A celebration of the heretofore hypothetical territory where rappers, jam bands, and electro producers meet, the North Coast Music Festival has built an identity distinctive enough to stand out amid Chicago’s bulging music-fest ecosystem. Most such gatherings act as little more than tour stops for the marquee names who spend their summers playing every single one, and in its eighth year North Coast hasn’t exactly refrained from throwing its net in that pool—the dregs of the 2017 lineup include unexceptional hip-hop jester Lil Dicky....

Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians turned 50 in 2015, and celebrations of this influential collective have been popping off worldwide all year—here in town, exhibits honoring the AACM’s impact have opened at the DuSable Museum of African American History and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The 37th annual Chicago Jazz Festival marks this auspicious anniverary with performances by four AACM-related groups: Douglas Ewart & Inventions, the Jeff Parker Trio, Steve & Iqua Colson, and Muhal Richard Abrams’s Experimental Band....

The cover of Sea When Absent I’ve been a fan of Philadelphia dream-pop outfit A Sunny Day in Glasgow since their 2007 debut Scribble Mural Comic Journal (Notenuf). That album seemed to refract early My Bloody Valentine and Sarah Records singles through Animal Collective‘s screwy, childlike sense of songwriting and Wolfgang Voigt‘s lush, cavernous ambient music. On their 2009 follow-up Ashes Grammar (Mis Ojos Discos), they still enshrouded their music in Voigt’s fog-thick textures but turned up the BPM and channeled early-90s indie-dance-pop acts like Saint Etienne and the KLF....

Beer for dogs seems like one of those ideas that sounds brilliant if you’re alone with your dog and a can of Miller Lite, because who would make a better—and more nonjudgmental—drinking buddy than man’s best friend? (And, maybe some of you actually have poured some beer into the dog’s bowl, just to see what would happen.) It’s also one of those ideas that quickly fades in the cold, harsh light of sobriety because even cheap beer is more expensive than tap water, and there’s no sense in wasting it on a creature that will, in a pinch, nibble on kitty litter between meals....

Jury selection in the murder trial of former Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke began this week. Nearly four years after he fired 16 shots into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, and nearly three years after he was indicted for the on-duty shooting, Van Dyke’s attorneys and the special prosecutor have commenced the painstaking process of picking the 12 men and women who will evaluate his actions. Diamond says that conducting voir dire interviews with each juror individually after the questionnaire, as Gaughan plans to do, is the right decision for a case like this too....

For better and for worse, Governor Bruce Rauner has never made a secret of his deep contempt­—bordering on hatred—for the Chicago Teachers Union. So imagine my surprise when I got a call from a source I’ll call Cockburn—because he doesn’t want to be identified—informing me that Rauner’s old private equity firm was a paid consultant to the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund. In September 2011, just a few months after inking its deal with the teachers’ fund, Townsend was purchased by GTCR, the private equity firm that Rauner used to help lead....

One of the main reasons biking is my favorite way to get around Chicago is the good vibes. Cyclists can bypass hectic, sun-baked arterials during hot-weather rush hours in favor of tranquil, leafy backstreet routes. And nothing beats a relaxed cruise home, past buzzing neon and packed sidewalk cafes on an absolutely perfect summer night. Particularly irksome is sexist “man-shoaling,” noted member Heléna Klumpp, “by guys who assume they’re faster than me—you know, because they’re guys, so they must be....

Gossip Wolf’s favorite dirge-­metal band, Anatomy of Habit, features members of Indian, Tortoise, Bloodyminded, and Joan of Arc, and its cathartic long-form jams combine doom, shoegaze, and industrial. Last week, the group announced a deal with heavy-music institution Relapse Records to release an as-yet-untitled new LP late this fall. Front man Mark Solotroff says the LP features artwork from former Bloodyminded member Pieter Schoolwerth, an old-master-style painter based in New York; its two long tracks include one that’s been augmented with analog synth....

LA rapper Gustav Åhr, better known as Lil Peep, was a child when emo’s third wave crashed onto the Billboard charts. For Peep and a smattering of other underground MCs, emo in its most popular form—notoriously defined by the masses in terms of its quasi-gothic fashions rather than, well, its music—has been part of the pop lexicon since they came of age. It was only a matter of time till someone spiked rap’s punch bowl with pop-punk and third-wave emo, and though Peep isn’t alone in doing it, he’s figured out a blend that doesn’t feel like a put-on....

