Hey, Faggot: A group of friends and I were having a raunchy night out at the Powerhouse in San Francisco. We noticed several blow-up dolls hanging from the rafters over the dance floor. A girlfriend and I yanked two down, deflated them, and snuck them out under our jackets. My friend was careless and lost […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 37
Issue of Jun. 18 – 24, 1998
Posted inArts & Culture
No-Frill Thrills
Angels in America The Journeymen at European Repertory Company By Albert Williams “Very Steven Spielberg,” gasps the prophetic gay AIDS patient in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America as the rumbling approach of a winged messenger causes the walls of his New York apartment to shake. In the 1993 Broadway premiere of Kushner’s “gay fantasia on […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mission Implausible
The charismatic leader of one of the century’s most popular utopian movements is remembered by a faithful few.
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
JEB LOY NICHOLS 6/19, SCHUBAS; 6/20, GUINNESS FLEADH This Texas boy has an aesthetic that can politely be called cosmopolitan–he once shared a house with Neneh Cherry, producer Adrian Sherwood, and Ari Up from the Slits. That worldly fusion is evident on his promising 1997 debut, Lovers Knot (Capitol), where he blends down-home balladry, light […]
Posted inMusic
Ray Barretto & New World Spirit
RAY BARRETTO & NEW WORLD SPIRIT I could go on at length about what distinguishes percussionist Ray Barretto’s bands from most “Latin jazz” bands, but why bother when Barretto has spelled it out so simply himself? “Latin jazz…is a term I despise,” the conguero said not long ago. “We play jazz, with me providing the […]
Posted inMusic
Richard Leech
RICHARD LEECH Any tenor singing pop standards today must acknowledge, however grudgingly, the influence of Mario Lanza, the first male operatic singer to achieve runaway popularity doing pop concerts and starring in movies. Unfortunately, Lanza was increasingly unable to cope with his celebrity, and died of a heart attack in Rome in 1959, at age […]
Posted inMusic
Heart of Soul
Soulsville, U.S.A.: The Story of Stax Records by Rob Bowman (Schirmer Books) In Rob Bowman’s recent history of Stax, Soulsville, U.S.A., the 1972 Wattstax music festival in LA stands as both a high point and the top of a long slide into the mud for the legendary Memphis record label. The event, which went off […]
Posted inMusic
Deanna Witkowski
DEANNA WITKOWSKI Tall, a little gangly, and almost childishly shy, 26-year-old pianist Deanna Witkowski doesn’t exactly exude the confidence of your typical young lion. But as she constructs sturdy solos from concrete riffs, juggles lessons learned from Chucho Valdes as well as Thelonious Monk, and manipulates musical space to give her solos their crisp grace, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Dramatic Tension
martin.qxd To the editor: I wasn’t too taken aback to read theater editor Albert Williams disagreeing with Justin Hayford’s original unfavorable review [Section Two, May 29] of Famous Door’s show Beautiful Thing (Critic’s Choice 6/12/98), accusing Justin (not by name) of being a “political doctrinaire” who “misses the point” of a “tender, funny tale” for […]
Posted inMusic
The Spider’s Web
The Spider’s Web This 1989 German epic, directed by Bernhard Wicki and running 198 minutes, makes visible the kind of soulless opportunism that helped lead to Nazism. Set mostly in 1923, it centers on Lohse (Ulrich MŸhe), a former army lieutenant putting himself through law school by tutoring the son of a Jewish banker. Propositioned […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Zephyr Dance
Zephyr Dance Michelle Kranicke has developed a fine eye and ear for contrast, for visual, aural, and kinetic textures. As artistic director of Zephyr Dance, the all-female troupe she founded in 1989, she’s evolved from a choreographer making specific, often feminist cultural observations into an artist interested in a broad range of issues that just […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Art People: small-town big thinker
Richard Brauer studied art history at the Institute of Design, Chicago’s breeding ground for modernists, and he specialized in 20th-century American art. But when Brauer joined the faculty at Valparaiso University in 1961, he became caretaker of a collection heavy with 19th-century landscapes and portraits influenced by the Hudson River school. It included painters like […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Poor Housing Act
wexman.qxd Harold Henderson’s “There Goes Their Neighborhood” (Reader, 29 May 1998) succinctly covered a great deal of ground. I would not, however, characterize CHA’s plans as “rest[ing] on a foundation of exceedingly optimistic assumptions.” I’d say they rest on a foundation of exceedingly subtle deceit. Take, for instance, their “hopes” that some people now living […]