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“Tristan Meinecke remains one of the monumental artistic secrets of Chicago, a man whose contribution remains to be adequately understood and evaluated,” wrote John Corbett, co-owner of the gallery Corbett vs. Dempsey and a professor of painting and drawing at the Art Institute, in a 2003 essay accompanying the only retrospective the conspicuously overlooked artist would know. “After that,” Pistorius says, “we were hooked.” His sons believe they are now better suited to handle their father’s artistic legacy, which they hope won’t remain under Chicago’s radar for much longer....

During their mid-2000s heyday, Providence foursome Daughters fed off their own recklessness to the point that it became an inextricable part of their identity. Excellent example: I caught them on tour in (maybe) 2007 in Covington, Kentucky, with Louisville hardcore-punk maniacs Lords during which an absolutely plowed member of one band stumbled onstage to take a piss while an absolutely plowed member of the other band cupped his hands to catch that piss....

11200 S. Avenue E Located near the southeast edge of Chicago, Eggers Grove is a 25-minute drive from downtown—or a more taxing but rewarding 16-mile bike ride, almost entirely on dedicated cycling trails. The Burnham Greenway, a rails-to-trails conversion that would seem like a pastoral escape from urban life if not for the crackling power lines overhead, leads into the Eggers Grove Forest Preserve, formerly known as Nike missile site C-44....

Gossip Wolf readers might know cellist Chris Wild from Chicago contemporary-­classical corps Ensemble dal Niente. On Tue 1/28 he’ll put out his first album of solo and chamber music, Abhanden (Navona), and on 1/5 at Constellation he plays an album-release concert with dal Niente soprano Amanda DeBoer Bartlett, violinist J. Austin Wulliman, and outsider-folk trio the Grant Wallace Band. The program, which includes work by Kaija Saariaho, Stefan Prins, and Wild’s wife, composer Eliza Brown, promises to investigate the cello’s “sonic and technical extremes....

In 2018, emerging musicians commonly hashtag artists they admire on Instagram or @ them on Twitter, hoping for a signal boost that might get them new listeners. In the 80s and 90s, though, the analog to this social-media circuit was tape trading (eventually people started using burned CDs, but “CD trading” doesn’t have the same ring). Polonsky no longer calls Chicago home—he’s lived in Los Angeles and New York over the past several years—but on Wednesday, November 28, he and his backing band come to GMan Tavern for a homecoming show celebrating the release of Unreleashed: Demos and Rarities 1996-2018 (Jett Plastic), a mix of album outtakes and unreleased tracks from the self-imposed hiatus in Polonsky’s solo career....

On Sunday remarkable guitarist Shane Parish, based in Asheville, North Carolina, returns to Chicago to headline Elastic. I spent a few minutes debating whether he belonged in the jazz post that I publish every Friday afternoon, but I have a sufficiently broad definition of the term for Parish’s exploratory sensibility to fit under its umbrella—though he draws just as heavily from progressive rock and American folk as it does from improvised music....

Few working bands embrace their southern heritage as proudly as Georgia’s Drive-By Truckers, which makes their decision to wade right through the country’s political divide all the more stunning. The group intentionally dropped its strong new album American Band (ATO) at the end of September, just as the presidential election neared the height of its fractious run, and aside from the record’s meaty guitar chords, raw soul, and raucous attack there’s nothing to please the supporters of our new president....

I Sell the Circus Guided by Voices officially called it quits one month ago, so naturally the group’s always-busy and ultraprolific front man Robert Pollard has a new record with a new band on the way. That didn’t take long. This time around he’s fronting a project called Ricked Wicky, a collaboration with a few other Dayton staples, some of whom have spent time in GBV themselves. A tune from Ricked Wicky’s debut LP, I Sell the Circus has surfaced—today’s 12 O’Clock Track, “Mobility”—and it’s really great, as expected....

Since the 90s, Chicago’s rockabilly scene has been getting bypassed in favor of its older alt-country sibling. In contrast to the likes of Robbie Fulks and Jeff Tweedy, who are well-known across the city, the rockabilly set has remained strangely insular. There’s a good chance other roots-rock communities might know about, say, former Chicagoan Jimmy Sutton, who’s played his doghouse bass with the Moondogs, Mighty Blue Kings, Jimmy Sutton’s Four Charms, and J....

This year the festival celebrates its 50th edition with revivals of: Alexander and Natural Born Killers, introduced by director Oliver Stone; Roger and Me, introduced by director Michael Moore; four features starring French actress Isabelle Huppert; and numerous features that have played in past years. Unless otherwise noted, screenings are at River East 21 and tickets are $14. A half century of CIFF milestones, from Scorsese’s debut to Lee Daniels’s achievement award Read our reviews of films screening during the first and second weeks of CIFF....

