CHICAGO’S FREE WEEKLY SINCE | FEBRUARY
Chicago’s black An Indo-Chinese artists return eatery in Davon Clark 8 North Park Mike Sula 11
Marcus Mixx has lost his home, but he still has house His early records fetch hundreds of dollars apiece, but he just wants a space of his own to make new tracks. By L G 26
Painter Nikko the Goodman’s Washington all-woman Yolanda Perdomo 12 production Kaylen Ralph 14 THIS WEEK CHICAGO READER | FEBRUARY | VOLUME NUMBER
T R A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR - @ THE PIZZA’S ALMOST gone here in the After all, it is not so much the drama of the about Chicago: amazing people doing Reader newsroom, and you know what that campaign that matters as the fact that we amazing things with very few resources. P T B E C AE M means—election results are starting to come went through it all together. The house legend is still going strong, Leor M E P S K in. Finally! Just kidding! The drama of the campaign— Galil writes, from his makeshift offices M E D K H D E K S It’s been a long road, hasn’t it? So many who’s tied to Alderman Ed Burke, who’s in down at the Chicago Cultural Center, and C L SK memories. Someday we’ll look back on this support of the new police academy, who’s on the airwaves at CAN TV. Photographer D P J R C E AL time and pine for a text message from Paul caught on Solis’s wiretap, and whether anyone Davon Clark introduces us to a thrilling M E PM Vallas that we definitely never gave out our can outmoney Daley—this all matters a great spate of black artists upending the nar- A E J L S W D I numbers for. Nostalgic chatter will linger on deal, and we know it. rative and coming back home to Chicago. BJ M S the question of where Jerry Joyce’s wife got So play a couple more rounds of Alder- Yolanda Perdomo visits a Hyde Park ex- S W M D L G her money. We’ll chuckle upon recall of Toni mania! The Board Game while you gird hibition of painter Nikko Washington, an G D D C S M E B W Preckwinkle’s staff’s latest foibles, musing yourself for several more weeks of intensive artist member of the Save Money collec- M L C aloud about the latest Daley to emerge from election coverage. Now that Ben Joravsky is tive. And Kat Sachs previews the Gene Sis- L C S C-J F L C P F the sewers of Bridgeport. back, this time on the virtual airwaves (lives- kel Film Center’s 60-film-strong Chicago T A E C S Then one day we will stumble across the treamed and via podcast on our very own European Union Film Festival. C N B E B D C L C name Neal Sales-Gri n somewhere online and website!), we’ll be looking more closely at our Let’s face it. No artist can capture the won- M DL C S F it will spark nothing. No recognition, no plat- fi nal mayoral potentials. “That’s going to be a der of a surprise text message from Vallas sug- I G A G J H J H I H forms, no endorsements, no memories. “Ah,” race about issues,” Maya Dukmasova said as a gesting you should vote for him solely because D J M K S K you will say to yourself. “That is someone’s Preckwinkle-Lightfoot runo started to look he’s neither Preckwinkle nor Lightfoot. But M M BM JRN M O Y P name.” And then you will move on, strapping feasible. “That will be interesting.” after tonight you’ll have to fi nd something else L P K R yourself in to Elon Musk’s new citywide jet- But that’s for next week. In the mean- to entertain you. K S BS D S K W A W pack rental device—a deal at only $780 per time, our music feature on Marcus Mixx We’ll have to order more pizza. I YY Z M minute. will remind you of what truly matters —A E M ------D D JD D P IN THIS ISSUE E & P K K O M Up serves up humor hope and 36 Secret History of Chicago SN L whiskey and yes we recommend Music Evanstonborn Freddie ADVERTISING Mike Pence Sex Dream Roulette is one of the few lap steel -- - @ guitarists in the blues C @ 36 Early Warnings Big Thief Sunni Colón Pelican and more just S M P F FEATURE announced concerts S A R 08 Culture Photographer Davon 36 Gossip Wolf Two master A M A R CITY LIFE Clark introduces us to black artists drummers anchor a worldclass trio LM -H N S 03 Street View Egypt and anime coming home to Chicago album Sacred Monster celebrate C R M T P coexist in one woman’s style an awesome new record and more N A 04 Transportation Skepticism FOOD & DRINK V M G --- abounds over Elon Musk’s fancy 11 Restaurant Review Indo FILM OPINION hole in the ground Chinese food escapes from the 20 Movies Auteurs and unknowns 37 Savage Love Dan Savage off ers JL SB suburbs at WokNChop mark the Chicago European advice for bi folks on coming out of ------Union Film Festival Capernaum the closet D C [email protected] ARTS & CULTURE examines refugees in Beirut with a -- 12 Visual Art Nikko Washington’s neorealistic lens CLASSIFIEDS STM READER LLC Hyde Park solo show is just blocks 23 Movies of note Birds of 37 Jobs B P D RL from where he grew up Passage stuns In Another Country 37 Apartments & Spaces T ER 13 Lit Book recommendations for pairs Hong Sangsoo with Isabelle 37 Marketplace S J S S V talking about race and gender Huppert and Tale of the Sea is an A- 14 Theater Twilight Bowl is all elegy for departed Iranian artists COMICS SERIALS C C EB female onstage and behind the 39 Comics John Porcellino Melissa ------NEWS & POLITICS scenes Lookingglass’s Act s of MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE Mendes and Mike Centeno charm R ISSN- 05 Joravsky | Politics Our political God would be better as a sitcom 26 Galil | Feature Chicago house thrill and disgust you in weekly STMR LLC writer gets the happy ending he 17 Dance Akram Khan and the legend Marcus Mixx wants a place installments SM SC IL -- deserves just in time for runoff and English National Ballet bring to call home recount season! Giselle into the st century 32 Shows of note Robyn Mike Krol C ©C R O P A P C IL 06 Dukmasova | News Why the 18 Plays of note Gross Indecency Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage M L F M C ’ SCOTUS decision on civil asset The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde is Ensemble and other excellent A C R R forfeiture won’t end the problem incandescent May the Road Rise shows this week RR T ®
2 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll CITY LIFE Less scrolling.
Street View Walk like a Pokémon trainer Egypt and anime come together in one woman’s style.
FROM AN EARLY AGE Ariel Couzan was fas- cinated by the ancient Egyptians, whose skin was the same shade of brown as hers. The 27-year-old Loop transplant smiles and rat- tles off stories about gods and goddesses and their legendary adventures. Couzan incorpo- rates elements of this obsession into her style with feline earmuff s and a Cleopatra -like bob with gold dreadlock cuff s, topped with a hat whose brim is adorned with a hieroglyphs- inspired design; her zip-up windbreaker has a sphinx face. An aspiring actress and model by day, Couzan is also a diehard anime fan who cosplays often. On this day, she’s equipped with a Pikachu backpack for a downtown adventure of her own: a game of Pokémon More strumming. Go on her phone. Couzan says she’s going for the look of the warrior goddess Sekhmet—if Sekhmet were also a Pokémon trainer. Cou- zan’s catlike eyes are a piercing yellow and red. “My contact lenses represent the fi erce fi re in my soul,” she says. “It burns bright like the sun.” She adds that her contacts do have a
ISAGIALLORENZO prescription. —I G
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TRANSPORTATION A hole is a hole The election will likely decide the fate of Elon Musk’s plan for the O’Hare Express, which transit experts view with skepticism. By J G
ast June, Mayor Rahm Emanuel an- nounced that the city had selected tech guru Elon Musk’s Jetsons-esque scheme to build and operate the O’Hare Express, an airport transit The current administration is hoping to ink Model X electric car instead of the autono- of dollars a year in taxpayer funds. He added Lsystem employing high-speed electric pods as its contract with the Boring Company before mous pods Musk had promised prior to the that initial ridership projections for Denver’s a faster, cushier alternative to the Blue Line. Emanuel leaves o ce in May, although there unveiling. And rather than using next-level A-Line airport train, which currently costs The inventor says his Boring Company will could be resistance from aldermen to voting tunneling technology, the company had $10.50, were also overly optimistic. use proprietary digging technology to tunnel to approve the deal before the next mayor excavated the 12-foot-wide passage with an Sriraj said that a much more sensible strat- some 18 miles from Block 37 to O’Hare at a takes over. Last week Jennifer Martinez, old tunnel boring machine (a machine with egy would be to simply convert two lanes fraction of the cost and time of conventional spokesperson for the Chicago Infrastructure a circular cross section that can dig through of the Kennedy Expressway to car-free bus methods. Then, he says, he’ll shoot customers Trust, which is representing the city in the everything from sand to hard rock) previously rapid-transit lanes to provide speedy nonstop through the passage in 16-person pods at over negotiations, told me, “Our goal is to present used to build sewers in Oakland. service between downtown and O’Hare. “If 100 mph using “electric skate” technology, re- the City Council with a proposed contract that Despite this evidence that Musk’s hypothet- it didn’t work out, it wouldn’t cost much to ducing the current 40- to 45-minute trip time protects taxpayers and requires no taxpayer ical technology doesn’t actually exist yet, Mar- dismantle.” to a mere 12 minutes. funding.” She said that, unlike Chicago’s di- tinez indicated that the city is confi dent he can Fritz Plous, spokesman for Corridor Capital, Musk says he can complete the project with- sastrous parking meter deal, which Richard M. pull o the project at the promised cost and a Chicago-based passenger-rail development, in two years for only $1 billion, then operate Daley pushed through the council in a matter time line. “The tunnel is a tunnel. The Boring finance, and management company, is even the system at a profi t by charging $25 a ride. of days, there would be “adequate time for Company is refi ning more e cient approaches more dubious of Musk’s scheme, which he Both he and the city swear there’s no way the review and discussion before a vote is taken.” to tunneling, which makes the economics of called “the whims of an entrepreneur peddling project will wind up costing taxpayers a dime. Martinez assured me that taxpayers won’t this project work.” an unproven new technology that he can’t The municipal election could decide the fate be on the hook if the excavation a ects utility So what do actual transit experts have to even be bothered to explain.” of the O’Hare Express. Most of the major may- lines, buildings, or the water table; if the tun- say about all this? Plous argued that the whole idea of building oral candidates have voiced opposition to the nel is left unfi nished; or if the service proves DePaul transportation professor Joe transit that only runs between the airport and project. “If we are going to make public transit unprofi table and the Boring Company decides Schwieterman said that “there isn’t a huge one downtown station is fl awed, even if aimed investments, it should be to CTA and Metra,” to stop running it. She said the contract will downside” in allowing Musk to take his moon primarily at business travelers. “Not [even] Toni Preckwinkle said at a January transit include “fi nancial and performance assuranc- shot. “Of course, there are many obstacles . . . that many O’Hare users go to the Loop, and forum. es that the city will be well protected should but there is also the possibility that the Boring Musk’s tunnel has no intermediate stops in Musk’s plan is “going to die on its own,” any such instances occur.” Company is willing to spend large amounts to the neighborhoods, as the Blue Line does.” He Gery Chico said during the event. “This thing Moreover, Martinez said, if Musk builds the prove the concept works.” noted that many business travelers these days is goofy.” system and then abandons it after failing to P.S. Sriraj, head of UIC’s Urban Transporta- are headed for River North, Streeterville, the “I’d kill it,” added Paul Vallas. “I can’t wait turn a profi t, he’ll be required to hand over the tion Center, is skeptical. “I’m apprehensive of West Loop, or South Loop. “When they disem- to kill it.” keys to the city. Chicago wouldn’t be obliged how this will all play out,” he said. “Even if the bark under Block 37 they’ll still need a cab or The notable exception has been Bill to continue the service, she said, but with no technology has been perfected and the service an Uber—so they’ll probably just catch one at Daley, who’s in the running as the most additional infrastructure costs or outstanding is up and running, will there be enough people O’Hare instead.” business-friendly candidate as well as the debt, “it is likely . . . the project will be of bene- to use it?” Depending on the outcome of the election, younger brother of former mayor Richard M. fi cial use and revenue-positive.” Sriraj cited the cautionary tale of Toronto’s Plous’s beefs against the O’Hare Express may Daley, who tried and failed to build an airport In December, Chicago officials attended a Union Pearson Express airport service, which well be moot. “Rahm’s days are numbered, express. While Bill Daley told the Tribune he press event for a 1.14-mile tunnel the Boring saw dismal ridership until fares were slashed and so, I believe, are the days of the Musk has some questions about the Musk project’s Company dug in the Los Angeles area. While from about U.S. $20 to roughly $9. Keeping tunnel.” v cost and fare structure, he also said Chicago some of them claimed to be wowed by the the service running at that ticket price would shouldn’t fear innovation. demo, it consisted of bumpy rides in a Tesla likely require a subsidy of tens of millions @greenfieldjohn 4 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll NEWS & POLITICS
Ben Joravsky I took to taking long walks in the neighbor- hood at that time of the day. Once I wandered over to the local library and who did I see? Political activist Sameena Mustafa, a regular on my old show. “Oh, my god, Ben, isn’t it a coincidence that I see you at the very time you should be on the air,” she said. “Except you’re not on the air ’cause—you got fi red!” OK, she didn’t remotely say anything like that. I’m sure she wasn’t even thinking it— but I was. To make it worse, Sameena was clutching several books by W.E.B. Du Bois, the brilliant African-American sociologist and Once fired, I entered my Moses-in-the- activist. You know—serious reading. desert phase of existence. Not that I’m liken- In contrast, I was holding London Boule- ing myself to a towering biblical figure—it’s vard, a sleazy mystery about an ex-con who just an analogy. The thing is, I’d fallen in love gets drunk, snorts coke, beats up bad guys, and with talking politics with people on the air. has wild sex with beautiful women. Though And then—bam—I’d been cut o . Cold turkey. not necessarily in that order. Making it worse—there was tons of stu to Hell, if I’d known I’d be bumping into Sa- talk about. I mean, just think about some of the meena, I’d have checked out Marcel Proust’s wacky shit that went down in the weeks since Remembrance of Things Past—which falls into I got fi red. The mayoral race zipped along. One the category of epic novels I plan to get to one alderman—Ed Burke—got indicted. Another— of these days. At least she’d think I was making Danny Solis—got outed for wearing a wire on good use of my free time. Burke. According to the Sun-Times, Solis was Trust me—this really does end happily . . . swapping his approval on zoning requests for I must admit there were those who openly POLITICS s you may recall, my fi rst run as a Viagra. Man, I could have talked about Danny rejoiced at my misery. Like the guy who wrote political talk show host didn’t end and his Viagra for days. an e-mail along the lines of—so, you got fi red, so well. It was a Thursday after- So, I was like this political junkie wandering huh? Welcome to the real world, pal! The happy noon—December 27, 2018. I’d just around the streets of Chicago, looking for You know, he sort of has a point. finished a show and the station’s someone—anyone—to talk politics with. But most people offered encouragement bossesA called me to the conference room to say Stick with me, folks. That happy ending re- and advice. I even got an unexpected o er of ending . . . “Get out—and don’t come back!” ally is on the way . . . assistance from Bob, one of my Trump-voting Well, they were a little more subtle than You go through several stages of grief when friends. (Yeah, I’ve got a few.) The Ben Joravsky Show returns, that. But that was the gist. Bottom line—after you’ve been publicly fi red—at least, I did. Bob: Are you and your family going to be OK streaming live Tuesdays through almost two years on the air, they unceremo- I went through this weird week or two when fi nancially? Fridays on the websites of the niously fi red me. Apparently I was just a little I didn’t want to be seen or heard between the Me: Yeah, we’re good. Reader and the Sun-Times. too progressive for the progressive radio sta- hours of two and fi ve in the afternoon—when Bob: ’Cause, if you need some help—let me tion. Happy New Year! my old show aired. ’Cause people might know. By B J By the way, this column has a happy ending, think—oh, poor guy, he doesn’t have his show Don’t tell Bob I told you this—but I got all I swear. anymore. choked up when he said that. The progres- J
ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 5 NEWS & POLITICS continued from 5 both the Reader and the Sun-Times as well as sives fi red me, and the Trumpster o ered me the Sun-Times’s YouTube channel. Plus, you assistance. The world works in mysterious will be able to find our shows wherever you ways. download podcasts. And now, the happy ending—or endings . . . We’ll start Wednesday, February 27. As Anne Elizabeth Moore, my editor at the I write this, it’s before the election. But by Reader, had a great idea for a podcast called Wednesday, I’m pretty sure we’ll have a runo the Back Room Deal. It would feature Maya (or recount) to discuss. Dukmasova—ace Reader reporter—and My former partner in crime—producer me, talking politics from the studio in the Dennis, aka Dr. D—will be joining me. I’ll regu- back room of the Lumpen Radio station in larly bring on writers from the Sun-Times and Bridgeport. Reader to talk about the latest headlines. They sat us down one Friday afternoon in And many of my favorite guests from the January—and we spent almost fi ve hours gab- old show have promised to return—including bing about aldermanic races. It was a blast— Monroe Anderson (“talking Trump, Trump & and there are more Back Room Deal podcasts Trump”) as well as Ed Maher and Ryan Kelly to come. and Stacy Davis Gates and Joanna Klonsky If that’s not happy enough, consider this . . . and—well, pretty much everyone will be back. I’m back on the air. I’ll make sure to keep the collection of The Reader, the Sun-Times, the Chicago Proust on my desk for Sameena’s return. Federation of Labor, and several local unions Talking politics with cool people—OK, so have joined forces to sponsor The Ben Jora- maybe it’s not as “nice” as the ending Danny vsky Show. Solis had in mind. But it’s a happy one for Yes, yes, I’ve wandered out of the desert. me. v We’ll be podcasting live from 1 to 3 PM Tuesday through Friday on the websites of @bennyjshow PABLOIGLESIAS
ast week the Supreme Court issued a landmark unanimous decision that the Eighth Amendment’s protections against excessive fines apply to the states, not just to the federal gov- Lernment. The decision was hailed by many NEWS as a major blow to the practice of civil asset forfeiture—when law enforcement agencies permanently seize property or money tied to Not the end of criminal activity. However, despite the impor- tance of the decision, experts familiar with civil asset forfeiture in Illinois caution that it profi t-driven won’t necessarily change much about the un- fairness of the practice. Civil asset forfeiture ramped up in the mid- policing 1980s as part of the war on drugs. By giving law enforcement agencies the ability to seize SCOTUS’s civil asset forfeiture and keep cars, jewelry, cash, and other prop- decision sets an important precedent erty discovered in the wake of arrests, it was but hardly solves the problem. considered an e ective way to paralyze crim- inal organizations. But the practice has been By M D increasingly criticized by liberals and conser- vatives alike for its infringement on private property rights and its disproportionately punitive impact on poor people of color. In 2016 a Reader investigation created a fi rst-ever record of how the Chicago Police De- partment uses funds derived from civil asset 310346_4.75_x_4.75.indd 1 9/12/18 12:13 PM 6 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll NEWS & POLITICS
forfeiture. With the help of FOIA’d records we because it just comes back to them,” Ruddell found that between 2009 and 2016 CPD for- explains. feited more than $70 million. About 65 percent Ruddell has found some of the coverage of of this was retained by the department and the Supreme Court decision to be “overstat- the rest divvied up between the Cook County ing” its consequences. But it may still have State’s Attorney’s O ce and the Illinois State some positive impact, especially in the long Police. While this may not seem like a lot of term, he adds. While the decision doesn’t end money given the CPD’s more than $1.5 billion profit-driven policing, people may now be annual budget, the funds essentially created emboldened to file more lawsuits claiming a substantial “shadow budget” for one unit forfeitures of their property as unfair and within the police force—the Bureau of Orga- disproportional. nized Crime. This money was often spent on “As more of those cases are fi led and adjudi- controversial surveillance equipment (like cated there’ll be a body of case law that gives Stingray cell phone data capture technology), shape and meaning to the question of when undercover o cers’ car rental and cell phone does forfeiture go too far,” Ruddell explains. bills, and o ce supplies. The case that yielded the Supreme Court’s The fact that a division of CPD has a source decision, Timbs v. Indiana, revolved around a of money not subject to the city’s budgeting $42,000 Land Rover SUV forfeited by the state process or regular public disclosure is also in the wake of a conviction for selling a small troubling because civil asset forfeiture often amount of heroin. Tyson Timbs, who bought impacts people who aren’t themselves accused the car not with proceeds from drug sales but of a crime. For example, if a relative borrows with money from his deceased father’s life someone’s car and is arrested after driving the insurance policy, sued Indiana for imposing vehicle to conduct an alleged drug deal, the an excessive fi ne. The value of the car was far owner of the car can have it taken away even greater than the maximum fi ne he could have if they have no knowledge of what the vehicle been assessed for his particular conviction. was used for and there’s been no conviction in While a trial and appellate court had ruled the criminal case. in his favor, ordering the state to return the In 2017, the ACLU of Illinois and allied car, the Indiana Supreme Court decided the groups successfully lobbied for reforms to state didn’t have to, reasoning that the Eighth the state civil asset forfeiture statute. Under Amendment excessive fi ne prohibition didn’t the new law, property owners no longer have apply to state governments. to pay to argue against the forfeiture in court. “Now that the question has been defi nitive- Law enforcement must auction o , rather than ly settled,” Ruddell says, “I think you’ll see a keep, forfeited property. The burden of proof lot of litigation being fi led for people seeking for forfeiture has been shifted onto the state— to challenge forfeitures on [Eighth Amend- it now has to make a more solid case for the ment] grounds.” He’s hopeful that more legal property owner’s involvement in the crime to aid groups will find resources to take these hang on to the seized assets (the presumption cases on behalf of low-income people whose is no longer that the property owner is guilty). lives can be wrecked by the loss of a car, house, Finally, the new law requires the Illinois State or other asset “contaminated” by a crime they Police to maintain a public database on civil may not have committed. asset forfeiture statewide, which is supposed Still, it’s worth remembering that often the to go live in 2020. cash value of the money or assets forfeited Ben Ruddell, an attorney with the ACLU by the law enforcement is relatively small. of Illinois who worked on the bill, calls these The Reader’s investigation found that the changes “incremental progress,” given law en- median value of each forfeiture in Illinois forcement groups’ staunch opposition to the was just $530—unlikely to be fodder for a bill. “We did ultimately get them to the table constitutional challenge though it’s frequently to negotiate, but we had to sacrifi ce signifi cant enough to trigger eviction, job loss, and other things,” he says. Assets can still be forfeited disastrous consequences. The biggest hurdle from third parties without any convictions in to preventing such losses is that, unlike Timbs, the associated criminal cases. The cops still most people who fi nd themselves in civil asset get to keep funds derived from seizing assets forfeiture proceedings don’t have lawyers to and can use them however they want. In other help them fi ght in court. v words, there’s still “a built-in incentive for law enforcement agencies to seize property @mdoukmas ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 7 Chicago’s black artists are coming home Despite the black exodus from Chicago, black artists are thriving and tell a story with a common thread: the city provides comfort and inspiration. Story and Photos by D C
Swopes started using Instagram in 2013 as a portfolio amass hundreds of thousands of followers on @swopes to share her surreal visuals and the clean-cut social media and opened her up to gigs and camerawork she captured on her phone, which collaborations with global brands like Dunkin’ ELISE SWOPES IS a photographer and graphic she only recently supplemented with a DSLR Donuts and Adidas that want to appeal to Chi- designer who uses scenes from nature—gi- camera. Many of her fans know Swopes by her cago at the street level. Swopes wants to put raffes and waterfalls—to turn the mundane miragelike takes on the Chicago skyscrapers resources and opportunities in front of city into the marvelous. She pairs her images with and freeze frames of the Loop amid rain, snow, youths pursuing multimedia careers, and she down-to-earth commentary and daily a rma- fog, and other elements. Swopes’s on-the-go shares tips and secrets on living as a freelance tions that humanize her and her city. She fi rst shooting and editing process have helped her creative on her podcast, Swopes So Dope. 8 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll “I rap. A lot. And other things, but mostly rap.”
