More than four decades ago, a prodigiously talented Kentucky guitarist named Mark Fosson earned the praise of the great John Fahey, who signed Fosson to his Takoma label on the strength of a demo tape. Fosson headed to LA and played some gigs with Fahey, but Takoma was in bad financial straits and the record never came out. Still, that near miss is largely responsible for the late-career bump Fosson has experienced over the past dozen years....

When drill broke out two years ago it had an unparalleled grip on the city’s hip-hop scene. The genre’s rise has been exhaustively documented (though not always well), but if you’re eager to get a taste for drill’s influence outside this city’s borders the best place to look right now might be Vine. The app has pushed New York rapper Bobby Shmurda into the web’s limelight after a six-second loop of him performing his “shmoney dance” started going viral a couple weeks ago; the clip shows Shmurda slowly jerking his hips with the right amount of style to make some herky-jerky dance moves mesmerizing....

Between the release of their 2010 album Skit I Allt and the 2015 gem Allas Sak, excellent Swedish psych band Dungen were enlisted to create an original soundtrack for German director Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 animated feature film The Adventures of Prince Achmed, one of the medium’s earliest examples and widely considered to be its oldest surviving work. Dungen’s music is distinguished in part by the sweet nasal singing of front man Gustav Ejstes, whose indelible melodies weave together the group’s often discursive styles....

Speaking of bar food, ever since Lakeview’s Long Room opened its kitchen, Sidecar, this summer, I’ve been wondering if slinger consumption has taken a hit across the street at the Diner Grill. Late night the little window to the side of the barroom has been manned by chefs Kyle Schrage and Jim Torres, calling themselves Beard & Belly. They’re putting out exactly the sort of cheesy, palliative drunk food you head for when you leave a bar, and it’s good enough that people might just stay put instead of heading across Irving Park Road to get fixed: pickled eggs, burgers, fries, chili-cheese fries, poutine, and something called a poutinewich....

Makavejev’s The Coca-Cola Kid screens at the Logan Center for the Arts on Friday at 7 PM. At the University of Chicago’s website, a countdown has already begun for Let’s Get Working, a three-day celebration of Studs Terkel that will take place in early May. The festival is to feature readings, film screenings, musical performances, and community dialogues—an appropriately diverse tribute to a man who “recognized the value in listening to all of the city’s voices....

James Broughton’s The Pleasure Garden I find it telling that Big Joy, a fairly straightforward documentary about the poet and experimental filmmaker James Broughton, is currently playing at Facets Multimedia in a weeklong run while most genuine experimental films are lucky to play Chicago more than once. That’s not Big Joy‘s fault: the movie does a commendable job of explaining why Broughton’s art is important, elucidating his perennial themes and the cultural contexts in which he worked....

I just wrote about Jute Gyte for In Rotation, only to discover after press deadline that it (or rather he) had released yet another album last week—for a total of 17 full-lengths since 2010. Most of what I said still applies, though: Adam Kalmbach, aka one-man Missouri avant-garde black-metal project Jute Gyte, uses guitars retro­fitted to play 24-tone equal-tempered scales—meaning he’s got twice as many notes in an octave as an ordinary guitarist....

During her lifetime, the artist and educator Barbara DeGenevieve fearless and controversial work was rarely shown. Iceberg Project’s “Medusa’s Cave” is the first exhibition of her art since her passing in August 2014, as well as her first-ever solo show. The exhibition presents many pieces from DeGenevieve’s early career, including a few that have never before been seen. Although many institutions were uncomfortable showing DeGenevieve’s work, the curators at Iceberg Projects gravitated towards it, since they pride themselves on exhibiting work that is controversial, sexually charged, and queer....

To be a “black playwright,” according to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins‘s onstage surrogate, BJJ, is to have every work examined through the lens of racial discord in America, be it relevant or not. Write about farm animals and their feed as an allegory for substance abuse? Must be a deconstructed, modernized African folktale. Ask a Caucasian actor to play a period-appropriate bigot? Must be a personal expression of rage against white society. Use the bathroom?...

Sometimes the most wrenching moments when we travel are ones we don’t appreciate at the time. Only much later do we understand what we saw. Or didn’t see. “Isn’t there a college there?” said Betsy. Most telling of all—southerners, not even in Kentucky, never speak of the Bowling Green Massacre. We never once heard it come up. Some catastrophes traumatize survivors for generations to come, and clearly the Bowling Green Massacre is something the region is not even close to coming to grips with....

