TOKYO STRING QUARTET This year the Tokyo String Quartet is trying out a new first violinist–the third in its almost 30 year existence: Peter Oundjian, who lasted 15 years in the job, has been replaced by Mikhail Kopelman from the Borodin Quartet. Such a transition–especially in the first chair, more often than not the soul […]
Tag: Vol. 26 No. 36
Issue of Jun. 12 – 18, 1997
Posted inArts & Culture
The Future of Food?/ Candlelight Snuffed Out/ Whisky a Go Go
After a string of traditional hits, Okno’s Terry Alexander bucks his own trend.
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In May the San Francisco Chronicle reported on addiction to lip balm, especially the Chap Stick brand. According to one addict who studied the problem, the ingredients in Chap Stick fuse with the skin, requiring constant reapplication. Another source cited a better, nonaddictive lip balm: a person’s own nose oil, which has reportedly […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Cheap Shot
youngwe2.qxd To the editors, The hype phrase “Rolling Stone rewrites history,” which graced the top of the June 6 Reader cover, misrepresents J.R. Jones’s enclosed Rock, Etc. article–much like Jones himself misrepresents a dozen album reviews culled from old issues of the magazine to make his “now and then” case against its recent essential rock […]
Posted inMusic
Eugene Chadbourne
EUGENE CHADBOURNE There’s a subset of close-listening free improvisation that has long been referred to as “insect music.” The tag makes intuitive sense: always seeking new sonic possibilities, improvising musicians use alternative and extended techniques to produce unorthodox timbres and textures–including what sound suspiciously like buzzes and chirps. North Carolina guitarist and wacko troubador Eugene […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Prometheus
PROMETHEUS, ArtWorx International Ensemble, at the Chopin Theatre. Back in the middle of the fifth century BC, when the Athenians got their first peek at the despot-defying hero of Aeschylus’ Prometheus trilogy, the memory of tyrants like Peisistratus of Athens, Lygdamis of Naxos, and Polycrates of Samos was still fresh. Contemporary Americans have no analogous […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Petty Crime
May 22, 1:20 PM, 6100 block of North Winthrop. Battery. Woman getting cable system repaired refused to sign service form and began asking cable company employee difficult questions. When woman attempted to call cable company to complain about service, employee twisted her arm, grabbing service form and cable remote control. He then fled. Woman did […]
Posted inMusic
Tanareid
TANAREID The distinctiveness of TanaReid–a rather ordinary-looking quintet, with two saxophonists fronting a conventional rhythm section–has nothing to do with exotic spices and everything to do with basic ingredients. In fact, at first glance you might even take for granted the lean texture and unassuming flavors that make an hour’s set so nourishing. Like any […]
Posted inArts & Culture
For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls
FOR WHOM THE SOUTHERN BELLE TOLLS, Live Bait Theater. Christopher Durang’s parody of The Glass Menagerie is a hoot. Written after a lengthy writer’s block, from 1988 to 1993, this witty, wild, vicious deconstruction of Williams’s beautiful but done-to-death classic is as wickedly funny as any of Durang’s earlier, longer, better-known works. At least it […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Memories of a Trouper
By Cara Jepsen “All of these people are dead,” says Rudy Horn as he pages through a photo album, pointing to black-and-white photos of performers with whom he once shared the bill: Ruth Etting, Fifi D’Orsay, George Burns, Bing Crosby, Artie Shaw, George Gershwin, Texas Guinan, Paul Ash, Gloria Swanson, Bonnie Baker, Ray Bolger, Olsen […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Hey, Faggot: You bioboys think you’ve got problems… I’m a female-to-male transsexual who, since my accession to sentience, has been wild about boys. For years I tried to be happy as a straight female, but it never worked. I wasn’t a female and I wasn’t straight. What I was, and am, is a guy who […]
Posted inMusic
Johnny Adams
JOHNNY ADAMS In the last decade Johnny Adams–now 65 and still perhaps the greatest male vocalist ever to come out of New Orleans–has rebuilt his career with a series of concept albums on which he’s gradually moved away from silky Crescent City soul and toward urbane jazz balladry. While two late-80s collections devoted to great […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Restaurant Tours: bringing fufu to Wrigleyville
Alpha Tense is explaining how a former agricultural engineer came to be the owner of a Nigerian restaurant in Wrigleyville when he is interrupted by someone pounding on the window. A grubby, unshaven face appears above the curtain and yells, “Howya doing?” Taken by surprise, Tense calls out, “How are you?” The door opens and […]
Posted inMusic
Third Eye Foundation
THIRD EYE FOUNDATION As recent recordings by Squarepusher and Boymerang continue to play Frankenstein with drum ‘n’ bass, it seems only a matter of time before some artist embraces the form while severing its connection to the dance floor altogether. One that comes awfully close is Third Eye Foundation, aka Matt Elliot, whose previous work […]