Toaster @toastersmodernlife
AFTER THREE YEARS in California, Tim Henderson resumed an art-based lifestyle here in Chicago, where he’s always been heavily involved with Young Chicago Authors. His paintings and dynamic poetry performances pour into each other, allowing him to appeal to crowds of all kinds. He’s done everything in performance from personifying a blind date between a spider and a bug to painting a Twilight Zone-like scene of a man trying to stop the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. His paintings J
Femdot @femdotdotcom
FEMI ADIGUN BETTER known as Femdot, is a Chicago, he fi nds the best opportunities, along Chicago-based rapper. With equally ambitious with something he hasn’t found anywhere artistic and academic goals centered on hip- else: comfort. “It’s just a different feel. The hop, culture, and his hometown, the young gun comfortability of hearing niggas talk like me,” is taking any shot he can at success—last year he says. “I’m someone who, growing up in the alone he got his college degree from DePaul, burbs and in the city, I’ve seen how the culture spoke 2018 Lollapalooza into existence, played spreads on all sides of town, no matter where Apple’s Music Industry Summit, and released you’re at. It’s something about that feeling of his album Delacreme 2. After leaving for a being home, even the winter. It’s something year to study at Penn State in 2013, Adigun about what that does to your kin. How that “I do art shit. I’m a performer, an artist, a poet, teaching artist, whatever pays the bills and keeps me happy.” returned to pursue a rap career back home. In builds you.” ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 9 continued from 9 feature a trademark toaster character that takes on several faces and colors and often is surrounded by clouds and texts of thoughts. Though he’s traveled across the country, it’s the city that gives him the fuel to keep cre- ating. As a cofounder of Big Kid Slam, a free monthly poetry slam for young adults, and a teaching artist at YCA, Toaster works hard to create a community for young artists—after all, he learned to create because of community.
Kenyatta Forbes urbanmacramefibers.com
INTERSECTIONS ARE THE thread of Kenyatta Forbes’s creativity, and that comes through in her homegrown approach to living as an artist: having her hand in multiple proj- ects—teaching, homemade natural products, macrame fi ber work, the Trading Races card game—is what helps her keep things fresh and new. In the world of macrame fi ber, a typically homogenous trade, she uses a spectrum of colors and textures to make her work stand out from the fun-size beige ornaments that are often thought to be the industry standard. Though she doesn’t shy away from things like o -white plant holders, taking up half of her living room wall is a large black-stained wall hanging. She says that Chicago’s a ordability gives her the option to do what she wants, how she wants it, and with the people she wants to work with. Her apartment is outfi tted with Chicago-made art, and her clothing style refl ects a love for the city: when I interviewed her she was wearing some Nike Blazers from a limited run that pays homage to the late Chicago DJ Timbuck2, a hoodie by Chicago luxury lifestyle boutique Sir & Madame, and she’d had a makeup artist homie who lives up the street get her ready. v
This article was produced in collaboration with City Bureau (citybureau.org). 10 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll W NC | R W. Foster -- woknchopstick.com FOOD & DRINK
Chinese bhel; chicken lollipops; sichuan shrimp; chili paneer COLINBECKETT Hoffman Estate’s Bombay Chopsticks. Their menu isn’t as sprawling or indiscriminate as the latter’s, the region’s preeminent repre- sentation of Indo-Chinese, but there are some striking outliers, such as Thai-style coconut curries and pizza. It’s a potentially bewilder- ing variety, with not much to go on menu- wise, if you’re unfamiliar with standards of Indo-Chinese; and it isn’t particularly helpful, loaded with regional descriptors—Manchuri- an, “Schezwhan,” Mongolian—that wouldn’t be out of place on any typical Ameri-Chinese menu but are in fact specifi c to this style. Manchurian sauce, for example, bears some resemblance to the inky glossy sauces (glauces?) you might encounter at Great Beijing or Great Sea, not black bean, but soy sauce-dominated, with a hint of chile heat and not a lot of sweetness. It’s a silky nightgown for ruddy lamb meatballs or lightly fried cau- lifl ower, though you have to attack these early before their crispiness degrades into mush. The profile isn’t dissimilar from the black- pepper gravy that blankets that tofu with fi ns, fried tilapia fillets, or lighter, almost fluffy chicken meatballs. Drier, lava-colored chile sauces, often tem- pered with honey, predominate on other dish- es, like chewy nubs of paneer, crinkle-cut fries, or deep-fried baby corn cobs, which may be the only redemption of this otherwise dispir- iting staple of the pan-Chinese culinary canon. Maybe the most overt integration is the Indian street snack bhel puri, Sinicized with chow RESTAURANT REVIEW and native Indians started adapting the new- mein noodles that somehow maintain their comers’ food to their own tastes. crunch in a tomato-chile sauce. Many lifetimes later, Indo-Chinese food Noodles—variations of stir-fried, Hakka- Indo-Chinese food escapes from bears as little resemblance to Chinese food as style wheat noodles—and fried rice are dis- Korean-Chinese food does, but the two share tinguished by two particular options: one with similarities, chicken lollipops being one of crispy burnt garlic, and house style, which the suburbs at WokNChop them. Gampongi, which according to WBEZ’s tinges the starches an attractive pastel green Monica Eng were invented right here in Chi- with mint, cilantro, green apple, and chile. Wok this way to a subcontinental chicken wing that demands your respect. cago at a couple of Albany Park restaurants But if it weren’t for these relatively rare (Peking Mandarin and Great Sea), are the an- and notable items, WokNChop could stand By M S alogue to Hakka lollipops. alone on those fearsome-looking lollipops. If Sizzle India wasn’t an Indo-Chinese restau- challenged to a duel I’d choose these sculpted rant, and if memory serves Chef Thumma cudgels of fl aming chicken over the righteous- e have eaten meat on a stick video—which at press time was clocking just didn’t o er lollipops on Devon Avenue. As far ly gnarly gampongi, but that’s deceptive. ever since the caveman over 1.4 million views—Thumma demon- as I can tell, the fi rst and only place within city That turmeric-strained batter is crunchy and “ killed his first chicken. It strates increasingly Fieri-esque variations on limits ever to labor over them (and they are la- adhesive, but it protects a juicy interior, well was a simple logic. Bones Hakka-style lollipop chicken wings—chubby bor-intensive) is WokNChop, a year-old halal preserved from the ravages of the fryer. make great handles.” So frenched drumettes fi rst marinated in a ma- restaurant housed in a former White Hen, a At WokNChop, they don’t stu the lollipops saidW chef Sanjay Thumma, aka Vahchef, in sala yogurt, then battered and fried hard in a bit less than a mile north of the birthplaces of with cheese and bits of naan the way Vahchef a 2008 YouTube video posted around the turmeric-and-chile-stained fry suit. They’re a gampongi. does, but these wings are every bit equal to the time he sold his Chicago-area minichain product of the particular style of Indo-Chinese WokNChop is owner Mustak Hira’s first gift of Chicago gampongi. v Sizzle India, moved back to India, and went culinary cross-pollination that spread after (nonfranchise) restaurant, though his chef, viral among the Indo-expat diaspora. In the ethnic-Chinese Hakka settled around Kolkata whom he declines to name, has worked at @MikeSula ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 11 ’ I Through / : Mon-Sat AM- PM, Sun AM- PM, Café Logan, E. th, -- ARTS & CULTURE , arts.uchicago.edu. F
Nikko Washington NOLISANDERSON man wearing a jacket and tie. His eyes are downcast. There’s a large X at the right edge of the painting, a nod to Malcolm X. Stiff is one of ten paintings Washington made that focus on black expression. These include subjects that have often been depicted as white: for example, a Madonna and child, Adam and Eve. “I want people to get their own reactions and feelings from the work,” Washington says. “But if you ask me, it’s just interpreting black expression through a di erent lens and through an abstract lens.” In the past, he explains, “black expression was struggle and pain. People would show work based o historical movement, the mis- treatment of people of color throughout gen- erations. Sambo characters or slave drawings, anything of that sort that would represent black people in the struggle. But then it’s being sold and produced and sold to di erent peo- ple. It’s people profi ting o of black struggle and not just artists but other galleries are sell- ing black struggle. This way I’m reinterpreting it through a lens that’s not in my head makes me feel guilty. “I do feel that artists have a responsibility to represent [social] issues,” he says. “But VISUAL ART nobody can tell you how to do it. Everyone has their own way because artists are human beings.” Nikko Washington looks from 53 ’til Infi nity One of the subjects he tackles is gentrifi- cation, which has affected Hyde Park. The The painter in the Save Money collective has a solo show just blocks from where he grew up. painting Thank You for Gentrifying is a com- mentary on the development that’s overtaking By Y P his neighborhood. Washington says this is a double-edged sword. ikko Washington looks like any The title 53 ’til Infinity comes from 53rd “That’s what gave me the idea that I could The title of the painting, Washington says, other student coming in to Café Street, a place where Washington hung out make money o art,” Washington says. “Gal- was intended as sarcastic. “It’s from Tµ¶·¸ Logan on the University of Chicago as a kid. A place that’s gone through changes. lery 37 gave me a stipend of $1,000 for ten Y¹º »¹¼ Sµ¹½½¾·¿ [plastic] bags, because campus to grab a bite between “There were permission walls for graffiti,” weeks, which was the craziest thing to me, to that’s where it all comes from, retail, shop- classes. But the 25-year-old fin- Washington remembers. “There [were] a get paid to do what I was doing anyway.” ping, and consumerism,” he explains. “But it’s Nished his studies at the School of the Art whole bunch of boutiques that are not here His mother and father, who worked as a also ‘thank you’ because if that didn’t happen, Institute three years ago. And there’s another anymore. Food places that had their own salesman for a book publisher, both supported I wouldn’t be in the [Café Logan] show. Be- di erence: the oil paintings on the wall are all unique vibe.” Washington grew up on 51st, his decision to pursue art. He credits Jean- cause they’re looking to connect more with by Washington, together comprising an ex- and credits his mother, an artist, for giving Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol as his early the community.” hibit called 53 ’til Infi nity, on display through him one of his earliest memories of artistic influences, as well as Chicago artist Hebru Painting canvases is only part of Washing- March 31. These are his most recent works, expression. Brantley. ton’s vast portfolio. He’s also a graphic artist mostly portraits, all characterized by bold “My mom drew a mural of Space Jam on my The summer after he graduated high school, with the Save Money collective, an informal colors and the serious but joyous expressions wall,” he recalls. “It was very detailed. I was Washington worked in an o ce where he had group of friends that includes musicians, vid- on the subjects’ faces. fi ve years old, and I just knew that that was art to wear a suit and tie. The experience would eographers, and other creatives who support For Washington, who now lives in Pilsen, somehow, and I could draw that.” have a profound impact on the way he saw one another’s work. Washington has produced having a show in Hyde Park, blocks from where Washington went to Whitney Young High himself. It wouldn’t be his last corporate job, cover art for albums by Towkio, Sterling he grew up, is nothing less than fantastic. School, and participated in the After School but it inspired him to paint a self-portrait of Hayes, and Vic Mensa. “I used to go to summer camp down the Matters program, where he worked with pro- sorts, inspired by questions he asked himself “Sterling and Vic I’ve known since I was street at the Ratner Center,” Washington says. fessional artists and had work displayed at at the time: “Will I lose myself? Will I become five, Chance [the Rapper] since I was 12,” “It’s full circle. It’s amazing.” Gallery 37. a corporate sti ?” Sti is a painting of a black Washington explains. “We’ve all been friends 12 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll R READERRECOMMENDEDb ALLAGESF
BOOK SWAP Lit recs for talking about race and gender
S t i ff COURTESYNIKKOWASHINGTON
for a while, a long-ass time. It was only natu- ral [for the collective to develop].” Mensa remembers first meeting Wash- ington in karate class. “He was funny and n Book Swap, a Reader staffer recom- To balance out all of that rage and pet- popular, and people always liked him.” For mends two to five books and then asks tiness, I’ve also been interested in books as long as he could remember, Mensa adds, Ia local wordsmith, literary enthusiast, devoted to, well, how to be less angry and Washington was always drawing and paint- or publishing-adjacent professional to do petty. Enter Shawn Achor, author of T ing. Always making art. the same. In this installment, Reader digital H A H P “He’s always been a dope artist,” Mensa managing editor K H swaps book B F S W L says. “I think what interests me about his art suggestions with author, visual artist, and (Currency). Achor makes a compelling argu- is like how natural it feels. There’s a freedom educator X P. ment for being consistently grateful, kind, and intrinsic expression in his art. It really and gracious, both for your own personal feels like it represents him.” Karen Hawkins, Reader digital managing satisfaction and for building and managing While they’re all busier these days than editor teams. It’s enough to off set even the longest when they were kids, with everything from We’re talking a lot about women’s anger el ride’s worth of rage and cackling. ceeds in “doing unheard of things” with the music projects to their own families, the Save these days, thank goodness. But what’s English language. Pitched as poetry, this Money crew makes time to create together been missing for me is validation for my Xandria Phillips, author, visual artist, book shi s through hybrid forms as a means and even go bowling. (Of the group, Washing- rage as a black lesbian who feels surround- educator of addressing migration, displacement, and ton would say he and the rapper Kami are the ed by straight white women who demand B B S A R H - the intimate violence of the state. Whether two best bowlers.) to be heard about sexism but aren’t willing T I by C. Riley Snorton she’s writing about humanity, the mystic, or “Work is always happening,” Washington to listen when I talk about race and LGBTQ (University of Minnesota Press) is the book future ghosts, Marwa has the ability to fore- says. “Being friends and coming together as issues. Fortunately for me there’s E from 2018 that has continued to populate tell the footholds of disaster. Invasive Spe- coworkers is the same. We don’t clock out.” R A B F D H my headspace daily. I think we live in a time cies is the kind of book I sleep with under my Along with his painting, Washington is S (St. Martin’s) by Brittney Coo- when gender is considered precious and pillow hoping its lushness will infiltrate my now designing title cards and show logos for per. She had me at the opening words, “This overexamined. Snorton shows us that gen- dreams. Hulu through a new advertising agency the is a book by a grown-ass woman written for der has always been elastic—and a matter of Presently I am reading through A A Times, headed by Jason Peterson, the former other grown-ass women.” If you ever spot me life and death for black people, beginning R & F C from the Har- COO of the global ad giant Havas. on the CTA angrily muttering “YES, girl” to with its mutability during chattel slavery. The vard Art Museums (Atelier Éditions), and I Washington’s current exhibit will overlap myself, this is probably what I’m reading. language in Black on Both Sides manages a have been savoring the feeling of learning with a new show that opens at Soho House on Conversely, if you see me snort-laughing buoyancy in its lyricism despite its weighty for the sake of pleasure. Following a brief March 9. He won’t reveal much about it; the on the bus, there’s a good chance I’m enjoy- context. The tether I feel to this book is in essay on each color’s historical rendering, only clues he gives are the word “blue” and ing I’ J Y T D-B M- the consistent subversion of gender expec- every chapter displays numerous pigments that it’ll be an immersive environment. (Holt) by wickedly witty Chicago author tations as a means to liberation. Here I read both natural and man-made, archived from But his Hyde Park show is di erent. Wash- Luvvie Ajayi. I count on Luvvie’s blog Awe- the ways my ancestors’ very breath was all over the world. I must trouble the com- ington always knew Hyde Park was special, somely Luvvie to concisely—and hilarious- abolition. plicated pleasure I derive from this book but now he gets to hear it from others. ly—articulate the things I’ve been thinking I don’t think we truly deserve I because it is lanced with colonial ideology. “The best response I got was people saying, but didn’t want to say out loud about pop S by Marwa Helal (Nightboat Books), Every bottled pigment I see from a region in ‘This was my excuse to fi nally come down to culture, -isms, tech, and more, and her book an Egyptian-born writer currently based the global south raises a question: Was the Hyde Park,’” Washington says with a slight delivers in the same way. Reading it feels like in New York, but here I am holding it in my acquisition consensual? I relish this book smile. “Or ‘I’ve never been down here. Now I sitting down for tea with your funniest friend hands. It opens with a quote from Chinua with an eye of wonder and an eye of curios- have a reason to come down here.’” v who is proud to be petty, pulls no punches, Achebe: “Let no one be fooled by the fact ity. Blood has been spilt for the use of color. and has strong opinions about just about that we may write in / English, for we intend What we do and say with it might just be our @yolandanews everything. to do unheard of things with it.” Marwa suc- most subconscious political acts. v ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 13 ARTS & CULTURE
Anne Thompson (Sharlene), Heather Chrisler (Jaycee), Hayley Burgess (Clarice) and Becca Savoy (Sam) LIZLAUREN
one of Chicago’s better-known theaters, this move carries weight, especially in the #MeToo era. Thompson says the space immediately felt safe. Director Erica Weiss made sure that everybody in the cast and crew felt heard, en- couraged, and celebrated on a daily basis, even in moments of frustration. “One of the fi rst things that I said on the day of first rehearsal was—without presuming anyone’s experience in terms of their working environments in the past—that especially in light of the broader cultural conversation that we’re having, this process feels somehow healing in whatever way that meant to people personally,” says Weiss. “That was a huge pre- rogative of mine, because that can mean what- ever it means to any individual person. It was important for me to articulate that as a way of setting o the safe space. One of the things that I have observed, in terms of that safety, is that we have talked a lot about the freedom to fail and fl ail in the room, and try something and have it totally not work and break into THEATER giggles, or be like, ‘Well, this was o the rails.’” She continues: “I think it created an envi- ronment that was loose enough and support- Six women walk into a bar . . . ive enough that we maybe got away from any feeling of embarrassment or [feeling] that The Goodman’s production of Twilight Bowl is all female—onstage and behind the scenes. they might be judged in that moment.” Twilight Bowl was originally commissioned By K R from the Pulitzer Prize fi nalist Gilman by the Big Ten Theatre Consortium, a collegiate conference made up of the Big Ten’s 14 the- guy walks into a bar . . . , ” or six members of the all-female ensemble are di erent weight than they did the fi rst time.” ater departments and schools, which began so goes the familiar joke setup reprising their original roles, imbuing the pro- The 2019 iteration is a signifi cant produc- commissioning plays by and about women in “ that works because guys are duction with the sense of familiarity that gels tion for both the Goodman and for contem- 2014 as part of its interscholastic New Play always walking into bars. any female friendship after long enough. porary theater, especially in Chicago. During Initiative. The intention was to provide more Except in Rebecca Gilman’s “We were able to go deeper into these the 2015-’16 Chicago theater season, only 36 roles for women in their 20s. TwilightA Bowl , now playing through March 10 characters this time, because we were given percent of the plays were directed by women, “They did not have plays for their students, at the Goodman Theatre, the token guy never more time and we were able to live with them and only 25 percent were written by women, essentially,” Gilman says. enters the scene. Over the course of the show’s for a year in our heads, and so everything just according to research by Chicago-based art- Twilight Bowl begins with four young 90-minute running time, not one man makes marinated more,” says Anne E. Thompson, ists Kay Kron and Mariah Schultz. The gender women clustered around the table of a bar an appearance onstage—or even so much as who portrays one of the show’s six characters. disparity between men and women in the within a small-town Wisconsin bowling alley. issues a cue backstage. “This time we got to talk about these char- artistic positions of set design, lighting, and Gathered for what Gilman once wrote in an Twilight Bowl first premiered at the acters and their shared histories and put in sound were even worse. In Twilight Bowl, all earlier draft of the play as a baby shower—“or Goodman two years ago as part of the 2017 some of that backstory that roots them to each of those positions are fi lled by women (all of something,” adds the playwright—the women New Stages Festival. For its second run, all other, and so the moments feel like they have a whom are local). Coming from the Goodman, are giving a send-off to their friend Jaycee 14 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll T B Through /: Wed-Thu : PM, Fri PM, Sat and PM, Sun and : PM, Goodman Theatre, N. Dearborn, - - , goodmantheatre.org, $-$. ARTS & CULTURE “ALIVE, REAL, RAW AND IN THE MOMENT” –Chicago Tribune (Heather Chrisler), who’s headed to prison in that was like, specifi cally what that is like for the morning for selling prescription meds. The women in the United States. Because I think other women in attendance represent di er- that, in addition to obstacles brought about by ent parts of Jaycee’s past. There’s her younger class disparity, there is also obviously gender “A STRONG WORKING CLASS cousin, Sam (Becca Savoy), who’s nervous politics in play for these women.” That sense about leaving her hometown for Ohio State of transition is woven into every scene due in DRAMA FOR OUR TIMES” –Daily Herald that fall; her oldest ride-or-die friend, Clarice large part to the set’s design. (Hayley Burgess), who works at the Twilight “This is their place, their pub, an extension Bowl but is growing weary of the low pay of home, so it is important to have pictures and the lack of long-term career prospects it of the teams and trophies peppered through o ers; and then there’s Sharlene (Thompson), the bar and not just in the trophy case,” set the God-fearing Christian who tries to see the designer Regina Garcia writes in an e-mail. best in each member of the group—especially “These are reminders of the ‘good ole’ days,’ Jaycee—despite their foul mouths. a time for family and community. However, no It’s a scene full of biting one-liners—you one is visiting the bowling alley anymore, and can tell these women have grown up together, tra c is less than ideal. The furnishings are reckoning constantly with each other’s evolv- simple and dated. It is time for these ladies to ing personalities—that pierce an otherwise in- make other choices.” tense period of anticipation for an experience The choices and the reality these women none of these girls can imagine: Orange Is the face are very specifi c to their geographic lo- New Black is their only frame of reference for cation and the timing of their coming of age what life is like for a woman behind bars. (the play starts two years in the past and ends The bowling-alley bar is the epicenter of the in the present day). The specifi city of the roles entire play. Once Jaycee is off to prison, up- that result from this setting is what Gilman dates as to her incarcerated life are relayed to and Weiss agree the theater world needs more the audience through conversations between of for young women. The more roles for young her friends “on the outside” and the bartender, women that are written, and the more cultur- Brielle, expertly portrayed by Mary Taylor. ally and demographically specifi c they are, the Gilman’s original draft of Twilight Bowl fea- more inclusive the stage becomes. tured a male bartender, “And because he was “The need to expand the canon, the contem- TWILIGHT the bartender, everyone kept talking to him, porary canon, of female roles also includes and he took on this signifi cant role,” she says. women of color across the cultural spectrum, “And then I thought, ‘You know what? Why is because I think we are still missing a lot of he a guy?’ So I got rid of him.” perspectives of female characters across the BOWL Brielle’s slight removal from the core group border of cultural experiences,” Weiss says. of friends lends her the omniscience of any “I am really interested to see more and more good bartender character, but her female stories that focus on these specific cultural BY REBECCA GILMAN DIRECTED BY ERICA WEISS perspective keeps the characters’ conversa- experiences through a female lens, and es- tions fi rmly rooted in the exploration of their pecially a young female lens, voices that just shared, small-town female identity, as varied are not taken particularly seriously in society After graduating from a small Wisconsin high school, Sam heads to college on as the particulars of these young women’s in- across the board.” scholarship—but her cousin Jaycee’s future isn’t looking as bright. As the young dividual experiences. Maddy (Angela Morris), It’s the Bechdel test, really. women and their friends face adulthood, their local bowling alley becomes a a preppy Chicagoan who is a “friend” of Sam’s “I think what we’re starting to realize is place to celebrate triumphs, confront challenges and forge new identities. from school, dominates the middle third of the women have complex lives in and of them- play as a fully formed foil to the other girls’ selves that oftentimes do not have particular small-town culture and politics. attachments to men, and that those stories are NOW THROUGH MARCH 10 “I think that when we think about rural life, also interesting,” says Thompson. “As you see TICKETS START AT JUST $15! [when] we think about working-class people, in Twilight Bowl, on paper all of these women too often we think about what the male experi- can seem kind of similar, but once you get into ence of that is, and we do not think about what each of their stories, you feel for every single 312.443.3800 | GoodmanTheatre.org life is like for women in small towns,” says one of them, and you start to see just how GROUPS OF 10+ ONLY: 312.443.3820 Gilman, who herself grew up in a small town di erent they each are. I’m on board for more in Alabama. “I felt like there’s a whole lot of weirdo women that you want to spend an hour
people out there who are working really hard and a half with, not just for a few minutes in THE ELIZABETH F. and doing their best, but they have limited the second act.” v CHENEY FOUNDATION opportunities because capitalism is unfair Major Support Contributing Sponsors to most people. And I wanted to look at what @kaylenralph ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 15 A G Through /: Wed-Fri : PM, Sat-Sun and : PM; also Thu /, /, and /, PM; no : PM performance Sun / and /, Water Tower Water ARTS & CULTURE Works, N. Michigan, - -, lookingglasstheatre.org , $-$.
