Only time will tell if the career of LA hip-hop producer Danger Mouse, aka Brian Burton, will outlast the buzz surrounding The Grey Album, his audacious mash-up of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album. Burton didn’t bother getting clearance for the Beatles samples, but neither did he make commercial use of them: he […]
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 36
Issue of Jun. 3 – 9, 2004
Posted inArts & Culture
Patty Loveless
A buddy and I fell into disputation about Patty Loveless. “The woods are thick with ersatz crossroads divas,” he complained, “whose rediscovery of their roots occurs about 20 seconds after their pop-country careers fall apart.” You’re nuts, I replied. It’s true, Loveless went slutting after mainstream airplay and then repented, but this is proof of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Time Trial
THE TIME TRIAL, Steep Theatre Company. Jack Gilhooley’s play about the stuck lives of small-town southern youth is undercut by caricature: the women are easy, the men are violent, and everybody is brainless. Seven friends high on booze and pot watch the time trial of a car-racing champion who’s returned to town. Gilhooley hammers home […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Printers Row Book Fair
This weekend the 20th annual Printers Row Book Fair will gather more than 160 exhibitors, including booksellers, publishers, and literary organizations, on Dearborn between Congress and Polk and along Polk between Plymouth Court and Clark. In addition to the new, used, and collectible books offered for sale, the fair features dozens of readings and signings […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Popcorn Punditry
How lame is it that it takes a summer blockbuster to get people talking about global warming?
Posted inArts & Culture
In Print: famous abroad, a Swedish crime novelist finally breaks in the States
Henning Mankell’s region of Skane, in the coastal badlands of southern Sweden, is a great place to hide. Evildoers flock there from overseas, and hometown baddies–war criminals, sex traders, domestic abusers–are a dime a dozen. In Skane, the long arm of the law must flex and stretch a little further despite sleepless nights, chest pains, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Breaking the Chains
Armed with research that proves the value of local stores, Women & Children First is fighting the Borders war.
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
My problem starts when I get an erection. Within seconds my cock starts to dribble this clear, sticky liquid. This happens every time I get stiff. I guess I thought it was normal. I’ve had no other cock problems, and sex has always been great and it all works like it should. None of my […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Decemberists
On their most recent release, The Tain (Acuarela), the Decemberists have cast a pall over the relatively sunny pop that’s won the band such a dedicated following over the past two years. The Tain is a five-part, 18-minute song cycle loosely based on a pre-Christian Irish epic, whose young hero, Cuchulainn, turns the tide in […]
Posted inMusic
Four Hundred Pages of Heavenly Joy
Howlin’ Wolf is one of the biggest names in blues, but a new biography is the first to tell his story.
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Blues Festival
CHICAGO BLUES FESTIVAL offers music on five stages in Grant Park: the Juke Joint Stage (Columbus & Jackson), the Front Porch Stage (Columbus & Jackson), the Crossroads Stage (Jackson & Lake Shore Drive), the Showcase Stage (Columbus & Jackson), and the Petrillo Music Shell. The Route 66 Stage (Columbus & Jackson) features speakers and discussions. […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
BELIEVER MAGAZINE PARTY FEATURING THE MOUNTAIN GOATS 6/4, EMPTY BOTTLE Believer is the latest publication to emerge from the big McSweeney’s tent, a monthly books magazine heavy on the sort of tidy, vaguely 19th-century visuals that make McSweeney’s itself so instantly recognizable (and so easy to parody). If you let the smug in-crowd feel of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Video: George Ryan’s death row drama
When Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson started working on their documentary Deadline three years ago, they didn’t know that George Ryan would become the video’s central figure. Instead they were planning to focus on the history and repercussions of Furman v. Georgia, the 1972 Supreme Court case in which the majority ruled that the state’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Moonlight and Magnolias
This ribald, eloquent new play by Ron Hutchinson dramatizes–and enlarges for comic effect–a marathon writing session undertaken in 1939 by film producer David O. Selznick, script doctor Ben Hecht, and director Victor Fleming. Sequestered in Selznick’s office with only bananas and peanuts to eat, the trio cobbled together a screenplay for the movie Gone With […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Bradbury Chronicles
Can a biographer dig up every detail of his subject’s life and still expect to be his friend?