Combining savvy marketing with an interesting concept, Chicago’s Atavistic label presents a showcase of solo guitarists. Lee Ranaldo, Elliott Sharp, Bruce Anderson, Rick Rizzo, and Steve Wynn come from disparate musical backgrounds, and their approaches to playing guitar vary significantly, but Atavistic’s put them all on the same stage. Ranaldo, of course, is a charter member of Sonic Youth; his new pair of solo-guitar CDs are painted with varied shades of gray sound and rippling with unusual textures....

Before entering the “Fragonard Mood Swing Faux Pas Fart Show,” I am required to attach a piece of cloth, cut to resemble toilet paper, to my shoe. This, I am told, will free my inhibitions and allow me to enjoy the exhibit without prejudice. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Kopp has expressed his freedom by inserting the word “fart” into well-known quotations scribbled on a wall....

I AM A FOOL, Studio 108, at the Lunar Cabaret and Full Moon Cafe. Sherwood Anderson’s 1923 tale of a young stable hand who lies about his origins to impress a girl is as quaint and sentimental as any yarn of its period. But Mike Vieau’s adaptation remains true to that time: he never flinches from an idiom in which “gay” means “extravagant,” a “nigger” is simply a man who happens to be black, and “craps amighty” is the strongest expletive the narrator utters....

Graceland is perhaps the crown jewel of midwestern cemeteries, numbering among its tenants many of Chicago’s rich and famous, some of whom were commemorated by artists as well known as Lorado Taft and Louis Sullivan. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » But John Gary Brown, a photographer based in Lawrence, Kansas, has little interest in the famous, either as artists or subjects. His book Soul in the Stone: Cemetery Art From America’s Heartland focuses on the folk traditions of funerary art, celebrating an artistic pluralism that he claims is unique to the midwest....

Since we all know that rock is dead, a band like LA’s Lazy Cowgirls thrusts upon us true suspension of disbelief. Seeking a slice of the mythological rock ‘n’ roll pie back in the mid-80s, they transplanted themselves from Indiana to Hollywood in search of something–maybe even stardom. They never found it. Yet in the years since they’ve sustained one of the fiercest, most passionate takes on classic punk-rock energy anywhere, proving that it doesn’t have to be a kids’ game....

8 Blue M&M’s: Back in January the corporate candy kingpins at Mars announced a consumer poll to choose a new M&M’s color. The ballot listed blue, purple, pink, and an option to leave the colors as they were. But the firm neglected to mention that if a new color was selected, it wouldn’t simply be added to the mix–it would replace tan, which would be exiled from the M&M’s family of colors....

What readers saw in the pages of the official Soviet news weekly Ogunyuk was not terribly interesting. Its photo editor for nearly half a century, Dmitri Baltermants, was a prolific photojournalist himself, but his images and the pictures he selected mostly served as indicators of ideology. Soviet history may be better illuminated by discovering why certain Baltermants shots were censored–then later published–than by dwelling on the historic details they purport to preserve....

SPACE NEEDLE 8/11, EMPTY BOTTLE On their debut album, Voyager (Zero Hour), the Long Island duo known as Space Needle transport space rock into the lo-fi realm, combining rough-hewn ambient sounds, fuzzy melodies, and an almost catatonic rhythmic attack. When vocals break through the sonic mess, as on “Beers in Heaven,” they evoke a more bleary-eyed Sebadoh, but for the most part this duo sticks to creating extended bouts of hazy hypnosis by means of Jeff Gatland’s repetitive guitar patterns and the droning keyboard and drum playing of Jud Ehrbar, who alternates instruments and also sings....

At first glance, Brasserie Jo looks charmingly Parisian, from the hard-boiled eggs set up in their funny stands at the bar to the little pots of mustard on the tables. But after you take off your coat and before your first aperitif that eerie Lettuce Entertain You feeling sets in. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Ice water will be served upon request: There’s this ridiculous routine the waiters go through with each customer, pretending tap water is foreign to the tables of Chicago....

How come flies, after landing on someone or something, start rubbing their “hands” together? Planning something? –John Oliveros, Montreal Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We know that flies are cleaning themselves (as opposed to plotting) because when they get dirty they clean themselves more, starting first with the dirty part and concluding by dusting off their forelegs. The smart fly–granted there isn’t a vast difference between a smart fly and a dumb one–keeps its legs clean because they contain an abundance of taste and tactile receptors, the better to savor the flavor of whatever rank thing the fly lights on next....