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Act(s) of God LIZLAUREN
hicago actor Kareem Bandealy is a busy Watching the world premiere, directed by Of course, this has been done before—and man, with a bio packed with A-list acting Heidi Stillman, it’s hard not to wish Bandealy better (see Waiting for Godot). Bandealy gives Cgigs at, among other places, the Good- had spent more time writing—or more time us a lighter version of theater of the absurd: man, Court Theatre, Writers Theatre, and, of deciding what he wanted to write about—be- milder, sweeter, and stripped of its anger and course, Lookingglass, where he’s an ensemble fore leaping into a full production. The play as conviction and passion. Instead of staring into member. Still, somehow, he found time to it stands now feels more like a loose collection the void or raging at the dying of the light, write a play. And get it produced, at Looking- of theatrical ideas, theological jokes, and clev- Bandealy mocks an old man for chattering on glass. And now it’s being reviewed, by me. erly written scenes than an actual play with a about how much he likes fruit and allots nearly compelling reason to exist beyond the need to a third of the play to a discussion of a charac- fi ll a slot in the season. ter sleeping in the next room whom we never Set in the near future, in 2029, in an isolated meet but who may or may not be God. suburban home in the desert, the action con- Bandealy’s brand of absurdism is not an ex- live in the cerns an upper-class family that might have pression of frustration at having been thrown been lifted from a play by Edward Albee: a into an absurd world. Instead this is a play MOMENTUM regret-fi lled middle-aged mother; her passive, about the myriad petty annoyances of life, a ineffectual husband; and their three disap- theme better suited for a stand-up routine or pointing adult children. Except that Albee was a half-hour sitcom episode. a much angrier and sharper writer. Having Still, the folks at Lookingglass, led by summoned up these people in this world, Ban- director Stillman, throw everything at their dealy doesn’t seem to know what to do with disposal to create a pleasant evening of the- “Joy, Hope, them. Or why they are there. ater—and they do have an impressive arsenal Part of the problem is that Bandealy sets of theatrical tricks and devices. The cast is and Optimism” out to do too much. He tries to use a familiar fi rst-rate, especially Shannon Cochran as the - Big Island Music Magazine (Hawaii) genre, the estranged-family drama, to go after family’s rightfully angry matriarch. Stillman’s the biggest existential issues we human beings production unfolds at just the right pace to face: mortality, God, our place in the universe. keep an audience amused—provided they But he doesn’t deliver. Instead he teases us, don’t think about what they’re watching or see promising that in the next scene or the next how shallow and unsubstantial this all is. v TICKETS 205 E. Randolph Drive 312.334.7777 harristheaterchicago.org act, this will all add up to something. And then it doesn’t. @JackHelbig 16 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll A K’ G R Through /: Thu-Fri : PM, Sat and : PM, Harris Theater, E. Randolph, - -, harristheaterchicago.org, $ -$. ARTS & CULTURE Save $5 with code: TeamFatGay
by Morgan Gould directed by Jessica Fisch Feb 15 - Mar 23
Alina Cojocaru in Akram Khan’s Giselle LAURENT LIOTARDO
DANCE it’s women’s work A new Giselle www.rivendelltheatre.org Akram Khan and the English National Ballet bring the 1841 or call 773-334-7728 classic into the 21st century. By I H
ince its 1841 premiere, Giselle has been an building housing several apparel factories col- exemplar of romanticism, with its depic- lapsed, Khan and Little reimagined Giselle and 24 lumpenradio.com Stions of frolicking country folk, feminine her clan as migrant garment workers. “We’re virtue, and ghosts. The innocent peasant girl all in the end migrants,” notes Khan. 7 coprosperity.org Giselle dies of heartbreak when her lover, Al- Khan also revisited the character of Giselle brecht, turns out to be an aristocrat in disguise as he created the ballet. “In the classical with a well-to-do fi ancee. Like other maidens version, Giselle is portrayed from a man’s who perish before their wedding day, Giselle perspective—coy, sweet, fragile,” says Khan. joins the wilis, spirits dressed like brides who “But the women in my life are not that. They lurk in the woods, luring men into furious, are fi erce, strongheaded, and leaders, like my fatal dances. Yet when Albrecht wanders into mother, like my daughter, like my wife.” their ethereal sorority, doomed to die, Giselle Yet he insists that Giselle’s mercy towards forgives him and protects him from harm. the deceitful Albrecht is also the key to her This week, the English National Ballet power—and to the necessity of such narratives makes its first foray across the Atlantic in in our time. “To forgive is the hardest thing. three decades to bring its wildly anticipated It’s not a sign of weakness. As human beings, new Giselle for an exclusive North American we need empathy again. We are so used to engagement at the Harris. Commissioned in the Western system of right and wrong, good 2016 by artistic director Tamara Rojo, the bal- and evil, black and white. It’s so much more let was choreographed by Akram Khan, who complex in the [Sanskrit epics] Mahābhārata uses his background in contemporary dance and the Rāmāyana. Within the good there and kathak, a form of Indian classical dance, are elements of the bad; within the bad there to reenvision the classic to a new score by Vin- are elements of the good. In order to create, cenzo Lamagna. you have to destroy fi rst. In order to destroy The English-born son of immigrants from something you have to create something. Bangladesh, Khan worked with dramaturg The human condition is complex. We haven’t Ruth Little to develop an international context grieved for climate change or xenophobia yet for the ballet that reflects current events. as a species, because we’re in such denial. We “At the time of creation, how Europe was haven’t learned from our past by forgiving— Music, Shows, WLPN 105.5 ON treating the migrants was quite horrifi c,” he and the only way to forgive is to see.” v says. Haunted by the tragedy of Rana Plaza in Art Events LP FM AIR Bangladesh, in which 1,134 people died when a @IreneCHsiao ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 17 ARTS & CULTURE
it’s clear that this tragic tale is also a love story of the THEATER highest order. Of course the show is built on a very strong foun- The love that dares to speak dation: Kaufman’s script is fi rst-rate. His research is R its name sound and exhaustive, his deconstruction of the texts and Victorian era thorough. Yet the show also works Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde as fi ne, entertaining theater. —J H G is incandescent theater. I T T T O W Through 3/23: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Mon Brian Pastor’s remounting of his 2016 gender-blind 3/4, 7:30 PM, Strawdog Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice, production of Moisés Kaufman’s 1997 nonfi ction play prometheantheatre.org , $30. $25 seniors, $15 stu- about the slow, painful judicial destruction of one of dents and military. the 19th century’s greatest writers is not perfect. Some of the acting is rough. The performing space is a little Don’t worry, you won’t have any cramped. The set is perhaps too spare. And it’s clear that the production has been put together on a shoe- trouble following this one string. But it is, at its core, inspired theater. An Inspector Calls has all the nuance of a Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde At the heart of the show are two actresses, Jamie thermonuclear blast. Bragg and Heather Smith, who perfectly embody Oscar foreseeable acts Goole shows how each family mem- more than one Birling visitation. The actors match Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas, the lovers at the center J.B. Priestley’s 1945 chestnut, a staple of the modern the- ber’s privilege and self-absorption contributed to the the set in bombast and obviousness. This production of this tragic story. Bragg is great as Wilde, playing atrical canon, is not what anyone would call subtle. Set dead woman’s despondency and dissolution. Is there a premiered in 1992, when Daldry was all of 32, so perhaps equally well his highs and his lows; his fi ne, high-fl ying on the cusp of World War I, it focuses on the well-to-do lesson waiting for everyone about “community and all we can excuse it as a youngish man’s undisciplined wit; and his dark depression a er he’s sentenced to Birlings, led by self-satisfi ed industrialist and politician that nonsense”? Could be. squeal. Then again, even at that age he might have two years of hard labor at Reading Gaol. And Smith is Arthur, a man singularly devoted to protecting “the So it’s perplexing that director Stephen Daldry, realized that audiences can fi gure a thing or two out terrifi c as the mad, impetuous Douglas. Her nuanced interests of capital” and pooh-poohing the burgeoning known for his exquisite restraint on Netfl ix’s The Crown, for themselves. —J H A I performance shows there’s more to the man than the socialist ideal of “community and all that nonsense.” applies the nuance of a thermonuclear blast to Priestly’s C Through 3/10: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri beautiful spoiled brat he’s usually been portrayed Into their swank ranks comes mysterious, hard-nosed script. On Ian MacNeil’s gorgeously overdetermined 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, as. And together these two are incandescent. From Inspector Goole to inform them that a young woman’s set, everything is metaphor writ large, from the Birling Chicago Shakespeare, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, the moment they appear together onstage their love just committed suicide and le a diary in which several manse, barfed up from the earth and teetering on spin- chicagoshakes.com , $46-$98. speaks its name loudly and clearly. In this production of them are named. For the bulk of three painstakingly dly metal girders, to the puddle of fi lth that will receive
18 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll SAVE $10* WITH PROMO CODE: READER ARTS & CULTURE
Michael’s brief return to his small hometown to A little less conversation . . . attend his grandpa Danny’s birthday is the catalyst that The visual splendors of The Man Who Was shows how an abundance of blame and inaction can Thursday compensate for its extreme verbosity. cause a community to implode. Yet unbridled friendship and good alcohol prove choice comfort. This is a play G.K. Chesterton’s 1908 satire about the battle between about how we heal and cope in a time of turmoil, internal order and chaos gets a spirited and beautifully staged and external. Through major tragic losses, combined production at Lifeline. Though the extreme verbosity with deep-seated guilt and gut-wrenching revelations, of the piece becomes tiresome by about the halfway O’Neill has cra ed an exemplary work that leaves much point of the two-hour-plus show, there are enough visual room for humor and hope. —Y Z M touches to keep one interested beyond the chatter. M R R U Through 3/30: Fri-Sat 8 The shaggy-dog plot involves a poet recruited by PM, Sun 3 PM, Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, Scotland Yard to infi ltrate a supposed anarchist cell. factorytheater.com , $25. A er quickly gaining entry into the inner sanctum, he becomes involved with the anarchists’ various plots Yes, we are recommending to blow up, assassinate, and otherwise disrupt good R Mike Pence Sex Dream bourgeois society. But wouldn’t you know it, he isn’t the only infi ltrator in this cabal. The rest of the running time Dan Giles’s satire is Orwell by way of David is devoted to a parade of spy-versus-spy chases and Lynch, and it’s electrifying. unmaskings. These machinations are what I could’ve done with a lot less of. The two things that carry the piece are Eric Wat- kins’s lighting design and Lizzie Bracken’s sets. My favor- ite moments were the wordless pantomimes as the cast changed scenes, lit by noirish spotlights or candlelight that made them barely visible as they skulked about. The set, full of doors, and featuring a wrought-iron catwalk and staircases—used brilliantly to visually evoke how characters operate on diff erent levels—does a lot more to tell Chesterton’s story than his many, many words do. The gist: evil can lurk in plain sight while men’s pride and need to be right will blind them to what’s in front of their faces. Bilal Dardai adapted Chesterton’s novel for the stage and Jess Hutchinson directed. —D Mike Pence Sex Dream S T M W W T Through 4/7: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 4 and 8 PM, Sun 4 PM, Our long national nightmare isn’t over. It’s barely begun. Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773-761-4477, That’s the dystopic message of Dan Giles’s play, now in 6 PERFORMANCES ONLY! lifelinetheatre.com, $40, $30 seniors and military, a world premiere at First Floor Theater. As refl ected in $20 students. the mirrored walls of William Boles’s set, with Claire Chr- zan’s lighting and Eric Backus’s sound creating a disco You can’t always judge a play hellscape environment, we’re through the looking glass MARCH 6–10 R by its marketing of Trumpian times. Do we throw down for resistance, or do we game the system for our own benefi t? There’s humor and hope in May the Road Rise That’s the dilemma facing fi ction-writer-turned- Up—along with plenty of whiskey. adman Gary (Scott Shimizu) and his spouse, Ben (Collin Quinn Rice), an elementary schoolteacher who uses A play about an Irish family rarely breaks the mold of nonbinary pronouns and whose acts of defi ance range being too long, too sad, and too predictable. Usually from wearing a dress to class to fi ghting a MAGA someone important dies halfway through and we’re parent. Gary’s subconscious punishes him for selling stuck with the remaining characters who have to deal out with dreams of working as a beleaguered assistant/ with it. But Shannon O’Neill’s May the Road Rise Up, boy toy to the vice president. These are only slightly directed by Spenser Davis at the Factory Theater, is a more disturbing than his waking-life encounters with stellar example of why we shouldn’t always judge a play Tom (an eerily deadpan Gage Wallace), the client whose by its marketing. factory-farmed bacon allows Gary to strike gold with the TICKETS START AT $34 The people who die are already dead when the play catchphrase “It’s the Sizzle.” begins, and it’s their absence that causes much grief Giles’s script and Hutch Pimentel’s fearless direction DISCOUNTS FOR GROUPS OF 10+ and propels the plot. The audience is seated in a semi- trace the characters’ journey from existential dread AuditoriumTheatre.org circle around a middle-class kitchen that off ers intimate to rationalization. (Rice’s Ben abandons their activist playing space around the edges. Everything is precisely instincts for the safer realm of corporate philanthropy.) 312.341.2300 50 E Ida B Wells Dr | Chicago, IL organized, from the draped dish towels behind the sink Wallace and Rice take turns as the bad-dream Pence, to the framed photos lining the teal-painted walls. This with the latter nailing a dance interlude choreographed home doesn’t feel lived-in save for an athletic jacket by Breon Arzell. hanging on the back of one kitchen chair. Tom tells a story about pigs who get smarter the ENGAGEMENT SPONSORS 2018–19 SEASON SPONSORS This calm and order dissipate as we become more they’re abused—who still turn on each other. Giles acquainted with the ensemble of ten who bustle through gives us Orwell by way of David Lynch, and the results in an expertly cra ed opening montage that takes up are electrifying. —K R M P S Performance Opening Night Performance Performance International Student Matinee Sponsors every inch of the stage. We meet the Murphys, including D Through 3/16: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; Sponsor Sponsor Sponsor Sponsor Dance Sponsor bottled-up mom and excellent nurse Patty (Loretta also Mon 3/11, 7:30 PM, and Sat 3/16, 3 PM; no per- Commissioning support for Lazarus provided by the Auditorium Theatre with sponsorship support Samantha Figgins and Jeroboam Bozeman, Rezos); her son, Michael (Vic Kuligoski), a recovering formance Sat 3/17, 7:30 PM, the Den Theatre, 1331 N. from ARIEL INVESTMENTS, AVISON YOUNG, and SVOBODA CAPITAL PARTNERS. photo by Andrew Eccles. addict; and her father, Danny (Patrick Blashill), a former Milwaukee, firstfloortheater.com , $25, $20 students. boxer full of pride and whiskey. *O er valid on price levels 1–4. Not valid on previously purchased tickets. No refunds. ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 19 ARTS & CULTURE FILM
B On the five-year plan R Tango shows that ideas alone can’t change society.
