Boss Hog
Tag: Vol. 25 No. 26
Issue of Apr. 4 – 10, 1996
Posted inMusic
Rock 101
Rock 101 The Beatles: Recording Sessions, subtitled “The Official Abbey Road Studio Session Notes, 1962-1970,” by Beatlesologist Mark Lewisohn, was published nearly ten years ago to practically no fanfare. The book, a painstaking journey through almost every take the group ever recorded, chronicles the band from their first venture inside the studio to play for […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Daley Boys
The Mystery of the Shrinking Convention “Gee! The Democratic National Convention! Right here in our own backyard!” Richie Daley grinned at his brother Bill as the two boys slipped on their business suits. “That’s right,” Bill answered with a chuckle. “It’s our big chance to show the world that Chicago is still the City That […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Stage Notes: Acting in a Travelling Band
Two years ago Dexter Bullard turned down a job many would have killed for. The artistic director of the Next Theatre, Harriet Spizziri, was retiring, and the first person she thought of to replace her was Bullard. The choice seemed like a natural. Bullard had directed some of the company’s most successful shows, including Bouncers, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Imaginary Invalid
The Imaginary Invalid, Symposium Theatre Company, at the Organic Theater Company Greenhouse, South Hall. You won’t hear much of Moliere’s repartee in this rendition of The Imaginary Invalid, not in John Wood’s plodding translation or in these actors’ leaden midwestern accents, with the occasional oui, monsieur, and mon pere (pronounced “wee,” “muhzherr,” and “moan pear”) […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
On a recent afternoon around the lunch counter, my colleagues and I were discussing the attributes of the chicken egg when someone asked, “Which end of the egg comes out first, the round end or the pointed end?” Of course we all took a position, and while wagering of serious money did not take place, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Diary of Evelyn Lau
Asians as the model minority is a stereotype that flatters and stifles. This 1993 feature, made for the Canadian Broadcast Company, turns the cliche on its head in chronicling the tawdry true-life encounters of a Vancouver runaway teenager who aspires to be a poet. Caught between disapproving parents with traditional expectations and her own curiosity-driven […]
Posted inArts & Culture
One Tough Cookie
Twenty years ago newcomer Karen Mason wowed Chicago cabaretgoers with her big, phenomenally rich voice, shown off in songs written and/or arranged for her by accompanist Brian Lasser. Now an established presence on Broadway, where she’s standby for the lead in Sunset Boulevard, Mason is back home starring in the world premiere of this quasi-autobiographical […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Hearing Disorder
To the editors: Sarah Bryan Miller errs when she allows her bias against modern music to create a misunderstanding about Emanuel Ax’s preperformance comments about the Schoenberg Piano Concerto (March 8). At the February 15 concert under review, Ax, one of today’s most generous and self-effacing performers, neither said, nor implied, that “the work has […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Now Playing: on the frontier of film
Soon after Auguste and Louis Lumiere devised their pioneering motion-picture system in 1895, the French brothers hired cameramen to travel around the world with their portable invention, the Cinematographe, which served as a camera, film printer, and projector. After arriving in a new city, the cameraman would shoot film on the streets, occasionally processing it […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Grifters
GRIFTERS On their new album, Ain’t My Lookout (Sub Pop), Memphis’s Grifters deliver more of the straight-up rock grittiness they served in a smaller dose on last year’s Eureka EP–this time reconciling the divergent strains (hook-laden pop, mangled power chords, sonic collisions) that made their musical tension stand out initially. With three accomplished songwriters the […]