AC/DC Things change, though–especially in radio. Today WLUP is an all-talk station skewed to its old audience, which now falls into the 25-to-54-year-old niche. But in 1993 WLUP’s owner, Evergreen Media Corporation, purchased hard rock station WWBZ, rechristened it WRCX, and turned it into a mainstream rock station. You’ll still hear Metallica, Led Zeppelin, and Aerosmith, but you’ll also get a dose of newer artists like Smashing Pumpkins, Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, Son Volt, and Green Day....

Bailiwick Repertory’s sixth annual Directors Festival showcases the aspirations of generally unknown, mostly young pro, semipro, and student directors whose projects range from established classical and contemporary selections to brand-new material. The fest runs October 2 through 27, with a different program of three one-acts each scheduled to begin every night at 7:30 PM. Tickets are $8 per program. Each week highlights a different theme: “World Premieres and Visionaries of the Past” October 2 through 6; “American Writers” October 10 through 13; “New Works and Unknown Treasures” October 17 through 20; and “Symbols and Absurdities” October 24 through 27....

Americans dream of summering in France, but saxophonist Brad Wheeler, who moved from Chicago to Paris several years ago, is spending the last part of his summer vacation in Illinois, where his depth of purpose and committed urgency always find a sweet home. Wheeler plays music as if he’s been thinking about nothing else since the last time he held his sax. Even when he fills a solo with skittering trails of notes, they carry weight and resolve, instead of fluttering off like the contrails of his more facile contemporaries....

By Harold Henderson Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Since many of the poor do work, work by itself does not eradicate poverty,” Marlene Kim explains in Poverty & Race (January/ February). Using U.S. census data, she surveyed working poor people who qualify for food stamps, AFDC, and Medicaid. “Most were in married-couple families, in their prime working years, worked many hours and had at least a high school education....

LYRICAL NITRATE *** (A must-see) The full title of this compilation, put together in Holland by Peter Delpeut in 1990, is Lyrical Nitrate, 1905-1915: Fragments From the Distribution Catalogue of Jean Desmet. Desmet bought all the films between 1905 and 1920 for his movie theater in Amsterdam, the Cinema Parisien, and stored them in the theater’s attic until his death in 1956; since then they have been housed at the Nederlands Filmmuseum....

Dear editors, Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » After Jerry Sullivan’s departure from the Field & Street, I looked forward to whom the Reader would choose to write the column. By the third post-Jerry article, I realized the Reader was testing future prospects on us, your readership. Pete Leki writing March 11’s issue woke me from a long bus commute with his sardonic wink at civic planning....

RICHARD II Goodman Theatre You have to look hard to find nobility in Goodman Theatre’s enterprising but wildly uneven modern-dress production of Richard II. A sporadically inspired but often self-indulgent effort, it substitutes anachronistic touches for a genuine vision of the play and its politics. And swift scene changes can’t camouflage the emptiness of several key performances. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the good scenes, someone trusted the material....

I admit it, straight out. I love the sound of Karrin Allyson’s voice–the basic physical timbre of it–and even if she didn’t do so right by it, I still wouldn’t miss the opportunity to listen to her. But the Kansas City-based Allyson does do right: she has just about the whole package. She scats with a mix of learned skill and instinctual musicality, playing her voice like a piano (her first instrument)....

The Best of the Fest Unlike tragedy, comedy cannot exist in a void, as the winning entries from the Factory Theater’s “Shut Up and Laugh” festival demonstrate. The harder these artists work to nail down tiny comic details, the more satisfying the results. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Professional clown Nathan Carver and lyric soprano Sarah Worthington have clearly sweated bullets over their 20-minute routine, Singer and Saw....

Nominally a rockabilly artist, Monte Warden is most frequently compared to Buddy Holly, and both that influence and that of the Everly Brothers are unmistakable on his self-titled 1993 solo debut on Watermelon Records. The former frontman for the Austin-based Wagoneers, Warden follows an energetic pop-rock ‘n’ roll path, the one Holly himself was blazing at the time of his death. Warden’s also a modern guy who occasionally dips into pop-inflected white soul of the early Hall and Oates variety....