In Sławomir Mrożek’s 1965 satire of life in communist Poland, everything’s topsy-turvy. A family and a couple hangers-on live in a chaotic household in which every member’s role is constantly shi ing. It’s a vision of soci- ety in fl ux and disillusioned despair—which shouldn’t be diffi cult for Americans in 2019 to identify with. At the beginning, Arthur, the uptight son, is impos- ing his will on the rest of the clan. Arthur is bent on restoring a sense of order to his anarchic home, but can’t quite settle on a unifying theory under which to govern. He’s horrifi ed that his eccentric father has retreated into an imaginary world of sock-puppetry shows he refers to as his “experiments,” while his mother is openly carrying on an aff air with their boor of a neigh- bor. His grandmother and uncle are similarly debauched. In a desperate bid to bring sense to his world, Arthur decides to marry the neighborhood fl oozy. He thinks Tango Coincoin and the Extra Humans that a traditional wedding will restore honor to his family and begin to build the principled, orderly society he well-meaning Christian, and Hayley Burgess as stoic longs for. It all goes sideways. workhorse Clarice) ultimately fl eshes out these over- Utterly committed performances from a standout looked lives with wit and emotional honesty. —K cast and a crudely painted set of backgrounds on R T B Through 3/10: Wed-Thu 7:30 MOVIES rollers—between which characters keep disappearing— PM, Fri 8 PM, Sat 2 and 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM, make the instability under which these people live Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, palpable. Though set at a time when Eastern bloc com- goodmantheatre.org, $15-$45. munism was beginning to crumble, the notion that top- The melting pot down ideas—however well-meaning—can’t truly change Peppy, bright, and oblivious society for the better, o en leading to authoritarianism Regressive and toothless, The Vagina Melodies: The 22nd Chicago European Union Film Festival instead, should be crystal-clear to anyone living today. Here We Go Again is Feminism 101 for the 80s. Emily Lotspeich directed. —D S T off ers a mix of major auteurs and relative unknowns. Through 3/30: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Trap Door Theatre, Peppy, bright, and oblivious, this musical revue at the 1655 W. Cortland, 773-384-0494, trapdoortheatre. Cornservatory, fi rst performed in 2016 and “updated” By K S com , $20-$25, two-for-one admission Thu. for 2019, feels like it was created during a middle-school sleepover in a small, all-white midwestern town. Propped The girls at the bowling-alley bar up by the music of powerful black women—from the Twilight Bowl takes a close look at overlooked songs of Missy Elliott, Beyoncé, and Janelle Monáe to t seems that audiences now expect fi lm the best foreign-language film Oscar a few lives. parodies of Ciara and Whitney Houston hits—performed festivals to be road shows of the latest years back. It’s a fiction film about former by a cast of 13 white women, this may be the least- and greatest in independent, art house, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and Rebecca Gilman’s portrait of fi ve young women in a nuanced portrayal of feminism I’ve seen since the 1980s. and foreign cinema rather than an his sleazy inner circle; originally released small Wisconsin town (and one annoying interloper Apparently nobody thought to include a discernible from Winnetka) is a minor-key chamber piece, with a token from any other demographic. opportunity to discover work not yet in Italy in two parts, the international cut is few wince-worthy dramaturgical air horns thrown in. Lacking all self-awareness, the show delivers a series Ibuzzed about. This year’s Chicago European just a single fi lm. Not available for preview, Set in the bar of a bowling alley, it follows the wom- of occasionally successful but mostly mediocre sketch- Union Film Festival lineup has plenty of the its trailer gives o Wolf of Wall Street vibes, en’s lives over two years, from the farewell party for es. Hosted by the charming Deanna DeMay as Rosie latter, and the chance to discover new fi lms vulgar platitudes of the privileged uttered soon-to-be-incarcerated Jaycee (the dynamic Heather the Riveter, the sloppy monologues could use more Chrisler), caught helping her father sell prescription polish and structure. A lazy nod at celebrating famous and fi lmmakers makes perusing the schedule like sordid catechisms. meds, to a celebration for Sam (Becca Savoy), whose heroines from history feels like a hastily written midshow all the more exciting. French provocateur Bruno Dumont fol- bowling scholarship to Ohio State promises a way out. book report. A parody of “Cell-Block Tango” from Chi- All of the European Union’s 28 member lows up his 2014 miniseries Li’l Quinquin Along the way, the women try to fi gure out where they cago has the delicious potential to skewer rape culture; states are represented in the festival’s 22nd (which played at CEUFF that year—his belong, and whether they still have room for each other instead, it pulls its punches in favor of safer jokes. iteration, which includes 60 films in total, most recent achievements, Slack Bay, from in their lives. Lyss Dutkanych displays hilarious comic timing as Erica Weiss’s direction mostly allows plenty of the Pubic Hairy Fairy, and in a sea of mostly good- ranging from narrative to documentary to 2016, and last year’s exceptionally absurd breathing space, and Gilman’s story balances uncom- enough-for-comedy voices, Briana Bower and Bryce animated features. Twenty-two of the 60 Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc also fortable group dynamics with honest one-on-one Saxon provide a lovely rendition of Houston’s “I Wanna films are helmed by women, accounting played in recent lineups) with Coincoin and encounters. A conversation between Sam and bartender Dance With Somebody” with great harmonies. The for more than 30 percent of the schedule. the Extra-Humans, another miniseries cum Brielle (Mary Taylor), who had her own abortive attempt enthusiastic cast gives the show their all, and a bit about at attending college, teases out the emotional strains the lack of pockets in women’s clothing is gratifying if Per usual, the lineup is a healthy mix of the cinematic experience that again finds its of trying to fi t into a place you’re not sure you deserve not terribly original. biggest names in European cinema and rel- young and peculiar protagonist in ludicrous to be (or want to be) in the fi rst place with compelling Still, the noninclusive Feminism 101 of The Vagina ative unknowns, making the festival a great scenarios, this time involving alien cow pat- empathy. But a scene involving Maddy (Angela Morris), Melodies: Here We Go Again is regressive and toothless, opportunity not just to catch up with major ties and strangely gestated doppelgangers. Sam’s self-absorbed North Shore college acquaintance, especially in the way it ignores race, gender expression, leans too heavily on rich-girl cliches even as we learn and class. It’ll be fun for anyone that fi nds the mention of auteurs but to discover filmmakers whose Dumont’s droll absurdity is matched by de- some disturbing things about Maddy’s own circum- a dildo the height of indecency. —S F T work might be unfamiliar to U.S. audiences. ceptively halcyon widescreen compositions stances. V M H W G A Through First, the heavy heavy hitters. Loro is that further elucidate his wacky ambitions. Despite some jarring false notes, the cast (includ- 3/30: Thu-Sat 8 PM, the Cornservatory, 4210 N. the latest by Italian writer-director Paolo Polish master Krzysztof Zanussi, whose ing Anne E. Thompson as Sharlene, an awkward but Lincoln, cornservatory.com , $12-$20. v Sorrentino, whose The Great Beauty won works from the 70s and 80s are among 20 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll The Midwest’s Premier Environmental Film Festival C E U F F /-/: dates and times vary; see schedule, Gene Siskel Film Center, N. State, --, siskelfilmcenter.org , $, $ students. FILM
the greatest Polish films ever made, again which inspires near-philosophical discourse foregrounds his preoccupation with faith in on a range of subjects. Ether, a Faustian historical drama in which Lesser-known documentary gems include the anesthetic, here in the hands of an amoral Donal Foreman’s The Image You Missed doctor, serves as a metaphor for both power (Ireland-France), credited as a fi lm “between” and pain, specifically the ability to either Foreman and his estranged father, documen- exacerbate or alleviate the latter. Like many tary fi lmmaker Arthur MacCaig; Robert Bahar of Zanussi’s recent fi lms, it’s a bit ham-fi sted, and Almudena Carracedo’s The Silence of Oth- especially in how it incorporates the Faustian ers (Spain-USA), produced by Pedro Almodó- elements. Still, it’s confidently realized, and var, about some of Spanish dictator Francisco worth watching for anyone who hopes to catch Franco’s victims seeking justice for crimes a glimpse of Zanussi’s erstwhile genius. committed under his rule; Niels Bolbrinker The documentary selection features a trove and Thomas Tielsch’s Bauhaus Spirit: 100 of fi lms from directors both well-known and Years of Bauhaus (Germany), a comprehen- those less so. The former category includes sive look at the title subject; Giacomo Durzi’s Mark Cousins’s The Eyes of Orson Welles (UK), Ferrante Fever (Italy), about Elena Ferrante, an examination of an oft-overlooked facet of the elusive author of the much-lauded Nea- Welles’s life, his interest in drawing and paint- politan novels; and James Erskine’s The Ice ing; Peter Lataster and Petra Lataster-Czisch’s King (UK), an elegantly heartbreaking portrait You Are My Friend (Netherlands), an unas- of acclaimed British fi gure skater John Curry, 67 suming follow-up to their popular 2016 docu- openly gay when it was still illegal to be so, mentary Miss Kiet’s Children, about a teacher whose fortitude on and o the rink is especial- and her immigrant students, this time focus- ly moving. ing on just one of the previous film’s young The narrative offerings are where female FILM EVENTS subjects; Ruth Beckermann’s The Waldheim filmmakers really shine. Standouts are Va- Waltz (Austria), a smartly edited examination leria Bruni Tedeschi’s The Summer House Throughout Chicagoland of the Waldheim a air that includes footage (Italy-France), Jagoda Szelc’s Tower. A Beckermann shot during the mid-80s protests Bright Day., Adina Pintilie’s Touch Me Not against the Austrian president who was al- (Romania-Germany), Iveta Grofova’s Little March 1-10, 2019 leged to have participated in Nazi war crimes Harbor (Slovakia-Czech Republic), Gabriela during World War II; and Corneliu Porum- Pichler’s Amateurs (Sweden), Liina Trishkina- OEFF AFTER HOURS boiu’s Infinite Football (Romania), which is Vanhatalo’s Take It or Leave It (Estonia), March 3: UNITY TEMPLE, Oak Park idiosyncratic in its portrayal of a middle-aged and Carmel Winters’s Float Like a Butterfly man whose football injury inspired him to (Ireland). Two first-time feature directors, March 4: GRAND CENTRAL BREWING, Chicago amend the rules of the sport, the discussion of Moonika Siimets and Marine Francen, J March 5 & 9: PATAGONIA CHICAGO
Reserve tickets at oneearthfilmfest.org
Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 21 C sss Directed by Nadine Labaki. In Arabic and Amharic with subtitles. R, min. Fri /-Thu /, Gene Siskel Film Center, N. FILM State, --, siskelfilmcenter.org, $.
Capernaum continued from 21 make imposing if somewhat wonted period dramas that embody their native coun- tries. Siimets’s The Little Comrade is based on the childhood of noted Estonian writer Leelo Tungal and features an astonishing performance by Helena Maria Reisner as young Leelo. Francen’s The Sower (France), based on real events, is about a village whose men are all arrested in the wake of Louis Napoleon’s 1851 coup, leaving the women without male companions for two years; they agree that if a man should come to them, they’ll share him for both labor and sex. Beautifully rendered, its love scenes are refreshingly sensual. than sleep seven to a bed and endure his par- As is the case with any large festival, REVIEW ents’ deceptions and cruelty. One day he meets some films fall short. The Saint Bernard another refugee, Rahil, a working Ethiopian Syndicate (Denmark), the first narrative single mother (Eritrean migrant Yordanos feature from controversial documentarian Lebanese neorealism Shiferaw) who o ers him shelter in her cor- Mads Brügger, is so intentionally unwieldy rugated plastic shed if he will mind her baby as to be artless, while Lars Kraume’s The Starring a cast of nonactors, Capernaum examines the son, Yonas (female toddler and scene stealer Silent Revolution (Germany), about a pro- lives of refugees in a Beirut slum. Boluwatife Treasure Bankole). When Rahil and test by East German students in solidarity other undocumented laborers are caught in with the victims of the 1956 Hungarian By A G a police roundup, Zain must fend for himself Revolution, proves that not every politi- again, except now he has another mouth to cal protest is worthy of a dramatization. feed, and after he learns about a horrifi c death Judith Davis’s Whatever Happened to My he past 12 months have seen the the- and interviews Labaki and her collaborators in his family, he snaps. Labaki plays the advo- Revolution (France), a portrait of a young atrical releases of three extraordi- conducted with refugees and neglected, aban- cate who represents him in his lawsuit against woman with no outlet for her righteous nary dramas powered by nonactors: doned, and/or incarcerated minors. It offers his parents. indignation, doesn’t succeed as any sort of Chloé Zhao’s lyrical contemporary an immediacy and authenticity that would not (It should be noted here that although Al commentary, and Ray & Liz, from British western The Rider, starring horse have been possible without its nonprofession- Rafeea shares certain things with his charac- photographer Richard Billingham, an auto- Ttrainer Brady Jandreau as a Native American al performers improvising versions of their ter—like having worked since the age of ten, biographical story of a family on the dole in cowboy on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reser- own experiences. In this story of an abused having a temper and a habit of swearing—he’s Thatcher-era England, is visually stunning vation; Alfonso Cuarón’s sublime Roma, an street child who sues his monstrous parents not a criminal, nor is he unloved. Shiferaw’s but more an idea than a film. It remains homage to the strong women who reared him for bringing him into the world, no one is more life, however, has had uncomfortably close to be seen whether Louis Garrel—whose in 1970s Mexico City, with first-time actress compelling than Zain Al Rafeea, the youngster parallels to her character’s: during the film second directorial feature, A Faithful Man Yalitza Aparicio carrying the movie as its lead; who plays the protagonist (also named Zain), shoot the actress was arrested and imprisoned (France), is playing in the festival—will and now Nadine Labaki’s searing take on the a real-life refugee from Syria’s civil war who for two weeks for being an illegal immigrant.) live up to his father’s reputation, though global refugee crisis, Capernaum, in which the was only 12 years old and barely literate when A popular actress in her native Lebanon, its title certainly recalls those of Philippe’s director is the only professional actor among the director met him. He is also small for his Labaki has been lauded at the Cannes Film recent masterpieces (Lover for a Day, Reg- a cast of hundreds who portray migrants in a age, a result of malnutrition; with haunted Festival since her 2007 writing-directing fea- ular Lovers). Beirut slum. It is a sprawling epic that is also eyes and a stunted frame, he’s every inch the ture debut, Caramel, and her follow-up, Where Two animated features, Salvador intimate; in its rawness, pathos, and intensity heartbreaking urchin. Do We Go Now? (2011), which won two prizes Simó’s Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the it recalls Italian neorealist films by Vittorio Make that scrappy and heartbreaking at Cannes and remains Lebanon’s top-grossing Turtles (Spain), about a turning point De Sica and Roberto Rossellini, particularly urchin. Capernaum opens and closes with Arabic-language film. At last May’s festival, in the surrealist director’s prodigious the latter’s war trilogy—Rome, Open City Zain being shuÅ ed through the legal system, Capernaum was nominated for the Palme d’Or career, and Raúl de la Fuente and Da- (1945), Paisan (1946), and Germany Year Zero having been sentenced to jail for fi ve years for and won three other awards, including the mian Nenow’s Another Day of Life (1948)—works that also examine traumatized knifi ng a predatory scoundrel who, let’s just prestigious Jury Prize. (It was also nominated (Poland-Spain), reminiscent of Waltz With survivors rebuilding their lives amid ruins and say, had it coming. Through flashbacks, we for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.) Bashir in its exploration of Polish journalist ghosts of the past and that, also like Caper- witness his sorry childhood: how he and his But the fi lm almost didn’t get made: with no Ryszard Kapuscinski’s experiences during naum, employ a little melodrama to heighten many siblings are pressed into their parents’ stars, no fi rm shooting schedule, and no fi xed the 1975 Angolan civil war, round out an impact. drug trade; how his shiftless father puts them locations—which consequently meant no eclectic program. There’s much to catch Shot over six months, Capernaum is doc- to work rather than send them to school; and concrete budget—the project initially wasn’t up with, but there’s also much to discover, umentary in feel, based on years of research how Zain escapes to live on the streets rather considered bankable. So Labaki’s husband, with even more in store for those up to the task. v ssssEXCELLENTsssGOODssAVERAGEsPOOR• WORTHLESS 22 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll R READERRECOMMENDEDb ALLAGESN NEWF FILM
cowriter and composer Khaled Mouzanar, NOW PLAYING assumed producer duties, letting her fi lm the way she wanted: shooting almost the Barbara entire screenplay chronologically while R German suspense director Christian Petzold (Yella, Jerichow) has found an ideal setting for his quietly setting up scenes that were meticulously oppressive tone: East Germany in 1980. Nina Hoss, his plotted, but whose dialogue was devised icy blond muse, plays the title character, a doctor and by the amateur actorsn who could readily former le -wing conspirator who’s released from prison follow her beats despite not having a copy and assigned to a provincial mental hospital. Her kindly boss at the hospital tries to help her adjust and clearly of the script. She worked with only two wants something personal with her, while the Stasi PEE-WEE’S cameramen and a boom operator so that no keeps close tabs on her; yet she’s secretly planning extraneous equipment would hamper any- an escape to the West. The occasional ravings of the Big Adventure one’s freedom of movement, and pushed patients, ringing off the walls in Petzold’s measured MAR 1-4 AT 11 PM quiet, provide an appropriate backdrop to the heroine’s for as many takes as she felt necessary, need for freedom, yet the movie’s politics never trump winding up with 520 hours of footage. its humanity: in one unexpectedly moving scene, Barba- The end result has the stark grittiness of ra glimpses the Stasi agent who’s been bearing down Matteo Garrone’s Neapolitan crime story on her suff ering in silence as his wife receives cancer Gomorrah (2008), captures the dangers treatment. With Ronald Zehrfeld. In German with subti- tles. —JR J PG-13, 106 min. 35mm. Sat 3/2-Sun 3/3, of a teeming slum with the veracity of 11:30 AM. Music Box Fernando Mereilles and Kátia Lund’s City of God (2002), and chronicles the end of in- Birds of Passage nocence as harrowingly as Cary Joji Fukun- RNCiro Guerra and Cristina Gallego’s follow-up to their 2015 gem Embrace of the Serpent is aga’s Sin Nombre (2009) and Beasts of No a stunner, from the bookend device of a blind bard who Irma La Douce Nation (2015)—all of which used nonactors spins the tale of a legend at once local and universal MAR 5-7 AT 10:30 PM to great e ect. But those fi lms are more vi- (echoing antique roots in Homer and The Illiad) to olent than Capernaum, which is humanist the division of this Colombian drama’s narrative into fi v e cantos, or songs, which are distant cousins to For showtimes and advance tickets, visit in its outlook and purpose: Labaki wants thelogantheatre.com the burgeoning narcocorrido Mexican musical genre to elicit empathy from her viewers, as well and tie this drug-smuggling tale, circa 1968-1980, to as instill outrage that such things can hap- the present. What at fi rst seems like an ethnographic pen to children. The original French title chronicle of an old Wayuu tribal mating ritual—an exotic never reaches the delirious heights of Manners, howev- of her film, Capharnaüm, can be loosely dance where a marriageable young woman (Natalia er; director Ali Abbasi maintains the same muted tone Reyes) simulates a fi ery bird to be captured—soon throughout (his color palette is also limited and bland), translated as “chaos” or “a jumble,” while becomes a saga about the costs that her suitor (José and the characters fail to evoke much sympathy. The Capernaum itself is the name of an ancient Acosta) shoulders in order to win over her mother, fi lm centers on an androgynous customs agent who pos- village on the Sea of Galilee’s north shore, the clan’s revered matriarch (Carmiña Martinez). The sesses the ability to intuit people’s emotional states by site of the remains of two of the oldest syn- swain labors hard for the required dowry, but he’s smart smelling them. She meets a stranger who looks curiously and impatient, so when he stumbles upon a group like she does and becomes drawn to him, ultimately let- agogues in documented history, and leg- of hippie Peace Corps volunteers who preach anti- ting him move in with her and her boyfriend. For a while endary as a place where Jesus is believed communism but are also looking for weed, his solution, the fi lm hovers around notions of identity (both national to have resided early in his ministry. in its capitalist supply-and-demand paradigm, seems and gender based), but it abandons them in the second God is nowhere to be found in Labaki’s obvious. The alliance he enters with his relatives who half in favor of narrative trickery. I found this compelling farm the marijuana whose market he soon corners will as I watched it, though I don’t feel I gained much from milieu—that of underemployed twentysomethings in film, except in some deep-seated human threaten the family traditions he vowed to uphold. In the experience. In Swedish with subtitles. —B S contemporary Seoul—in such a way that one comes to impulse to do good. If the film has a Wayuu and Spanish with subtitles. —A G R, 108 min. Sat 3/2, 7 and 9:30 PM; and Sun 3/3, 4 PM. see it as existing beyond the subjects’ control. Director flaw, it’s an occasional repetitiveness of 125 min. At Music Box. Visit musicboxtheatre.com for Univ. of Chicago Doc Films Lee Chang-dong works on a grand scale here, shooting language and affect; it’s also relentless showtimes. in wide-screen and o en employing long takes that in the travails it hurls at its young hero. Burning convey an epic sense of anticipation, and by rendering Border Burning (based on Haruki Murakami’s 1992 short story the story so monumental, he makes it seem somewhat Capernaum demands a lot from audiences, Like the recent Brazilian masterpiece Good Manners, “Barn Burning”) paints vivid portraits of three distinct unapproachable, much like Murakami does through his some of whom may fi nd one or two middle this Swedish feature begins as a naturalistic drama characters and inspires sympathy with a bewildered forbidding minimalist prose. At the same time, Lee’s passages too emotionally draining. But it’s before transforming into a modern-day fairy tale. It protagonist; moreover, it depicts a particular social art works at cross-purposes to Murakami’s. He likes to essential viewing for the ways in which it explain things that the author would prefer to keep ambiguous; in a sense, he wants to get deeper into the Birds of Passage illuminates brutally hard lives many of us characters’ heads than even Murakami does. Lee’s insis- could otherwise not imagine, and for the tence on three-dimensional realism takes him only so far, craft of its nonprofessional performers, since he also does his best to preserve Murakami’s sense who, rescued from obscurity, have gifted of unresolved mystery, and this has the eff ect of nullify- ing the director’s social observations. The movie feels us with indelible screen presences. Mostly, like an extended stalemate between two very diff erent though, it is worth the investment just to master storytellers, though the clash of sensibilities is see the last, long close-up of Zain at the also instructive, pointing to a tension in contemporary end of one decisive chapter in his fight. life between individualist and systems-based philoso- phies. 148 min. Fri 3/1, 3 and 6:30 PM; Sat His future is by no means certain, but he’s —B S 3/2, 2 PM; Sun 3/3, 2:30 PM; Mon 3/4, 6:30 PM; and Wed earned, many times over, his fi rst glimmer 3/6, 6:30 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center of what might be happiness. v ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 23 FILM Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.
