BROWN WHORNET 10/29, FIRESIDE BOWL It’s dawned on some of us lately that the most enervating and threatening music one can possibly play is not punk or gangsta rap or death metal but rather prog–and by that I mean the kind of obscenely elaborate, indulgent pileup favored by folks who think Sheik Yerbouti was too […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 4
Issue of Oct. 28 – Nov. 3, 1999
Posted inNews & Politics
More on Naked Raygun
Just a few comments about the Rock, Etc., column in the October 1 Reader: Historically, Naked Raygun’s earliest years (documented on the 1981 compilation Busted at Oz) consisted of a sound a lot closer to the punk of England’s the Fall, and even Chicago’s own Silver Abuse, sort of an antimusic punk rock. One of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Writer’s Best Friend
By Michael Marsh “Black Writers Approaching the Millennium” was the theme of last weekend’s Gwendolyn Brooks Writers’ Conference at Chicago State University. But most of the notable participants wanted to acknowledge the past. Nikki Giovanni praised the Pullman porters who watched after her on childhood trips to the south. CSU professor Haki Madhubuti inducted 30 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bill Frisell
BILL FRISELL When guitarist Bill Frisell started showing up on ECM albums in the late 70s, behind Norwegian saxist Jan Garbarek, he already had the quirky, spacey style and total timbral control that would make him one of the three most influential jazz guitarists of his generation. (Metheny. Scofield.) Frisell plays with a monk’s patience, […]
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True Books
Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon, by Leonard S. Marcus (Quill, $14). Synopsis: The brief life and extensive oeuvre of the author of Goodnight Moon, The Runaway Bunny, and other children’s classics is meticulously chronicled and analyzed. Representative quote: “A small comic masterpiece, Mister Dog: The Dog Who Belonged to Himself revealed Margaret at […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Selective Extermination
[Re: “Building a Better Baby,” October 22] Genocide and slaughter! Sorry! The freedom to choose is not a cherished value; instead it is the ultimate perpetuation of irreverence for helpless, sentient beings. Abortion, slaughterhouses, genetic engineering, and animal genocide are all heinous ramifications of brazen, unabated secular humanism. We are assuming the power of Providence […]
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Big Dicks on Stage
BIG DICKS ON STAGE, Bailiwick Repertory. In this comedy by prolific Australian playwright Steven Dawson, idealistic gay writer Daniel has penned a script about two middle-aged lovers but is forced by his producers to change his characters into young studs who appear nude. Otherwise, it’s argued, a gay audience won’t go near the play. The […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Macy Gray
MACY GRAY Epic has spent wads of cash to build buzz for the debut album by singer Macy Gray. A month before On How Life Is was released, the label sent her on a short club tour with a crack 11-piece band; her gig at Double Door in June was crowded, but most of the […]
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Vieux Carre
Vieux Carre, Equity Library Theatre Chicago, at the North Lakeside Cultural Center. In 1972 Tennessee Williams returned to earlier times in search of dramatic tension. Vieux Carre takes place in the shabby grandeur of the French Quarter in New Orleans circa 1939, when homosexuality was a perversion, cohabitation a scandal, and a job in a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Single Bullet Theory
Hi Cecil! Re your column on Russian roulette [October 22]: It was my understanding that in one or another of the wars in which the Russians were involved, the soldiers were so ill-equipped for battle that they could rarely fully load their weapons. They placed bullets in the chambers at random. Therefore, when they fired […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bringing Out the Dead
A conscientious NYC paramedic (Nicolas Cage) has lost a patient whose image continues to haunt him in this seminarrative plotted as a series of calls he answers with a series of partners (John Goodman, Ving Rhames, Tom Sizemore). A kind of revisionist Taxi Driver-After Hours-Leaving Las Vegas, the movie draws genre allusions, specific references, a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Low-Tech Triumphs
Havana: Walker Evans and Andrew Moore at Carol Ehlers, through November 27 From Pin Hole to Pixel at Wood Street, through November 13 By Fred Camper Because art often depends on the creative use of limited means, increasingly sophisticated technology doesn’t necessarily lead to better work–in fact it sometimes seems a substitute for an artist’s […]
Posted inNews & Politics
West Side Stories
Whenever we got on the 12th Street car to go down to Halsted Street we would pass Holy Family church, and I don’t think we ever passed it where my mother didn’t say, “My mother was buried from that church.” So several years back, when I heard they were going to demolish the church, I […]
Posted inNews & Politics
You Fool
Dear Reader: Of all the miscalculated Michael Miner pieces I have read over the years, I believe the Brenda You interview sets some sort of new low [October 22]. Giving him enormous benefit of the doubt, I’ll assume he meant her interview to be self-indicting; he meant to hand her a halyard with which to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Buzzcocks
BUZZCOCKS I could probably fill an entire page with bands inspired by this British punk-pop quartet–but for starters, how about Naked Raygun, Sugar, All, Green Day, Elastica, the Foo Fighters, the Offspring, the Smoking Popes, and Nirvana, who invited the ‘Cocks to open for them on their last European tour? During the band’s original run, […]