To appreciate Jeff Garlin’s sense of humor you just have to listen to him for a few minutes, during which time you are darn near guaranteed two snickers, several guffaws, and a belly laugh if you’re lucky. To appreciate his craft you have to watch his work develop. I saw Jeff Garlin: Uncomplicated in its […]
Tag: Vol. 22 No. 45
Issue of Aug. 19 – 25, 1993
Posted inArts & Culture
The Prodigal Son
The Finnish cinema of today probably offers the most distinctive collective vision since Fassbinder and friends contributed theirs in 1970s Munich. In the films of the Kaurismaki brothers and their colleagues there’s a streak of subversive humor lurking under the bleak, dissolute existence of the postindustrial working class. While this idiosyncratic, tragicomic take pays oblique […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kimberly Gordon
A classic jazz stereotype–a staple of the jokes jazzmen tell among themselves–pivots on the lack of musicianship among female vocalists. Kimberly Gordon changes, in fact defies, the punch line whenever she takes the stage. She thinks like a musician; instead of displaying that mentality in a series of scat improvisations, she prefers to apply her […]
Posted inMusic
Return of the monster boogie
Raging Slab’s Def American debut, Dynamite Monster Boogie Concert, is rife with fragments of the 70s: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s southern blues boogie, Blue Oyster Cult’s heavy rock hooks, Grand Funk Railroad’s braggadocio, ZZ Top’s riff-drenched electric blues, Bad Company’s pure hard rock. But Raging Slab doesn’t just gorge on the past and spit it back out. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Head Exam
The shopworn term is “free improvisation,” but to paraphrase T.S. Eliot, no improvisation is free for the musician who wants to do a good job. Meaningful escape from chord structure and set rhythm requires disciplined players who really listen to each other and can find their way across trackless lands without making asses of themselves. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Rodgers & Hammerstein Songbook
Fifty years after they made their debut as a team with the landmark Oklahoma!, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein remain the preeminent musical dramatists in American theater. Others before and after them may have been wittier, jazzier, more polished, more romantic, or more sophisticated. But none have equaled the duo’s ability to dramatize an individual’s […]
Posted inMusic
Seattle-on-the-Lake: Hitsville’s Guide for Soon-to-Be-Recent Arrivals/Chart Watch
It’s Official/Chicago has a music scene!
Posted inNews & Politics
Neandertal Man
The hulking lowbrow’s claim to human ancestry is not quite dead and buried: Q & A with NU anthropologist Fred H. Smith
Posted inArts & Culture
Blacklight International Film Festival
The 12th edition of the annual festival of black independent film continues from Friday, August 20, through Thursday, August 26, at Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton. Tickets are $5 and can be purchased only on the day of the screening. For more information call 649-4855. FRIDAY, AUGUST 20 Fly by Night A movie about […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ian Hominick
The extraordinary pyrotechnics of 19th-century keyboardist Sigismond Thalberg put him in the exalted company of Franz Liszt, at least according to accounts at the time. But though widely popular, this Swiss-born Austrian virtuoso wasn’t a charismatic dazzler like Liszt; his stage presence was more elegant and subdued and his musicianship more subtle. As with many […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Is That a Wig?
Orthodox Jewish women from across the city and out of state are asking: Is it live, or is it Gurewicz?
Posted inArts & Culture
Johnny Laws
Johnny Laws’s weekend sets at the Cuddle Inn on South Ashland have long been among the most popular blues attractions on the south side; after years of local celebrity he’s finally begun to extend his reputation to other parts of the city (and the world: he was recently profiled in Living Blues magazine). Laws’s voice […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Coming Soon to the Tribune/Fuller Up/The Third Man
Coming Soon to the Tribune His sex aside, Mike Wilmington should turn out to be just what the Tribune wanted in a film critic. He writes gracefully, he’s prolific, and he not only loves film but likes films, lots of them. “Dave [Kehr] would give three movies a year four stars,” an admirer of both […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
There’s a question that’s been burning in the unscrubbed corners of my mind for a long time. We are told that Ivory soap is “99 and 44/100% pure.” What’s in the other 56/100% (or 0.56% if you prefer)? –Peter Holland, Chicago You’re not the first to wonder. Actually it consists of “foreign and unnecessary substances,” […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lefty Dizz
With all the bad news that’s been hanging over the blues world lately–deaths, sickness, untimely departures–the return of guitarist Lefty Dizz is nothing short of a godsend. Dizz, who spent the better part of last year battling cancer, is known around the world for his antic fusion of inspiration and impishness, but what makes him […]