Michael Gebert Prepping cassoulet at Honey Butter Fried Chicken It’s 11 AM on Monday, but Josh Kulp of Honey Butter Fried Chicken and Sunday Dinner Club already looks beat. “We had the biggest night of Honey Butter’s life on Saturday,” he explains. “We sold out of chicken by 7:30. It was insane.” Apparently, as soon as the polar vortex was over, a significant portion of Chicago’s population decided to celebrate by eating Honey Butter’s fried chicken....

There is no more mercurial restaurant than Gene & Georgetti, the storied River North Italian steak house that’s a living set piece for a Chicago that dies a bit more every day. Sometimes it welcomes you with a drunk uncle’s embrace, dirty martinis in each hand. Other times it acts like you haven’t even arrived. Still, it’s difficult to imagine this unapologetically dated concept opening on the edge of a sleepy city neighborhood, across the street from an Olive Garden and within arm’s reach of the Kennedy in Old Irving Park....

Alex Wong/Getty Images Mayor Rahm’s FOIA practice in action: it takes CPS eight months to turn over a blank piece of paper. My recent opus on the saga at Ames Middle School was so complicated that I never got around to telling you one of my favorite parts: the so-called FOIAgate angle. The mayor announced his Ames decision in October, but by then the fight had been going on for about two years....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, September 7, 2017. Sandi Jackson subpoenas Tamron Hall and strip club owner in increasingly bizarre divorce case Former alderman Sandi Jackson has subpoenaed a wide array of people in her ongoing divorce from former congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., from a strip club owner to former Today Show host Tamron Hall, according to the Sun-Times. Hall, restaurant hostess and model Giovana Huidobro, Jesse Jackson Sr....

For the past three months Natalie Chami, a Chicago high school teacher who’s been making music as TALsounds since 2011, has been fastidiously learning songs from her new album, Love Sick. If you think it seems backward to record first and learn the material later, you’re not wrong. Right from the beginning, Chami has improvised every TALsounds performance and recording, using digital looping technology to layer piano, synthesizer, and other electronics with her ethereal vocals....

A springtime mixologist mashup Friday, March 21 | 7-9:30 PM | Chop Shop | $45 PURCHASE TICKETS HERE Friday, March 21, 2014, Chop Shop, 2033 W. North, 7-9:30PM Get ready for the cocktail creativity dreamed up by the following lineup of mixologists—and get inspired by the mastery displayed in their past Cocktail Challenge: Nick Ostapczuk of Bangers & Lace (Watch Nick take a whip to the Ramos Gin Fizz )...

During the golden age of public-access television in the 1980s, a gloriously low-rent corner of the media world flourished. In the absence of expectations of network executives and their advertisers, individuality reigned, and all manner of oddball delights were waiting to be discovered by curious teens: fanatical televangelist preachers, talent-show hacks, prank-prone call-in shows, and programs broadcasting the unedited perspectives of a multitude of marginalized people—minorities, LGBTQ folks, atheists, clowns....

In an overheated black box above the streets of Logan Square, the Runaways Lab Theatre presents Ysentia and The Adventures of Astroman, two short plays by Dan Mozurkewich with near-identical themes: the decline of the universe and the rise of a protagonist who may, though neither intrinsically gifted nor particularly driven, save us all. In Ysentia, a misfit machine made of titanium roams the galaxy in search of a new home....

A dozen or so people gathered around Cheryl Johnson for a grim kind of story time. Altgeld’s proximity to the southeast side’s slew of factories, landfills, dumps, and polluted waterways has left its residents exposed and vulnerable for more than 30 years. And although Johnson has been preaching this gospel for decades her audience was unexpected. A gaggle of professional environmentalists and longtime community activists were joined by a small handful of bona fide celebrities....

In search of relief from the grim, dog-eat-dog politics of President Trump’s first days in office—oh, how will I survive four years of this?—I’ve gone back in time to revisit the good old days of FDR. “I don’t have Rauner’s money—so I’ll have to outwork him,” Pawar says. “I believe we have to change the narrative in this state. Rauner’s told us that government is the enemy. Just like Trump, Rauner’s played on our differences, pitting one group against another....