—Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, Chicago alderman and new Democratic Socialists for America member Everything was coming up roses on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus. Red rose symbols were emblazoned on scarlet T-shirts, branded on pinback buttons affixed to messenger bags and backpacks, printed on brochures and pamphlets, and projected onto the walls of a lecture hall in the student center on the east side of the school’s grounds. One would’ve been forgiven for mistaking the gathering for a conference of professional florists....

John Garfield in Body and Soul (1947), screening Saturday at 2 PM This weekend Block Cinema at Northwestern University concludes two series of studio-era American movies, each one programmed in conjunction with a different art exhibit at the Block Museum (and both presented entirely from 35-millimeter). The first of these, Moving Pictures, corresponds to an exhibit of photos by Edward Steichen and Andy Warhol. Steichen’s is the dominant personality here—his bold lighting schemes, which often emphasize the vertical dimension of the frame, make all his human figures look like movie stars and all his location shots look like movie settings....

Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang played their first sunrise percussion concert in 1990. Timed to coincide with the winter solstice, the performance was an open-invite gesture, nonpreachy spiritual gesture to welcome all their friends who felt out of place attending more conventional holiday-oriented festivities. Twenty-eight years later, much of the country feels like it could use a reminder about the merits of inclusion, but this event has become a tradition unto itself; many people return annually to observe the beginning of the year’s shortest day by listening to two master drummers match rhythms and sounds played on percussion instruments that come from all around the world....

Like many subversive sounds before it, techno exerts an influence on music at large but feels a world apart. To newcomers, its immense history can appear subterranean and impenetrable, its legends unknown outside the club scene that birthed them. Detroit DJ and producer Carl Craig, a second-­generation techno veteran who began releasing music in the early 90s, is one of the rare heroes worshipped both within his community and outside it....

Each generation of jazz players includes at least a few epoch-defining pianists, and right now, we’re living in the age of Robert Glasper. His long-standing trio with bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Damion Reid has served, to some extent, as the bandleader’s connection to tradition, as his other projects are filigreed with noteworthy collaborators from sundry genres—soul and R&B singer Bilal and rapper Yasiin Bey (also known as Mos Def), among them....

I was certain that Philadelphia musician Kurt Vile had shed all his weirdness as he grew older and his public profile leaped from underground phenom to indie success. On his breakthrough third album, 2009’s Childish Prodigy, Vile was a ramblin’ psychedelic storyteller, playing freaky fingerstyle folk through lush, hazy soundscapes. But as he began experiencing more mainstream acceptance, his records started to reflect that: the songs were still great, but he pushed aside the sonic experimentation that dominated his earlier work for breezy heartland indie rock....

A brief, tongue-in-cheek bio for fourth-wave emo band Mush says its members, who live in Chicago and Grand Rapids, decided to join forces “after discussing how sick Vagrants Records use[d] to be.” Their debut EP, Protect Your Brand (Skeletal Lightning), is, well, on brand: visceral guitars scream as if out of control, ever-so-slightly shambolic melodies exude pop euphoria, and shout-along choruses balance gruff enthusiasm and saccharine earnestness like a server swerving through a busy restaurant with a couple armloads of dishes....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, February 16, 2017. Authorities: Eleven-year-old Takiya Holmes was killed by gunman aiming for rivals Antwan C. Jones, 19, was trying to shoot three members of a rival gang Saturday night when he fatally shot 11-year-old Takiya Holmes instead, according to authorities. A stray bullet hit Holmes, who was sitting in a van with her mother, aunt, and brother. Holmes died Tuesday at University of Chicago Comer Children’s Hospital after being taken off life support....

It’s uncanny the reunions that have taken place across the pond since shoegazing trailblazers My Bloody Valentine re-formed in 2007 (the same year as Scotland’s the Jesus and Mary Chain, who predate the movement but possess many of the genre’s sonic attributes). Swervedriver, Slowdive, and most recently Ride are all working the reunion circuit. Ride’s debut, 1990’s Nowhere—with its bleak and cryptic cover art depicting a nearly colorless wave waiting to break—remains one of the canonical works of shoegaze....

“What are your favorite overlooked Chicago hip-hop releases of 2015?” I posted that to Twitter as I listened through my own choices for the year, and the wide range of responses I got reminded me that my question isn’t as simple as it seems. Some folks named projects I’d considered well-loved and thoroughly covered, among them Sicko Mobb’s first mixtape of the year, Super Saiyan Vol. 2, which earned praise from Pitchfork....

