Give us 12 or 18 months, says executive producer Doug Berman. Then we’ll know what the public thinks of the news quiz Berman just brought to WBEZ. There are straws in the wind already, however–censure so sharp it could poke your eye out. The feisty regulars on the WBEZ Web site, who by and large […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 20
Issue of Feb. 19 – 25, 1998
Posted inArts & Culture
Seven Years in Joliet
SEVEN YEARS IN JOLIET, Second City Outreach Program, Donny’s Skybox Studio, Piper’s Alley. The terrific title for this alternative revue comes from one sketch: two matrons from the “Women’s Auxiliary of Wilmette” offer their services as motivational speakers to Cook County Jail inmates. The scene almost writes itself. But that’s a problem with several other […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
Hey, Faggot: I’ve been seeing my current girlfriend for about three years. During our very first lovemaking session, she said, “Don’t think I’m one of those women who bucks and moans.” What she meant was that she had never had an orgasm in her life (she’s now 39). All my attempts to move her in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Backward Clods
Dear Editor: I disagree with Michael Miner’s conclusion (“Strife After Death,” January 23, 1998) that the Chicago Tribune did not violate Timothy Marback’s human rights in refusing to describe his same-sex marriage in the same manner as it described the marriages of his straight siblings. To be sure, this human rights violation does not begin […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Slave
THE SLAVE, Hostage Theatre Company, at Voltaire. Amiri Baraka (formerly LeRoi Jones) wrote this play in 1964, one year after his masterwork Dutchman, in which a black man is ritualistically murdered on a subway car by indifferent whites. The Slave reverses the crime: blacks are winning a race war, and Walker Vessels–a poet heading the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Sports Section
Picabo Street stood at the bottom of the women’s super-giant slalom run in Nagano, Japan, and waited to see if her time would stand up as the best in the world. She chatted with supporters, fans, hangers-on, and reporters, smiling all the while. CBS TV cameras and microphones picked her up saying, “I am a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Little Hope for the Virginian
Headline Dear Editor: Issues of neighborhood development are by their very nature sensitive and highly charged. It is therefore important that community leaders and the media do their best to debate those issues on the basis of facts, free from demagoguery and sloganeering. Unfortunately, Neal Pollack, who usually tries to be fair, failed to do […]
Posted inMusic
Isaac Stern, Jaime Laredo, Yo-Yo Ma, and Emanuel Ax
ISAAC STERN, JAIME LAREDO, YO-YO MA, AND EMANUEL AX This chamber recital corrals four heavyweights for a conventional survey of the evolution of the piano quartet. All four have played together often (as a marketing creation of the honchos at Sony), but at their last ensemble appearance in Chicago, four seasons ago, it was quite […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
BLACK FAMILY 2/20, DOUBLE DOOR This Chicago trio’s demo tape, Dolly Horrorshow, is a solid debut of grim, spitting cowpunk–a little bit Texas Playboys and a little bit Geraldine Fibbers, a little bit rockabilly and a little bit revival tent. Singer Danny Black puts the words across well enough, but it’s the duets with his […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Strange Snow
Strange Snow, Pyewacket, at Sarantos Studios. By now most theater audiences can sing along with the post-Vietnam GI blues, but Steve Metcalfe’s 1982 tale of a veteran and his sister and the war comrade who rescues them has lost none of its compassion, either for the men unwilling to confront choices they made in the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Misplaced Faith
morris.qxd Dear Reader: In David Moberg’s cover report, “All Together Now” (October 17, 1997) on United Power for Action & Justice and the Industrial Areas Foundation, Mr. Moberg writes as follows: “So far most of the critics are on the Catholic right. Conservative Joseph Morris, for example, alleged in a column in Crain’s Chicago Business […]
Posted inMusic
Terranova
TERRANOVA I admit my recommendation for the Berlin DJ triumvirate Terranova ain’t based on much, but what little I’ve heard sure sounded good. The only group member who might have any stateside name recognition is Fetisch, who moved to New York in the late 80s to immerse himself in the city’s thriving hip-hop scene. DJing […]
Posted inMusic
T-Model Ford
T-MODEL FORD Matthew Johnson, the 28-year-old who runs Mississippi’s Fat Possum Records, has said that the only good blues music today is on his record label–and with Delta talent like the late Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside, CeDell Davis, and Paul “Wine” Jones on his roster, the hyperbole can almost be forgiven. In the liner notes […]
Posted inMusic
Mose Allison
MOSE ALLISON For 40 years now the world has failed to heed Mose Allison’s humorous warnings and ironic observations, his gimlet-eyed advice disguised in homespun metaphors–and that makes his laconic philosophizing as essential as ever. On his new album, Gimcracks and Gewgaws (Blue Note), he occasionally updates his bemused outrage, as in “The More You […]
Posted inNews & Politics
What’s Best for the Businessman
weiss.qxd Dear Editor, This is a response to the letter from Mari Gallagher, the executive director of DevCorp North [February 13]. As a nearby resident of the Gateway development, I welcome the project [Neighborhood News, January 16]. I don’t find anything essentially noble about an area being poor. But really, Ms. Gallagher, whom do you […]