It all began with a bad smell. A little before 4 PM on January 17, 1992, the ominous smell of natural gas filled the apartments and businesses of River West, just east of the Kennedy and west of the river. Next came hissing noises from stoves and space heaters. In one home a pilot light shot up three feet. As people stumbled out into the dusk, the buildings along Racine started blowing up....

Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Chicago’s most toxic zip codes, according to 1993 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency toxics-release-inventory data compiled by Citizens for a Better Environment: 60622, 60612, 60608, 60623, 60609, 60632, and 60638 (near-west and southwest sides heading down the Stevenson), and 60627, 60628, and 60633 (southeast side). In a class by itself is zip code 60617 on the far southeast side, with over 43 million pounds of toxic chemical releases or transfers, more than three times greater than the next worst zip code....

The storm that hit the day before Halloween marked the end of the soft autumn days that provide Chicago with its annual taste of perfect weather. The seasonal shift announced itself at my house about 3 AM, when the wind blew a large packing box into the fence under my bedroom window. I awoke expecting to see a truck bursting through the wall. The wind–twisting and whirling between apartment buildings–was actually roaring....

A mourning dove has been living on my block since we moved in in early February, often perching in a tree on the corner or doing its head-bobbing pigeon walk around the courtyard of our building searching for food. It–only another mourning dove can tell whether it is a he or a she–may have found a mate. Most mourning doves spend the winter in small flocks, which break into pairs in early spring....

Instrument inventor and sound sculptor Hal Rammel thrives in a world of elusive, ephemeral sonic scapes–a world with no musical boundaries. Sans structure, Rammel glides and twirls, reveling in odd textures and serendipitous phrases. This gig celebrates the release of the CD Elsewheres (Penumbra), a thrilling, unusual, and utterly fresh-sounding collection of works performed on Rammel’s sound palette, an instrument of his own design. A paint palette fitted with wooden dowels of different lengths and thicknesses, it’s either plucked or bowed....

I just got back from the Independent Label Festival in Chicago and read Peter Margasak’s dis of it in the July 26 Reader [Post No Bills]. I’m a Cleveland-based music journalist who is a veteran of many conferences (including the biggies he mentions: CMJ, SXSW, and the late NMS). It seems to me that Margasak has set expectations for the conference that its organizers aren’t arrogant or unrealistic enough to set for themselves....

Cellist Lynn Harrell is one of those veterans of the concert circuit we more or less take for granted. Since leaving the first chair of George Szell’s Cleveland Orchestra in 1971 to go solo, he has established a solid reputation as an avid purveyor of both orchestral and chamber repertoires. Yet despite (or perhaps because of) his all-American lineage and demeanor, he hasn’t quite achieved the demigod status of a Pablo Casals or the celebrity of a Yo-Yo Ma....

ZZ TOP Ah, testosterone. That ordinary reproductive hormone isn’t just a source of adventure, excitement, and ecstasy; it can also change your musical tastes. Without healthy doses of it–or at least a healthy appreciation for it–you could wind up listening to Counting Crows. With it comes an appreciation for big, loud, aggressive bands that have everything you need to release those pent-up drives: overstated blues riffs, stampeding rhythms, hoary vocals, and lewd lyrics....

Report From the Jeffs: Eclipse Rising Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Eclipse mounted Xenogenesis in conjunction with Chilany Pictures, a production company formed by longtime local casting director Jane Alderman, who also is vice president of Eclipse’s board of directors and the organization’s den mother: she taught seven of the nine core ensemble members at the DePaul University Theatre School. Notes Alderman: “When they were getting started I told the founding members of Eclipse I didn’t want them to be just another dinky theater company in town putting on stupid plays....

ROLE PLAY Chris (Rafer Weigel) is the classic teenage underachiever, a character who should be familiar to anyone who went to school in the ‘burbs or bought an album by Rush. Never able to come to terms with his parents’ divorce and his mom’s remarriage to a schmuck, Chris blows off school and immerses himself in the role-playing fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons. After school Chris and his buddies Robert (David Vanwert), Alex (Sean Patrick Hayes), and Jenny (Karen Hough) can escape their sorry existence as outcasts and dweebs and live out their fantasies of being knights and thieves, saving damsels in distress and fighting the evil monster Crag; a cool, detached Dungeon Master (Andrew J....

