The new Dirty Projectors LP combines familiar elements in the most peculiar ways.
Tag: Vol. 34 No. 39
Issue of Jun. 23 – 29, 2005
Posted inArts & Culture
Dirty Projectors
Now that there’s no point waiting for Michael Jackson’s “Live From Corcoran” collaboration with Charles Manson, the Dirty Projectors’ The Getty Address (Western Vinyl) pretty much has the Weirdest Release of 2005 title sewn up. The loosely defined group, led by Yale dropout Dave Longstreth, caught my attention with its 2003 album The Glad Fact–first […]
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Documentary South
The premise of this show is at least new-ish: to improvise a faux documentary in the tradition of Christopher Guest films (Waiting for Guffman, Best in Show). But the problems that bog it down are as old as improvisation: denial, dumb ideas, bad acting, poor preparation, lousy teamwork. The two women in Dirty South Improv, […]
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The Straight Dope
I’ve heard talk about “suitcase” nuclear weapons, which someone could carry around and detonate anywhere. Is this possible? I’m not talking about whether someone could get hold of the proper components or be mad enough to pull it off. Rather, I always thought uranium and plutonium were really heavy and the amount needed for a […]
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Elton John’s Glasses
There’s nothing sadder than a promising play without a second act. David Farr’s 1996 comedy-drama treads somewhat familiar ground with its agoraphobic, damaged sports-fan protagonist, supporting cast of rock ‘n’ roll musicians, and bumbled-crime subplot, but does it so masterfully it doesn’t matter–until intermission anyway. Then, despite an old-school jaw-dropper of a twist at the […]
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Cheb i Sabbah
San Francisco-based producer and DJ Cheb i Sabbah devoted his first few albums to Indian musical traditions, making his own field recordings and then meticulously constructing his tracks in the studio. Unlike ethno-techno dabblers who slap house beats on top of samples of sitars or Bollywood divas, Sabbah understands the history and structural underpinnings of […]
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Correction
In the June 10 Meter, on filmmaker John Anderson and the video/film production company Superior Street, I neglected to mention that Joe Langenfeld was one of the company’s founding partners. He is currently negotiating a split from the company and is launching his own firm, Punk Vision. Bob Mehr
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Tell ‘Em What to Think; Citizen Kane, Meet Citizen Joe Blow; James Weinstein, 1926-2005
But don’t tell ’em what they’re thinking it about.
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When “Broken” Is Better
Anna DiRenzo Geneticist University of Chicago Do genetic diseases come from defective genes? Not always, as Anna Di Rienzo and her colleagues found in a study published last year in the American Journal of Human Genetics: sometimes it’s just that circumstances change faster than our genes can adapt. Di Rienzo, along with her research assistant, […]
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream: A Queer Tale
MidTangent Productions shakes up Shakespeare in Tony Lewis’s version of midsummer madness, which includes cross-dressing, same-sex lovers, a leather lord of the “faggot” fairies, and riotous rave dancing, choreographed by Bill Janisse. The Bard’s potions are now pills; the wood is now a hood. The verse is freely (but not always excusably) altered, as in […]
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Portrait of a Shiksa
Gentile/Jewish romantic relationships have been a staple of theater at least since Abie’s Irish Rose, Anne Nichols’s 1922 comedy. And Sharon Evans’s sweet but slight piece, first presented by Live Bait in 1989, has a distinctly retro feel, as small-town Tennessee party girl Adelle discovers an erotic fixation on Jewish men during a Holy Land […]
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Melissa King
Arkansas tomboy Melissa King ditched the south for the big city at the less-than-tender age of 27. She picked Chicago because, as she writes in her new memoir, She’s Got Next (Mariner), she was looking for someplace “cold, expensive, and the setting for at least one violent television show.” And though she doesn’t come out […]
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Traces of Trauma
Sarah Krepp still recalls her surprise as a child at seeing how Seurat’s Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte changed as she got nearer to it. Now her own work, which looks smooth and flat from a distance, breaks up into seemingly countless details once you’re close. Her mixed-media pieces at Roy […]