With every record it produces, the British folk family known as Waterson:Carthy proves over again that traditional music doesn’t have to sound like it belongs in a museum. For the clan’s latest collective offering, Broken Ground (Topic), singer and guitarist Martin Carthy–a veteran of Steeleye Span, the Albion Country Band, and the harmony vocal group […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 10
Issue of Dec. 9 – 15, 1999
Posted inArts & Culture
Keeping It In the Family
In Leaves Selene Carter, Tiina Harris, Atalee Judy, and Amy Alyn Pope at Link’s Hall, November 19-21 By Terry Brennan When Tiina Harris met her 94-year-old Estonian great-grandmother for the first time, the great-grandmother looked carefully at her and said, “You are the first one who looks like me.” Although we tend to think about […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tiff and Mom and the Meaning of the Magi Gift Mix-Up
TIFF AND MOM AND THE MEANING OF THE MAGI GIFT MIX-UP, Corn Productions, at the Cornservatory. Directed by “Scruffy Mufflekiss,” this 40-minute late-night offering succeeds October’s Tales From Mom’s Crypt III as the latest perpetration of the saga of Tiffani Tay-anya Tiffelmeyer and Mom Tiffelmeyer. Foulmouthed, sex hungry, and food crazed, the Berwyn mother-and-daughter duo […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Second City 40th Anniversary Celebration
When the Second City cabaret theater was opened by Paul Sills, Bernie Sahlins, and Howard Alk on December 16, 1959, its name was its founders’ way of thumbing their noses at Chicago’s image as a cultural also-ran. That image was soon laid to rest thanks in large part to Second City’s international influence, with its […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Christmas Carol and Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol and Jacob Marley’s Christmas Carol, Goodman Theatre. Any play set in a period more than two generations ago risks being labeled a “costume drama” and comfortably wallowing in fantasies about what always seems a happier time than our own. But in his four years as director of the Goodman’s Christmas Carol, Henry […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Pagans Have Feelings Too
Sometimes the difference between causing offense and speaking directly can lie in the timing. Cecil has complained of the massive amount of hate mail he has received from Wiccans after questioning the antiquity of their faith and their claims of maintaining continuity with the original Pagan traditions [November 12]. Late in the article he acknowledges […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Wishbone’s Rise From Grits to Gravy
Joel Nickson had a simple mission: to create a neighborhood hangout that served healthy, affordable southern cooking. Though raised in New Mexico and New Jersey, he learned to love the south through visits to his grandparents in North Carolina. At age 15 he ran away from home to live and work for a year and […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
JARBOE 12/10, THE NOTE Singer, keyboardist, and performance artist Jarboe took a lot of heat when she joined Swans in 1986 and dared to exert a complicating influence (or “woman’s touch”) on Michael Gira’s most excellent heart-of-darkness grind. In fact her 13-year collaboration with Gira pushed both of them in directions they never could have […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Blue Ink
Cop-cum-novelist Mike Balck finds inspiration in the criminal mind.
Posted inNews & Politics
Fed UPP
Letter to the editor: I would like to set the record straight on several inaccuracies in Grant Pick’s article “The Streets Have Eyes” (November 19) about the Uptown Peace Patrol. Prince Crockrom and Anton Miglietta were indeed in attendance at our monthly CAPS meeting on October 5, but that is where reality ends. According to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
American Buffalo
AMERICAN BUFFALO, American Theater Company. Is there anything more disappointing than lukewarm David Mamet? His plays work best when performed by white-hot actors adept at his witty verbal pyrotechnics but capable of revealing the subtext seething beneath. But in the neutered Buffalo currently playing at American Theater Company, none of the three actors feels quite […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bocage, the Triumph of Love
Manuel Maria Barbosa du Bocage was a pivotal figure in late-18th-century Portuguese literature, his earthy, rebellious, at times metaphysical poems embracing the ideals of both romanticism and the Enlightenment. This fanciful 1997 biography by Brazilian filmmaker Djalma Limongi Batista seems to be based more on Bocage’s poetry than his life, portraying him as an exiled […]
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Lois Kaz
Improvisation has always been an important facet at Second City, but it was usually treated as a means to an end: scripted sketch comedy shows. The troupe Lois Kaz, formed in 1994, changed all that–named after a longtime Second City employee (and the ex-wife of Second City music director Fred Kaz), it was begun for […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Aterciopelados
ATERCIOPELADOS Before Bloque was even a blip on the North American radar, their fellow Colombians Aterciopelados–led by singer-guitarist Andrea Echeverri and guitarist Hector Buitrago–had released four albums that wedded rock ‘n’ roll to traditional folk forms with a punkish urgency. On the most recent of these, last year’s terrific Caribe Atomico (BMG U.S. Latin), the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kevin Cole
KEVIN COLE In the year since Kevin Cole first presented his Gershwin Solo at the Ivanhoe Theater, his singing has gained noticeably in resonance and expressiveness, thanks in part to lessons from veteran songwriter (and sometime coach to Judy Garland) Hugh Martin. Still, Cole’s ace in the hole is his ebullient, dynamic piano playing, which […]