PAUL PLIMLEY If I were planning a Frank Zappa songbook project, I wouldn’t peg solo piano as the ideal instrument to do it on. But Vancouver pianist Paul Plimley–who is currently at work on such a collection for the Swiss Hat Art label–is full of surprises. He’s done great tributes to Ornette Coleman and Max […]
Tag: Vol. 28 No. 2
Issue of Oct. 15 – 21, 1998
Posted inArts & Culture
All Together Now/ Good Plan/ Liquid Assets
He’s made a few mistakes, but after three years Welborn Young is looking more and more like the savior of the Windy City Gay Chorus.
Posted inNews & Politics
Police Scanner
Saturday, October 3, 1:00 AM 4569-Adam: We got Monica and Linda goin’ to Area Four lockup. Dispatcher: OK. Unidentified caller: Book that fight, baby. Saturday, October 3, 11:10 PM Dispatcher: 540? 2520: 2520. Whaddaya need? Dispatcher: Put in a request for a supervisor, 19– N. Kildare. Miss R– said two people were in their yard […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Correction
The September 25 Culture Club misstated the history of Manga Entertainment; the company was founded by Islandlife executive Chris Blackwell. The sound track to the film Six-String Samurai was released by the Palm Pictures record label; Rykodisc was the distributor. The editors
Posted inArts & Culture
Barrymore
Christopher Plummer’s elegantly aquiline profile and a certain stagy flamboyance in his acting (which he smartly lampooned as a Shakespeare-spouting alien in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) make the Canadian actor perfect for this grandly entertaining tour de force. It first hit Chicago in March of ’97, then went on to Broadway, where Plummer […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Monster Hit
Dracula Defiant Theatre at Charybdis By Justin Hayford If I weren’t a gay man living in the age of AIDS, I might have gotten sucked into the century-old vampire mystique exemplified by Bram Stoker’s 1897 horror story, Dracula. The lure is obvious: libidos run wild, unleashing “darker” instincts and lustful evil. In the figure of […]
Posted inMusic
Billy Joe Shaver
BILLY JOE SHAVER Most of the major figures of the 70s outlaw movement–including Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, and David Allan Coe–have continued to make listenable records into the 90s, but Billy Joe Shaver might be the only one who’s done his best work this decade. Though he’s still best known for writing most of the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Human Nature
trojanek.qxd Dear Reader, Jerry Sullivan in Field & Street errs by trying to replace one national myth with another [October 9]. Certainly the dogma of manifest destiny needs to be relegated to historical belief. But replacing it with a myth of Native Americans as overly peaceful, naturally nondestructive “beautiful people” is equally invalid. The myth […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Reader’s Guide to the 34th Annual Chicago International Film Festival
The Movies, Week Two
Posted inArts & Culture
In Print: opening the past’s iron box
Back between the two world wars was a great time to be a Czechoslovakian citizen. The republic had been born in 1918, headed by president Tomas Masaryk, who was not only a democrat but a feminist. Czech had become the national language, blossoming after its second-class status to German under the Austro-Hungarian empire. The new […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Sports Section
What a golden, glowing, glorious baseball season it was. Even so, when the Cubs came home to Wrigley Field for the third game of their playoff series with the Atlanta Braves, the summer seemed already preserved in amber. The stiff, cold wind blowing in from right field and the lake made the hardiest, most hedonistic […]
Posted inMusic
Andrea Marcovicci
ANDREA MARCOVICCI British-born chanteuse Mabel Mercer was–to cop a phrase from Cole Porter–“the essence of, the quintessence of” cabaret artistry in the New York nightclub scene of the 40s and 50s. Her elegant yet conversational style has influenced stars from Frank Sinatra and Billie Holiday to Johnny Mathis and Bobby Short, and now Andrea Marcovicci, […]
Posted inMusic
Odean Pope Trio
ODEAN POPE TRIO John Coltrane spent his formative years in the City of Brotherly Love, and his spirit has hovered there since. Saxist Odean Pope, now 59, grew up in Philadelphia, and as a teenager he surely heard Coltrane in local clubs just before the visionary saxophonist rocketed to fame in Miles Davis’s group in […]
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The Flunking of Joshua T. Bates
The Flunking of Joshua T. Bates, Griffin Theatre Company. Unlike most Chicago companies, Griffin treats children’s theater primarily as a vehicle for instruction. And in sharp contrast to the company’s generally gaudy, vibrant adult productions, Griffin’s children’s shows are uniformly sparse, keeping props and costumes to a minimum, so the burden of bringing the characters’ […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
PAUL K 10/16, SCHUBAS Detroit-born, Kentucky-based cult hero Paul K has been praised as (or accused of being, depending on your perspective) a “one-man Tin Pan Alley,” and now he’s taken the next logical step: he’s written a rock opera. His A Wilderness of Mirrors (Alias), loosely based on the Book of Job, is a […]