YOU MUST READ THIS ISSUE! Hello, I’m Carol Marin. Welcome to the Reader’s Year in Review. This annual issue was once a model of the form, winning numerous national Year in Review awards. But as the years progressed, commercial considerations began to outstrip artistic ones, and the quality of our Year in Review faltered. We […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 12
Issue of Dec. 21 – 27, 2000
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
BLUE MEANIES, TOSSERS 12/23, METRO Billy Spunke says he had one goal for the Blue Meanies’ seventh album and major-label debut, The Post Wave (MCA), “and that was to actually sing.” That he does; on a few cuts, like the feel-good antiracist chant “All the Same,” he sounds like a cuter, twerpier Jello Biafra. Their […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Privatizing the Ghetto
What happens when the CHA gets out of property management?
Posted inArts & Culture
Waco Brothers
WACO BROTHERS On their recently released fifth album, Electric Waco Chair (Bloodshot), the Waco Brothers haven’t quite captured the drunken energy that fuels their live shows, but they come a lot closer than they did on last year’s glossy-sounding Wacoworld. They’re still moving steadily away from the Clash-meets-Cash aesthetic of their earliest work, sounding more […]
Posted inArts & Culture
God, What a Mess
Chris T Ma’at Production Association of Afrikan Centered Theatre at Victory Gardens Theater Black Nativity Fleetwood-Jourdain Theatre By Kelly Kleiman The African-American experience is so often identified with the biblical story of Exodus that only occasionally does it come to mind how strange it is for black Christians to adopt as their defining narrative the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
West Side Stories
I went down to Orlando in March of ’44, and in July we came home on furlough. We took the bus to Titusville, Florida, to get the train. I was wearing a white suit, white gloves, white purse. We put our bags in a locker at the train station and went into a drugstore. The […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The House of Mirth
“If she slipped she recovered her footing, and it was only afterward that she was aware of having recovered it each time on a slightly lower level.” Edith Wharton’s encapsulation of the narrative form of her tragic (and sexy) 1905 novel, describing the progressive defeat of socialite Lily Bart by the ugly indifference of Wharton’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Big James & the Chicago Playboys
BIG JAMES & THE CHICAGO PLAYBOYS The band on Big James Montgomery’s debut as a leader, 1998’s Funkin’ Blues (Jamot), had a winning way with riff-driven soul workouts and 12-bar blues barn burners–though they sometimes soloed with more energy than direction or recklessly cranked up a tempo until a tune all but flew apart. Since […]
Posted inMusic
Valentine’s Day
Valentine’s Day In 1983, T. Valentine was driving a cab, listening to Larry Lujack on WLS AM, when he heard the song that would change the course of his life: Josie Cotton’s new-wave ditty “Johnny, Are You Queer?” Valentine, a failed R & B singer and songwriter who hadn’t recorded in more than 15 years, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Passing the Ball
Manny Weincord’s out, Tarrie Blakely’s in, but Roosevelt High’s basketball team still has a long way to go.
Posted inArts & Culture
Mrs. Coney
MRS. CONEY, Bailiwick Repertory. Belinda Bremner’s 80-minute memory play, now in its fourth year, is quieter than Bailiwick’s holiday epic The Christmas Schooner, now in its sixth season. But Mrs. Coney is just as heartwarming. Glowing with homespun detail and graced with Woody Guthrie ballads, this one-act feels as authentic and unforced as a Walker […]