Re: David Futrelle, “Marx on the Skids” [September 15] Thanks for the stunning insight that Marx wrote Capital because he didn’t want to get a job. If you had actually read the book whilst you were posing, you would have noted that earlier concepts of “revolutionary proletariat” and “alienation” had all but disappeared in the […]
Tag: Vol. 24 No. 52
Issue of Oct. 5 – 11, 1995
Posted inArts & Culture
Scenes From an Unfinished Country: 1905/1995
Pintig Cultural Group, at the Greenview Arts Center. In Chris Millado’s two-hour drama with music, two theater companies separated by 90 years collide: Pintig Cultural Group is restaging Juan Matapang Cruz’s seditious 1905 Filipino drama, Hindi Aco Patay (“I Am Not Yet Dead”), while flashbacks show what made Cruz’s revolutionary theater truly dangerous to U.S. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Naked Truth
To the Reader: “Naked Censorship, Part I” [September 29] uncovers a lot of fascinating material, and although I wasn’t nuts about everything said about me, that’s what they call life. It is the best single piece I’ve read about this now 37-year-old matter. There is of course more to be said about everything I remember, […]
Posted inMusic
Teaching Jazz to Rap
Guru’s Jazzmatazz Metro, September 23 When Guru first threaded smooth jazz melodies with hip-hop’s heavy bass lines in Gangstarr’s 1989 single “No More Mr. Nice Guy,” he was taking a risk–jazz fans screamed blasphemy, and hip-hop purists questioned its street credibility. He created an uproar, but he helped set the stage for such groups as […]
Posted inFilm
Don’t Worry, Be Unhappy
Seven *** (A must-see) Directed by David Fincher Written by Andrew Kevin Walker With Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Richard Roundtree, R. Lee Ermey, John McGinley, Julie Araskog, Mark Boone Junior, and Kevin Spacey. Since when have designer vomit, mannerist rot, and other chic signifiers of gloom, doom, and decline become such comforting mainstays […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Reader to Reader
Overheard exiting the R.E.M. show, where Michael Stipe did a number with surprise guest Patti Smith: A young man to his clique of male and female companions: “Who’s Patti Smith?” There’s a brief silence, as the group rack their brains for an answer. A young woman, dripping derision, responds, “She’s a lesbian, I can tell […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Stage: fireman in a crowded theater
Almost every actor needs a day job to fall back on, a paying gig to balance the budget. It can be waiting tables, teaching, answering phones, fighting fires . . . Fighting fires? An occupation like that isn’t usually on the resume of most show folk. But actor Guy Van Swearingen divides his time between […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: Ian Schneller’s guitar wizardry
Ian Schneller made his first guitar about eight years ago in a logical pairing of his abilities as a sculptor and a musician. He had come to Chicago from Memphis to attend graduate school at the Art Institute, and was a founding member of the band Shrimp Boat. He now fronts the group Falstaff. After […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Salome
“Personally I like comedy to be intensely modern, and like my tragedy to walk in purple and to be remote,” Oscar Wilde wrote. He would have admired actor-director Steven Berkoff’s staging of Salome, the poetic drama Wilde adapted from the biblical tale of the teenage temptress who lusted for John the Baptist. Berkoff, who plays […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fred Hersch Trio
Finding pianist Fred Hersch listed as a sideman on someone else’s album has much the same effect as ordering something in a restaurant and discovering it comes with champagne on the side. It’s a treat, and it has a definite psychoactive effect: it makes the music sound better. Though he isn’t so well known as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Squonk Opera
Squonk Opera’s onomatopoeic, jokey name suggests an irreverent troupe bent on creating a novel kind of musical theater, and the Pittsburgh-based band, which was founded only two years ago, largely fulfills that promise. Its five members draw on their varied backgrounds in experimental theater and classical composition and performance to create an often witty, always […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
LUNA, MERCURY REV 10/6, METRO Penthouse (Elektra), the third album by Luna, explores the same post-Velvet Underground strum grooves the combo has been working since it formed in 1992, after the dissolution of Galaxie 500, leader Dean Wareham’s previous band. With rolling rhythms and gentle melodies polished to a new luster, the band has continued […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tracers
The re-creation of the Vietnam combat experience in John DiFusco’s Tracers reveals no love of war but an immeasurable compassion for the warriors who, willingly or not, fought in it. This Mary-Arrchie production, which opened last July to critical praise, has lost none of its intensity–indeed, its new quarters in the Firehouse allow the action […]
Posted inMusic
Howard Stern Fired…and Hired/How to make $11 Million Without Really Trying
Next!/WJJD steps up
Posted inArts & Culture
Music Notes: rebirth of a jazz legend
The Sutherland Hotel and Ballroom still stands on the corner of 47th and Drexel, but it’s been a long time since it counted the jazz greats among its guests. For more than 30 years it was a jazz mecca. Located down the street from the old Regal Theatre in a neighborhood known for its nightclubs, […]