Drag City’s Spin on Publishing
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 12
Issue of Dec. 18 – 24, 2003
Posted inNews & Politics
At Home With the Senator
“Hello, this is Paul,” said the man who answered the phone. The voice was unmistakably Senator Simon’s. I reached him last summer at a number I’d gotten out of the phone book. I paused, then launched into my spiel–I’d been a supporter during his presidential run in ’88 (“Thank you,” he said) and my wife […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
LOS STRAITJACKETS CHRISTMAS PAGEANT 12/19, ABBEY PUB; 12/20, FITZGERALD’S Other than experimental music–stuff that’s freed from traditional melodic and rhythmic concerns–it’s hard to find a genre that emphasizes pure sound as much as instrumental surf rock. Straightforward and infectious as the Ventures’ melodies were, how far could they have gone without that perfect, crisp, reverby […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel
When more than four years elapse between releases from a steadily gigging artist, it’s natural to expect some significant changes, but Oh, the Stories We Hold (Undertow), the new album by Anna Fermin’s Trigger Gospel, isn’t too different from 1999’s Things to Come. The local Filipina-American singer-songwriter has sharpened her skills somewhat, but the album […]
Posted inFilm
Stuck, But Slippery
Stuck on You *** (A must-see) Directed by Bobby and Peter Farrelly Written by Bobby and Peter Farrelly, Charles B. Wessler, and Bennett Yellin With Matt Damon, Greg Kinnear, Eva Mendes, Wen Yann Shih, Cher, Seymour Cassel, Griffin Dunne, and Meryl Streep. One of my all-time favorite Japanese movies is Yasuzo Masumura’s A Wife Confesses […]
Posted inArts & Culture
West Side Story
West Side Story, Renegade Theatre Company, at Theatre Building Chicago. Founded by teens who want to tackle socially relevant theater, Renegade makes a sure debut with Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents’s 1957 musical. Most of the ensemble’s 30 members are so young they needn’t stretch an inch to understand peer pressure, bigotry, sex–your […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Strength in Numbers
On the brink of extinction a few decades ago, sandhill cranes now descend by the thousands every year on a favorite spot in Indiana.
Posted inArts & Culture
Active Cultures: bikers find balance at Yojimbo’s Garage
When Marcus Moore started Yojimbo’s Garage six years ago, he decided to do something most of his competitors didn’t: open at 8 AM. About half the bike shop’s customers are bicycle messengers, as was Moore until 1995, and the early hours make a difference to them. “I know what it’s like to work all day, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Another One Bites the Dust/Partying With the Enemy?/News Bites
Another One Bites the Dust Something shocking happened last week in the small world of editorial cartooning. A cartoonist quit. John Sherffius of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch suddenly resigned, though he had no place better to go. Predecessors Daniel Fitzpatrick and Bill Mauldin had won Pulitzers during the 1950s and rank among the greatest cartoonists […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Here today, gone tomorrow. According to a Catalyst Chicago (November) analysis of school board data, 18 percent of teachers hired by Chicago Public Schools in 1996-’97 quit the system within two years. That figure ballooned to 31 percent of teachers hired in 2001-’02, even though the job market slumped and teacher attrition numbers elsewhere remained […]
Posted inArts & Culture
U.S. Maple
Purple on Time (Drag City) might seem like a radical departure for U.S. Maple. On all four of their previous recordings, the band changed time signatures, tone, density, and melodic direction every few measures, building tension and frustration but denying the listener any resolution. But though the music sounded chaotic, it was in fact mapped […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Who Killed Jessie?
Czech director Vaclav Vorlicek’s black-and-white slapstick fantasy is from 1966, the same year as Vera Chytilova’s Daisies, and it’s hard to think of two more gleefully anarchic comedies made under a communist regime. This one is slighter and more conventional, but its premise is still pretty outrageous. A scientist develops a formula that transforms bad […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Datebook
DECEMBER 19 FRIDAY “I’ve never been there and seen something that was ordinary or didn’t strike me,” says Other Voices executive editor Gina Frangello of Flatfile Galleries. Tonight the UIC-based fiction magazine is hosting a release party for issue 39 at the near-west-side space. The event will include readings by contributors Laura Ruby and Barbara […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Annie Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire. Marc Robin’s revival of Irving Berlin’s treasure turns the theater space into a poster-filled, festively lit carnival tent. That’s perfect, because Peter Stone’s brilliant revision of the 1946 musical is set not in the Wild West but in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. The rambunctious courtship between […]
Posted inMusic
History Remix
The Beatles Let It Be…Naked (Apple/Capitol) Spin the latest entry in the Beatles’ catalog and you’ll be transported, as they say, to a simpler time. That simpler time isn’t the halcyon 60s, though–it’s the late 80s, when we all thought the worst that could happen to the Fab Four’s memory would be Michael Jackson’s buying […]