Women & Children First Lynn Mooney and Sarah Hollenbeck, new owners of Women & Children First Bookselling has never been a sure way to unfathomable riches, but if you were going to take over an independent bookstore, there have been worse times than the present. Particularly if you’re going to take over a beloved neighborhood institution like Women & Children First in Andersonville or the Seminary Co-op and 57th Street Books in Hyde Park....

Southern soul singer Arthur Alexander was always something of a square peg, making music that often split the difference between soul and country. His early work exerted more influence in the UK than in the U.S., and some of his best songs were immortalized in cover versions by the Beatles and Rolling Stones (“Anna” and “Soldier of Love” by the former, “You Better Move On” by the latter). In the late 80s I picked up a copy of the indispensable Ace compilation A Shot of Rhythm & Soul, and it’s remained a favorite for three decades....

Almost 40 years since extreme metal emerged out of the pits of hell (or at least its garages and basements), the gender of its practitioners remains overwhelmingly male. But even in its earliest days, women wanted in on the fun. In the late 80s, vocalist and guitarist Sharon Bascovsky asked her friend Terri Heggen to start a death-metal band—Heggen even learned drums to do it. Taking the name Derkéta from a goddess of death in the Conan the Barbarian mythos, the Pittsburgh duo began writing songs that merge raw, scathing death metal with guttural, churning doom—and by their own account, they were the first all-woman band in either genre....

Julia Thiel Templeton Rye has been in the news a lot lately. Bryce T. Bauer’s book Gentlemen Bootleggers: The True Story of Templeton Rye, Prohibition, and a Small Town in Cahoots was released in July, the same month that the Daily Beast published an article by Eric Felten titled “Your ‘Craft’ Rye Whiskey Is Probably From a Factory Distillery in Indiana.” (My review of the book is here.) And yesterday the Des Moines Register reported that a Chicago-based law firm had filed a class-action lawsuit against Templeton Rye on the grounds that the company “broke consumer protection laws and misled drinkers with stories of its whiskey’s prohibition-era origins....

Luca Cimarusti, Reader music listings coordinator Metallica, . . . And Justice for Jason When bassist Jason Newsted joined Metallica, legend has it that his bandmates hazed the shit out of him—among other things, they’re supposed to have deliberately buried all his bass parts inaudibly low in the mix of 1988’s . . . And Justice for All. However it happened, it resulted in one of the most complex and engaging records in metal history sounding notoriously limp....

To commemorate the Chicago International Film Festival’s 50th anniversary, Channel 11 is launching a series of monthly broadcasts of notable films that have screened at the festival over the years. Legacy (2000), which opens the series February 27 at 10 PM, seems a particularly apt choice because it’s a true Chicago story, one that plays out against the long, sad history of the city’s housing authority. Director Tod Lending opens in September 1997 with the gun murder of 14-year-old Terrell Collins not far from the Henry Horner Homes in West Town, where he lived with his grandmother and five siblings; Terrell’s story is one we see over and over again on the ten o’clock news—an A student, bound for better things, shot dead in a pointless quarrel....

In Book Swap, a Reader staffer recommends two to five books and then asks a local wordsmith, literary enthusiast, or publishing-adjacent professional to do the same. In this installment, Reader deputy editor Kate Schmidt swaps book suggestions with her roommate (and fiance) Ted Cox, longtime Chicago journalist, current editor of the news site OneIllinois, and author of 1,001 Days in the Bleachers (Northwestern), a collection of sports columns that first appeared in the Reader....

Listen to Me Marlon, an engrossing documentary portrait of Marlon Brando, has more than its share of awkward moments, but none more so than its 1955 clip of the 30-year-old actor appearing on Edward R. Murrow’s CBS interview series Person to Person alongside his 60-year-old father, Marlon Brando Sr. When Murrow asks the father if he’s proud of his son—who has just won an Oscar for On the Waterfront—Marlon Sr. replies, “Well, as an actor, not too proud, but as a man, why quite proud....

For the past five years, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) has installed public art projects outside, near the front steps of the building’s main entrance, in order to enliven the city’s landscape with contemporary art and to partially create a “museum without walls.” This summer, the highly acclaimed Brazilian contemporary artist Alexandre da Cunha brings three interactive pieces to the plaza. One is a full-scale cement mixer titled Mix (Americana) (2013), cleaned up and freshly painted with red-white-and-blue stars and stripes....