Most of the well-known headliners at this weekend’s 31st annual Chicago Blues Festival are older artists with mainstream appeal—that is, they play some combination of vintage blues, soul, and R&B. This is more or less standard operating procedure for the fest, but the 2014 lineup distinguishes itself in other ways: further down the bill you’ll find an array of talent more diverse than in many recent years, covering soul-blues, roots rock, old-time string-band music, and more....

I feel pretty silly for missing the boat on X_X (pronounced “ex blank ex”), a short-lived Cleveland punk band led by guitarist John Morton of the Electric Eels—an equally warped prepunk combo that injected serious sonic damage into art-rock in the early 70s. But in my defense, X_X existed for a mere six months in 1978 and released just two singles, both for the Clevo underground imprint Drome, which also released some great early material by the Pagans....

Following, in alphabetical order, are reviews of selected films screening at this year’s festival. Scroll to the bottom of the page for information about venue, admission, and advance sales. Chronic Mexican filmmaker Michel Franco is attracted to perverse relationships: his haunting Daniel & Ana, which screened at the 2009 festival, concerned a brother and sister in Mexico City who are kidnapped and forced to mate for a sex video, and this eerie drama stars Tim Roth as a private nurse in LA who’s incapable of setting boundaries with his patients....

Pull up your chairs, kiddies, and let me tell you of a time long ago when you could make your name by starting a food blog. Daniel Shumski, who was also for part of this time a digital editor at the Tribune, did that twice—first by starting a thoughtful blog called Fruit Slinger, chronicling his experiences working for a certain farmer/vendor at the Green City Market (let’s just say he grew the blog from a seedling), which for a time occupied space here at the Reader....

Why does some music feel like fuel for your body? That’s the question Esoteric Dance Project’s co-artistic director, Christopher Tucker, asked himself while getting pumped up by pop music on his morning bike ride to work—and it’s the foundation for his piece in the new program “Correlated Mediums.” The bill of three original works is built around each of three choreographer’s ideas of how music and dance intersect, and Tucker sought to explore how musical structure shapes movement....

Do you know what an amuse-bouche is? Don’t worry. Your server at Herb does, and whether you know or not, he’ll earnestly explain the concept at the start of your prix fixe meal at this new restaurant in Edgewater that alleges to have “redefined” Thai food. Right now that particular amuse-bouche is what’s commonly referred to in innumerable American Thai restaurants as a one-bite-salad, but properly in Thai as miang kham....

The illustration on the cover of James Adomian’s debut stand-up album, 2012’s Low Hangin Fruit (Earwolf)—a monocle hovering just above a couple devilish patches of facial hair—is perfectly fitting. A man of many voices, Adomian spends about a quarter of his act imitating the cane-toting, top-hatted rascals of the early 20th century (with an occasional wily prospector woven in). He has a keen ability to strike the right balance between upper-nasal-cavity flamboyance (a la Charles Nelson Reilly at his most Charles Nelson Reilly-ish) and the kind of earnestness with which a community theater troupe might stage King Lear....

Avishai Teicher/Wikimedia Commons The Rumbula Forest Memorial in Latvia There appear to be an unofficial series of Holocaust documentaries taking place around town this week. Yesterday the University of Chicago screened Nazi propaganda films about the Theresienstadt concentration camp, and today Claude Lanzmann’s The Last of the Unjust begins its run at the Music Box. On March 23 at 11 AM local filmmaker Mitchell Lieber will screen excerpts from his work in progress, Rumbula’s Echo, at the Chicago Cultural Center....

Most local Korean food court aficionados are familiar with the varied delights at the Super H Mart in Niles and the more tightly focused offerings at Avondale’s Joong Boo Market. You don’t often as hear much about the food court at Assi Plaza in Niles, a mostly Korean supermarket that’s slightly smaller than the former but dwarfs the latter. To the right of Seoul Seolleongtang, there’s another rarity at Chu Ga Dek Snacks, which specializes in kongkuksu, or chilled soy milk noodle soup....

According to data obtained from the sheriff’s office, no Cook County zip code has seen more evictions than South Shore, 60649, since the office began tracking these numbers in 2011. Last year the sheriff’s office conducted 382 evictions in the area bounded by Stony Island Avenue, the lakefront, Jackson Park, and 79th Street—eight times more than the average. Between 2014 and 2016 the neighborhood saw about 20 percent more evictions than the second-busiest zip code, 60619, which includes parts of Chatham, Avalon Park, and Greater Grand Crossing....