Eddie Blazonczyk & the Versatones 3/8, FitzGerald’s The king of Polish polka, Eddie Blazonczyk, has been a Chicago institution for more than three decades. This clever booking gambit finds him opening for gonzo revisionists Brave Combo (who play the next night at Lounge Ax). As the recent “best of” collection Polkatime (Cleveland International) shows, his music throbs with his rousing accordion playing and spirited singing supported by consistently dynamic backing. Whether breezing through traditionally oriented originals or country nuggets, the music always kicks....

JUNE OF 44 6/30, LOUNGE AX While I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t find a copy of Spiderland in most homes around town, in some ways Slint’s last album has become the Holy Grail of indie rock referents. On Engine Takes to the Water (Quarterstick), the debut album by June of 44–a quartet that includes former members of Rodan and Codeine, both of which were plenty swayed by Slint’s pull–the veneer of the legendary Louisvillians is more palpable than ever....

Been working inside too long? The Rest of Us (June), the newsletter of the Chicago Area Macintosh Users’ Group, offers this brief review of SoundScape 2.1.1: “A control panel that plays bird calls at random intervals. Yes I know this isn’t an application, but some of us happen to like birds. OK?” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Many advocates of free trade claim that higher productivity growth in the United States will offset any downward pressure on wages caused by the global sweatshop economy,” writes Michael Lind in Harper’s (June), “but the appealing theory falls victim to an unpleasant fact....

What started as a performance component of the Bucktown Arts Fest has taken on a life of its own: this is the fifth annual incarnation of the Rhino Fest, whose name is inspired by surrealist painter Salvador Dali’s use of the term “rhinocerontic” (it means real big). Organized this year by Beau O’Reilly, Michael Martin, and Colm O’Reilly, who have endeavored to combine a broad scope and a cutting-edge sensibility, the event closes this weekend having showcased some 25 individuals and ensembles (plus several bands), including well-known folks like Jenny Magnus, Theater Oobleck, Paula Killen, Marc Smith, the Curious Theatre Branch, John Starrs, David Hernandez, Splinter Group, Frank Melcori, Redmoon Theater, and New Crime Productions....

Humanitarian aid to war-torn countries usually consists of blankets and beans, but the Balkan Womens Empowerment Project has taken a different approach to the war in the former Yugoslavia. Instead of bandages, BWEP has sent hundreds of books on feminism, rape, domestic violence, and war. Instead of funding a hospital, it is helping Croatian feminists start a women’s center in Zagreb, where 65,000 refugees from Bosnia-Herzegovina, mostly women and children, now live....

Unfortunately Jeff Huebner’s article “The Panic in Wicker Park” [August 26] is heavy on the griping and petty finger pointing and light on a more substantial analysis of gentrification; a real and present danger. What seems painfully absent are the voices of the dispossessed, either from the street, the recently evicted, or the workers and manufacturers in whose lofts all these artists/realtors are squabbling over. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Blurred Perceptions: The Report From Art 21 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » During the three days of speeches and discussions with panelists who mostly ranged from mediocre to abysmal, attendees kept complaining that not enough artists had been invited. Later, when working artists were asked to stand and be recognized, everyone looked shocked at the sizable number of bodies that popped up. It seemed the substantial contingent of arts administrators in the audience simply couldn’t recognize around them the kind of people with whom they presumably interact on a regular basis....

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra He pushed and pulled at scores as if they were Silly Putty–ignoring all the composer’s markings for how passages were supposed to be played, feeling his way through concerts as though he were making up the music himself. Sometimes you get the feeling the orchestra was alternately struggling to follow him and staring at him in disbelief. When it worked, the results could be weird and spectacular: he could give a Brahms symphony the dark splendor of a Rembrandt painting, he conducted Don Giovanni as though it were the sound track for the apocalypse, and he once turned Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” into an anguished, wailing dirge....

David Miller entered the University of Illinois at Chicago’s dental school in 1984 with some trepidation. “First off, it was a very competitive environment,” he says. “There weren’t many African-Americans around. There were two of us in my class. Once his recruits were admitted, Roberts served as their advocate. “When problems developed with housing or financial aid, I stepped in,” he says. “This one time six or seven blacks came down to my office, enraged that this professor had seated them all together in the front of the class....

For emerging local composers with newly minted PhDs, chamber recitals organized by the Chicago Composers’ Consortium have proven to be an indispensable forum. It helps, of course, that older academics often consent to be spotlighted along with their younger colleagues, whipping up wider interest while bestowing implicit approval on fledgling careers. At this season finale Stephen Mosko, head of the Contemporary Chamber Players, does the honors. Earlier this year he conducted the venerable CCP in a pair of commendable concerts that featured some of his own works....