To the editors: I was interested in your article about the con man who tried to take you for $5.00 [Our Town, February 17]. I was approached by a white guy in Hyde Park a few years ago with the same pitch. My wife was ready to give him some money, but I was suspicious […]
Tag: Vol. 18 No. 24
Issue of Mar. 30 – Apr. 5, 1989
Posted inArts & Culture
Either/Orchestra
It’s quite simple really. Just combine a fondness for classic jazz composers (e.g., Monk, Roland Kirk, and Sonny Rollins) with a sensibility that allows for elasticized solo sections, the occasional synthesizer foray, and a goofily clever humor; include evocative newer pieces by the likes of Ornette Coleman and even Robert Fripp; fashion a vibrant sound […]
Posted inNews & Politics
High Stakes Revisited
To the editors: I enjoyed reading the lengthy profile of Philip Corboy in your most recent issue [March 3]. Your readers may recall that a significant portion of the article dealt with the case of Randy Block, the law professor who suffered locked-in syndrome as a result of a truck driver blowing a stop sign. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Go-Betweens
Critics have been creaming their jeans over the Go-Betweens for nearly ten years. The Australian combo is led by songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, who took their name (one assumes) from Joseph Losey’s moody, heavily symbolic movie. The pair have dispensed with the moodiness in favor of an ever-more-crystalline pop production, but they’ve retained […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Anarcho-Syndicalists for Evans
To the editors: Thank you for running Doug Cassel’s article, “Is Tim Evans for Real?” [March 17]. When I was recruited as a volunteer for the Evans campaign, by unacquainted friends living in different wards, I was skeptical. I consider myself an anarcho-syndicalist. I’ll be pragmatic and vote, but work for a politician? Me? Tim […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Grand Hotel
The Stevens, later known as the Conrad Hilton, opened in 1927 with 3,000 rooms, a hospital, and a library, a five-lane bolwing alley, and a barber shop with 27 chairs. Most of that is gone now, but there are still a few employees who remember when it was
Posted inNews & Politics
A Crime and a Sin
To the editors: In a fiery little speech directed against Rich Daley, Eddie Vrdolyak recently referred to an artwork involving an American flag placed on the Art Institute’s floor as a “crime” and a “sin.” I think such language would better describe the murder of Selena Johnson by her husband, Ed, and the Chicago Police […]
Posted inArts & Culture
King Lear
Jean-Luc Godard’s zany, English-speaking quasi adaptation of the Shakespeare play has the most complex and densely layered use of Dolby sound in movies, and this screening offers one the first chance in Chicago to hear it properly. The “itinerary” of the film–one can’t quite consider it a plot–involves a post-Chernobyl view of culture in general […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Bar Fight
It was a standard barroom argument. But it happened in the bar of the Heartland Cafe, the Rogers Park watering hole for refugees from an earlier, earthier era. On this Thursday night, the female bartender broke with barroom tradition–which dictates that the bartender, in concert with a few hunch-shouldered regulars, decides which sports event the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Fuel of a New Machine
Who’s financing the Daley campaign? What do they want in return? The old one ran on patronage and graft. This new model runs on pure money.
Posted inArts & Culture
Les Miserables
LES MISERABLES at the Auditorium Theatre At last, two years after it opened in New York, it’s come to Chicago. It’s an event, a spectacle, a dress occasion, an opera, and a musical. It’s Les Miserables! I don’t know. I don’t get it. Maybe if I’d seen the original Royal Shakespeare Company production–the one with […]
Posted inMusic
Religious Experiences
MUSIC OF THE BAROQUE at Saint Paul’s United Church March 6 THE CITY MUSICK at Pick-Staiger Concert Hall March 12 Holy Week came a bit early this year for Music of the Baroque and the City Musick. In early March Music of the Baroque presented Bach’s Saint John Passion, and the City Musick presented the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
How Allen Seidner’s car got crushed: a cautionary tale from Evanston
If Allen Seidner weren’t such a sound sleeper, he might have heard the sirens that warn Evanston car owners that snow is failing so hard they must move their cars off the street. If they don’t move their cars, they’ll be towed away. By the time he had scurried outside, his car–a two-door, five-speed 1981 […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Old News
To the editors: After paging through the cover section of your March 17 issue I was vaguely bemused; not by any particular item, but rather by the whole. I looked again and found a feature article on a book about LSD in which the CIA was repeatedly mentioned. There was one review of Bob Dylan […]
Posted inArts & Culture
His Majestie’s Clerkes and Newberry Consort
In what should prove to be a historic joint appearance as well as the local early music event of the year, the Evanston-based choral ensemble His Majestie’s Clerkes (hands down the best chamber choir in the area) will join forces with the Newberry Consort under the direction of Mary Springfels for the season close of […]