Jigs and spud bars top the agenda at the ice-fisherman’s ball.
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 11
Issue of Dec. 16 – 22, 1999
Posted inArts & Culture
Willie Pickens Trio with Randy Brecker & Joanie Pallatto
WILLIE PICKENS TRIO WITH RANDY BRECKER & JOANIE PALLATTO Christmas never comes too early for Chicago pianist Willie Pickens: for five years running he’s produced a yuletide concert, and in 1998 he issued A Jazz Christmas (Southport), one of the least sentimental and most engaging holiday jazz albums ever. If you think of Christmastime tunes […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
I am in the middle of changing my sex from male to female. I have a sweet girlfriend, and she and I have fabulous sex! I told her I was a woman about four years ago and began the transition two years ago. My girlfriend still loves me and overlooks the boobies or other feminizations. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Karrin Allyson, Nancy King
KARRIN ALLYSON, NANCY KING Before I learned about this bill, I’d have never guessed that Karrin Allyson had even heard of Nancy King–let alone that she’s adored King’s records for years, as she’s recently said. Though the two share a husky-voiced assertiveness, their territories don’t seem to overlap: King, an intrepid scat improviser based in […]
Posted inMusic
Electronica in the House/The Ax Finally Falls
Electronica in the House House music has sprouted like a spider plant since its birth more than two decades ago. Techno, speed garage, acid house, drum ‘n’ bass, gabber, and 90s electronica are among its progeny–but here in Chicago, where house began, its more experimental offspring are largely ignored. Important postrave artists, from England’s Autechre […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Sports Section
What a perfect time for the end of the millennium or, if not that, the end of the century or, if not even that, then certainly the end of the 1900s and, ergo, the 90s. If there has ever been a time when Chicago sports fans wanted to reject the present and lose themselves in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Power to the People
Dear editor: Free speech does rock! And that is why the people running the show at Harpo Inc. are trying to stop free speech [December 10]. Thank you for the interesting story about Oprah Winfrey and her company’s influence over one person’s First Amendment rights and public discourse at large. This story illustrated very well […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Kitsch Pitch
Not that many decades ago high art and kitsch were thought of as irreconcilable opposites. Now, however, it almost seems as if art imitating kitsch were the norm among young artists. The less interesting work in this vein simply replicates the superficial effects of mass-culture objects, but the best of it, dating back at least […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer adn Rudolph the Red-Hosed Reindeer
RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, Annoyance Theatre, and RUDOLPH THE RED-HOSED REINDEER, Sweetback Productions, at the American Theater Company. Every year for the past ten years the Annoyance folks have taken a TV holiday classic (A Charlie Brown Christmas, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town, Frosty the Snowman) and adapted it for the stage, re-creating with […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
BUSKER SOUNDCHECK 12/17, DOUBLE DOOR For their annual holiday show, this midwest alt-rock juggernaut will good-naturedly demolish traditional tunes as well as “Christmas classics” by the Beach Boys, the Andrews Sisters, and the Kinks. KAHIL EL’ZABAR’S RITUAL TRIO WITH PHAROAH SANDERS 12/17 & 18, DeJOIE’S Percussionist and promoter Kahil El’Zabar, who briefly but effectively made […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fallen Angels
FALLEN ANGELS, Writers’ Theatre Chicago. A quip by W.S. Gilbert suits this delightful trifle perfectly: “Of course it’s nonsense, but it’s such precious nonsense.” Noel Coward’s 1923 comedy still teases and titillates, as two bored wives learn that the exotic French lover both knew before they married their duffer husbands has returned to London. His […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Save Lincoln Square!
I was at the meeting at Sulzer Library called by Mary Edsey to protest the conversion of the Davis Theater into condominiums, and Alderman Schulter didn’t help his bid to unseat Committeeman Ed Kelly any. At the meeting, Alderman Schulter’s assistant responded to one citizen’s question by offering to “kill her”–political jargon for silencing opposing […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Rob Sherman’s Bad Year
The country’s most outspoken atheist tries to maintain his credibility in the face of family turmoil, jail time, and government conspiracies.
Posted inNews & Politics
West Side Stories
When I was 15 years old my Aunt Anna said that I could come down to the bookbindery where she was a forelady and she’d give me a job at $15 a week. So I went down there, and there was my aunt running the whole show in the bindery. She would sit up on […]
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 bicoastal image as a cultural also-ran. That image was soon laid to rest thanks in large part to Second City’s international influence, with […]