Hit the Wall wowed Chicago audiences two years ago, when it debuted in a production staged by the Inconvenience as part of Steppenwolf Theatre’s annual Garage Rep. (“Fiery,” “funny,” and “visceral” were some of my adjectives.) From there it went to New York’s Barrow Street Theatre—but closed earlier than expected, reportedly due to “soft” ticket sales. Well, thank god and Judy Garland the Barrow Street experience didn’t scare off the Chicago Commercial Collective....

The 1990s are far enough gone that the voracious nostalgia cycle has begun to nibble at nu-metal. That much-maligned genre became the pop-facing side of metal in the late 90s, when Korn and Limp Bizkit competed with N-Sync, the Backstreet Boys, and Britney Spears to get videos on Total Request Live. People who were in junior high when Kid Rock dropped Devil Without a Cause in 1998 are now old enough to own houses, have kids, and contribute to retirement accounts (though let’s be honest, nobody in their 30s or younger today is ever gonna be able to retire)....

It’s been almost a week since Governor Rauner was outed for attending—maybe even officiating—the wedding of a gay friend. For all I know Four Weddings and a Funeral—where that poem plays a key role—is Rauner’s favorite movie of the 90s. First he supports HB 40—the abortion rights bill—and now gay marriage! What’s next, the abolition of ICE? In 2015, when he was governor of Indiana, Pence signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, an abominable attempt to legitimize discrimination against gays on the grounds that you can’t compel someone to serve someone if it violates their religious convictions....

Of the dozens of shows I’ll see this summer, I’ve looked forward most to this outdoor concert by Senegalese national hero Youssou N’Dour. Born in 1959 to a griot mother and a car mechanic father, he began singing publicly at age 12 and has since become the most beloved voice in Africa. As a teenager in the mid-70s, he joined Dakar’s biggest group, the Star Band, formed in 1960 to celebrate Senegal’s independence....

Not long ago, TV was said to be rotting our brains, shrinking our attention spans, blunting our emotions, and alienating us from one another, even as it promised to connect us to the wide world. Today, of course, the very same concerns surround the Internet and its ubiquitous delivery methods—laptops, tablets, and, especially, mobile phones (television, meanwhile, has entered a much-ballyhooed “golden age”). West’s protagonist, whose real name is never given, is a young newspaperman in New York....

Tim Soter The Clean Punk’s wake reached the shores of Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1978 when brothers David (guitar) and Hamish Kilgour (drums) formed the Clean. With Robert Scott on bass, the band’s 1981 single “Tally Ho,” the second single released on the beloved Flying Nun label, zoomed up the national charts. A combination of periodic recording, fruitful reunions, a gentle grasp of the untrained melodic guitar scratch that makes its hooky tunes so particular, and the likes of Pavement singing their praises have kept the act alive (at least occasionally) to this day....

Dawn of Midi NPR is streaming the forthcoming Tune-Yards album, Nikki Nack, and even though I’ve only heard a few minutes of it I imagine I’ll have the whole thing on repeat for the rest of the day. If you can get away from this stream and are in the mood to check out some live music, you’ve got some good options. “This New York piano trio got its start in 2007, when drummer Qasim Naqvi, bassist Aakaash Israni, and pianist Amino Belyamani were students at CalArts, jamming in darkened spaces and developing a distinctive strain of group improvisation—limited in its use of melody, harmony, and structural motion but tightly coiled and constantly, incrementally developing,” writes Peter Margasak....

COURTESY OF GROUND CONTROL TOURING Perfect Pussy About a year ago comedian Donovan Strain claimed to have pinpointed the exact date Ice Cube commemorates in his 1993 single “It Was a Good Day”—January 20, 1992. Vulture fact-checked Strain’s hypothesis with Ice Cube, whose ambiguous response left the truth a little unclear, but Strain’s claim paved the way for us to celebrate that track every January 20 all the same. Tonight the folks behind Dre Day—the annual fake holiday celebrating the Compton rap icon—are throwing what’s billed as the first annual Ice Cube “Today Was a ....

Nine performers is a lot of band, and on their recordings Austin country-rock outfit Sweet Spirit can sound a bit clotted and ragged, like nobody’s quite clear where all the members go. Live, though, they throw one hell of a party. Lead singer Sabrina Ellis in particular has a riveting, no-fucks-given charisma that comes across best onstage. With a nasal edge that moves up into an almost shriek, her voice adds a threatening vibe to the band’s feel-good groove and authoritative aggression to lines like “Right hand on my heart / I swear I’ll knock you out....

