Joseph Taylor of the one-man band Sax in the City has a thing for headwear.
Tag: Vol. 46 No. 51
Issue of Sep. 28 – Oct. 4, 2017
Posted inBlogs
The movement for rent control in Chicago is gaining momentum
A new grassroots coalition is mobilizing in the face of rising rents and no-cause evictions.
Posted inBlogs
Eddie Izzard, the Chicago Podcast Festival, and more of the best things to do in Chicago this week
Violet Hour celebrates its tenth anniversary, Fleet Foxes perform at the Chicago Theatre, and more happenings from October 2-5.
Posted inFilm
Orientalism is alive and well in Stephen Frears’s Victoria & Abdul
Judi Dench stars as Queen Victoria, riling the Royal Court with her new Indian pal.
Posted inBlogs
Chicago DJ Big Hank refashions Future’s flow for footwork on the new Streetwise
Teklife affiliate DJ Big Hank improves a cut from Future’s February data dump by sampling it on his own “Fresher.”
Posted inBlogs
Congressman Luis Gutierrez wants the military to help storm-ravaged Puerto Rico, and other Chicago news
Also, more than 1,000 people turned out for Kenneka Jenkins’s funeral.
Posted inBlogs
Pianist Dave Burrell deftly straddles jazz history
The Philadelphia-based veteran, who’s just as fluent in the music of Jelly Roll Morton as he is playing Eurocentric free improvisation, performs Friday night with Harrison Bankhead.
Posted inBlogs
The Upside Down closing with DJ Heaven Malone, and more of the best things to do in Chicago this weekend
Eve Ewing at Columbia College, the South Asian Film Festival, and more goings-on about town the weekend of September 29-October 1
Posted inBlogs
How Chicago shaped Hugh Hefner and his Playboy empire, and other news
Also, Governor Rauner signs a bill expanding abortion coverage.
Posted inMusic
Georgia indie rocker Torres sinks into romance and nostalgia on her best album yet
Mackenzie Scott is the kind of artist who can turn a song about peach cobbler into a sweeping tale of thwarted lust and bitter memory. The lyric “I know you never dreamed I’d become a damn Yankee / I need you to believe that I’m still your same baby,” from “Tongue Slap Your Brains Out,” the opening […]
Posted inMusic
Malian quartet Songhoy Blues tightens the connections between Saharan guitar music and rock music on its new album
Over the last decade the crossover appeal of guitar music from Saharan Africa to Western rock fans has been caressed and milked. The best-known proponent of the music, the great Tuareg band Tinariwen, has regularly studded its albums with Western rock stars whose presence hasn’t appreciably altered its sound (save for a misguided cameo by […]
Posted inMusic
Animal Collective cofounder Avey Tare’s strong new solo album recalls the elusive, warped pop sound of his band’s early years
There’s a sly bit of metaphor employed on “Melody Unfair,” a tune from Eucalyptus (Domino), the wonderful second album by Animal Collective charter member Dave Portner, aka Avey Tare. As he sings, “She crept up to my front door / Rang the bell and now she’s leaving,” he personifies a beguiling quality in his music, […]
Posted inMusic
Jon Langford embraces the musical legacy of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with his latest project, but still comes out sounding like himself
Welshman Jon Langford’s love and fascination for American musical culture has long pulsed at the center of his work, whether he was sending his pioneering punk band the Mekons toward honky-tonk or forming the Waco Brothers to honor the forgotten sounds of Nashville. In 2015 Langford, a longtime resident of Chicago, contributed visual artwork to […]
Posted inMusic
The first U.S. festival devoted to the work of Galina Ustvolskaya offers an unvarnished look at the Russian composer’s dark but exquisitely human body of work
In an addendum to the liner notes of a reissued 1993 album of the first recordings of music by Galina Ustvolskaya, scholar Art Lange offers corrections and new revelations about the reclusive Russian composer. At the time of the original release, just after the era of glasnost had ended in the dissolution of the Soviet […]