Young bassist Brandon Lopez has become a force on New York’s improvised-music scene these past few years, in large part due to his formidable power. The recent self-released solo album Smoked Sunshine Vitriol Spits is a testament to his strength—his oversize instrument can sound like a toy in his hands, and the way he wields and manhandles it in a live setting (e.g., his performance here last fall as a member of Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones) makes it look like one too....

Q: I’ve been reading your column for a while, and you always advise kinky people to go seek the same within the kink community. But in my experience, the kink community is very “sex right away, get to know you later”-oriented. So I have two questions. First, as someone who’s a bit of an old-fashioned romantic, is there somewhere I can go to find sexually compatible people who are willing to let me get to know them before we fuck?...

On his sophomore album, True to Self, Bryson Tiller keeps doing Bryson Tiller things, like lamenting over trap-infused 808s about a girlfriend’s emotional distance and the impending end of their relationship—which may also be related to some questionable behavior of his own. “I’m busy, it’s no wonder you upset with me,” he sings on his summer single “Somethin Tells Me.” “You found a Magnum inside of my bag / Don’t know how to explain this / That was in there way before we started dating....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. The Hard Times Though this fake punk-news site has been pushing outside its territory of late with anything-goes Onion-style satire, it’s hardly in danger of exhausting its original niche—the Hard Times had some kind of 2016, with headlines such as “Ceremony Thinks You Were Better in 2006, Too” and “Minor Threat Reference Wasted on Chili’s Waitress....

“Then, from all reports, we seem to be completely surrounded by love.” —Nat Miller in Ah, Wilderness! Our main concern is Richard’s coming of age, neatly and safely accomplished in about 24 hours. Given a droll spin by Niall Cunningham, Dick is a curly-haired, beanpole-thin know-it-all when we first meet him, spouting opinions on Wilde and Shaw while declaring his epic love for Muriel, daughter of a cranky merchant named McComber—who arrives before long with the soul-baring if pedantic letters Dick’s been writing to Muriel in secret....

Theaster Gates’s newest project, the Stony Island Arts Bank, a 17,000-square-foot building he purchased from the city for $1, which opens to the public this Saturday, October 3, will do something many of Gates’s Rebuild Foundation projects have not—exist with normal operating hours for true public access. The building’s first exhibition is an installation by Portuguese artist Carlos Bunga. His cardboard-based structures act as faux columns in the bank’s first-floor gallery space and, oddly, blend into the nearly century-old architecture....

The 1979 film Being There—which received a superb new Blu-Ray release last week from the Criterion Collection—feels more funereal than virtually any other movie comedy I know. Set during winter and shot with clear, chilly precision by Caleb Deschanel, it generally looks like an Ingmar Bergman psychodrama; the jokes, albeit funny and perfectly timed, seem oddly out of place. The film is also structured around death: it begins with the death of one character and ends at the burial of another, whose rapid demise influences much of the onscreen behavior in the second half....

There are plenty of shows, films, and concerts happening this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Mon 10/15-Thu 10/18: Chicago International Film Festival. The Reader’s Kathleen Sachs writes: “Included in the lineup are many films made by Chicago-born or -based filmmakers or else set in our city.” Additionally, “the festival will screen more features directed by women than ever before,” according to the Reader’s Ben Sachs. Through 10/21; screening dates and times vary, AMC River East, 322 E....

In the 60s and 70s, Chicago producer, A&R man, songwriter, and record honcho Carl Davis helped shape the sound of Chicago soul, working directly with Jackie Wilson, Tyrone Davis, the Chi-Lites, and Barbara Acklin, among others. While employed at legendary label Brunswick in the early 70s, Davis was keen to add a white crossover act in the vein of Motown signees Rare Earth (of “I Just Want to Celebrate” fame); according to Steve Krakow’s regular Reader series,Secret History of Chicago Music, that’s what led Davis to sign McLuhan....

How do you explain Donald Trump to small children? Both copies of President Donald Trump were mailed to me at the office and were immediately confiscated by coworkers who wanted to know how one explained to children the overlap of Trump’s first two marriages and the bit about pussy grabbing. The answer: you don’t. Both of the President Donald Trump books just mentioned dates of marriages and divorces and included pictures of the various Trump offspring....