seem typical of the defensive tendencies of the 50s art B Caught fi lm; it doesn’t let you forget that it’s “poetic.” An under- R European exile Max Ophuls looks at Amer- ground group retreats through Warsaw’s sewers during ican materialism in this 1949 story of a woman’s involve- the uprising of 1944, and most of the members come to ment with a Howard Hughes-ish millionaire, and fi nds it grim ends. In Polish with subtitles. —D K 91 min. just as stifl ing as the old-world variety. Ophuls’s famous Sun 3/3, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films tracking shots seem to defi ne absences instead of spaces, moving through a desert of shadows and cold Mapplethorpe surfaces. With James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, and N In her fi rst scripted feature, documentary fi lm- Robert Ryan. —D K 88 min. 35mm archival print. maker Ondi Timoner attempts to tell the story of Robert Fri 3/1, 7 and 9:30 PM; and Sun 3/3, 1:30 PM. Univ. of Mapplethorpe, the queer photographer known for his Chicago Doc Films powerful yet controversial black-and-white images of BDSM and gay sex, but Timoner falls short of capturing Chutney Popcorn what made Mapplethorpe so daring. Though the fi lm An Indian-American lesbian (Nisha Ganatra) agrees doesn’t shy away from showing his work or some of the to carry a child for her infertile sister and anxious traits that made him complicated, like his narcissism or brother-in-law; predictably, the laughs in this 1999 tendency to destroy personal relationships, it refuses comedy come from cultural clashes (the protagonist’s to lean into those scenes in a way that would give the Indian-born mother refuses to acknowledge her daugh- story a bit more nuance. Instead, it jams in as many of ter’s homosexuality, her lesbian friends can’t understand the important moments in Mapplethorpe’s life from 1967 her willingness to give birth) as well as the nuts and to his death from AIDS in 1989 as it can in an hour and bolts of artifi cial insemination. As director and cowriter, a half, another entry in the list of biopics (like Bohemian Ganatra brings to the project an insider’s view and a Rhapsody) that reduce the career of an iconoclast to sure handling of girl talk, but she isn’t particularly good a formulaic biopic that refuses to scratch beneath the with actors (only Jill Hennessy as her statuesque girl- In Another Country surface. —M D L C 102 min. Fri 3/1, 4:15 friend and Madhur Jaff rey as her exasperated mother and 8:30 PM; Sat 3/2, 4:45 and 8 PM; Sun 3/3, 3 PM; Mon stand out), and her own character is underwritten, an 3/4, 6 PM; Tue 3/5, 8:15 PM; Wed 3/6, 6 PM; and Thu 3/7, impassive, petulant Madonna who somehow commands Fighting With My Family The Hitch-Hiker 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center adoration. It doesn’t help that the fi lm runs out of comic N Stephen Merchant, cocreator of the BBC series R Actress Ida Lupino (High Sierra) enjoyed a situations a er the fi rst hour and resorts to too many The Offi ce, wrote and directed this comic docudrama second career as a director of B movies in the late Margaret senseless montages (accompanied by the entrancing about WWE fi ghter Paige (nee Saraya Knight), who 40s and early 50s, and this hell-for-leather noir (1953) R A spoiled Manhattan teenager (Anna Paquin) fusion sounds of Karsh Kale). —T S PG-13, 92 min. rose to international prominence on the pro wrestling demonstrates her facility with actors and her fl awless distracts a city bus driver (Mark Ruff alo) with her 35mm. Tue 3/5, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films circuit when she was in her late teens. Don’t expect any pacing. Two pals (Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy, fl irty behavior, causing him to run a red light and kill of the discomforting humor or camerawork that made both excellent) head off for a fi shing trip in Mexico but a pedestrian (Allison Janney). At her mother’s urging, Dirty Dancing The Offi ce so infl uential; this is pat, sentimental stuff , get carjacked south of the border by a fi sh-eyed serial the girl tells police the light was green, but eventually A rather novel Flashdance spin-off , this coming-of-age from its underdog narrative to its corny one-liners. The killer (William Talman, later the DA on the Perry Mason an attack of conscience—from which she conveniently dancing romance (1987) is set in a Catskills resort during story follows Paige as she gets plucked from her family’s series). There’s a subplot in which the authorities close spares herself—impels her to launch a vendetta against the summer of 1963. What sets it apart from others of its amateur wrestling show in Norwich, England, to train for in on the fugitive, but Lupino, who cowrote the script, the driver. This moving drama was shot in 2005 but ilk is that some of the leads—notably Jennifer Grey, who the WWE in Florida. Needless to say, she faces setbacks devotes most of the screen time to the fear, rage, and tied up in court for years a er writer-director Kenneth achieves her apotheosis by learning the mambo, and on her journey to stardom, such as missing her parents despair of the two friends, who realize they’re marked Lonergan (You Can Count on Me) failed to deliver a cut Jerry Orbach—actually resemble real people rather than and dealing with the jealousy of her older brother, for death. —JR J 71 min. Author Elizabeth Weitz- under 150 minutes, as his contract demanded. Released actors. The plot hinges on class diff erences between whose own dreams of becoming a pro wrestler have man (Renegade Women in Film and TV) introduces the at long last (2011) and running 149 minutes, the movie resort customers and staff members (“dirty dancing” is gone down the drain. The fi lm is basic and predictable, screening. Mon 3/4, 7 PM. Music Box shows obvious signs of having been hacked down to what the latter do at their own parties), and before the but its sincerity is hard to overlook. With Vince Vaughn, size (Matt Damon’s fi ne performance as the girl’s math movie collapses into the utopian nonsense that seems Nick Frost, and Florence Pugh as Paige. —B S In Another Country teacher seems to have suff ered particularly). But even in obligatory to this subgenre, a surprising amount of PG-13, 108 min. ArcLight, Ford City, River East 21, 600 R Hong Sang-soo’s fi rst collaboration with Isabelle its truncated state, this is pretty gripping stuff ; just think sensitivity and satirical insight emerges from Eleanor N. Michigan Huppert from 2012 is the South Korean writer-director’s of it as an epic commercial for the director’s-cut DVD. Bergstein’s script and Emile Ardolino’s direction. There’s liveliest, funniest fi lm. It comprises three stories, each Among the stellar cast are Matthew Broderick, Jean also a memorable use of the resort location, and while Greta one about a diff erent Frenchwoman named Anne (all Reno, Kieran Culkin, Rosemarie DeWitt, Olivia Thirlby, the music on the soundtrack is predictably overloud, the N A er a six-year hiatus from feature fi lmmaking, of them played by Huppert) visiting the same Korean and J. Smith-Cameron as the girl’s mother. —JR J period detail is refreshingly so -pedaled. —J Neil Jordan returns with a visually splendid, though the- beachside resort town. In the fi rst Anne’s a successful R. The 186-minute director’s cut is screening. Mon 3/4, 7 R PG-13, 100 min. 35mm. Thu 3/7, 7 PM. Univ. matically thin, New York-set thriller. A well-to-do recent fi lmmaker thwarting off the romantic advances of a PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films of Chicago Doc Films college graduate (Chloë Grace Moretz) mourning the married (and frequently drunk) Korean director; in the loss of her mother befriends a lonely widow (Isabelle second she’s a Korean businessman’s wife in town for Othello Drag Me to Hell Huppert), only to fi nd out that the woman is a psycho- a tryst with her fi lmmaker lover, who never arrives; and R For all the liberties taken with the play, Orson R A er directing three Spider-Man movies, Sam path obsessed with terrorizing young strangers. The in the third Anne is a tourist traveling with a female Welles’s 1952 independent feature may well be the Raimi makes a masterful return to the horror genre, opening passages, which detail the characters bonding friend a er her French husband leaves her for a Korean greatest Shakespeare fi lm (Welles’s later Chimes at though the crazed kineticism of his Evil Dead trilogy is over their mutual loneliness, are intriguing and sensi- woman. The second story, in which Hong at several Midnight is the only other contender)—a brooding replaced here by a fable of guilt, shame, and insecurity tively realized: Jordan succeeds at making New York points reveals the onscreen action to be a dream, is the expressionist dream made in eerie Moorish locations (2009). Soulful Alison Lohman plays a loan offi cer trying seem unusually small (foreshadowing the frightening most formally playful, but the whole fi lm is a joy—rarely over nearly three years, yet held together by a remark- to get ahead at work so she can impress the snooty depictions of confi nement that occur later on), and the has the director generated so many laugh-out-loud ably cohesive style and atmosphere. (The fi lm looks parents of her ardent sweetheart (Justin Long); prodded two leads are highly sympathetic. But once the older moments from his characters’ passive-aggression and better than ever in its 1992 restored version, though it by her boss (David Paymer), she forecloses on the mort- woman reveals her true nature, the fi lm becomes a rel- self-delusion. The singing lifeguard played by Yoo Joon- sounds quite diff erent thanks to the restorers’ debatable gage of an awful old crone (Lorna Raver), who retaliates atively conventional stalker tale, and the psychological sang may be Hong’s most delightful creation. In English decision to redo the brilliant score and sound eff ects by saddling her with a demonic curse. The biggest insights of the fi rst act seem for naught. Even then the and subtitled Korean. —B S 89 min. Wed 3/6, 7 in stereo, altering them considerably in the process.) howls involve the delicate heroine helplessly ingesting fi lm doesn’t lack for fun visuals—I just wished there were and 9:30 PM. Univ. of Chicago Doc Films The most impressive performance here is Micheal or inhaling bugs, worms, and bile—physical equivalents a better script to go with them. With Maika Monroe and MacLiammoir’s Iago; Welles’s own underplaying of the of her destructive emotions—and Raimi ends the story Jordan’s perennial favorite actor, Stephen Rea. —B Kanal title role meshes well with the somnambulistic mood, with the sort of black punch line that’s become his S R, 98 min. AMC Dine-in Block 37, ArcLight, River Andrzej Wajda’s 1957 fi lm was the fi rst to call world but apart from some magnifi cent line readings he makes signature. —JR J PG-13, 99 min. 35mm. Fri 3/1-Sat East 21, Webster Place 11 attention to the Polish cinema, though it hasn’t aged less of a dramatic impression. With Suzanne Cloutier (as 3/2, midnight. Music Box gracefully. Its social theme and allegorical style now Desdemona), Robert Coote, Fay Compton, Doris Dow-
24 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll R READERRECOMMENDEDb ALLAGESN NEWF FILM
ling, and Michael Laurence. —J R ALSO PLAYING Greta 92 min. The original 1955 release version (not the 1992 restoration) will be screening. Former Reader fi lm critic Between Two Cinemas Jonathan Rosenbaum lectures at the screening. Tue 3/5, Longtime fi lmmaker and fi lm archivist Ross Lipman 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center directed this autobiographical essay/documentary fi lm about his career in cinema. 84 min. Lipman attends the Princess Cyd screening. Thu 3/7, 7 PM. Univ. of Chicago Logan Center R Writer-director Stephen Cone (The Wise Kids) for the Arts F ventures into Eric Rohmer territory with this philo- sophical, dialogue-driven 2017 comedy about a bright Borgman 17-year-old girl (Jessie Pinnick) spending the summer Alex van Warmerdam directed this 2013 Dutch fi lm in Chicago with her novelist aunt (Rebecca Spence). about a rich family terrorized by a vagrant. In Dutch with The girl is in the process of discovering herself both subtitles. 113 min. Thu 3/7, 9:30 PM. Univ. of Chicago intellectually and sexually, and her development sparks Doc Films the curiosity of the solitary older woman. Their relation- ship evolves over the course of leisurely conversations The Competition about the nature of fulfi llment, which lead both women Claire Simon directed this 2016 French documentary to question whether they’re happy (as in Rohmer’s fi lms, about the intense process of admitting students into La the characters use philosophy to mask discussion of Fémis, one of France’s top fi lm schools. In French with Level 16 The Prairie Trilogy their feelings). With great delicacy, Cone metes out subtitles. 121 min. Simon attends the Saturday screening. N Danishka Esterhazy directed this Canadian sci- This documentary trilogy (1977-80) directed by John details about his subjects through refi ned dialogue and Sat 3/2, 4:45 PM, and Thu 3/7, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film fi fi lm about two girls in a prisonlike dystopian boarding Hanson and Rob Nilsson explores the radical and everyday behavior; this is the sort of movie that makes Center school who attempt to discover the reason for their socialist history of North Dakota’s labor and activist you feel you’ve befriended the characters. —B S confi nement. 102 min. At Facets Cinémathèque. Visit movements through the life of 97-year-old Henry Martin- 97 min. Cone and select crew attend the screening. Fri Crime + Punishment facets.org for showtimes. son. 107 min. 16mm. Sat 3/2, 7 PM. Chicago Filmmakers 3/1, 7 PM. Northwestern University Block Museum of Art A documentary about NYPD offi cers who expose the department’s quota system for minimum numbers of On Watching Men Stray Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take arrests and summons. Stephen Maing directed. 112 min. Curator Rachel Rakes assembles a program of exper- N A man just out of prison and a woman just Maing attends the screening. Thu 3/7, 7 PM. Northwest- imental documentaries (1976-2010) by Chick Strand, released from a psychiatric institution connect and One ern University Block Museum of Art F Tracey Moff at, Yael Bartana, and Jumana Manna, that attempt to heal their individual past traumas in a remote William Greaves, a pioneering black fi lm actor, went on look at social representations of masculinity. 82 min. mountain location. Dustin Feneley directed this New to direct more than 200 documentaries, host and exec- Jimi Hendrix Experience: Electric Rakes attends the screening. Thu, 3/7, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Zealand drama. 104 min. At Facets Cinémathèque. Visit utive produce NET’s Black Journal, and teach acting. Film Center facets.org for showtimes. For this eccentric 1968 experiment, he got two white Church actors to play a quarreling couple in Central Park and John McDemott directed this 2015 documentary about One Earth Film Festival Tyler Perry’s A Madea Family proceeded to fi lm not only them (in both rehearsal and a 1970 Jimi Hendrix concert. 105 min. Wed 3/6, 9:30 PM. N The 2019 edition of this festival devoted to N Funeral performance) but also himself and his camera crew and Music Box fi lms about environmental issues takes place at various various other people, o en juxtaposing separate angles Chicago and suburban locations from March 1 through Tyler Perry directed and stars in this fi lm in his Madea in split screen in the fi nal edit. The crew’s own doubts Leona 10. For a complete schedule visit oneearthfi lmfest.org. comedy series, with the family traveling to Georgia and speculations about the fi lm being made were also N Isaac Chrem directed this Mexican drama about and having to arrange a funeral. PG-13, 102 min. AMC included. The couple’s quarrel is singularly unpleasant, a young Jewish woman in Mexico City confl icted by Our Mother the Mountain Dine-in Block 37, Century 12 and CineArts 6, Chatham the acting variable, the collective insight into what her family’s wishes and her love for a non-Jewish man. Tamar Lando directed this documentary about the 14, City North 14, River East 21, Showplace ICON, 600 N. Greaves is up to mainly uncertain. The title modifi es a In Spanish with subtitles. 107 min. Showing as part of disappearing way of life among aging cowboys in New Michigan, Webster Place 11 v term referring to the interactions between people and the JCC Chicago Jewish Film Festival. Sun 3/3, 7 PM. Mexico. 40 min. Lando attends the screening. Fri 3/1, 7 their environment, and the notion of a shi ing center Music Box PM. Univ. of Chicago Logan Center for the Arts F is what gives this experiment much of its interest and also limits it from going very far in any single direction. —J R 75 min. 35mm. Wed 3/6, 7:30 PM. Northeastern Illinois University 164 North State Street $11 GENERAL | $7 STUDENTS | $6 MEMBERS Tale of the Sea MOVIE HOTLINE: 312.846.2800 N Bahman Farmanara (Fragrance of Camphor, Smell of Jasmine) wrote, directed, and stars in this ruminative Iranian drama, playing a famous novelist readjusting to normal life a er spending several years in MAPPLETHORPE CAPERNAUM C Oscar® Nominee! a psychiatric hospital. Not fully cured of his unspecifi ed BLI PU E mental illness, the septuagenarian writer o en goes TH O MARCH 1 - 7 T N wandering, and hallucinates that he’s being visited by E P Fri 3/1 @ 2 & 6:15 pm; O friends who are no longer living (the fi lm is on one level Feb. 27-March 1, 2019 D N Sat 3/2 @ 2:15 pm; A
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an elegy for departed Iranian artists of Farmanara’s E Sun 3/3 @ 5:15 pm; generation); his strange behavior places considerable FR Mon 3/4 @ 8 pm; emotional strain on his wife, who’s secretly wanted out CHICAGO Tue 3/5 @ 6 pm; Wed 3/6 @ 8 pm; of the marriage for years. This is dour, yet never oppres- Thu 3/7 @ 6 pm
sively so. Farmanara alleviates the pervasive sense of FEMINIST MARCH 1 - 7 “Heartbreaking…lands with the loss with poetic imagery, gentle pacing, and sympathetic Fri 3/1 @ 4:15 & 8:30 pm; Sat 3/2 @ 4:45 & 8 pm; emotional force of Dickens relocated performances. Turning up in the fi nal act, Leila Hatami FILM Sun 3/3 @ 3 pm; Mon 3/4 @ 6 pm; to the slums of the modern-day delivers characteristically strong work as the daughter Tue 3/5 @ 8:15 pm; Wed 3/6 @ 6 pm; Middle East.” --Chris Nashawaty, of the writer’s wife’s late best friend, who possess- FESTIVAL Thu 3/7 @ 8:15 pm Entertainment Weekly es a dark secret about him. In Farsi with subtitles. Film Row Cinema “A great film, engrossing, suspsensful, and —B S 97 min. Sat 3/2, 8 PM, and Sun 3/3, 5:15 PM. 1104 S. Wabash Ave. 8th oor MARCH 1 - 6 • Lee Chang-dong’s BURNING • strange.” --Sheila O’Malley, RogerEbert.com Gene Siskel Film Center chicagofeminist lmfestival.com BUY TICKETS NOW at www.siskelfilmcenter.org ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 25 Marcus “Mixx” Shannon at the Chicago Cultural Center, where he o en works on his music ALEXUSMCLANE
and do work. “I’m really looking for something with all utilities, and if it had a shared bath- Marcus Mixx has lost his home, room—I don’t really need a stove or anything,” he says. “I just really need a little space.” On January 10, Shannon uploaded to Band- camp a new remix of his earliest song, titled “‘I but he still has house Wanna House Now (or at Least a Room)’—No Furniture Needed Mixx.” Many of the com- menters on his GoFundMe page appeared to know him only through his music, and a couple even specifically referenced his old materi- al, including the original 1987 version of “I Wanna House!” Shannon stopped DJing in 1995, and by the turn of the century he was largely isolated— his parents had split, and he was living in their old house alone. But his music had taken on a life of its own—especially the house 12-inches he’d made in the late 80s and early 90s with a loose circle of friends. Back then Shannon had started several labels (Under Dog, Missing Dog Records, Missing Records, Get Wet & Sweat Records), each of which released just a record or two, most in small batches that topped out at 700 copies. Those early recordings have earned him a cult following, and Missing Dog’s 1989 compilation Volume 2 has sold on Dis- cogs for as much as Shannon hopes to pay for a month’s rent. While his early records fetch hundreds of dollars apiece from a cult of collectors, he just Producer Ron Morelli, who runs an im- wants a space of his own to make his new tracks. portant outre dance label called Long Island Electrical Systems (L.I.E.S.), sees Shannon’s By L G offbeat music as critical to the development of a psychedelic strain in early house. “A lot arcus “Mixx” Shannon has been for Marcus Mixx on TV, the 30-minute music Cheap Video”). Last year he joined the video of people don’t like that stu —a lot of people making house music since the show he’s made on and o since the 1990s for production team of new label Wake Up! Music, think it’s too raw or it’s underproduced or it mid-80s, when the style was cable-access channel CAN TV. Sometimes he run by Pepper Gomez, a house vocalist who doesn’t hit. But to me, that energy and that the beating heart of Chicago performs alongside sock puppets, which are recorded for crucial Chicago imprint DJ Inter- spirit is the true energy of house music,” he nightlife. In 1987, Farley “Jack- really just plain socks with his hands in them, national in the 80s. Shannon says he could do says. “It’s just a couple people getting in a Mmaster” Funk of the famous Hot Mix 5 played including a white one with a gray heel and a more work—he’d like to fi lm events, not just basement studio, just rockin’ out, and making Shannon’s very fi rst release, the 12-inch single gray toe that he calls “Rockerd.” Shannon says edit video—but he’s held back by the hours of really tweaked-out stu for their own enjoy- “I Wanna House!,” on one of the crew’s hugely the socks were a donation—with the exception the Garfi eld Park shelter where he stays. (It’s ment—maybe with the hopes of a DJ playing infl uential WBMX radio shows. Original copies of a couple months last year, he’s been living in operated by Franciscan Outreach at Walls it and hearing their stu on the radio. For me, of Shannon’s early records now provoke bitter homeless shelters since 2014. Memorial CME Church.) If he doesn’t arrive by it’s really the spirit that they did it in—it’s the squabbles among hard-core collectors—a Shannon, 52, doesn’t hesitate to discuss his 6:30 PM, he can’t be sure of a bed for the night. true DIY spirit.” compilation he made in 1989 has sold for as circumstances on Facebook and in short You- On January 7, Shannon launched a GoFund- much as $500—but none of the money chang- Tube videos. He has a robust albeit sparsely Me to help him rent an apartment. If he fi nds n the mid-80s, when Shannon was a ing hands makes it to him. one, it’ll be his first—he lived in the house student at Columbia College, he saw an Instead Shannon relies on the generosity where he grew up till 2008, after which he Iadvertising card for Head Studios that of friends and earns a dollar here and there stayed with his father and then his brother, promised recording for $12 an hour. He drove from the roughly 250 new house tracks he’s whose hospitality eventually ran out. “I’ve to 18th Street in Pilsen, a few blocks east of M M TV uploaded to Bandcamp since joining a year Broadcast on CAN TV channel 19. fi nally come to the conclusion that I have to I-90, where he met engineer Liam Gallegos: and a half ago. “Some days I’ll crap out three Sat 3/2, Sat 3/9, Sat 3/16, and swallow my pride & just face the facts that I “An Italian guy, long hair,” Shannon remem- or four songs a day, some weeks it may be Sat 3/23, each night at 11 PM. can’t move forward in my life on any level until bers. “He looked sort of like Rambo.” Gallegos, ten,” he says. He works in GarageBand on a I get a few basic things in order,” Shannon who would later record and produce as Gitano 2018 MacBook, often near the north entrance wrote on his fund-raising page. Camero and L.I.A.M., had set up Head Stu- of the Chicago Cultural Center or in a cubicle He met his $3,000 goal in two weeks, and so dios in a one-bedroom apartment with high on the seventh fl oor of the Harold Washington trafficked Web presence, which he uses to far 125 people have donated. He hopes to fi nd ceilings. He’d completely emptied out the Library. He also uses the library’s eighth- o er his video-editing skills for as little as $25 a place for $500 a month—just a room where bedroom so he could use it to track drums, floor music practice rooms to shoot scenes (he usually calls his service “Cheap, but Not he can stash his cameras and computer, sleep, and he slept in a loft he’d built above his studio 26 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll 3730 N. CLARK ST METROCHICAGO.COM setup, which included a reel-to-reel machine house-scene hub Importes Etc. He also enlist- @ METROCHICAGO and a Commodore 64. One of the few pieces of ed Ray Barney, owner of the Dance Mania label furniture was a swing. and crucial west-side store and distro Bar- “One day this black kid comes in and says, ney’s Records, to help get copies into retailers METRO, JBTV, ‘Hey, do you do house?’ I was like, ‘Well, this outside Chicago. CHARITY BOMB, TEENAGE & 101WKQX PRESENT is a loft, dude,’” Gallegos says. “I didn’t know Sometimes shops would ask for more copies FANCLUB STRANGE 90’S what house was.” after a run had sold out, but Shannon didn’t THE LOVE LANGUAGE A BENEFIT FOR Shannon was happy to demonstrate. “When consistently follow through. “I would press up, WED MAR 06 JERRY BRYANT OF JBTV FRI MAR 08 we did our first session, I was like, ‘Can you press up, but I just didn’t stick to it—I really turn that bass drum up?’ He looked at me like, can’t say why,” he says. “It was like, ‘I’m on my ON SALE FRIDAY! ‘That’s too loud,’” Shannon says. “I said, ‘No, next project, I’ll let that sit and do that when- that’s house.’” After an hour, Gallegos was ever,’ even though it was mastered. I didn’t VHS BIG THIEF hooked—he didn’t even ask Shannon to pay really have that business vibe at the time.” COLLECTION PALEHOUND THU MAR 14 FRI OCT 18 for the session. “He begged me to come back the following weekend—‘Let’s just hang out n the mid-2000s, Gallegos found an eBay and do this,’” Shannon remembers. listing for one of the 12-inches he’d made Shannon and Gallegos liked to party at Head Iwith Shannon. “One of our old records is with whichever friends showed up: on the 1987 selling for 500 fucking dollars—we were like, compilation Missing Records Special Edition ‘What’s going on?’” he says. “All of a sudden, Volume 1, the follow-up to “I Wanna House!,” this old work had value. There was this guy the guests include Kevin “Krazy K” Dobbins, who was coming and saying, ‘Look, I want to Gallegos’s girlfriend China, and Corey “Send” rerelease some of your stuff.’” That guy was Shannon, Marcus’s brother. Once folks had Thomos Oakes, who’d moved to Chicago from gotten pleasantly drunk and started to mess Kentucky in 2000. around with the studio gear, Gallegos had the “I was a hard-core record collector, and I foresight to start recording, capturing mate- became aware of the Marcus Mixx records rial that could later be reworked into formal and just hunted them like crazy,” Oakes says. releases. “If there’s a golden moment that hap- “People were paying $2,000 for these records. pens when you’re doing these jam sessions—I I’m still missing a few of them.” don’t know what it is, but if you go ‘Wait a Oakes reached out to Shannon, who asked second, let me record!’ you scare it away. It him to swing by his parents’ house in Beverly doesn’t come back,” he says. “The same people Woods on the far south side. “The house is just there, three seconds later, they can’t do what falling apart—it’s like a weird haunted-house 04/13 VEIL OF MAYA & INTERVALS 04/20 MISSIO they were just doing. I would have this tape thing,” Oakes says. “I meet him, go in, he gives 04/21 WILD BELLE recorder going, and I would take my fi nger o me beer. We’re sitting there, talking, and it 04/27 BLACK LIPS / FUCKED UP the pause just to capture the moment.” becomes evident to me that the guy is kind of a 05/01 THE DRUMS 05/07 ANDY BLACK Shannon recalls listening simultaneous- hermit—he leaves the house, but he leaves the 05/11 THE DANDY WARHOLS ly to Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” and house house to go to the liquor store on the corner 05/18 THE TWILIGHT SAD @ SLEEPING VILLAGE heavyweight Jamie Principle while jamming, and to the bus stop, and only on errands that 05/19 MOVEMENTS and he says he’d sometimes sing like Pee-wee he has to go to.” By that time Shannon wasn’t Herman. The recordings that emerged from seeing much of Gallegos, who’d relocated Head this atmosphere pushed house toward the Studios to the north side. (In 2006 Gallegos SMARTBARCHICAGO.COM fringe but kept its four-on-the-fl oor founda- moved to France.) 3730 N CLARK ST | 21+ tion intact: “Psychousic,” from Missing Dog’s Oakes pitched the pair on reissuing their 1988 compilation Volume 1, is dominated old music. “They didn’t really understand,” by a robotic arpeggiating synth that sounds he says. “They’re like, ‘Oh, this is really cool, DAPHNE ‘19 like it’s rattling around in a downspout, but but why do you give a shit?’” Oakes convinced it’s spread across blistered tom-toms and an Shannon and Gallegos to transfer the rights DIAMOND FRIDAY FORMATION WITH MARCH 08 omnipresent, thundering bass drum. “Songs to their music to him—he made an up-front like ‘Psychousic’—there are maybe two or payment, and he agreed to give Shannon all three other tracks like that we did in the same the proceeds from any releases. Most of the night,” Shannon says. recordings that Shannon and Gallegos made Madam X Most of those tracks never saw the light of were never issued in any form, however, day, but what Shannon and Gallegos decided and much of that unreleased material is un- Itsï (live) to release they’d send to Dixie Record Pressing accounted for. “They gave me this list: ‘Oh in Nashville. “It was cheap as hell,” Gallegos yeah, here’s two or three hundred songs that Delilac says. “Seventy-five cents a record or some- we wrote,’” Oakes says. “I realized that 60 thing ridiculously cheap.” They’d press a few percent of it’s missing still. That just kills me— Ariel Zetina hundred, and Shannon would distribute most that it was just thrown away or something, TICKETS AVAILABLE VIA METRO + SMART BAR WEBSITES + METRO BOX OFFICE. NO SERVICE FEES AT BOX OFFICE! of them to local shops—notably South Loop ’cause nobody thought it was important.” J ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 27 continued from 27 “My whole goal, and thank God it’s not like In 2006, Oakes started the label Let’s Pet this [now], was just to get my beer money Puppies to release three 12-inches of vintage and party money,” he says. “That’s all I cared Marcus Mixx material. By the time he’d put about.” out just one more, though, his work with Shan- Those priorities are just about the only non’s music became suddenly urgent: In 2008, way to make sense of the business decisions Shannon’s family home was foreclosed on, and Shannon made. “If there was a $1,200 profi t, he had to move out. He’d lived his whole life hypothetically, in one pressing, I would not there, more than 40 years, and he had to fi nd put the basics in to keep that going—I just par- somewhere to put all his things. tied with it,” he says. Even his generosity with “I went down there and loaded up my car friends didn’t always come from the healthiest with shit—and I don’t mean, like, pillaging his place. “It’d be like, ‘This guy needs his rent house,” Oakes says. “The walls were lined with paid, or this paid,’” he says. “Part of my drink- posters and fl yers, and it was all gonna go in ing too, besides liking the buzz factor—for the trash, so I saved it. I saved a couple crates a while I was just depressed. I wanted a girl- of records, including some white labels that I friend and family. I had very high anxiety—I found out later were test pressings of Missing would help out anybody.” Dog stu that was gonna go in the trash. There were two locked closets that I couldn’t get into n 1987, Gallegos began broadcasting a that went in the trash. They could’ve been full program on public-access channel CAN TV of reels—I just don’t know. That kind of stu Icalled The Chicago Underground Explo- haunts me.” sion. He and Shannon and their friends would By reissuing this old material, Let’s Pet throw dance parties in CAN TV’s studio, and Puppies has helped preserve a strange and he’d chroma-key images onto a green screen precious piece of house history: the ine able Trax Records just behind the dancers. hired Shannon chemistry between Shannon and Gallegos. to edit its long- “It was live on the air,” Shannon says. He “Musically, it’s important,” Oakes says. “I running Cable25 used the show to promote parties he hosted was a big disciple of Chicago for a really long program Trax TV. at bars and clubs. “I would plug probably four, ALEXUSMCLANE time—I still am—but there’s certain strains of fi ve di erent events, and it was awesome,” he music across the di erent producing groups they knew I would play them on the radio,” Rachael” Cain at a house party in a Knights of recalls. “I just went out there and said, ‘All the that were derivative, and there was something says Farley “Jackmaster” Funk, aka Hot Mix 5 Columbus Hall on 95th Street. Shannon was ladies that want to lick me, you gotta meet us wholly original about these kids. They didn’t cofounder Farley Keith. One of the records he on the bill, and Jannott noticed him. “Marcus at the party tonight.’” really go out and participate with other crews. was given was Shannon’s “I Wanna House!” 12- is tall and thin and defi nitely house,” he wrote. Broadcasts included a call-in number, and They weren’t faithful regulars somewhere. inch. “Me being the epicenter of house music “He’s got his hair shaved up the sides and piled occasionally somebody would try to bait They didn’t try to imitate what they did on in Chicago, emanating from the radio show on top, he’s got these funky old plastic-rimmed Shannon with racial slurs. “It was that raw and the radio. They got drunk and they clicked in the WBMX days, I was the one who played glasses, he’s got this stud in his ear.” that live and awesome,” Gallegos says. “We ‘record.’” Chicago house,” he says. Shannon couldn’t Cain still knows Shannon today. “Marcus would get o on doing the show.” have hoped for a more powerful cosign. “I always had his own slant of house music—he The crew frequently kept partying else- hannon discovered house music in the would call him an eclectic artist,” Keith says. was always a bit avant-garde, but I love that where after wrapping the show for the night. early 80s by listening to WBMX and the “He’s got his own genre—that’s how di erent about Marcus,” she says. “He’s oÉ eat, but he’s “We’d go to AKA’s, and we were received like SHot Mix 5—their Friday-night program Marcus has always been.” still house—he’s house to the core.” we were gods, man,” Gallegos says. “It was just hit him like a thunderbolt. “Sometimes I ac- Keith got to know Shannon through DJ Shannon was hardly a recluse in the late 80s something that was out of this world.” tually avoided it, ’cause I loved it so much,” he and producer Armando Gallop, who in 1989 and early 90s, but the center of his social life Gallegos says that The Chicago Under- says. “I’m like, ‘This is outstanding, how could would contribute to the second Missing Dog remained Head Studios. He occasionally con- ground Explosion, which he produced concur- they do this?’” While still a student at Morgan compilation. Gallop worked at JR Records in vinced better-known DJs to come hang out, in- rently with a stripped-down, surreal music- Park High School (he graduated in 1984), he’d the Evergreen Plaza mall, and occasionally cluding house pioneer Ron Hardy, who’d DJed video show called Boom TV, only lasted a few weasel his way into fl y-by-night clubs that he he and Keith would make the short drive some of Shannon’s events. Hardy contributed years. “There’s a saying: ‘A favor once too was too young to enter legally by o ering to over to Shannon’s place. Shannon says Keith to a few Head Studios sessions by giving many times given becomes an obligation,’ and carry record crates for DJs. “Frankie [Knuck- taught him a lot about promoting parties and advice on editing songs. “I’d get fi ve minutes: so it was almost like I was obliged to do this,” les], the first time I met him—‘If you break getting his music out there. By the early 90s, ‘Ronny, listen to this,’” Shannon says. “He said, he explains. “I was behind the scenes—every- my records, I’ma have to beat your bootie,’” he was hosting parties at a handful of clubs, ‘Keep the bass line out for like 32 measures.’ one else was getting famous. And so I kinda Shannon says. “I didn’t know what he was most regularly AKA’s and Coconuts, and he’d I’m, ‘OK, OK, can I call it the Ron Hardy mix?’ got sick of it.” talking about. ‘I won’t break them, Frankie, I sometimes recruit a bigger-name DJ to boost ‘Yeah, I don’t care.’” In 1992, Trax sublabel He gave the name Boom TV to Shannon, promise.’” attendance (and his take for the night). Streetfi re released one of these collaborations, whose own show has gone through a long list Shannon wasn’t close with the key origi- Shannon also DJed at gigs other people or- “Liquid Love (Chicago Mix),” on the EP The of names in the intervening years—Marcus nators of house music, but of course he knew ganized. Evidence of one has been preserved Best of Ron Hardy. Let’s Pet Puppies reissued Mixx on TV is only the latest. Working on it who they all were—and some of them soon in a June 1988 Chicago magazine profile of it as part of the 2017 12-inch Liquid Love. has helped Shannon refine the skills he also learned who he was. “When Marcus’s music entertainment lawyer and house-scene advo- The more or less constant party at Head uses for paying jobs as Cheap, but Not Cheap came out in the record stores, I never paid cate Jay B. Ross by Mark Jannott, who talked Studios was good for attracting collaborators, Video (and for video-editing work with Wake for music—stores gave them to me because to Ross and Trax Records star “Screamin’ but it wasn’t great for Shannon’s bottom line. Up! Music, L.I.E.S., and other labels). 28 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll The center label of the fi rst Marcus Mixx release, 1987’s “I Wanna House!”
always him—I don’t know how else to explain Sherman took a hands-off approach to inating videotape to Pam Zekman, an investi- it,” Johnson says. Because CAN TV contribu- Shannon, encouraging his latest A&R rep to gative reporter for CBS Chicago, but Zekman tors submit their episodes digitally, she doesn’t do as he pleased. And Trax sublabels released doesn’t recall the incident. “I don’t remember interact with Shannon much, but he does drop a couple of Shannon’s creations: Streetfi re put ever doing a story about bootlegged records,” her a line occasionally. “He’ll reach out and say, out The Best of Ron Hardy Volume 1, and Saber she says. “It’s entirely possible in my old age ‘Hey, thanks to you for all your support,’” she dropped the Tits, Ass & Pussy EP, credited to that I’ve forgotten.” says. “Not many people do that.” Shannon, Gallegos, and Victor Blood. Because Cain claims that the Recording Industry Sherman didn’t spend much time at Trax Association of America raided Trax; Gallegos n the early 90s—he can’t remember exactly headquarters, Shannon delivered the money remembers it being the FBI. Sherman isn’t CAN TV program director Lesley Johnson when—Shannon briefl y served as an A&R coming in from sales to Sherman’s home each talking, but Cain says all charges against him estimates that Shannon has produced more Irepresentative for Trax Records. “It was week. “He insisted that I drive one of his three were dropped and “everything was expunged.” than 400 episodes for the station since 1996. like saying, ‘Would you like to play for the Cadillacs,” Shannon says. “I had a station In any case, the damage was done. It would “He’s obviously found meaning in it, and that Bears or the Bulls?’ or something,’” he says. wagon at the time. He said, ‘You can’t repre- be decades before Shannon mended his re- makes my job meaningful,” Johnson says. “He He made $350 a week and acted as a liaison sent us in that.’” lationship with Trax. “We realized that not keeps coming back, no matter whatever else between potential signees and label founder Shannon claims that Sherman’s hands-off only did we fuck Larry Sherman, we fucked is going on in his life. He’s still fi nding time to Larry Sherman. approach sometimes extended to paying him. ourselves,” Gallegos says. “Nobody wanted to create. He wants to share that with Chicago, “He was kind of special—Larry’s right- “After a couple months, I couldn’t even get talk to us after that.” and he’s so persistent.” hand guy,” Cain says. Because Sherman had regular money to put in the Cadillac, never Oakes found Shannon because of his CAN a bad reputation in the business—a long list mind my station wagon,” Shannon says. hen Shannon burned bridges with TV show. “It was crazy—there was this rotat- of artists didn’t want to work with him— He’d sometimes have to ask his family for one of the most influential labels in ing head, it was super lo-fi , and it was just him Shannon’s job was often an uphill climb. As gas money just to get to Trax headquarters. WChicago house, his career predict- playing weird videos in his basement with a Michaelangelo Matos wrote in the 2015 book Eventually he reached his breaking point with ably suffered. He wouldn’t have label repre- camera on himself,” he says. “He would just The Underground Is Massive: How Electronic Sherman. “They had some kind of crazy falling sentation again till Oakes found him in the fl ash up a number there and beg people to call Dance Music Conquered America, “Allegations out,” Cain says. “Whatever that was.” mid-2000s. A few years before that, Shannon him.” of Sherman’s business tactics run rampant Trax had the only operational record started selling self-released CDs by promoting Shannon’s recent episodes lean heavily on where and whenever he is discussed—with presses in town, and Shannon believes that them on MySpace. He’d buy cheap CD-Rs from music videos, which he breaks up with short artists persistently raising questions about Sherman was running a vinyl bootlegging op- Best Buy, slap homemade labels on them, and skits recorded with his iPhone. “His shows are copyright grants and royalty payments.” eration on the side. He says he took an incrim- put them out through a new imprint he J
ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 29 continued from 29 there and blow it, but on the other hand, back the bathroom while he’s working at the library “It was like, ‘Wow, somebody’s not slapping me called Marcuss Mixxed Up Records. The CDs when he was drinking really hard, he would or the Cultural Center. (Grant also makes ap- around saying, “Well, you’re Marcus Mixx, you were part of a series titled Legal Volume—a just drink through that money.” pearances in Shannon’s YouTube videos and did this, you did this, and you screwed it up.”’ I dig at pirated editions of his older material. Shannon has been sober since 2014, but social-media posts.) But some misfortunes already know that. They really helped me.” “A lot of guys try to bootleg his stu , many he says he used to black out regularly from nobody has been able to help him through. He wasn’t making enough money from his times, or take advantage of him,” Oakes says. drinking. After such an episode about ten When Shannon’s family home was foreclosed music or his video work to support himself For more than ten years, Let’s Pet Puppies re- years ago, he came back to himself at Stroger on in 2008, he went to live with his father, who once he got out, but he didn’t want to ask leases of Shannon’s music have helped stamp Hospital. “When I woke up, they said, ‘We su ered from dementia. his family for help. Within a month or so he out bootleggers, and they continue to provide need to tell you this, blah blah blah, you’ve got “He would sing ‘Love Me Tender’ over and landed at the Pacifi c Garden Mission homeless him with a small income. Oakes periodically something called epilepsy,’” Shannon says. He over and over—he’d sing it for four or five shelter, a few blocks north of Head Studios’ sends money through PayPal too: “If I give takes an anticonvulsant called Dilantin, but hours straight,” Oakes says. original Pilsen location. him three or four hundred bucks on records, he still occasionally has seizures. Oakes sends His father’s deterioration took a toll on Over the years Oakes has given Shannon that’s fi ne,” he says. “But it’s more like, every Shannon money when his Obamacare plan and Shannon too. “I just watched him slip, so that several computers—two PCs, a Mac Mini, and other week I give him 25 bucks.” (Shannon Medicaid assistance aren’t enough to help him got me even more depressed,” he says. Shan- his wife’s old laptop. After Shannon left rehab, opened a checking account with TCF Bank a ord the medicine. non looked after his father until his death in Oakes eventually bought him another laptop, about 15 years ago, but only so he could link it Around the time of his diagnosis, Shannon 2011, then moved in with his brother, Corey. He but at first he didn’t have a machine of his to PayPal.) either blacked out or had a seizure (he’s not lived in the basement of Corey’s family’s house own. Shannon started making tracks on public Unfortunately, for years Shannon often sure which) and knocked out two of his upper for a few years, but that arrangement came computers on the third floor of the Harold spent much of those funds on alcohol. “I’d have, incisors. Oakes took care of getting him dental to a mutually agreed-upon end in 2014, after Washington Library, using a free Web-based like, two 30-packs a day, no problem,” he says. implants. “He came out of the blue one day and he was caught urinating in the oven while music-programming tool called Soundation. Oakes noticed. “When I would get money said, ‘We’re going to the dentist and see what sleepwalking. Often he’d tag them on Soundcloud and Mix- in, I would give him lump sums that would go they can do,’” Shannon recalls. “I think it was Shannon immediately checked into rehab cloud with the phrase “Home Is Where House poof really quick,” he says. “Sometimes I’d be five grand.” He’s since lost the left implant, for 30 days at the John J. Madden Mental Is.” French producer Joseph Bendavid heard like, ‘Hey man, you have 800 bucks here, can I which he says “wiggled loose.” Health Center in Hines, Illinois, taking only a some of those tracks and o ered to put them get you the best laptop I can possibly get you?’ Shannon calls Oakes his best friend. Gal- small bag of clothes and leaving all his other out through his Skylax label. Shannon needed He’s like, ‘Yes.’ I tried to get tools that would legos is his best friend too, he says, and so is belongings at his brother’s place. He says he money and an ego boost, and he says he sold help him make more money instead of just a homeless man named Grant who watches hasn’t had a drink since. “It was refreshing—it 50 songs to Bendavid for $75. (Ben david hasn’t giving him cash. He’s not the kind to go out Shannon’s bag and laptop when he has to use was like a mental bowel movement,” he says. replied to an e-mail requesting confi rmation
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30 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll Marcus “Mixx” Shannon on CAN TV, probably in the late 1980s—toward the beginning of his decades-long relationship with the network
of those numbers.) In 2016, Skylax released bought him broke, she got him a new one. two volumes of Home Is Where House Is, both “Working with him is a joy—he’s so respon- as 12-inch EPs. sive, he gets everything done really quickly, and he’s super enthusiastic,” she says. Gomez fter moving out of his brother’s place, isn’t the only one who’s been impressed: Cain, Shannon barely spoke to him. But in who rebooted Trax Records in 2007 and has AJanuary 2018, Shannon was stabbed run the label ever since, hired Shannon ear- in the stomach while peeing at a urinal at the lier this month to help edit the long-running Walls Memorial shelter. He spent a few days Cable25 program Trax TV. at Stroger Hospital, undergoing two surgeries Even after years of homelessness, Shannon that left him with a five-inch scar above his didn’t seriously consider turning to crowd- navel and a smaller one to its upper right. He funding till early this year. “I think it was a badly needed a source of stability in his life, pride thing,” he says. “I was afraid I wouldn’t and he broke years of silence to call his brother. get anything, and it would be more of a mental Corey helped Shannon get a job working an stress type thing—‘Wow, I suck that bad.’” overnight shift at an Amazon warehouse in Shannon has been looking at apartments Romeoville. He also found Shannon a place in that will allow him to sign a short-term lease Gary, Indiana, rooming with another Amazon without presenting pay stubs. He says he’s got employee he knew, in part by o ering to chip leads on places in Garfi eld Park and Chatham. in on rent himself. But within a couple months, He needed a new bank account in order to col- Shannon says, his housemate was acting lect the money from his GoFundMe, but after erratically and frequently badgering him for he created a savings account at Capital One, it money. Shannon had to rely on his housemate took three weeks for the bank card to arrive at to get to work, so when he moved out of the the homeless shelter. house, he was forced to quit the job. He re- For as long as Shannon had the family home turned to the shelter where he’d been stabbed. to fall back on, it didn’t matter much that Shannon’s Facebook update about the his income was spotty and meager. But once attack helped bring him another windfall, he lost that safety net, he discovered how though: while he was still in Gary last winter, biased every public and private bureaucracy it caught the attention of Pepper Gomez, who is against the impoverished. After years of hired him to edit videos for Wake Up! Music. struggling with those systems and getting She’d never met Shannon, but they had mutual nowhere, he’s willing to consider even a small friends from the house scene. She decided to step a triumph. “I want an apartment that’s take a chance on him. “I think it was a culmi- made for individual dwelling, where I can have nation of, basically, seeing the challenges that a key,” he says. “I’m not gonna have live music he was going through, and learning about his up—I don’t have any pets, I don’t smoke, I mad skills and talent,” she says. won’t have people over. Like R.E.M., that’s me Gomez insisted on paying Shannon more in the corner.” v than he was asking for via Cheap, but Not Cheap Video. And when the laptop Oates had @imleor ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 31 Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of February 28 ®
MUSIC b ALLAGESF
THURSDAY28 PICK OF THE WEEK Kahil El’Zabar’s Ethnic Heritage This Ensemble 7 PM, Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park, Saturday! Chicago punks Absolutely Not are creepier $10-$18. b March 2 than ever on Problematic Amid Chicago’s vast pool of talent are a handful of jazz-related percussionists subject to some com- Vic bination of local renown and international atten- Theatre tion. They include Hamid Drake and Avreeayl Ra— each an integral part of the city’s most adventurous wing of astral-reaching jazz—as well as drum- mer Kahil El’Zabar, who’s been performing and recording since the early 70s and has counted Tickets available for saxophonist David Murray and violinist Billy Bang as collaborators. With his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble the 2nd Show at 10pm (just one of his enduring troupes), El’Zabar has 7:30pm Show is Sold Out! been able to take on various sonic personas over the years. That’s partially because of his group’s shi ing lineup, but also because of his willingness and ability to experiment—he moves effortlessly between the kit, the mbira, and various other percussion instruments. His latest iteration of the group, a trio with trumpeter Corey Wilkes and baritone saxophonist Alex Harding, takes histori- cal stock of jazz while affi rming the genre’s destiny on the upcoming Be Known: Ancient/Future/Music (Spiritmuse). On the album, tunes paying tribute to writers and jazz luminaries (including a shout-out to Pharoah Sanders) sit alongside El’Zabar’s revisiting of Eddie Harris’s “Freedom Jazz Dance.” Though it’s a well-worn standard, it’s clearly important to the bandleader—in 1999 he chose it for the title and opening track of an EHE album for Delmark. On Be Known, the group also explore muscular, kit- driven sounds, with Wilkes’s assured statements bolstered by boisterous rhythms from Harding and cellist Ian Maksin (who isn’t touring with the band) Riviera while El’Zabar swings deeply behind it all. Though Theatre it might seem anachronistic to see creative music and improvisation through a historic lens, El’Zabar’s This Saturday! March 2 vision and commitment over decades of musical exploration have enabled the art of Ethnic Heritage Ensemble to fl ourish. And it seems that there’s still plenty of ancient history to heave into the future too. —D C
MARISAKLUGMORATAYA A N P M N M Mike Krol The Steve Adamyk Band and Sat 3/2, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $5. 21+ Graham Hunt Gemini City open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. 21+
Mike Krol makes the kind of distorted pop-rock that’s so sunny it’s liable to burn you till your skin LOCAL PUNKS ABSOLUTELY NOT have never been the type of band to put out accessi- peels. He’s a devoted student of the decades-old ble music. Their early releases showcased fairly standard garage punk, but they topped magic that allows punk fury and pop sweetness to coexist, which is why the songs on his fourth album, everything o with a serious dose of spazzy harshness. On their brand-new third album, January’s Power Chords (Merge), feel familiar at fi rst Problematic (No Trend), the band—vocalist and guitarist Donnie Moore, vocalist and listen. And though the relatively languid beachside keyboardist Madison Moore, drummer Santiago Guerrero, and Meat Wave front man tune “Blue and Pink” tips its hat to the long- standing fascination that Beach Boys-style surf-rock Chris Sutter newly appointed on second guitar—take the eerie dissonance they hinted has with the sand and ocean, when Krol sings about at on their previous releases and push it to the brink, hammering out obtuse, disjointed, wanting to feel palm trees fall and fl atten his body paranoia-inducing, sci-fi new-wave punk, and cramming more bad energy than should be it’s clear he knows that even paradise can fail to cure what ails him. Krol ain’t trying to reinvent the legal into two-and-a-half-minute songs. The tracks on Problematic are so dark and unset- wheel, he’s just trying to outdo himself: he wants his rock to hit harder and more accurately, and his mel- BUY tling it’s easy to forget how fun the band are at their core. But Absolutely Not are always TICKETS high-energy and upbeat—even through their most dystopian moods—so come dance your odies to linger longer. He’s true to the history and AT spirit of 60s rock culture, but also knows he needs ass o as the world burns around you. —L C to futz around with it; when he interrupts the furi- 32 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll MUSIC N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG . .
Mike Krol JUST ADDED ON SALE THIS FRIDAY! BRIANGUIDO hip-hop aesthetics into their sound will fall into that odd frat-rock zone occupied by jam bands and New Season of World Music Dave Matthews acolytes. Manwolves, started as an Wednesdays & Global Dance Parties! after-school activity by Evanston Township High School students in 2012, have sidestepped such FOR TICKETS, VISIT OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG a cheesy fate, at least for the time being. On Sep- tember’s self-released A Safety Meeting, they per- SATURDAY, MARCH PM form with uniform tightness while wading through languid melodies. They o en play with a comfort- Fifth House Ensemble ing touch; their gentle horns are equal parts jazz and adult contemporary, and sometimes their gui- and Alash present tars take shimmering yacht-rock dives. Front man In Szold Hall Jamie McNear is responsible for much of the hip- Sonic Meditations ous fuzz of “Little Drama” for an oh-so-clean chorus $4,000 coffi n). There seems to be a constant circus hop feel on A Safety Meeting, even when he’s not and a limber Krautrock bridge, he supersizes the surrounding Kiss, whether it’s reports of an intra- explicitly rapping. The infl ection in his soulful drawl THURSDAY, MARCH PM song’s sense of urgency. —L G band feud, lawsuits between current and former on the slack “Georgia Peach” shows he understands members, viral videos of Paul Stanley’s hilarious how the lines between rapping and singing have Habib Koité & stage banter, or outrageous and questionable polit- increasingly blurred—an evolution that has quick- Bassekou Kouyate ical statements. And with all that crap out there, it ened from Atlanta’s post-Future era to today’s becomes hard to remember that at one point many, Soundcloud scene. It’s the kind of small detail that SATURDAY2 FRIDAY, MARCH & PM many years ago, Kiss were actually an amazing band suggests bands like Manwolves could play an even Absolutely NOt See Pick of the Week, (though their last front-to-back great album, Love bigger role in the shape of hip-hop in years to come. page 32. Paper Mice and No Men open. 8:30 PM, Gun, came out 42 years ago). The fi rst bunch of —L G The Earls of Leicester Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $5. 21+ Kiss records were ham-fi sted, hard-rocking, glam featuring Jerry Douglas, Shawn Camp, Charlie Cushman, Johnny Warren, and Jeff White joyrides that heavily tipped a mirrored top hat to Slade and Sweet. Unlike their infl uences, Kiss had Black Diamond 6 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Kiss 7:30 PM, United Center, 1901 W. Madison, no fi nesse, but that was fi ne because they had Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b SUNDAY, MARCH & PM $54.50-$264.50. b plenty of irresistible hooks—and when you have the high-gain guitar acrobatics of Ace Frehley up front Black Diamond recorded their brand-new album, Steep Canyon Rangers The makeup, the pyrotechnics, the guitars that in the mix, it’s easy to ignore the limp drumming of Chant (Shifting Paradigm), during a five-week shoot fi reworks, the blood spitting, the levitating Peter Criss. Though the farewell tour focuses on residency at beloved Logan Square venue the SATURDAY, MARCH PM band members, the fi re breathing, the glitz, the that classic era, mixed reviews are already rolling Whistler. But rather than host a traditional release glamour, the rock ’n’ rolling every night and the in—the most common criticism being the suspected show, the two-tenor-saxophone quartet, co-led Sam Bush partying every day . . . a er 46 years, it’s all coming use of prerecorded vocal tracks. But no matter what by Artie Black and Hunter Diamond, are taking to an end, apparently, as Kiss—one of the most else happens, the band will undoubtedly blow up a part in a multidisciplinary event called Zoetic: A SATURDAY, MARCH PM ridiculous rock spectacles ever to exist—embark on bunch of shit onstage—and with Kiss, that’s most of Celebration of Visual, Aural, and Botanic Art. Just their farewell tour. This won’t be the fi rst time Kiss the fun. —L C as Chicago’s jazz circles constantly break down bar- DBUK have claimed to be hanging up their seven-inch riers between genres, Zoetic hopes to break down Slim Cessna's Auto Club with Norman Westberg platform-heel boots—they originally said their 2000 barriers between artistic communities; its organiz- of Swans • In Szold Hall reunion tour would be their last. But if there’s any Manwolves Floof and Family Reunion open. ers realize how easy it can be to stay within one art more money to milk out of the band, you can believe 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $10. 17+ circle. “The ultimate goal here is to celebrate new SUNDAY, MARCH PM that bassist Gene Simmons will be squeezing with works in a space and manner that will invite tangen- all his might to get at every last dime (a er all, this There’s a dangerously high likelihood that a group tial sectors of Chicago’s creative arts communities Graham Nash is the man who’s stamped the band’s name on a of white guys who heavily incorporate rapping and together,” Diamond says. The group conjure a J at the Athenaeum Theatre, N Southport Ave
THURSDAY, MARCH :PM Avishai Cohen Quartet at Constellation, N Western Ave
FRIDAY, MARCH PM
Glen Phillips In Szold Hall
SATURDAY, MARCH PM Garnet Rogers La Juan D’Arienzo Orquesta Tipica with special guest Crys Matthews • In Szold Hall LIVE ART TANGO FAIR FRIDAY, MARCH 8 NORTH SHORE CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS IN SKOKIE, IL WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE Performed by the amazing Orquesta Tipica La Juan D’Arienzo (Argentina), accompanied by the world-class Tango dancers: Celina Rotundo and Hugo Paytn Flamenco Eñe: Diego Guerrero (Argentina), Lorena Gonzalez Cattaneo and Gaston Camejo (Argentina/Uruguay), Flamenco Eñe: Maria Terremoto Lena and Oleg Mashkovich (USA). part of the Chicago Flamenco Festival WWW.NORTHSHORECENTER.ORG/EVENT/TANGO-ONE-EMOTION OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 33 Est.Est.1954 1954 Celebrating over 6165 years of service service to Chicago! 1800 W. DIVISION (773) 486-9862 MUSIC Come enjoy one of Chicago’s finest beer gardens! continued from 33 FEBRUARYSEPTEMBERJAFEBRUARYNUARY 11...... 20 23 28 ...... MIKEDA HIATTVID QUINN FLABBYDUNLAP FELTEN HOFFMAN SHOW 8PM playful spirit through their performance, and that’ll SEPTEMBERMARCH 1 21 .....WAGNER TOURS & MORSE JANUARY 12...... STATE AMERICANOF EMERGENCY DRAFT be matched tonight by an exhibition featuring visu- FEBRUARYSEPTEMBERJAMARCHNUARY 13...... 2 22 24 .....THE ..... SUNNDOGDADYRKNAMOS DJRO SKIDOM LICIOUS MEN SEPTEMBERJANUARY 14...... 23 ....WHOLESOMERADIOR.WHITEWOLFSONICPRINCESS AVENUETONY DO DJRO NIGHTSARIO GROUP al art from Marine Tempels (who created the album MURPHYCHIDITAROD THOMPSON 9:30PM JAMARCHNUARY 17...... 3 AJMOJO ROSALESJA 49MIE WAGNER & FRIENDS covers for Chant and Black Diamond’s 2017 debut, MIKEDAVID FELTEN BRAVOS Mandala) and a botanic installation from Ebimera FEBRUARYJAMARCHNUARY 18...... 4 25 .....WHOLESOMERADIOTHE CHICAGO RON MIKEAND SKYLINERS RACHEL FELTON SHOW BIG DJ BAND NIGHT 7PM SEPTEMBERJANUARY 19...... 24 .....RCPROSPECT BIG BAND SITU 7PMAT FOURION DAV 9PMID Vines founder Nyabweza Itaagi. Black Diamond’s MARCH 6 MORSEMAXLIELLIAM & WAGNER ANNA FEBRUARYMARCH 7 26 .....RCBIRDGANGS SMILIN’ BIG BOBBY 9:30PMBAND AND 7PM THE CLEMTONES program will include selections from the album JAMARCHNUARY 20...... 8 TITTY THE CITTY ACOUSTIPUNKS FIRST WARD PROBLEMS RADIO FREE BERWYN (recontextualized and reworked for the event), FEBRUARYJAMARCHNUARY 21...... 9 28 .....PETERDUDE THE SAME STREETSTO CASANONY DO AREROVASARIO ONQUARTET FIRE GROUP 8PM SEPTEMBERJANUARY 22...... 26 .....PETERYURI’S CASANOVA RC BIRTHDAY BIG QUARTETBAND PARTY 7PM improvisations infl uenced by the visual and botan- MARCHSEPTEMBERMARCH 1...... SMILIN’ 10 27 .....DORIANHEISENBERGTAJ BOBBY UNCERTAINTY AND THE PLAYERS CLEMTONES 7PM JAMARCHNUARY 24...... 11 RC BIG PETER BAND CASONO 7PM VA QUARTET ic art around them, and a piece by Diamond that SEPTEMBERJANUARY 25...... 28 .....TOURSJON RARICK THE WICK NONET 9PM MARCHMARCH 2...... ICE 12 BULLY FLABBY PULPITBO XHOFFMAN AND BIG SHOW HOUSE 8PM deals with the theme of sustainable urban agricul- SEPTEMBERJAMARCHNUARY 26...... 13 29 .....SOMEBODY’S ELIZABETH’S THE SINSHEPKATS CRAZY LITTLE THING FEATURINGSKIPPIN’ MISSRO JACKIECK 9PM ture. Chant proudly wears its creators’ influences MARCH 3...... CHIDITARODFEATURING JOE LANASA AND TARRINGTON 10PM SEPTEMBERJASATURDAYNUARY 27...... 30 .....OFF 3/2/19 THE VINE THE CHIDITAROD 4:30PM STRAY BOLTS XIV 12PM on its sleeve; “Henrylle” was created in response MARCHJANUARY 7...... 28...... NUCLEARJAMIE WHOLESOMERADIO JAZZWA QUARKTETGNER & 7:30PM FRIENDS DJ NIGHT to a performance by saxophonist Bill McHenry and EVERYOPENEVERY MIC TUESD TUESD HOSTEDAY (EXCEPT BY MIKE 2ND) 2ND) &ATAT MIKE8PM8PM drummer Andrew Cyrille. At the same time it shows OPENON TUESDAY MIC HOSTED EVENINGS BY JIMIJON (EXCEPT AMERICA 2ND) an evolution of the band’s tenor-heavy style, which blurs composition and improvisation. But no matter which direction the quartet or its individual mem- bers go, their music always has a warm, welcoming feeling—hearing it is like running into an old friend who’s ecstatic to see you. And at Zoetic, they’re sure to affirm the importance of discovering the commonalities between mediums that are bound by creativity and growth. —I Y SUNDAY3 Mykele Deville Sam Trump, Jovan Landry, and Daryn Alexus open. 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $15, 18+
Any media outlet referencing west-side native Mykele Deville should be required to include a brief of his CV, partially because he’s established himself as profi cient in several roles: poet, actor, educator, and rapper. And with the remarkable growth he shows on his new seven-song album, Maintain (on
local DIY label No Trend), I imagine Deville’s name which closes with a spoken-word piece by Deville’s will be on even more people’s lips soon. He sounds Growing Concerns Poetry Collective collaborator so confident on the mike it’s as if he’d dropped McKenzie Chinn. —L G his debut mixtape, 2016’s Super Predator, three decades ago instead of barely three years ago. He’s evolving into a sophisticated spitter who’s able to bust out an occasional chopperesque rhythm with MONDAY4 stylish swing before smoothly pivoting into a slow- er fl ow, as he does on the saxophone-heavy “Free Don Dietrich See also Tuesday. 7 PM, Soul.” Lyrically, Deville confronts self-doubt, rac- Experimental Sound Studio, 5925 N. Ravenswood, ism, and the injustices late capitalism imposes upon $10, $8 students and members. b individuals struggling to voice their own agency— and on the title traack, he does it all in one song. Many of the best sounds in music come from push- Tight and concise, Maintain shows how maintain- ing a piece of equipment past its limits. Obvi- ing multiple artistic practices can improve your ous examples include what Jimi Hendrix creat- Mykele Deville ZAKKIYYAHNAJEEBAH creative strengths and broaden your artistic vision. ed with his electric guitar and amplifier and what This is most obvious on “Loosies + Poem for Us,” King Tubby coaxed from a mixing board. Just as 34 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard. MUSIC
mind-blowing are the sonorities that Don Diet- witness to the death of the planet itself. They’ve rich and Jim Sauter, Dietrich’s partner in the long- paced the story brilliantly: savage beats and shred- running ensemble Borbetomagus (which also ding evoke the desperate desire to hang on to life; includes guitarist Donald Miller), obtain from their guest appearances from horn and string players saxophones. For 40 years these musicians have add poignant, emotional elements. The live expe- combined the overtones and multiphonics first rience won’t be exactly like the studio version, of exploited by saxophonists such as Albert Ayler course, but it should get close. Patrick Corona of and Pharoah Sanders with overdriven effects and Cyborg Octopus will fi ll in on sax for Zach Sprouse, maxed-out amplification—the results come across a friend of the band who often plays on their like fi eld recordings of the destruction of a city by records. —M K giant monster-movie insects. Though Borbetoma- gus don’t play very o en these days, Dietrich has explored similarly blasted territory on his own and in partnerships with a small number of like-minded WEDNESDAY6 musicians. Chief among his projects is New Monu- ments, a trio with drummer Ben Hall and violinist- PLanes Mistaken for Stars Airstream vocalist C. Spencer Yeh that combines electroni- Futures and Canadian Rifl e open. 8 PM, cally shredded tonalities with breakneck momen- Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $12. 17+ tum. Last September, when Dietrich was scheduled for a solo appearance at Experimental Sound Stu- Listening to the 1999 self-titled debut EP by Planes Robyn dio’s Option series—which presents musicians play- Mistaken for Stars feels like taking a bullet train TOM ØVERLIE ing and then speaking about their work in an inti- back to the year it was released. The record’s twin- mate setting—the performance was canceled due kly guitars, vocals that mix anguished croons and kind of party it is. With her 2010 trio of Body Talk Where crescendos and towering hooks define to weather-induced travel delays. So on this visit to explosive shrieks, and urgent, vaguely poetic lyr- releases, the Swedish dance-pop phenomenon Body Talk, on Honey she glides rather than stomps Chicago, he’ll perform twice: once to make up for ics are clear hallmarks of that specific moment in unleashed a rank of futuristic club bangers, several through choruses—tracks such as “Missing U” and the canceled solo appearance, and the next night emotional hardcore. The past couple of years have of which, including “Dancing on My Own” and “Call “Because It’s in the Music” melt forward, more sub- with New Monuments. —B M brought renewed interest in bands from the same Your Girlfriend,” are still rightfully queued up on tle in their dance-pop moves and moods. And awe- time period. But while groups such as Majority TouchTunes jukeboxes as a way to boost bar vibes some closer “Ever Again” is damn near future funk Rule, City of Caterpillar, and Jerome’s Dream had when bar vibes are badly in need of boosting. But in its struts. As a result, Honey is a chill, cohesive brief runs, split up in the early 00s, and are now Robyn’s most recent full-length, 2018’s Honey (Kon- record that feels personal far beyond its lyrics. — TUESDAY5 making their comebacks with reunion tours, Planes ichiwa), simmers and writhes in its own restraint. K W v Mistaken for Stars have remained active over the New Monuments with Don Dietrich See years (aside from a couple of short breaks in the Monday. 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10. b late 00s). More than that, they’ve been an ongo- AVAILABLE NOW ing concern for more than two decades—a centu- TBS ULL lmlA8TT ry in punk years—and they’ve stayed fresh too. On BOB KOESTER'S ���]BE�LL� Rivers of Nihil Entheos, Conjurer, Wolf King, their most recent album, 2016’s Prey, they incorpo- BLUES & JAZZ MART a I and Cannibal Abortion open. 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock rate posthardcore- meets-Thin-Lizzy-style riff age and - 3419 W. IRVING PARK RD • CHICAGO, IL - 10:30-6:30 Monday - Saturday LURRIETribute BELL to Carey & THE Bell (DE 855) Club, 2105 S. State, $17, $15 in advance. 17+ slurred noise-rock yowls, dragging their emo roots special sales for february BELL(NOMINATED DYNASTY FOR 2 BMA through the mud. Though Prey came out a little • AWARDS) On their current tour, Pennsylvania’s fast-rising more than two years ago, the unease and fury that • • technical death-metal stars Rivers of Nihil are try- pulse through every song remain as resonant as 30 % off on all anthologies ing their hand at the full-album-set format, focus- ever. Tonight’s show is their only headlining date on on CD and LP (great way to experience jazz ing on last spring’s mesmerizing Where Owls Know this tour. —E B Celebration of De/mark's My Name (Metal Blade). The traditional surprise- you haven't tried) 25% off all second- TRIBUTE65th Anniversary set-list show has its advantages for sure, but it’s hand CDs (LIMITED EDITION) good to see this format getting so much traction Robyn 7 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 1106 W. All rock is 1/2 price and classical LPs for new releases as well as old classics. Rivers of Lawrence, sold out. 18+ and CDs are 99 cents what other record store has Jazz at Massey Hall, LPs in 5 Nihil’s third full-length is a fantastic candidate for places under Dizzy, Bird, Bud Powell, Max Roach and Mingus this treatment: it’s a loose concept album about the There’s never much debate about whether or not a last human on earth, who’s made immortal to bear new Robyn album is a party—it’s rather about what BOB'S BLUES & JAZZ MART | FIND US ON FACEBOOK CALL 773-549-5002
LHST 30/10 PRESENTS: LINCOLN2424 N LINCOLN AVE HALL SCHUBAS3159 N SOUTHPORT AVE Celebrating 30 years at Schubas and 10 years at Lincoln Hall 03.02 - AND THE KIDS 03.02 - WAY DOWN WANDERERS MAR17 03.04 - JUSTIN NOZUKA 03.03 - MYKELE DEVILLE 03.08 - LIZ COOPER & THE STAMPEDE 03.04 - THE BUGLE LIVE The Ike Reilly Assassination 03.09 - NOBIGDYL. 03.07 - ALL THEM WITCHES APR01 03.10 - WESTERMAN + PUMA BLUE 03.15 - BRONZE RADIO RETURN Open Mike Eagle 03.14 - BEACH BUNNY SOLO 03.16 - CASS MCCOMBS 03.15 - GIRL K [ALBUM RELEASE] 03.28 - HAELOS SPONSORED BY: APR16 03.17 - EZRA COLLECTIVE 04.19 - STEVE GUNN of Montreal 03.22 - ELUJAY 04.20 - THE MURLOCHS MAY26 04.01 - OPEN MIKE EAGLE 04.22 - PRIESTS Mudhoney 04.28 - KATIE VON SCHLEICHER 05.01 - DENGUE FEVER STAY TUNED FOR MORE TICKETS AND INFO AT WWW.LH-ST.COM ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 35 CHICAGOSHOWSYOUSHOULDKNOWABOUTINTHEWEEKSTOCOME
