On March 18, Merge Records will reissue Bloomed, the 1994 debut album of Richard Buckner, appended with a bonus disc containing various live recordings and studio rarities made around the time of its initial release. The record remains one of my all-time favorites, and while I’ve always admired the artistic restlessness that’s driven Buckner to constantly tweak his sound and aesthetic, for me this will always hold a special place in my heart....

Chandler West/Sun-Times Media Congressman Mike Quigley: Other than Republicans controlling the House and the Cubs being the Cubs, things are going just fine. Mike Quigley doesn’t think it was anything he said. There are all sorts of theories about why Cantor lost and what’s going to happen next. The House is sitting on an immigration measure already passed in the Senate that would allow some undocumented immigrants to achieve citizenship....

Chandler West / Sun-Times Media Governor Pat Quinn is happy to report that the Illinois economy isn’t quite as lousy as before. Governor Pat Quinn had reason to cheer the latest Illinois job figures released this week. The state’s unemployment rate fell in July to 6.8 percent, down from 7.1 percent a month earlier and 9.2 percent in July 2013. Conventional wisdom—and actual evidence—has long established that at election time, it’s always the economy, stupid, especially in presidential races....

This year’s Chicago Jazz Festival doesn’t have a single theme, but rather celebrates the centennials of three of the music’s greats: trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, pianist and composer Thelonious Monk, and singer Ella Fitzgerald. Each artist transformed the trajectory of the tradition in different ways, and their tribute sets are radically different from one another too. On Thursday night, Gillespie’s most famous protege, Jon Faddis (a Chicago favorite thanks to his involvement in the Chicago Jazz Ensemble), leads a strong orchestra to honor his mentor’s storied, multifaceted career....

Every year when things start to warm up, University of Chicago’s WHPK radio station hosts a free, all-day concert in the school’s quad, and this season’s edition is happening at noon on Sat 5/17. The show is called Summer Breeze, and through the years it has hosted tons of weird and awesome bands from Chicago and beyond. Recent Summer Breeze lineups have included defunct local trash-glam outfit Mickey, southern-fried noise rockers Spray Paint, heady San Francisco garage rockers Sic Alps, and forgotten psych freaks Bunnybrains....

Chicago jazz singer Dee Alexander is internationally recognized as one of the most gifted and versatile vocal stylists alive. Ben Ratliff at the New York Times named her 2013 Newport Jazz Festival performance one of his ten favorite live-music experiences of the year, calling it “both low key and extraordinary, with well-worn standards and risky originals, earthiness and high-flown mysticism.” Her 2009 album Wild Is the Wind (Blujazz) met with nearly universal acclaim, earning a rare five-star review in DownBeat magazine and a place on the cover of a special issue devoted to the best CDs of the new millennium....

Fall, it would appear, is falling short. CPS students began the semester this week in a school district lacking the funds necessary to make it through the year. That deficit is due, in large part, to the Rauner v. Madigan political battle in Springfield that has not wanted for hostility. Meanwhile, over in sports, the Bears are struggling with a shortfall of their own: a distinct absence of talent (or perhaps heart) that’s putting the team near the bottom fourth of NFL power rankings as the season begins Sunday against the Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field....

G&O, the latest project from Aberdeen Tap coowner Chris Mitchell, has been open for six months, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone told me they were unaware it even exists. Tucked away into a weird, triangular pocket at the intersection of Grand, Ogden, and Racine, the onetime auto garage is further removed from sight by a walled-off patio that pushes the venue away from street traffic. Lack of visibility was partially to blame for the shuttering of the space’s previous inhabitant, Clutch, but that closing was presumably due to opening up a bar/dining concept too similar to the Twisted Spoke, a superior and far more prominent business in the same intersection, with its distinctive twirling statue of a skeleton riding a motorcycle on the roof....

Lo-fi darling Jimmy Whispers teams up with the Empty Bottle on Sun 10/12 to throw a benefit called Hoop Dreams for Chicago-based violence-­prevention initiative CeaseFire—and the lineup is nutso! Local musicians—including Hollywood Holt and members of Smith Westerns, Twin Peaks, Mines, the Lemons, and Heavy Times—will form four teams and face off in a one-day basketball tournament, complete with color commentary. Live music will be provided by Starfoxxx, Radar Eyes, Magic Milk, Jimmy Whispers, and DJ Gant-Man, who performs with footwork crew the Era....

