In a recently released video interview, local rapper JDott Trife recalls his high school principal’s good-bye the day JDott was kicked out of school. As the MC tells it, his principal said, “Oh, don’t worry about him, by the time he’s 21 he’ll be dead or in jail.” But JDott was determined to prove him wrong. “It was, like, wow, if that’s what you expect from me is to be dead or in jail,” he says....
With news that Mayor Emanuel has given police a new contract, I had to ask some cops I know: Are you going to vote for Rahm? Pensions matter a lot to police because, like teachers and other public-sector workers, they’re not eligible for social security. Plus, they have to retire by law at age 63, so they can’t work on and on until they drop. Which isn’t far from Bruce Rauner’s attitude toward public pensions....
The final play in August Wilson’s “Century Cycle,” Radio Golf, set in the 1990s, is a story about a little guy trying to survive the American political machine without having his morals ground to a pulp. Allen Gillmore expertly heads up Court Theatre’s five-person powerhouse ensemble as Harmond Wilks, an optimistic real estate developer running to become Pittsburgh’s first black mayor. Director Ron OJ Parson sets this examination of black upward mobility and class against a toe-tapping soundtrack that evokes the feeling of a classic sitcom with unusual gravitas....
Brian Jackson/Sun-Times Media Federal prosecutors say Jason Austin should serve extra time for a double murder on the west side, though he hasn’t been convicted of it. Two years ago Jason Austin was convicted of federal drug charges for dealing heroin and cocaine on Chicago’s west side. But defense attorney Richard Kling blasted the U.S. attorney’s office for attempting to pin the slayings on Austin without strong enough evidence to try him for it....
In 2004 Tobias Jeg left a gig at pop-punk powerhouse Fat Wreck Chords to found Red Scare Industries, which he relocated from San Francisco to Chicago in 2007 in part so he could work more closely with the label’s other principal player, Brendan Kelly (also of the Lawrence Arms). Red Scare reaches the double digits this year, and Gossip Wolf has the scoop on its tenth-anniversary weekend—which will be anchored by an all-day Metro show on Sat 10/25....
Early last month I was flipping through LPs at Pilsen’s new 606 Records when an ambient techno track playing through the store’s speakers caught my ears: dulcet flutelike synth droplets steadily echoing and arpeggiating, chirping crickets, pulsing brittle hi-hats. Like many smartphone users, I sometimes bust out Shazam to identify an unfamiliar song in public; sometimes it doesn’t work, and I fight back my embarrassment to ask someone who might know....
During the last few weeks, I engaged in a little shuttle diplomacy with Alexandra Holt, the mayor’s budget director, and Ken Davis, host of a public access television talk show. Generally, I’m the one who tells you that—again and again. So for the last four years, Mayor Emanuel’s created this budget-time ritual, in which he praises himself for not having raised property taxes, when of course he’s raising them every year through his TIFs....
Everyone loves Meat Wave, and for good reason. The local trio have been hammering out some of the best punk rock that’s currently being made, and each of their three records has been better than its predecessor. On their newest release, a brand-new split 45 with local punks Lifestyles (out on No Trend Records), Meat Wave deliver another hit with “That’s Alright.” Riding on a hard-hitting, airtight rhythm, the song is signature Meat Wave, with Chris Sutter’s melodic vocals equal parts pop smash and unsettling, dark rant....
In March, days before the launch of a tour planned to support his band’s 12th album, Romance (Joyful Noise), Oneida drummer Jon Colpitts—better known by his stage name, Kid Millions—was hospitalized following a serious car accident in Los Angeles. The tour was canceled, and though his Oneida bandmates announced that he was expected to make full recovery, I didn’t think the group would be back in action this summer. In recent years, Kid Millions has ascended as a new-music dynamo, but he’s remained staunchly devoted to Oneida since it formed in 1997....
Quicksand seemed destined to stay posthardcore’s version of a brilliant cult TV show that regrettably lasted only a season or two. Before disbanding in 1995, the New York-based four-piece released an EP and two near perfect but underappreciated albums, Slip (1993) and Manic Compression (1995). Following the breakup, the band’s four members (front man Walter Schreifels, drummer Alan Cage, bassist Sergio Vega, and guitarist Tom Capone) dispersed among a host of other projects like Rival Schools and Handsome, while elements of Quicksand’s brand of tightly constructed muscular and melodic rock—a sort of thinking man’s hardcore—lived on in their more commercially successful successors ranging from Tool to Deftones (whom Vega joined in 2008)....