This year’s edition of Lollapalooza was possibly the most controversial since the festival took up an annual weekend-long residence in Grant Park in the summer of 2005. As reported here on the Bleader and elsewhere, Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes and Samantha Urbani were assaulted by security officers who were reportedly not employed by the festival; yesterday, Chance the Rapper brought R. Kelly out onstage, but the reception was considerably cooler than the one following the latter’s performance at last year’s Pitchfork Music Festival....

Strawberry Hampton, a transgender woman currently serving a ten-year sentence for residential burglary at Dixon Correctional Center, the fourth male prison she’s been transferred to within the year, filed new claims against the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) on July 17 stating that she’s been sexually and physically assaulted by inmates and prison guards, and requesting she be transferred to Logan Correctional Center, a women’s prison. In April, the IDOC filed to dismiss Hampton’s complaints, stating that she had “failed to exhaust [her] administrative remedies as required prior to filing....

The other day I got a press release about Tenth Ward alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza‘s August 15 gubernatorial forum, which all the major Democratic candidates will attend. Asked why she’s not running, Garza generally says something along the lines of “Give me a break. I like my job.” Desperately seeking a take-no-prisoners progressive tactician who understands how Springfield really works? Then get to know Stacy Davis Gates, the political and legislative director of the Chicago Teachers Union....

A writer in midlife turned to other journalists this month for advice on how to connect with the Huffington Post. “I’m curious how to become part of the unpaid writers group,” said B. Howe on a University of Missouri alumni listserv. (I subscribe.) Yes, of course it is, but aside from that what’s so bad about it? Howe’s appeal reminded me of a conversation I’d had six years ago with Carol Felsenthal....

During the 2017 annual Sundance Film Festival—which took place January 19 to 29 in Park City, Utah—the U.S. changed presidents. On January 20, Donald Trump took the oath of office and succeeded Barack Obama as president of the United States; in the week that followed, protesters rallied in support of women’s rights and Muslim immigrants in major cities and small towns across the country, including in Park City. By the time the festival wrapped, the mood, according to LA Times film critic Justin Chang, had shifted....

Before I meet Kent Lambert for the first time, he e-mails me a song he recorded and released in 2001. It’s called “RP (Forget the Metaphors),” and it saw some airplay on Belgian national radio in 2002. Audience members still requested it this year when he played a monthlong residency at the Hideout with a rotating lineup of bandmates. When we meet up and drink beers in the Ukrainian Village, Lambert tells me how it’s the song that motivated him to keep making music as Roommate, the project for which he’s collected his various musical impulses during the past decade and a half....

There was a moment recently where everyone was going to open a diner, which meant his or her take on a diner—Stephanie Izard’s cheerfully wack one, Brendan Sodikoff’s swankily hip one, and so on. But any “take” is always partly ironic, because if you didn’t want a diner refracted through someone’s newer, hipper sensibility, you’d just go to an actual diner. And nobody eating on Randolph Street is doing that....

A pair of jeans doesn’t have to be synonymous with mass production: Brandon Lamar Rials of BLRDesign elevates the humble garment to haute-couture material. From his cool live-work space in Pilsen, the driven entrepreneur produces customized pants that take one to two weeks for completion, fashioned in quality 11- to 13-ounce stretch selvage denim made in America, Italy, and even Japan. “The jeans are one of a kind; you can’t find anything like what I make elsewhere in the city,” he says....

Andrea Bauer Danny Davis says he learned about power from his mother’s whuppings. In the middle of campaign season for the March 18 Democratic primary, Congressman Danny Davis was recalling the time his father had saved the life of a cow. “My daddy was a sharecropper, a farmer, who finished the fourth grade when he was 19 years old,” Davis said. “He also turned out to be one of the most gifted individuals I’ve ever encountered....

Rich Hein/Sun-Times Media Dean Zanella at Rhapsody Tragedy struck the family of a longtime Chicago chef late last month. On February 13, Dean Zanella—who’s best known for his years as chef of 312 Chicago in the Loop—and his wife, Mary Bridget Reidy Zanella, welcomed twin girls, Anna Grace and Nora Joan. Complications set in, and Mary passed away on February 22. Now friends of the family have set up a fund-raiser to help Zanella with the cost of caring for his new daughters alone....

As last weekend rolled around, local MC-slash-singer Tink dropped her Winter’s Diary 2 mixtape, and in a way it pairs well with Roy French’s recent Face God. While French’s mixtape offered a colorful escape from the dreary cold snap that made running to a nearby corner store a monumental mission that required wearing piles of clothing, Tink’s new tracks embrace a certain lustrous magic in wintertime that seemed like it could’ve been lost in the polar vortex....