Gossip Wolf has been hankering for a new full-length from High Spirits ever since hearing some hot demos in 2013—Chicago multi-instrumentalist and producer Chris Black, who’s also part of Dawnbringer and Superchrist, takes inspiration from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal for High Spirits’ massively exuberant music. This weekend the gods of thunder answered our prayers: the band’s new You Are Here is up for presale on Bandcamp (where it comes out Thu 4/25), and on Tue 5/13 Hell’s Headbangers will release it on LP and CD....

If I’m reading the cards right, 2018 will go down in history as the year the myth of the bad teacher finally, mercifully, and hopefully was consigned to the dustbin of history. Last week Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle launched her mayoral campaign to replace Rahm by emphasizing how proud she is of the time she spent, years ago, as a CPS history teacher. I will never understand the lure of this myth, which was largely propagated by billionaires like the Walmart clan—and Betsy DeVos, and Bruce Rauner, for that matter—as well as various high-tech chieftains....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Jim DeRogatis’s dogged reporting on R. Kelly Ever since 2002, when his pursuit of the R. Kelly scandal began with a videotape he received anonymously, Sound Opinions cohost and former Sun-Times pop critic Jim DeRogatis has never flagged. His most recent piece on Kelly, for BuzzFeed News, is about the singer’s manipulation of young women and the “cult” he’s created via promises of fame and notoriety....

Houdini After seeing both Sleep and Boris within only a couple of weeks of each other, I’ve been on a pretty big sludge-metal kick lately. One record that’s been getting an especially large number of spins from me has been Houdini, the 1993 major-label debut from Washington state stoner-metal weirdos the Melvins. As much as I wanted to make today’s 12 O’Clock Track the band’s cover of the Kiss ode to young women “Going Blind,” I settled instead with “Honey Bucket,” a song that better showcases the classic Melvins formula of atom-bomb-heavy guitars and creepy vocals, propelled by the explosive and tremendously fat drumming of Dale Crover....

At the Beat Kitchen’s Holiday Toy Drive, a jam-packed lineup of local emo and indie-rock icons will play acoustic sets while raising cash and collecting toys to benefit the SOS Children’s Villages of Illinois. Headlined by American Football’s Mike Kinsella (who moonlights as Owen in a solo capacity), the eight-set showcase includes bandleaders Dave Davison (Maps & Atlases), Bob Nanna (Braid, Lifted Bells), Mark Rose (Spitalfield), Avery Singer (Retirement Party), and Chris Sutter (Meat Wave), among others....

In Ida a virginal teenager who’s been raised in a Polish convent since her infancy is summoned by the mother superior and informed that, before she takes her vows of ordination to become a nun, she must travel to the city and meet her only living relative, an aunt who refused to take her in after her parents died. Poland is still under communist rule in the mid-60s, and the aunt is a powerful magistrate known for sentencing enemies of the state to death (“Red Wanda,” people call her)....

Well, 2015 was a hell of a year, but now it’s time to move on—why not do so in style? This year the city offers everything from a masquerade ball to a seafood feast to a night of improv, not to mention the traditional countdowns, balloon drops, and, of course, champagne toasts at midnight. Some of our top New Year’s Eve picks are below, with an ever-updating list here. El Ten Eleven 10 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W....

I had a great time at the live taping of the Savage Lovecast at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre June 15. Audience members submitted questions on cards, and I tackled as many as I could over two hours—with the welcome and hilarious assistance of local comedian Kristen Toomey. Here are some of the questions we didn’t get to before they gave us the hook . . . A: Get this woman’s phone number, exchange a few photos and flirty texts, and relax....

Pianist Johnny O’Neal seemed destined for success when he moved from his native Detroit to New York in 1981 and scored a regular gig at the Blue Note, where he played behind heavies including Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, and Nancy Wilson, among others. A year later he was working in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers—a virtual finishing academy for some of hard bop’s most respected figures, and in 1985 he opened for fellow pianist Oscar Peterson at Carnegie Hall....

Pianist Danilo Pérez, bassist John Patitucci, and drummer Brian Blade have served as the telepathic rhythm section in one of the greatest jazz bands of our time—the quartet that saxophonist Wayne Shorter has led since 2000. In that group those musicians have developed a highly refined sensibility, both elastic and elliptical, using a wide dynamic range to imbue performances with an endless sense of drama and surprise. They’ve occasionally worked together without Shorter, including a few pieces on the pianist’s 2014 album Panama 500 (Mack Avenue), but on the recently released Children of the Light (released by the same imprint) they’ve emerged as a fully contained unit, which is hardly surprising considering the time they’ve spent together....