JOSEPH HOLMES DANCE THEATRE at the Auditorium October 7 and 8 Joseph Holmes Dance Theatre is one of the hardest-working, most peripatetic troupes around. Each year they pop up in engagements all over the Chicago area–and around the country and, this year, out of the country (in Israel). But it’s fun to catch them in […]
Tag: Vol. 17 No. 52
Issue of Oct. 13 – 19, 1988
Posted inArts & Culture
La Triviata
LA TRAVIATA Lyric Opera at the Civic Opera House September 26 and October 1, 5, 8, 12, 16, 21, 25, and 28 Let’s face it: not only is La traviata the least musically interesting of all the standard Verdi operas, it is also probably the least dramatic. Moreover, it is a work where the link […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Local Paper Does Good; Quayle Watching
Local Paper Does Good Phil Kadner holds down what he calls “one of the greatest jobs in the world.” He writes a general newspaper column in Chicago. He writes it six days a week, which is unheard of in American journalism–doing so many for the simple reason that he wants to. His newspaper, the Southtown […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Accused
Something of a first, this is a serious movie about rape, and as such might be said to represent penance of a sort for the crude milking of antifeminist sentiments in the previous film of producers Sherry Lansing and Stanley R. Jaffe, Fatal Attraction. Sarah Tobias (Jodie Foster) is gang-raped in a bar, and Deputy […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sergei Kuryokhin
The music of Leningrad-based Sergey Kuryokhin is still revealing itself to me. After first discovering his brilliantly hip twisty-fingered pianistics on recordings Kuryokhin made as a member of Boris Grebenschikov’s rock band Aquarium (recordings that had to be smuggled out of the USSR by Westerners), I then moved on to his fascinating solo stuff, in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Maarten Altena Octet
I’m warning you up front: almost anything I say about this band will fail to capture the uniqueness of the experience, so plan on stopping by and figuring it out for yourself. Altena, a Dutch bassist whose prodigious technique is matched only by his iconoclasm, has jumbled together source music ranging from Mozart minuets to […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Fear and Loathing in Marquette Park
To the editors: After reading Gary Johnson’s (September 2) article entitled “Dream Day,” I must say that I felt as though I was in Marquette Park the day of the rally. Five years ago, I stubbornly invested in an old-fashioned bungalow in the Marquette Park area because there are so many big, old, solid homes […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Billy Bragg
In the grand leftist tradition of angry young geeks ranging from Antonio Gramsci to the Clash, British folk antihero Billy Bragg explores the tension between individual creation and collective consciousness by diving headfirst into the contradiction. Caught between punk anger and folk romanticism, between impersonal skepticism and the human touch, Bragg–whose hilariously self-effacing live performances […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Heaven on Earth
To the editors: Florence Levinsohn (“A Special Connection with God,” September 2), misses the essence of Judaism. Judaism is a religion of redemption in this world. The Western idea of heaven as a “construct of poets and philosophers” goes back to the Platonic idea of this world being an inferior imitation of the ideal world […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Where is Podunk? –Thomas Gruffydd-Hunter, Dallas You’re not the first guy to wonder about this, Tomaso. As a matter of fact, the search for Podunk, the archetypal jerkwater town, is one of the great adventures of philology, which, believe me, is not a field that has great adventures in abundance. Allow me to quote from […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Maxwell Street Blues
The Sunday-morning market may be in danger, but thanks to a new generation of bluesmen the music is as strong as ever.
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
“If you believe you have a good idea, try it out on friends,” advises Paul Hawken in Success (October 1988). “If they say you have a wonderful idea, you may be in trouble: An idea everyone recognizes as great has probably arrived on the scene too late. But if your friends look confused and shrug […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Me and My Girl
About a year after King Edward VIII abdicated to many an American commoner, London audiences were treated to this piece of fluff about a Cockney tramp who inherits a noble title and tries to give it up to keep his fishmonger girlfriend. Me and My Girl ran for five years after its 1937 debut; its […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Midnight Oil
In the process of single-handedly atoning for Australia’s past contributions to popular music–the Bee Gees, Olivia Newton-John, Men at Work–Midnight Oil may come to rank with U2 as the Commonwealth’s hard-rock leaders. Like U2, the Oil has a clean muscular sound; with four musicians, however, Oil’s sound is more ornate and the arrangements more diverse. […]