It’s only rock ‘n’ roll
Tag: Vol. 25 No. 42
Issue of Jul. 25 – 31, 1996
Bob Bashing Boring
That nit-picking Bob Greene basher, Ed Gold, still seems to be bashing away with his tirade in the June 7 edition of the Reader [BobWatch]. It’s possible there are other intellectually discriminating individuals like Mr. Gold who enjoy reading such derogatory effluvium. The Reader does well to publish something interesting for all the variegated tastes […]
Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra
Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra For the past several years, Grant Park has played host to the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, an outfit that in prestige and quality is just a notch or two below the Civic Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s training arm. (Ravinia, oddly enough, doesn’t have such an alliance even though the North […]
Barbara’s Weakest Link
Barbara’s Lakeview store may be the next victim of the dreaded creeping superstore.
Explosive Issue
Dear editors: I feel that your recent article on Lise Olsen took an unfair slant and raised assertions about improprieties taken by police and federal investigators without providing adequate justification [“The Accidental Terrorist,” by Laura Kopen, May 31]. It would appear, even from your incredibly slanted presentation of the facts, that a reasonable prosecutor could […]
The Straight Dope
The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams. For publication the week ending Friday, 07-26-96. Copyright 1996 Chicago Reader, Inc. All rights reserved. Publication without express written permission or before Monday of the week ending 07-26-96 is prohibited. When I was in sixth grade in 2972 I remember reports of the discovery of a tenth planet located […]
Dennis Kowalski
In November 1993 Chicago Tribune art critic Alan Artner called Dennis Kowalski “one of the few real maverick artists in the city, one who occasionally has prefigured here kinds of work that eventually caught on in more open art centers.” Kowalski, a sculpture professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a 25-year veteran […]
Iranians On Video
Dear editor: In his June 14 critical appraisal of the Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami, Jonathan Rosenbaum ends his piece with the admonishment, “Don’t think you’ll be able to catch up with him later on video or cable, because the American mainstream has firmly established that he doesn’t exist.” The American mainstream certainly has, but fortunately […]
Experimental Audio Research
Experimental Audio Research In E.A.R., Sonic Boom (aka Pete Kember) allows himself to fixate on the long, dusky soundscapes that merely streaked the music of his other projects, Spacemen 3 and Spectrum. There’s no heed paid to linear structure here; pieces flow more than they develop. But ambient in this case doesn’t necessarily mean high-tech: […]
Bait and Switch
West Town residents voting for an attractive housing proposal get less than they bargained for
Loves Light in Flight
Loves Light in Flight, ETA Creative Arts Foundation. Venus Stratford has an entrepreneur husband who treats her like a child. Halsted Bridges has a corporate-dragon ex-wife who treats him like a pet. Halsted’s sister and brother-in-law, Burnetta and Leonard, alternate between fighting and fornicating with the ferocity of tigers, and his best buddy, Earl, is […]
Mr. Mercado
Squeezed between the orange juice and a display of warm pork rinds, Congressman Luis Gutierrez meets his public
Rob Mazurek & the Chicago Underground Orchestra
ROB MAZUREK & THE CHICAGO UNDERGROUND ORCHESTRA The enthusiastic commingling of disparate ideas is one of the unspoken ideals of jazz, but all too often members of a given group display a predictable homogeneity. Not so with cornetist Rob Mazurek, guitarist Jeffrey Parker, bassist Josh Abrams, and drummer Robert Barry. Mazurek’s brash but lyrical attack […]