In Book Swap, a regular feature that is entirely unique, about books, and not at all related to the music feature In Rotation, a Reader staffer recommends three to five books and then asks a local wordsmith, literary enthusiast, or publishing-adjacent professional to do the same. It is awesome. Way better than it would be if it were about records. On Immunity: An Inoculation, Eula Biss’s 2014 Graywolf Press book, is a series of personal essays that tease through notions of illness, politics, care work, and vaccinations to pose questions about what makes us feel safe....

For several decades, Vicente Amigo has reigned as one of flamenco’s premier guitarists, a dazzling technician and an explosive performer carrying the torch of the great Paco de Lucía to push the Spanish tradition in new directions. Not all those directions have led to success—the 2013 album Tierra was a rather mushy collision of flamenco and Celtic music—but through each phase of his career Amigo, who turned 50 this year, has stuck to the fundamentals of his art....

YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images Elena Poniatowska Ask an American to name the most tumultuous events of 1968 and we’ll recall the King and Kennedy assassinations and the rioting at the Democratic convention in Chicago. Ask about international upheaval and we’ll add the Soviet invasion of Prague and the student uprising in Paris. Prod us further—what about Mexico City?—and most of us will come up with the moment when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists to protest racism in America as they were awarded Olympic medals....

It’s never difficult to see live blues in Chicago, and during the Blues Festival it’s even easier—the city’s blues clubs pull out the stops all weekend, and even venues that don’t specialize in the blues get in on the action. Two veterans who haven’t gigged Chicago for a while return during the festival: Eddy “the Chief” Clearwater, an early Chuck Berry fan who was among the first bluesmen of his generation to graft rock ’n’ roll onto the postwar Chicago style, plays at Buddy Guy’s Legends on Friday....

Things in Washington, D.C., are nuttier than ever in the wake of the multiple Trump-related felony convictions earlier this month, but at least some reason prevailed this year in regards to federal transit policy. That’s not to say that there weren’t some low points. Drivers had fatally struck six people on bikes on Chicago streets as of mid- December. In August cyclists were particularly shaken by the death of Angela Park, 39, a spin instructor and triathlon coach who was run over by a truck driver in Greektown during the morning rush....

Collection Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam. © Charlotte Salomon Foundation. Charlotte Salomon® Charlotte Salomon spent most of 1941 locked in a room in La Belle Aurore, a hotel in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat in the south of France, painting. She was trying to distract herself from the suicidal depression that plagued her family—it had claimed her mother, the aunt for whom she was named, and, most recently, her grandmother—and the impending Nazi invasion....

Getty Images Some senators and corporate CEOs called for hiking the minimum wage earlier this year, but studies have found that the rich and powerful are typically less able to sympathize with others. An important new business principle is making itself felt: the more you pay your CEO, the more incompetent a job he’ll do. I suppose powerful forces would like to stamp out this notion before it takes hold....

Ever since local singer-songwriter Jessica Marks dropped her debut EP,Forget Me, in March 2016, Gossip Wolf has been in thrall—her fragile, ghostly melodies and hypnotic vocals are pretty unforgettable. Though she has yet to release more music, on Saturday, September 16, she’ll perform at the Hideout and premiere a video for standout track “Fuck the Clock,” shot at an allegedly haunted mansion in Massillon, Ohio, by filmmaker Emily Esperanza (a former knight of departed Humboldt Park DIY space Young Camelot)....

In 1990, before she’d won her Tony Award (2002) or even her MacArthur “genius” fellowship (1996), Mary Zimmerman was the subject of a short feature by Reader contributor Justin Hayford. “I had this moment onstage a few years ago when I was supposed to be witnessing someone’s death,” Zimmerman told him. “There we were, all laced up in our corsets, our hair sprayed back, all that. We were trying so hard to be upset about this man’s death....

Alinea on Twitter . . . again “Next is one of our country’s great restaurants and Dave Beran is one of our country’s finest chefs,” says Ryan Sutton at Bloomberg.com. The bad news is everything else he says in what might just be the first major publication negative review that Next has ever gotten. Like “So what’s the verdict? The service is outstanding. The drinks are stunning. And the food is often well-executed....

Sun-Times Rashad Harden, better known as DJ Rashad, died yesterday at the age of 35. Calumet City footwork master Rashad Harden, better known as DJ Rashad, died Saturday at the age of 35. Harden had been one of the biggest names in footwork, a fast-paced style of dance music that evolved out of ghetto house in the 90s. Along with frequent collaborator Morris Harper (aka DJ Spinn) and the rest of their footwork collective, Teklife, Harden helped bring this unique local sound to the rest of the world....