulled out of the shoe box full of unused darkroom equipment; his find, still unopened in its carton, was a small brush attached to a rubber cylinder used to clean film before printing. What he wished to do with it, I cannot guess....

Over the past year we’ve been hearing a lot about the theme of redemption in current movies. Actually the seeds of this trend were probably sown back in 1980, when Raging Bull came out, but now “redemption” is becoming something of a buzzword. I recall being taken slightly aback when I heard Harvey Keitel, speaking at the 1992 Toronto film festival, employ the term without any trace of irony in regard to Reservoir Dogs....

Jazz Mandolin Project 9/20, Schubas Vermont acoustic and electric mandolinist Jamie Masefield also plays in Bad Hat with two guys from Phish, but there’s no call to knock this Flecktones-ish trio, which also includes Keith Jarrett’s son Gabe on drums. Neither a casual jamming affair nor just a showcase for Masefield’s budding virtuosity, the group emphasizes thematic development through improvised three-way conversations rather than long-winded solos. Those who have seen the group say its brainy self-titled CD (Accurate) fails to capture the power of its visceral live show....

“Although Chicago forms the hub of U.S. candy manufacturing– Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Forty-three percent of Chicagoans oppose additional legalized gambling for Chicago, according to a survey UIC political scientists Barry Rundquist and Gerald Strom conducted for the Religious Task Force to Oppose Increased Legalized Gambling, compared to 32 percent who favor it. And 44 percent say the costs of legalized gambling exceed the benefits to Illinois....

As Good as It Gets With Jack Nicholson, Helen Hunt, Greg Kinnear, Cuba Gooding Jr., Skeet Ulrich, Shirley Knight, Yeardley Smith, Lupe Ontiveros, Jesse James, and Jill. Any synopsis of As Good as It Gets is likely to make the movie seem like a shameless soap opera combined with an abrasive comedy, and any proper account of its style and metaphysics has to include the fantasy world we associate with musicals....

I know I’m not the only critic who counts Ugetsu (1953) among the greatest of films. Kenji Mizoguchi brings a poet’s eye to this tale of two men who flee their feudal village in a Japan riven by war, pursuing wealth and pleasure. The ever-changing relationships between people and the land, between the two men and their ultimately failed vanities, are well described by Mizoguchi’s camera movements; he avoids overly static or pictorial compositions in favor of images full of delicate light and shifting shadows....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Many of us who live in this neighborhood are proud of the diversity we offer. People of different sexual and ethnic orientations live together here in a model of tolerance. Clubs like the Wild Hare represent the heart of this community, a place where all types of people can go and feel comfortable in relating to one another....

In response to Q101 Program Director Bill Gamble’s letter defending Jamboree ’95 [June 9], gee, Bill, it must keep you up nights knowing Q101 beat out B96 in being the first to play “All That She Wants” from Ace of Base, but try not to be so overly impressed with yourself. Your station has yet to play Faith No More, and only plays KMFDM heavily when they’re in town, otherwise they can be found at two in the morning Saturday on “Alternative Beat....