Raeburn Flerlage was 44 years old when he finally found his vocation. One day in August 1959, a telegram arrived at his south-side home from Moses Asch, the founder of Folkways Records. Asch needed him to go to the Pershing Hotel to photograph blues pianist Memphis Slim for an upcoming album cover. Asch had seen […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 38
Issue of Jun. 22 – 28, 2000
Posted inArts & Culture
Slum Village, Bahamadia, Spontaneous, Cali Agents
SLUM VILLAGE, BAHAMADIA, SPONTANEOUS, CALI AGENTS Fantastic, Vol. 2, the new debut album from Detroit’s Slum Village, was supposed to come out in 1998, when its lean, imaginative, beam-rattling production would’ve instantly established the trio as a major new voice in hip-hop. But thanks to the Universal-Polygram merger, the release was repeatedly delayed, and the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Side By Side By Sondheim
SIDE BY SIDE BY SONDHEIM, Pegasus Players. Born a generation too late to fully participate in Broadway’s most fertile era–roughly the 1920s through the ’50s–Stephen Sondheim still turned out witty tunes and pleasing lyrics worthy of the masters: Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, George and Ira Gershwin. When this revue of early Sondheim songs […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg
By describing the life of the first Jewish baseball star in terms of other people’s feelings about him, Aviva Kempner has made those feelings as much the subject of this documentary as Hank Greenberg is. Without unduly lionizing him, airing his dirty laundry, or even forcing a dramatic arc or simple moral from his life, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jean Smith
JEAN SMITH The last thing I expected from Jean Smith was a mostly instrumental solo album: in Mecca Normal, her punk rock duo with guitarist David Lester, her words–bluntly political or private and allusive–are integral to her singing. But her voice has always served as an instrument too, not just as a way to deliver […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Sports Section
It’s been so long, I’d almost forgotten about that unique moment when a fan totally commits to a team. Understand, I’m not referring to a fan’s usual allegiance, impassioned though that may be, but to the deeper feeling that a team is going somewhere and taking the fan along with it, for better or–as is […]
Posted inFilm
Matters of Life and Death
The Hart of London Rating **** Masterpiece Directed by Jack Chambers. By Fred Camper Jack Chambers’s 80-minute film The Hart of London (1970), being presented this Saturday by Kino-Eye Cinema at the Chicago Cultural Center, is hardly ever screened; in fact, when I polled eleven local critics, curators, filmmakers, and academics interested in experimental film, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Soiree Dada
SOIREE DADA, WNEP Theater Foundation, at TurnAround Theatre. Someone sitting in the audience for this fascinating hour-long performance may well wonder how long the silence, screaming, gibberish, and baffling exchanges will last. The evening almost defies description, but that, after all, is the point of dadaism. The WNEP Theater Foundation’s show offers simultaneous dialogue in […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
GROWTH LTD 6/23, GALLERY CABARET; 6/30, THURSTON’S This local quartet says in a cover letter that its music is “‘alternative rock’ without the least bit of hip hop, trip hop, extremeness, post anything, drum ‘n’ or bass, noise pop, jazz, or punk flavorings.” Real meat ‘n’ potatoes guys–and their self-released Happy Is a Four Letter […]
Posted inNews & Politics
AMA Does the Right Thing–and Hopes Nobody Notices
By Michael Miner AMA Does the Right Thing–and Hopes Nobody Notices Health reformers have finally got the American Medical Association where they want it. The AMA just signed on to a ringing statement of national purpose, and if there’s no follow-through it’ll be an easy target for charges of hypocrisy. The trouble is, it’s apparently […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Stick Knife Here
STICK KNIFE HERE, Theatre Corps, at Viaduct Theatre. Though it may at times lack the clockwork precision or accessibility of Charlie Chaplin’s best material, Theatre Corps’ new ensemble piece owes an awful lot to the great silent film comedians of the early 1900s. The influence of Buster Keaton and Fatty Arbuckle, in particular, is undeniable: […]
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True Books
Think Like a Cat: How to Raise a Well-Adjusted Cat–NOT a Sour Puss, by Pam Johnson-Bennett (Penguin, $16.95). Synopsis: The author of Psycho Kitty and Twisted Whiskers leads you through the thicket of raising a confident, emotionally balanced, and happy cat. Representative quote: “When there is an unexpected crisis, such as a death in the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Roger McGuinn
ROGER McGUINN A local boy who made good, Roger McGuinn has long been acknowledged as a pivotal figure in rock: as the brilliant (and by most accounts autocratic) leader of the Byrds, he married traditional American music to 12-string electric guitar, creating a sound that would influence everyone from Bob Dylan and the Beatles to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ingrid Jensen Quartet
INGRID JENSEN QUARTET Though a preponderance of post-Marsalis trumpeters have homed in on the tough, soulful, but largely conservative melodies of the hard-bop 50s, few have explored the crusading swagger with which Freddie Hubbard and Woody Shaw led bebop into the liberated, tumultuous 60s. Now the bop revival has finally produced an answer to Hubbard’s […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Shame of the VA
The Veterans Administration’s undeclared war on its hospitals has turned patients back into fighters.