All but one of the rock bands named below was formed in the 80s and active in 1988. Can you identify the 60s band with the dumb psychedelic name? 1. Alice Donut 2. Liquid Pink 3. Precious Wax Drippings 4. Electric Prunes 5. Gay Bykers on Acid 6. Eleventh Dream Day 7. Trip Shakespeare 8. […]
Author Archives: Hugh Boulware
On Stage: all things crass and kitschy
“If you’re an angel and you’re coming to earth, and you want to pick a body to be in, why not put a little flair into it? You know? Why go out and be some doof?” says Kevin Kling of one of the characters in his play Lloyd’s Prayer. “I wouldn’t. I’d pick somebody that’s […]
Stage Effects
Heads are rolling at the Goodman Theatre. Geoff Binns-Calvey is responsible.
Stage Notes: laughing at the plague
British playwright Peter Barnes set Red Noses in the worst of times, period: his darkly comic social satire, which opens next week at the Goodman Theatre, takes place in the midst of the Black Plague. By 1348, the time of the play, Europe had lost a third of its population to the disease. Goodman dramaturge […]
Club Dates: Slammin’ Watusis get real
It’s a muggy July afternoon, and for this all-day show the other musicians are still plugging in their electric guitars when “Fast” Frank Raven begins tooting on his tenor sax. The tooting turns to honks, then resolves into an earsplitting scream as the rest of the Slammin’ Watusis crash into the first song of the […]
The Rousers
The Rousers, from Madison, Wisconsin, mix 50s rock and roll with traditional country to create raucous roadhouse music perfect for getting drunk to. While there’s nothing all that new about their original material, it’s performed with stirring conviction and the tightness that comes from doing years of three-sets-a-night club dates. Ernie DeMille’s guitar playing is […]
Theater Notes: Jim Cartwright’s Road to Chicago
“England’s in pieces. England’s an old twat in the sea. England’s cruel. My town’s scuffed out. My people’s pale. I’m going to lie out now and burn for all I’m worth.” So shouts a character from Road, Jim Cartwright’s remarkable play about economically depressed northern England. The show, with ex-Sex Pistol Edward Tudor-Pole and later […]
On Record: music to liberate animals by
Al Jourgensen is not known for being a do-gooder. Leader of dance club favorite Ministry, he’s burned more than a few bridges with music business execs and sidemen, who view him as an arrogant malcontent. But the release this week of Animal Liberation on Wax Trax Records casts Jourgensen in a different light, since he […]
Art Facts: creative bookmaker seeks attractive mail
Last fall, Barbara Lazarus Metz put out a call for mail art. The response has filled the window of Chicago Book Works with an array of postcards, foldouts, altered envelopes, rubber-stamped messages, and other objects having one thing in common: they were sent through the mail. Metz, founder and director of Artists Book Works, says, […]