ACETONE On its 1993 debut, Cindy (Vernon Yard), Acetone decorated a Velvetsy foundation with icy psychedelia, chunks of garage noise, and a sprinkling of Isaac Hayes guitar. But apparently the LA trio found its own concoction unsatisfying, because over subsequent albums, it radically changed the recipe. In fact, its recently released, eponymously titled third album, […]
Tag: Vol. 27 No. 6
Issue of Nov. 13 – 19, 1997
Posted inNews & Politics
The Other Evanstonians
kim.qxd Regarding the article “Hitting a Movie Target” [Neighborhood News, October 31], I have just a few things to say to people like Liz Reeves and Kathy Burgess. In case you haven’t noticed, there is this university located in Evanston called Northwestern University. Again, Northwestern University. Much of the motivation behind building the 18-screen complex […]
Posted inMusic
John McLaughlin
JOHN McLAUGHLIN John McLaughlin calls his new band the Heart of Things–that’s also the title of their brand-new Verve album–and it makes sense that the pioneering jazz-rock guitarist, now 55, might be wondering what’s made his brilliant career tick. Since helping to invent fusion, as a member of Tony Williams’s Lifetime and as a vital […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Humanities Festival
Chicago Humanities Festival The eighth annual Chicago Humanities Festival concluded its series of live programs last weekendâ but this week it presents a series of 18 filmsâ all organized around the theme “Work and Play: How We Organize Our Time.” The series runs Friday through Thursday, November 14 through 20, at Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Armageddon (A Christmas Play)
ARMAGEDDON (A CHRISTMAS PLAY), Buckorog Productions, at Stage Left Theatre. Some say the world will end by fire, others by ice. But having seen Darren Critz’s Armageddon (A Christmas Play), I know that the universe will be destroyed by boredom. My personal universe at least was destroyed by the time Critz’s overwritten 130-minute late-night show […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Endorsing the IVI-IPO
obama.qxd Dear Ms. True: In the article appearing recently in the Chicago Reader on the Independent Voters of Illinois-Independent Precinct Organization [“Fighting Over Scraps,” November 7], there were a number of quotes attributed to me that I feel need to be placed in the proper context. First, while it is technically true that I would […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Riders Looking Up Again
The CTA reinstates some much-missed lines–of poetry
Posted inMusic
High Llamas
HIGH LLAMAS The brainchild of former rock writer and Microdisney member Sean O’Hagan, the High Llamas leave the orch-pop competition in the dust–but hey, who’s looking back? On the group’s recent, sprawling Hawaii (V2) and to a lesser extent on 1994’s Gideon Gaye (Epic), O’Hagan and his quintet appropriate the brilliant arrangements of Van Dyke […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bedroom Set
BEDROOM SET, Great Beast Theater, at Live Bait Theater. All four one-acts that make up “Bedroom Set” involve a man, a woman, and a big brass bed. But in none of them does anyone sleep (though the wife of the boisterous early riser in Lanford Wilson’s Breakfast at the Track makes a valiant effort) or […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Just Resting
obrien.qxd In Lewis Lazare’s October 31 Culture Club piece about changes in the Splinter Group organization, there were a few contextual errors/misunderstandings on his part, and we’d like to correct them. 1. The article mentions that we’re in a sort of “hibernation” at present, but the truth is that in June of this year the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Truth on Trial
Navy Pier Wax Lips Theatre Company at Strawdog Theatre By Nick Green When one of the characters in John Corwin’s Navy Pier describes air hockey in maxims that might have been culled from Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War, he magnifies a simple game into an intense, complex battle of skill, wit, and determination. Wax Lips […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories In September in Columbus, Ohio, Peter “Commander Pedro” Langan was convicted of federal assault and gun charges stemming from a 1996 shootout with police. Langan also has been convicted of two bank robberies and faces trial in four others as the leader of a neo-Nazi, white-supremacist gang that used the robberies to fund […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Bells of Balangiga
THE BELLS OF BALANGIGA, Pintig Cultural Group, at Chopin Theatre. “Freedom or treachery–what will your verdict be?” the opening song of this musical asks. The answer is obvious–who wouldn’t cheer for brave third world people fighting to defend themselves against the foreign oppressors who occupy their homeland? Of course in this case we are the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
You Must Pay the Rent!
Headline I am writing in reference to the Post No Bills from August 8. How strange a twist on the truth Peter Margasak put forth! The insinuation that the former owners of the Bop Shop and HotHouse are martyrs of the gentrification of Wicker Park is highly misleading. The Reader and Mr. Margasak seem to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Perjured City, or the Awakenings of the Furies
THE PERJURED CITY, OR THE AWAKENING OF THE FURIES, StreetSigns, at Holy Covenant United Methodist Church. A woman screams hysterically through the stained-glass windows of the church that houses this StreetSigns production that the city is “a slaughterhouse” administered by conscience-free politicians and money-grubbing MDs. It seems that government officials, with the complicity of well-placed […]