THURSDAY JUNE BEST BUY SHOWCASE STAGE Noon Roger Connelly & the Blues Merchants 1:00 PM Big John Dickerson From Minneapolis, brass-leavened R & B and blues in the uplifting style of onetime Chicago mainstays Big Twist & the Mellow Fellows. (BD) 2:00 PM Johnny Drummer See below. 3:00 PM The Southsiders 4:00 PM J.B. Ritchie […]
Tag: Vol. 28 No. 34
Issue of May. 27 – Jun. 2, 1999
Magma
MAGMA Not to belittle punk’s largely successful efforts to dismantle prog rock’s pretensions, but there are a few things about the prog era that seem rather lovable now–most of all its tolerance, if not outright encouragement, of serious eccentricity. And no prog band was more seriously eccentric than the French band Magma. An underground legend […]
Low
LOW When I first heard Low’s 1994 debut, I Could Live in Hope, I dismissed the band as a Galaxie 500 rip-off–another quiet, mixed-gender trio who’d probably worn out a few copies of the Velvet Underground’s third LP between rehearsals. (Producer Kramer had even treated the album to the same reverb bath he gave Galaxie […]
Blues Festival Intro
Last year the Chicago Blues Festival pulled off a major coup by reuniting Ray Charles with his star-studded horn section of the 1950s, and during the first decade of the annual free event, now in its 16th year, there were many comparable once-in-a-lifetime evenings. But whether due to budget constraints or City Hall’s (probably correct) […]
Big Wheel Keeps on Burning
Legendary litigator Eugene Pincham takes the city to court–this time as a parking violator with a beef against permit-parking zones.
Mercury Rev
MERCURY REV I’ve never been particularly fond of Mercury Rev’s loud but static brand of psychedelic rock: tossing in the kitchen sink never seemed like a good substitute for writing decent songs. But last year the band released its best album yet, Deserter’s Songs (V2), which picked up where its last and most focused previous […]
Neotropic/Pole/J-Rocc & Rhettmatic
NEOTROPIC/POLE/J-ROCC & RHETTMATIC Billed as “Night of the Round Tables,” this extravaganza ought to paint a pretty convincing picture of just how amazingly diverse turntable-based music making has become in 1999. Mr Brubakers Strawberry Alarm Clock (Ntone), the second album from Londoner Riz Maslen, aka Neotropic, recalls DJ Shadow in terms of density and the […]
News of the Weird
Lead Stories Life imitates the movie Take the Money and Run: Vincent E. Rudolph, 36, was arrested in York, Pennsylvania, in March and charged with committing three robberies. In at least one of them he allegedly used a holdup note that read “Give me the money I got a gum.” In April the Associated Press […]
Course Evaluation/Heading For the Palace/As the Door Spins/Fun in Yugoslavia
Course Evaluation As a student at Tennessee State University, Oprah Winfrey majored in speech, communications, and performing arts, but when she returns to academia this fall as an adjunct professor at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, her subject will be the art of leadership. With her longtime beau, marketing executive Stedman Graham, […]
Nailing It Down
What’s behind the Vietnamese takeover of the manicure industry?
Petty Crime
April 28, 12:30 PM, 1500 block of East 53rd. Assault. Man was stopped on street by boss from convenience mart, who accused him of stealing store’s candy to sell after business hours. Employee denied accusation. Boss, who moonlights as security guard, was in uniform. He put gun to employee’s ribs, searched him, found candy, and […]
Keep the Legacy Alive
Born in Chicago in 1912, Katherine Dunham cobbled together a remarkable career. She made her professional debut in 1933 in Ruth Page’s ballet La Guiablesse while studying anthropology at the University of Chicago, then was awarded a fellowship by the Rosenwald Foundation and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm to study dance in Martinique, Jamaica, Trinidad, and Haiti. […]
Restaurant Tours: Penang’s Malaysian melting pot
Ken Lim surveys the Friday-night crowd at Penang, the Malaysian restaurant his family owns in Chinatown. All the tables are full, and a line stretches outside the front door even though it’s past nine. “That’s a Filipino family,” Lim says, pointing to a table of ten. “The grandparents bring everyone here to taste home cooking. […]