Singer/guitarist/songwriter Bill Direen is a controversial figure in New Zealand’s musical underground: he helped originate it, but he’s also stood well apart from it. Members of key bands like Tall Dwarfs, the Bats, the Renderers, and the Terminals have passed through his group, the Builders (aka the Bilders, Bilderine, and Die Bilder). The early Builders, […]
Tag: Vol. 23 No. 43
Issue of Aug. 4 – 10, 1994
Posted inNews & Politics
Advice for the Lovelorn
Dear Letters to the Editor: “A man’s life is a series of trials that women often figure in,” Hot Type columnist Michael Miner notes, musing on the O.J. Simpson case, and on the amorous wreckage of his own past, after the Kyprian’s gaze had fallen upon him, and led a much younger incarnation to wander […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In the Boom Boom Room
IN THE BOOM BOOM ROOM Thunder Road Ensemble at Live Bait Theater To the Thunder Road Ensemble: Please do not read this review. You have achieved nothing short of a miracle in turning David Rabe’s 1974 three-act dinosaur, In the Boom Boom Room, into a soaring evening of theater. The delicate balance of satire, lyricism, […]
Posted inMusic
Liz Phair’s Follow-Up
A Phair to Remember/Her second effort is almost as good as Guyville.
Posted inNews & Politics
The Naughty Professor
To the editors: It was with sorrow bordering on despair that I read Hot Type in the Chicago Reader of June 24, 1994–sorrow, because Northwestern University has a reputation as one of the country’s great universities, and despair, because if Northwestern is not willing to stand up for the First Amendment and academic freedom, then […]
Posted inMusic
Rosanne Cash
Born to country royalty, Rosanne Cash spent the first part of her career singing the songs she was told to by her country star-producer husband, Rodney Crowell, and wound up on the country charts for a decade. Much of that work (codified on the scrumptious best-of, Hits 1979-1989) was impressive, but it wasn’t the full […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Education of Maribeth Vander Wheele/News Bites
The Education of Maribeth Vander Wheele When the bottom fell out of the Chicago schools in 1979, Mayor Jane Byrne had an interesting notion of whom to blame. “Where were you?” she told reporters lined up to grill her. “The press should have known. They accepted what was told to them.” Byrne had a point. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Ignorant Babble
Dear editor, The only thing worse than Art Jones’s ignorant babble [“Bigot for Hire,” July 22] is the Reader’s decision to give him eight pages of column space. Please, no more front page articles on pathetic hate-mongers. Patrick Sloan Kristin Konrady Old Town
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
THE LAST WORD ON CIRCUMCISION Cecil continues to get denunciations from opponents of routine infant circumcision (January 28, March 25) who feel that if you’re not adamantly against this procedure you’re in favor of it. Cecil despairs of making any headway against this attitude, but will say yet again that in his view, and so […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Don’t Cha Know!
Don’t Cha Know!, at Cafe Voltaire. Unfortunately for David Parris, I’ve relinquished my habit of giving any production the benefit of the doubt. I suppose if I looked very hard I could find something encouraging to say about his one-man show, but trying to find the gold in this piece of dross is just a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
An Opportunist With Ovaries
Dear editor: I am offended and appalled that authors Futrelle and Tanenbaum [“Reading: The Feminine Mistake,” July 22] would waste their time reading, reviewing, and discussing Georgette Mosbacher’s so-called self-help book, Feminine Force. First, I have heard her speak–this spring at a women’s business owner’s luncheon. She was a bomb (actually more like a boob, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
Dessert? Well, since we’re moving to Detroit next week, I’ll have the triple hot fudge sundae. Attorney Sharlene McEvoy, in the Chicago-based Human Rights (Summer), laments the lack of laws against fat bias: “Congress could amend the ADA [Americans With Disabilities Act] to specifically include obesity as a disability. This would set an example for […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jodie Christian
Talk all you want about pianist Jodie Christian’s earth-stirring swing, or his unique harmonic adjustments, or the hard-wrought gossamer of his right-hand work, or the inestimable soul he wrings from the keyboard; the real reason he received this year’s Jazz Masters Award (from the advocacy organization Arts Midwest) has to do with his resilient versatility. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lana/Smoking
Seminude Michelle Banks stands with her back to the audience in a black latex bustier, boa draped over her shoulders, sinuously moving her hips from side to side, punctuating each movement with a little stomp of her foot. So begins Tanya White’s seamlessly written and directed Lana/Smoking, a monologue/inner dialogue on sex, sexism, racism, smoking, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Death to Mock a Poet
Dear [Barnes & Noble], I and my wife are longtime customers of your store. No longer. Your complicity in the arrest of Joffre Stewart defies logic [Neighborhood News, July 8]. In view of his anarchistic bent, it is entirely up to you, as initiators of the nonesuch, to send your suits to court to quash […]