As a founding member of LA’s short-lived Freestyle Fellowship, one of hip-hop’s most original and intelligent groups, Aceyalone helped lay the groundwork for today’s anything-goes underground scene. His free-form rap slops over tight beat schemes like runny oatmeal, much in the style of Kool Keith; but unlike Kool Keith’s sci-fi fantasies, Aceyalone’s thoughts are rooted […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 24
Issue of Mar. 15 – 21, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
Different to be Daring
Head Poison Plasticene at the Storefront Theater By Jack Helbig Plasticene, which specializes in physical theater, has always waged war on cliches, defying conventions and dashing expectations. Their first piece, the 1995 Doorslam, upended a device that’s launched a thousand comedy routines: opening and closing doors onstage. That show totally frustrated a friend of mine […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Brand-New Angles
Markus Raetz at the Arts Club of Chicago, through April 14 By Fred Camper Swiss artist Markus Raetz, who’s long had a considerable reputation in Europe, plays perceptual games in the 51 sculptures, installations, and drawings spanning three decades at the Arts Club, his first one-person Chicago show. TODO-NADA (1998) consists of four letters cast […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Women in the Director’s Chair International Film and Video Festival
Women in the Director’s Chair International Film and Video Festival The 20th annual Women in the Director’s Chair International Film and Video Festival, featuring narrative, documentary, animated, and experimental works by women, runs Friday, March 16, through Sunday, March 25. Screenings are at Preston Bradley Center and Women in the Director’s Chair Theater, both at […]
Posted inMusic
Brad Goode & Louis Smith
BRAD GOODE & LOUIS SMITH In the mid-80s, when baby-faced trumpeter Brad Goode graduated from college and arrived in Chicago, his easy command of the instrument and facility with mainstream styles made him a golden boy. By the time he left town nearly 15 years later, his music had become a little quirky, sometimes unpredictable, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Recent Casualties: One Stillborn…/One Cut Down in Its Prime…/…And One Sputtering Out at a Ripe Old Age/Open Mouth Policy
By Michael Miner Recent Casualties: One Stillborn . . . Clout was a dangerous idea from the get-go, a magazine that would be driven by substance instead of a niche. The other day Clout died just before it was born, and I asked the two founders what happened. James Ylisela, the editor, said, “My investor, […]
Posted inFood & Drink
A Report From Green City Market’s Winter Pantry
On this cold winter day, futures trader and self-professed food freak Langdon Van Ingen has a burning question for the chef he’s just watched make a lobster risotto with Meyer lemons and yellowfoot chanterelle mushrooms. “How do you keep a lobster stock from being too salty?” asks Van Ingen. “You don’t put salt in it,” […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chirgilchin
CHIRGILCHIN Over the last decade or so, regular tours by ensembles like Huun-Huur-Tu have blunted the novelty of khoomei, the throat-singing tradition native to the remote, mostly rural republic of Tuva, between Mongolia and Siberia–but the otherworldly beauty of its polyphonic chants and melodies remains undiminished. Chirgilchin is a quartet of young musicians–all still in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Group Efforts: this one’s for the ladies
“Hey lady!” reads the flyer. “Does a showcase celebrating and encouraging the artistic, organizational, and political work and talents of women sound good to you?” It sounded pretty good to Marf Wright last fall, after she got back from Olympia, Washington. She’d spent six days in August with some 2,000 other women at Ladyfest, a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fifteen
A first-rate Hollywood entertainment–at least if one can accept the schizophrenia of combining a cop/buddy action thriller with an angry satire about the shamelessness of the media. I didn’t much care for writer-director John Herzfeld’s previous outing, 2 Days in the Valley (1996), and I suppose it could be argued that the shotgun marriage he […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Let’s Try That Again
Dear Ms. True, I wanted to clarify an important point that was not justly revealed in my published statements in Jeffrey Felshman’s January 26, 2001, cover story, “Jazz in Bloom.” The edits made to my original interview removed some of the context that accurately depicted my quoted remarks in the article. Basically, the sentiment that […]
Posted inArts & Culture
John Butcher
JOHN BUTCHER In his 20s, English saxophonist John Butcher studied physics and played jazz. After he finished his doctoral thesis on charmed quarks, though, he abandoned both pursuits–and, according to a 1998 interview in Coda magazine, discarded along with them “90 percent of what the saxophone usually does,” piecing together a highly individual voice out […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Evelyn Glennie and Emanuel Ax
Evelyn Glennie and Emanuel AX Percussionist Evelyn Glennie, who’s been deaf since childhood and performs by feeling her instruments’ vibrations, plays drums, vibraphone, marimba, cymbals, gamelan–you name it. She’s done chamber events, soloed with orchestras, even collaborated with Icelandic pop diva Bjork. Onstage she’s a marvel of precision and drama and childlike glee. She claims […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Know-Nothings
[Re: “Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Top 40 Films of 2000” and “Top Ten Albums of 2000,” January 5] Mr. Rosenbaum, you know nothing about films, and your cohort Mr. Margasak knows none the better of music! Down with the infidel, The President of the Spartacist Movie Club