In the early 80s, Chicago ska group Heavy Manners were an anomaly. Ska wouldn’t completely catch on in the midwest till the genre’s successful third wave in the 90s, but Heavy Manners helped plant those seeds in the decade before. Bassist Jimi Robinson, a reggae regular who frequently served as MC at hot spot Wild Hare, discovered London’s two-tone scene while on a trip to Europe at the start of the 80s....

Gossip Wolf wishes a happy second anniversary to the women of Party Noire, whose monthly daytime bash at the Promontory was voted the Reader‘s Best Dance Party last year. Organizers Nick Alder, Lauren Ash, and Rae Chardonnay have also produced a short film and hosted other events, among them parties in New York and a Jamila Woods record release at Double Door. On Saturday, September 9, they celebrate two years of Party Noire with an evening at the Promontory whose slate of killer DJs includes Chardonnay, Lisa Decibel, and Twelve45....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, June 26, 2017. Legal experts: It’s “no sure thing’”that Jason Van Dyke will be found guilty in Laquan McDonald case Former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke could be found not guilty with first-degree murder for the 2014 shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, legal experts told the Sun-Times. Police dash-cam video captured Van Dyke shooting unarmed McDonald to death with 16 shots....

ESPN’s broadcast of Tuesday’s play-in game between the Astros and the Yankees featured baseball analyst Jessica Mendoza, an Olympic softball player who in calling it became the first woman to announce a nationally televised playoff game. I didn’t watch, but my partner, Ted Cox, a longtime Reader sports columnist and Daily Herald media critic as well as a past member of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, has been impressed: “She knows her shit, and she’s super up on sabermetrics....

A few years ago, the food historian Bruce Kraig learned from his friend and colleague Andrew Smith that plans were under way for a food encyclopedia of New York City. The news bruised Kraig’s midwestern pride. “I thought, if those SOB New Yorkers can do one,” he says, “we can do one for Chicago!” The book itself was a logistical beast. Kraig had previously worked on the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and knew that the best way to start writing an encyclopedia was by making lists of notable food people, places, and events....

To see the difference between the Neo-Futurists’ Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, Greg Allen’s long-running hit that featured an exuberant, lyrically inclined ensemble scrambling to perform 30 original plays in 60 minutes, and the Neo-Futurists’ The Infinite Wrench, the replacement show that does the same stuff in the same theater in the same time slot, you have to squint awfully hard. Most importantly, the ingenuity and engagement of the work not only remains but has deepened....

On August 8 of last year, Trap Them’s Twitter feed announced that the band would be heading back into the studio to begin recording the followup to 2011’s Darker Handcraft. I took the news well. A mix of hardcore, grind, and raw punk, Trap Them fits pretty darn snuggly into my wheelhouse. I’ve checked back regularly for updates—the band doesn’t update their feed with great urgency—and found out today that the album is done and expecting a release early this year on Prosthetic Records....

Access to nearby Rosebud Farm Stand, 525 E. 130th, is a particular sore spot. It’s the area’s sole grocery store, but it’s difficult to access by foot. The only way to walk there from the west is via a narrow trail pedestrians have worn on the south side of the five-lane highway. Walking north to Rosebud from Altgeld means taking a rutted dirt lane. —DELORIS LUCAS­ When asked why his agency has never built the 130th Street sidewalk, CDOT spokesman Mike Claffey declined to comment....

The Mexican art film La Tirisia screens three times next week at the Chicago International Film Festival. The other day, I wrote about the thrill of watching filmmakers fail spectacularly—a post inspired by the recent revival of Nagisa Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Thief, as well as the half-dozen unspectacular failures I’ve previewed for this year’s Chicago International Film Festival. Thinking about Oshima made me feel so good that I refrained from writing about the latter category, which would have reminded me of the disappointment I’d been trying to shake for the past couple weeks....

1140 W. Jackson, 312-543-6246 In the basement of the Mercy Home for Boys and Girls, at the GLeonard Boxing Club, you’re liable to run into such pols as state rep Christian Mitchell, Alderman Will Burns, Chicago Teachers Union field rep Joseph McDermott, and Alderman Walter Burnett. But the main attraction is Glenn Leonard, who runs the gym. The 56-year-old son of Vic, who operated the boxing program at Scottsdale Park (4687 W....

Eraldo Peres/AP Photos Eduardo Campos (left) died in a plane crash on Wednesday. As the Tribune and Sun-Times think about ways to improve their product, they might want to consider discontinuing some lines of news altogether. We the readers have a right to know, but that doesn’t put our dailies under a moral obligation to tell us. News they can’t report competently they might want to leave to NPR and the New York Times....