Warren William in The Mind Reader, which was cowritten by Mizner Once every week or two I attend a preview screening for work at the Showplace ICON in the South Loop. To make myself feel better about having to go there, I try to stop at the Harold Washington Library on my way. The DVD collection at the Harold Washington stirs my enthusiasm for movies as effectively as the ICON suppresses it....

Shot in luscious color around the Great Barrier Reef, the final feature (1969) by British director Michael Powell (who with Emeric Pressburger codirected such classics as The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp) returns to Chicago in a 35-millimeter print. James Mason stars as a frustrated artist who moves to a small island off the east coast of Australia in hopes of rekindling his passion for painting....

Sun-Times Media Blaine Elementary principal Troy LaRaviere The case against the reelection of Rahm Emanuel next spring is more than one issue long, but the one that’s stirred up all the passion is education. The hostility of educators who oppose him seems anchored by the belief that he regards them with contempt, and public education as a beast to be subdued. Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teachers Union, more than held her own against Emanuel in the 2012 teachers’ strike, and she’s the obvious candidate of enemies who believe education is Emanuel’s Achilles’ heel....

Sexual harassment is hurting women’s career ambitions and driving them away from the areas where they’re most needed—science, technology, engineering, and math—the STEM fields, as they’ve come to be called. We spoke to teenage girls participating in these programs about the possibility that their careers could be empowered instead of imperiled. Bailey, an Afro-Latina who wants to be a pilot, says she’s glad to know the nuances of when to call someone out....

Michael Gebert Uplands farm, near Dodgeville, Wisconsin Rush Creek Reserve, one of the most acclaimed artisanal cheeses in America, will not be made this year—and possibly never again. The reason is that new regulations from Washington appear to be poised to destroy much of the existing artisanal cheese movement. Yesterday I ran the first part of an interview with Andy Hatch of Uplands Cheese Co. in Wisconsin, who last week canceled production of Rush Creek Reserve, a soft French-style cheese made from raw milk and aged 60 days....

Strike rumors have been swirling around Columbia College for months now. The school’s famously scrappy part-time faculty union—recently re-branded as CFAC (Columbia Faculty Union)—has been working without a contract since the last one expired in August 2017. On October 23 CFAC member and part-time administrative employee Gita Kapila sent an email to the entire membership with this attention-getting subject line: “Full disclosure: the union is broke.” Within a few weeks, Kapila and two other union members, Michele Hoffman and Carey Friedman, received Integrity Committee notices informing them that they’d been charged with causing harm to the union and summoning them to hearings....

In September 2016, RCA released H.E.R. Volume 1, the debut EP from an R&B singer whose stage name, H.E.R., is an acronym for “Having Everything Revealed.” She didn’t offer clues to her identity in the EP-release details, but Genius quickly found the receipts that showed H.E.R. to be the nom de plume of Gabi Wilson—which I suppose would mean something if the public had a long-term investment in Wilson and her music....

Years ago my wife and I were living in Spain, and our landlord invited us to spend a weekend in their cabin outside Madrid. Sunday morning he drove us to a nearby village in search of folklore and local wine. A small glass cost five pesetas. “In the next village they demand ten pesetas,” said the landlord, and explained, “That’s a Moorish village.” I am aghast at the results of November’s elections, aghast at the crowd taking over the White House tomorrow....

Doug McGray started out as a magazine writer, which meant that he mostly knew other magazine writers and editors. Then about five years ago, he did a story for This American Life on NPR and met another breed of journalists: radio people! He discovered that he and the radio people had a great deal in common, but they never got to talk and share ideas because they had no common space to meet....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, January 25, 2016. Man sentenced to nine months in prison for role in hacking nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton, and other celebrities Southwest-side resident Edward Majerczyk has been sentenced to nine months in prison for his role in the 2014 “Celebgate” nude-photo hacking scandal. Majerczyk allegedly used a phishing scam to “illegally gain access to more than 300 Apple iCloud and Gmail accounts from November 2013 to August 2014, including at least 30 belonging to celebrities in the Los Angeles area,” according to the Tribune....

Hell must have frozen over last year, because Riot Fest managed to convince Glenn Danzig and Jerry Only to tolerate each other long enough for a partial reunion of the original Misfits. This morning the festival made its first lineup announcement for 2017, and it’s pulled off another triumph in the improbable-reunion category: Jawbreaker, who broke up in 1996 after guitarist-vocalist Blake Schwarzenbach and bassist Chris Bauermeister got into a fistfight....