Robots have been threatening to take over the world—which is to say that people have felt threatened by the possibility of a robot takeover—since at least 1921, when Czech playwright Karel Čapek coined the term “robot” for his play R.U.R. In Čapek’s scenario, manufactured workers rise up in successful revolt against their creator/masters, killing off pretty much the entire human species. The one incontrovertible innovation is Walter, Marjorie’s robotic companion. He doesn’t look like a robot....
It’s basically impossible to imagine The Daily Show without Jon Stewart, which is probably part of the reason people have reacted so poorly to Trevor Noah becoming his successor. OK, that and the fact that he’s practically an unknown. And then there were his tweets—unfunny at best, offensive at worst—that were used as evidence of Noah being unqualified for the job. No one can fill Stewart’s shoes—and from the sound of it, Noah isn’t interested in trying....
Quirky Americana band the Mavericks ended a nine-year hiatus in 2012 by picking up exactly where they left off, embracing a sprawling admixture of styles with more energy and ambition than ever before. Unfortunately their 2013 comeback album, In Time, was a bloated affair, written as though they were desperate to make up for lost time. But now, having recently formed their own Mono Mundo label to release the new Brand New Day, the Mavericks seem to have settled into their strengths....
ZZ Ward has dedicated her career to merging blues with contemporary pop R&B, achieving fair aesthetic results and mixed commercial success. Her single “The Deep,” off her sophomore album The Storm (out at the end of June on Hollywood), is a fine example of that approach. A meaty riff with chopped-up blues-slide notes dripping around the edges and an honest-to-god classic-rock guitar solo are arranged around a solid radio-ready beat. It’s tough and sexy—and not too far removed from Beyoncé’s similar mashup of rock, roots, and pop on Lemonade....
Japanese cult filmmaker Sion Sono (Suicide Club, Love Exposure) once cited as his primary influences John Cassavetes, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and 80s splatter movies, and many of his films play like a fusion of those three elements. Like Cassavetes, Sono elicits bold, expressive performances from his actors to depict characters at emotional extremes; he also favors jittery, handheld-camera work that gives his films a sense of wild spontaneity. Like Fassbinder, Sono is a social critic whose characters tend to be outcasts and people desperate for love, and a remarkably prolific artist whose quickly and cheaply made movies (about 20 in the last decade) exude a rousing punk bravado....
In the Reader‘s coverage of this weekend’s Chicago Jazz Festival, John Corbett wrote a wonderful profile of trailblazing South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, a founding member of the Blue Notes and the kind of versatile, curious percussionist that only comes along once or twice in a generation. His performance on Sunday with 5 Blokes is one of the festival sets I’m most excited about—not just because he’s talented and historically important, but also because every member of his band is terrific....
In December 2015, actress Sonja Mata approached director and fellow performer Claire Bauman about curating a show of one-minute dances, but they quickly changed course and started thinking about an event that combined arts and advocacy. They reached out to Awakenings Foundation—a group that promotes healing and recovery for sexual-assault survivors through art—which introduced them to Grace DeSant, a burlesque performer who was already planning a similar event. The result is Making (the) Movement, a one-day festival that takes place during Sexual Assault Awareness Month....
The suburb of Wheaton is 90 percent white and just 3 percent black, yet I found a sign of racial mixing out there that you’d be hard pressed to find in the city. But hold that thought and let me back up. I was in Wheaton for an annual all-night flea market, an event my kids find irresistible since it involves roaming a gravel lot in darkness with a flashlight, looking through other peoples’ stuff....
In the three years I’ve been writing about the Chicago Independent Spirits Expo, I think I’ve said all there is to say about the challenges of deciding what to taste at an event that boasts hundreds of spirits from several dozen distillers. This year, for a change, I stopped worrying about it. The Illinois distilleries were mostly grouped together in one corner of the room, so I started there, moving on to the other tables after I’d tasted as much as I could of the locally made spirits....
Though Barack Obama’s first post-presidency speech on April 24 and the March for Science on April 22 were at least partially born out of a need to address dangers presented by the agenda of President Donald Trump and a reinvigorated GOP, both only winked at Trump while embracing a kind of bloodless nonpartisanship. Changes in the way media is consumed, Obama said, reinforce people’s “own realities to the neglect of a common reality that allows us to have a healthy debate and then try to find common ground and actually move solutions forward....