Cecilia Roth and Antonia San Juan in All About My Mother Something unexpected happened during the revival of All About My Mother that I attended at the Siskel Center a couple weeks ago. About one-third of the way into the screening, the film skipped a reel, transporting the audience several weeks into the characters’ future and eliding a few key plot developments. I thought again of the French surrealists’ moviegoing game as I tried to imagine what I’d just missed—searching for clues in the dialogue and onscreen behavior—and, before that, as I briefly fell out of sync with the plot and had to enjoy the acting, sets, and costumes for their own sake....

These are strange days for the Chicago Public Schools, but on the Tuesday morning before winter break, the fifth-graders in Mr. Harlan’s class at Brentano Math and Science Academy in Logan Square are less concerned with the prospect of a teachers’ strike than with coming up with satisfying endings for the monster stories they’ve been writing all semester with help from volunteers at 826CHI, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center in Wicker Park....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, August 31, 2017. Jesse Jackson Jr. is still trying to subpoena Garry McCarthy in heated divorce Former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is still trying to subpoena former Chicago Police Department superintendent Garry McCarthy in his heated divorce from former alderman Sandi Jackson. Jackson Jr.’s legal team filed papers in a Washington, D.C., court asking that McCarthy, his former business partner Richard Simon, and former CPD officer James Love give depositions, according to the Tribune....

It’s been such a gloomy budget-cutting stretch for the Chicago Public Schools that I’d thought I’d cheer you up by going back to a glorious moment from just a few months ago. This was in May, when Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and Alderman Ameya Pawar joined the locals to block Mayor Emanuel from creating more charters in Rogers Park and Uptown. But that’s only part of the story. CPS doesn’t spend its money wisely—consider the $20....

Sara Carranza directs the world premiere of Guadalís Del Carmen’s play about gentrification in Humboldt Park. On the stretch of Division Street between the distinctive steel Puerto Rican flags, a store owner struggles to pay his property taxes, a local alderman must balance the needs of longtime residents and newcomers, a real estate agent tries to present himself as lifting up the place he grew up rather than just being another opportunist as many suspect, a young white couple moves in and tries to remake the block to suit themselves without considering what’s already there, and young activists try to push back with strident slogans but few substantive ideas to keep the neighborhood theirs....

To the extent that reggae singer Willi Williams is known beyond Jamaican music cognoscenti, it’s generally for his classic 1977 track “Armagideon Time,” a song covered by the Clash as the B side to their 1979 single “London Calling” and used prominently in the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai. In the early 70s Williams joined a vibrant expat community of Jamaicans in Toronto—including Jackie Mitoo and Leroy Sibbles—but he continued traveling home to Kingston to make records....

Michael Gebert John Laffler with Off Color’s tanks, which are named for dead pets. At Goose Island, John Laffler worked with one of Chicago beermaking’s cult successes: Bourbon County Stout, an imperial stout with a fearsome 14 percent alcohol content, aged in used bourbon barrels from places like Iowa’s Templeton Rye, and hunted for by fans on their release dates like a Wonka golden ticket. A bald technical description scarcely does justice to the rapture the Bourbon County Stout line provoked; here’s Michael Kiser at Good Beer Hunting trying to sum it up:...

—On Fillmore percussionist Glenn Kotche Glenn Kotche and Darin Gray have been making meticulous, minimalist instrumental music together as On Fillmore for more than 18 years, but if you ask each of them what he remembers about making their new album, Happiness of Living, you’ll get two different answers. They recorded the foundational material in Rio de Janeiro in December 2013, then finished the album in Chicago the following year—and that later work is where their stories diverge....

I wouldn’t call myself obsessive-compulsive, but I do have patterns. If I don’t follow them, I get nervous, my skin feels wavy. Train rides are the worst. Maybe because my mind is free to wander. Music being pumped directly into my ears via tiny white speakers while I’m being chauffeured over and under the city streets only heightens things. There are two things I must do in order to keep myself settled:...

Blood Rage This past weekend the Music Box dedicated half of its midnight programming to the seasonal standby Halloween, John Carpenter’s trendsetting masterpiece. The slasher film to which all others are compared, Halloween sparked a glut of similar kinds of pictures, and though many of them are mere imitations and copycats looking for a cash grab, a fair amount were legitimately inventive and wholly original works. The genre proved popular for decades after, but five or so years following Halloween‘s 1978 release represents a sort of golden age in slasher cinema....