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Higher WOLFBYKEITHHERZIK Brothers Ezra Collective 3/17, 8 PM, Never miss COURTESY Schubas, 18+ a show again. CODAAGENCY Flesh Eaters 3/10, 8 PM, Lin- coln Hall Sign up for the Flipper 6/28, 8 PM, Reggie’s newsletter at Rock Club, 17+ chicagoreader. Florence & the Machine, GOSSIP Blood Orange 5/23, 7:30 PM, com/early Huntington Bank Pavilion God Is an Astronaut 9/25, WOLF 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ T.S.O.L. 5/31, 7 PM, Reggie’s Goddamn Gallows, Scott H. Music Joint A furry ear to the ground of Biram 4/6, 7 PM, Reggie’s Turnover, Turnstile, Reptaliens Rock Club, 17+ 5/2, 6 PM, Concord Music the local music scene Gooch Palms 3/24, 9 PM, Hall b Empty Bottle Xiu Xiu 5/17, 9 PM, Empty DECADES OF PLAYING together have Steve Gunn, Gun Outfi t 4/19, Bottle 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Yheti 5/3, 10 PM, Bottom given percussionists Hamid Drake and Hatebreed, Obituary, Terror Lounge, 17+ Adam Rudolph an almost clairvoyant 4/11, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Yob, Voivod 3/27, 8 PM, Thalia rapport. They met as teens at a Chicago Hall, 17+ Hall, 17+ drum shop, and in the 70s they formed Health 4/20, 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b the Mandingo Griot Society with Gambi- Peter Hook & the Light 11/1, SOLD OUT an kora player Foday Musa Suso . Rudolph 9 PM, Metro, 18+ moved to New York in the 80s, but he Iceage, Nadah El Shazly 5/7, American Football 3/30, 9 PM, and Drake have continued to collaborate, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Metro, 18+ Iron Maiden 8/22, 7:30 PM, Avey Tare 4/6, 7 PM, Co-Pros- most notably in Moving Pictures. Last Lithics 6/22, 8:30 PM, Empty Empire of the Sun 5/30-6/1, Hollywood Casino Amphithe- perity Sphere b May, they recorded improvisations at NYC NEW Bottle 8 PM, Metro, 5/30-31 sold atre, Tinley Park Andrew Bird 4/2-3, 7:30 PM, venue the Stone with saxophonist and Nils Lofgren Band 5/12-13, out, 6/1 added, on sale Fri 3/1, Jamestown Revival 8/9, 8 PM, Green Mill fl utist Dave Liebman, an NEA Jazz Master Accidentals 6/20, 8 PM, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale 10 AM, 18+ Lincoln Hall, 18+ Casey 5/24, 7 PM, Bottom SPACE, Evanston, on sale Thu 2/28, noon b Sunn O))), Papa M 4/19 and Japanese Breakfast 3/12, Lounge b whose arid, biting timbres grace fusion- Fri 3/1, 10 AM b Bruno Major 5/4, 8 PM, Lincoln 4/22, 7 PM, Rockefeller 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Daughters, Wolf Eyes, Hide era Miles Davis classics such as On the Cisco Adler 4/30, 7 PM, Hall, on sale Fri 3/1, 10 AM b Memorial Chapel, 4/19 sold Jerusalem in My Heart 3/26, 3/8, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Corner and Dark Magus (among hundreds Schubas, on sale Fri 3/1, bea miller 4/24, 7:30 PM, out, 4/22 added 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Dave Davies 4/20, 8 PM, of other albums). Last week, UK label Rare 10 AM b Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 3/1, Stephen Kellogg 3/22, 9 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Adrian Belew 10/3, 8 PM, 10 AM b Lincoln Hall, 18+ Distillers, Starcrawler 5/22, Noise Records dropped a full-length from SPACE, Evanston, on sale PJ Morton, Amours 4/30, UPCOMING King Buff alo 3/15, 9:30 PM, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ the sessions, Chi, which blends a dizzy- Fri 3/1, noon b 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Hideout Dream Syndicate, Eleventh ing array of tones and colors, including Big Thief, Palehound 10/18, Thu 2/28, noon b Acid Mothers Temple, Yaman- King Crimson 9/10, 8 PM, Audi- Dream Day 5/31-6/1, 8 PM, Drake’s trap set and booming frame drum 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 3/1, Open Mike Eagle, Sammus, taka // Sonic Titan 4/13, torium Theatre Hideout 10 AM, 18+ Video Dave 4/1, 8 PM, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle King Gizzard & the Lizard Bryan Ferry 8/1, 7:30 PM, Chi- and Rudolph’s hand percussion and elec- Black Coff ee 5/11, 9 PM, Con- Schubas, 18+ Aesthetic Perfection 10/5, Wizard 8/24, 7:30 PM, Aragon cago Theatre tronics. On “Emergence,” Liebman’s sax- cord Music Hall, 18+ Palms 4/15, 8 PM, Schubas b 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Ballroom b FKJ 5/17, 8 PM, Concord Music ophone and recorder squirt and spray Sunni Colón 3/16, 8 PM, Sleep- Peelander-Z 5/1, 8 PM, Reg- Architects, Thy Art Is Murder La Luz 3/22, 9 PM, Sleeping Hall, 18+ around the duo to hypnotic eff ect. ing Village gie’s Music Joint 5/25, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Village Jess Glynne 3/30, 7:30 PM, J Fernandez, Coughy, Izzy Pelican, Young Widows, Cloak- Hall b Last Bison 4/7, 7 PM, Subterra- the Vic b Local riff fl ayers Sacred Monster have True 4/15, 8:30 PM, Empty room 6/29, 9 PM, Metro, on Baroness, Dea eaven 3/31, nean, 17+ Grandson 3/12, 7 PM, Reggie’s been playing their cartoonishly awesome, Bottle F sale Fri 3/1, 10 AM, 18+ 6:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Lemonheads, Tommy Stinson Rock Club b occult-obsessed thrashy doom metal FM-84 6/29, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, Tyler Ramsey 4/22, 8 PM, Basement, Nothing 5/24, 7 PM, 5/10, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Conan Gray 4/8, 7:30 PM, Bot- since 2012, but they’re only now dropping on sale Fri 3/1, 10 AM, 18+ Schubas Metro b Lord Huron, Bully 7/26, 8 PM, tom Lounge b Peter Frampton, Jason Bon- Lucy Roche & Suzzy Roche Andrew Belle 5/23, 8 PM, Lin- Chicago Theatre Beth Hart 4/25, 7:30 PM, Park their fi rst full-length! On Friday, March 1, ham’s Led Zeppelin Evening 4/6, 4 PM, Evanston History coln Hall, 18+ Lords of Acid, Orgy, Geni- West, 18+ they celebrate the self-released Worship 7/28, 7:30 PM, Huntington Center, Evanston b Better Oblivion Community torturers 3/7, 8 PM, Bottom Hives, Refused 5/20, 7 PM, the the Weird at Live Wire Lounge. Gossip Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 3/1, Royal Trux 5/12, 8:30 PM, Center 3/23, 8 PM, Lincoln Lounge, 17+ Vic, 18+ Wolf is going just to see if “Minister of 10 AM Empty Bottle Hall, 18+ Jeff Lynne’s ELO 6/27, 8 PM, Jungle, Houses 3/13, 9 PM, Fulcrum Point presents March Slightly Stoopid, Matisyahu, Black Lips, Fucked Up 4/27, United Center Metro, 18+ Screams” Adam Szczygieł always sounds Madness 3/20, 8:30 PM, Con- Tribal Seeds, Hirie 7/21, 6 PM, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Meat Wave 5/4, 8:30 PM, Lizzo 5/3-4, 8 PM, Riviera as freakin’ possessed as he does on the stellation, 18+ Huntington Bank Pavilion, on Black Moth Super Rainbow Sleeping Village Theatre b brutal stomper “High Confessor”! Robbie Fulks 5/19, 2 and 5 PM, sale Fri 3/1, 10 AM 3/20, 8 PM, Sleeping Village Misfi ts, Fear, Venom Inc. 4/27, Massive Attack 3/23, 8 PM, In December, label and promoter Feel- Evanston History Center, Smoking Popes 5/10-11, 8 PM, Cave Twins 4/3, 8 PM, 210 Live, 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Chicago Theatre Evanston b Bottom Lounge, 17+ Highwood Rosemont John Mayall 7/31, 8 PM, SPACE, Trip launched an Indiegogo campaign to Higher Brothers 5/10, 8 PM, Al Stewart 6/3, 8 PM, City Win- Chromatics, Desire, In Mirrors Mono, Emma Ruth Rundle Evanston cover unforeseen overhead for its new Concord Music Hall, on sale ery, on sale Thu 2/28, noon b 5/31, 9 PM, Park West, 18+ 6/15, 6 PM, Bohemian Nation- Mekons 7/12, 9 PM; 7/14, 8 PM, Avondale record store, No Requests Fri 3/1, 10 AM, 18+ Terror Jr 4/24, 6 PM, Chop Chvrches, Cherry Glazerr 5/2, al Cemetery b Hideout (3358 N. Karlov). Owners David Beltran Ìfe 5/9, 8 PM, Sleeping Village, Shop b 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ Monolord 4/26, 8:30 PM, Mumford & Sons 3/29, 7:30 PM, on sale Thu 2/28, 10 AM U.S. Girls 6/4, 8:30 PM, Empty Clan of Xymox, Bellwether Empty Bottle United Center and Diana Bowden soft launched the JR JR 6/13, 8 PM, Lincoln Bottle Syndicate 3/14, 8:30 PM, National Parks 4/13, 6 and MXPX, Five Iron Frenzy shop last week, and they throw a grand- Hall, 18+ Lizz Wright 5/14, 8 PM, City Thalia Hall, 17+ 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ 3/29-30, 8 PM, Bottom opening party Friday, March 1, with DJ Juice Wrld 5/30, 6:30 PM, Winery, on sale Thu 2/28, Cursive, Mewithoutyou, Willie Nile 4/6, 8 PM, City Lounge, 17+ sets by Composure Squad, Equator Club, Aragon Ballroom noon b Appleseed Cast 5/8, 8 PM, Winery b Lucy Roche & Suzzy Roche 4/7, Korn, Alice in Chains 8/21, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Molly Nilsson 3/20, 8:30 PM, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Johnny Walker, and DJ Hii, drinks by 6:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Dengue Fever 5/1, 9 PM, Lin- Empty Bottle Santigold 5/8, 8 PM, the Vic, 17+ Goose Island and Letherbee, and food by Ampitheatre, Tinley Park, on UPDATED coln Hall, 18+ Tobe Nwigwe 3/24, 8 PM, Lennon Stella, Valley 3/28, Your Filipina Lola. It’s all free and starts at sale Fri 3/1, 10 AM Luther Dickinson & Sisters of Thalia Hall, 17+ 7:30 PM, Metro b 5:30 PM. —JR N L G Brian Krock’s Liddle 5/17, Downlink, Al Ross, Eliminate, the Strawberry Moon 3/11, Graham Parker 4/18, 8 PM, Summer Walker, Maya B 3/21, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Phiso 6/14, 8 PM, Concord 8 PM, City Winery b City Winery b 7:30 PM, Metro b Sleepy LaBeef 3/21, 8:30 PM, Music Hall, rescheduled from Ex Hex, Moaning 4/10, 8 PM, Maceo Parker 6/13, 7 and 9 PM, Wallows 5/15, 7:30 PM, Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail FitzGerald’s, Berwyn 5/3, 18+ Thalia Hall, 17+ SPACE, Evanston b Metro b v [email protected].
36 CHICA O READER - FEBRUARY ll mgmt assessmnt, business mdl anlys, competitive positioning, JOBS accounting review, financl GENERAL mdlng, valuation, &investmnt due dilignce. Projct mng fi nan- Computer/IT: Kraft Heinz cl/audit, tax, & commrcldue By Dan Savage SAVAGE LOVE Foods Company seeks dilignce work streams w/ Associate Manager - IT EARLY responsblty for qlty & integrty Procurement, Global to work of due dilignce fi ndngs. Prtcpte in Chicago, IL & be responsible in transction prcs using expw/ WARNINGS for delivering & deploying new finance, capital & tax struc- NEVER MISS A SHOW AGAIN Global Procurement technology tures, legal doc, & regulatory CHICAGOREADER.COM/EARLY solutions for KHC Direct/ prcsng. Coord investmnt prcs, Indirect Procurement, including incl create work plans & direct implementation of future-state deal team activities, mng jr Gay-man (or woman) up KHC Procurement platform on team, produce update presen- the cloud, deployment of SAP tatns, compile final investmnt Advice for bi folks on coming out of the closet. STP processes internationally memo, & present to committee. & participation in the digital Monitor portfolio companies & transformation of KHC interface w/mgmt teams. Men- BS in Finance, Financial Mar- strategic and transactional tor & dvlp jrassocs. Exp req’d: kets or any other quantitative procurement processes. sourcing execs to invest behind discipline and 6 years related Degree & commensurate & IDing deals to invest in; IDing exp. Prior experience must exp. req’d. Apply online: & dvlpng creative investmnt : I’m a gay guy in my late about this arrangement for A: Secret second families— include the following: validate kraftheinzcompany.com/ info; conceptualizing viable components of mathematical 40s with a straight sister in four years, but has kept it and a secret boyfriend of applyNA.html at # R-15333 investmnt opps & structures; fi nancial models incorporating dvlpng &articulating investmnt her early 50s. She’s been four years counts—aren’t Monte Carlo routines, Cholesky a secret for the kids’ sake. TransUnion, LLC seeks opinions & pursuing these; algorithms and Principal Com- Senior Analysts – Info. Tech. workg w/srmgmt teams; dsgng married for a bit over two But she recently fi led for secrets that keep. I don’t ponent Analysis (3 yrs); man- for Chicago, IL location to & bldg cmplx mdls to anlyz age, research, model, develop decades to a guy who always divorce and told our parents think BIL is a closeted gay design, implement, & maintain investmntdecisions; & exp and validate interest rate risk, sw applications & IT infrastruc- using financl analyts to drive registered as a “possible” man. My money’s on closeted and liquidity risk using para- and me what’s been going ture. Master’s in Comp. Sci./ valuations & dvlpinvestmnt metric, historical and Monte Comp. Eng./related fi eld +2yrs recommendtns. Req Masters on my average-to-good on. Their kids have been bisexual man. Carlo VaR methods and model exp. or Bachelor’s in Comp. or frgn equiv in Bus Admin or FAS157 and FAS133 hedge gaydar. But I put “BIL,” informed about the divorce, In the world we live in now, Sci./Comp. Eng./related field rltd fl d, & at least 4 yrs exp as eff ectiveness calculation using +5yrs exp. req’d. Req’d skills: Investment Banking Analyst, aka my brother-in-law, in bisexuals are far less likely to Matlab and VBA (3 yrs); validate but not about their father’s 2yrs w/Ab-Initio, Linux, SQL, Private Equity Assoc, VP or rltd DFAST and CCAR stress test Oracle, DB2, Autosys, Unix occ in direct privateequity in- the “improbable” bucket boyfriend. be out than gays and lesbi- models and perform statistical Shell Scripts, Processing Large vesting / investmnt banking fl d. tests including Clayton copula because he actively wooed BIL needs to gay-man- ans, and the belief that a guy Data Sets (multi-terabyte), PDL, Trvl req domestic & intl(80%). replication and regressions, XFR Design. Send resume to: Send cv to [email protected]. my sister, was clearly in love up and admit the truth to is either gay or straight keeps R. Harvey, REF: AKM, 555 W in Matlab, R and VBA (2 yrs); perform valuation, calculate Adams, Chicago, IL 60661 Topiary Communications, Inc. with her, and fathered four himself and the rest of his many bisexual guys closet- P&L and accounting for seeks Software Developer in fixed income and derivative boys with her, all in their family and start the healing ed. Because if a bisexual guy Assoc Dir, Analytics: Lead Chicago, IL - Develop updated holdings as well as design and business analytics team in SW applications using ASP.Net, late teens now. It turns process. If BIL won’t do the who’s married to a woman development & delivery of data code proprietary valuation and
CLASSIFIEDS C# & SQL Server as a back-end accounting models in EXCEL driven marketing solutions for DB. Analyze SW Application out BIL has been far more right thing, my sister is going knows he’s going to be seen VBA (6 months). Send resume clients to improve marketing Requirements, GUI & CSS to [email protected]. “probable” than I thought. to have to tell the kids the as gay if he tells the truth—if performance & understanding Design, Web & DB level Cod- of consumer insights. Chicago, ing, version control & testing. no one will ever believe he ACCOUNTANT He has a boyfriend but is truth. What can I do to help IL location. Req’s MBA & 2 yrs Implement Stored Procedures, Bachelor’s deg in Accounting. exp as Analytics Mgr and/or Triggers, Joins & Views in SQL still very much closeted her with this? —D loved his wife or wanted all 40hr/wk. Mail Resume: Blue Optimization Testing Mgr. Send Server. Provide regression Island Lavanderia at 1847 Blue and denies he is gay. My G B --L those kids—he’s unlikely to resume to: VNC Communica- testing for legacy data. Reqs. Island Ave., Chicago, IL 60608 ever come out. JOBS tions, Inc. d/b/a Performics, Bachelor’s in CS, CIS, CE or sister has apparently known J 35 W Wacker Dr, Chicago, IL, rltd & 1-yr exp. in rltd SW devel- 60601, Attn: H. Blackston. oper occup. Mail resume to D. ADMINISTRATIVE Schramm, 211 W Wacker Drive, Architects. Highly experi- Suite 220, Chicago, IL 60606 REAL SALES & enced. Residential and Com- MARKETING mercial. Small projects wel- Vail Systems (Chicago, IL) ESTATE come. Zoning, Building Permit seeks Linux System Adminis- RENTALS services, Report/Consultation trator for implementing/main- FOOD & DRINK starting at $150. www.thdarch. taining/monitoring/designing/ com 312-361-1134 securing systems & voice BEDROOM SPAS & SALONS platforms w/strong high-avail- Management Analyst: de- ability requirements of a carri- BIKE JOBS velop, customize, modify and er-grade hosting environment. ONE BEDROOM $1500 1355 monitor management systems Position based out of Chicago, N. SANDBURG TERRACE GENERAL for the operation and fi nancial IL office but may require occ. #1907 AVAIL 4/1. PLEASE control of a food containers work from Deerfield, IL office. CONTACT DAVID 312 259 company: conduct statistical Apply at vailsys.com/about/ 3683 [email protected] studies and analyses of data careers/, Job ID: Linux System from departments, warehous- Administrator Lincoln Square - 5000 No. REAL ing facilities and factories to 2200 W. One bedroom Plus determine operation efficacy; Relativity (Chicago, IL) seeks Sr. Den. Second fl oor/2 fl at. A/C. ESTATE develop and improve manage- Software Engineer to architect/ Near park. Sec. dep. Credit ment systems for production, design/implement & test cloud Check. Ideal for single/couple. safety, qualify and inventory native software consistently No pets. AV. 5/1/19 773-561- RENTALS control, labor distribution and applying best practice software 9266 $985.00 other operations; develop and engineering. Must take and FOR SALE improve operation procedures, pass HackerRank Code Chal- One Bedroom guidelines and performance lenge pre-interview screening Large one bedroom apart- NON-RESIDENTIAL evaluation mechanism for test. To apply, email your ment near Metra and Warren each operation unit; analyze resume to Recruiting@relativity. Park. 1904 W. Pratt. Hardwood budget-cost efficiency to rec- com. Please include “JOB ID: fl oors. Cats OK. Heat included. ROOMATES ommend and plan managerial 19-9004” in the subject line. $975/month. Available 2/1. fi nancial control; develop man- (773)761 4318. www.lakefront- agement models, protocols and Manufacturing Project Engi- mgt.com plans for business expansions. neering Manager. Confer w/ MARKET- Req.: master in Business Ad- mgmt., staff re: manuf. projects BEDROOM ministration; have knowledge specs, engineering plans. or skilled with the following Analyze tech. trends, market Two Bedroom (acquired through either educa- demand, plan workshop floor PLACE Large two bedroom duplex tion, training, internship or prior projects. Coord. direct manu- near Warren park 1900 W. work): management information facturing engineering projects, Pratt. 2 full bathrooms. Heat GOODS systems; data mining and analyze prod. plans, lines. Plan, included. Private storage. Cats data analysis; Adobe Creative direct policies, standards, pro- OK. $1600/month. Available SERVICES Suite; financial management; cedures for engineering work. 2/1. (773)761 4318. www.lake- cost-benefi t analysis; fi nancial Req. Master’s in Mechanical, frontmgt.com HEALTH & reporting; international ac- Mechanotronics Engineering or counting. $67,850/year. Job & Engineering Management. Req. WELLNESS Interview: Chicago, IL. Contact: knowledge of manufacturing STUDIO Wei G. Huang, President, Sun- environ, assembly processes, INSTRUCTION shine Supply Company, 4501 tooling, prod. equipmt. capabil- Studio S. Knox Avenue, Chicago, IL ities. Jobsite: Chicago, IL. Send Large studio near Warren MUSIC & ARTS 60632 or email wsunshine738@ resume Attn: HR, at IT SOFT Park. 1904 W. Pratt. Hardwood yahoo.com USA INC, 55 West Monroe St, floors. Cats OK. $795/month. NOTICES #2575, Chicago, IL 60603 Heat included. Available 2/1. Vice Presidents (GTCR, LLC, (773)761 4318. www.lakefront- MESSAGES Chicago, IL): Utilize industryex- The Federal Home Loan Bank mgt.com pertise & leverage undrstandg of Chicago is seeking a Man- LEGAL NOTICES & rltnshps to ID investmntop- ager, Income Simulation and Studio portunities. ID & dvlp investmnt Risk Modeling in Chicago, IL Large studio apartment near ADULT SERVICES info & evaluate using mrktanlys, with the following requirements: Loyola Park. 1329-41 W. ll FEBRUARY - CHICA O READER 37 B Estes. Hardwood floors. signed with the County Clerk of the 4th day of January, 2011 Cats OK. $795/month. Heat Cook County. Registration Num- in Iowa City, Iowa. For further CLERK OF THE ABOVE COURT included. Laundry in building. ber: Y19000497 on Feb 7, 2019 details contact the clerks offi ce. Available 3/1. Larger unit avail- (For Office Use Only) Under The petitioners attorney is Lucas SERVICES able 4/1 for $850/month. (773) the Assumed Business Name C. Helling of Foss, Kuiken, 761-4318 www.lakefrontmgt. of SIMAS Family Management Cochran & Helling, PC, 100 East SAVAGE LOVE By Dan Savage Danielle’s Lip Service, Erotic com Company with the business Burlington Avenue, PO Box 30, Phone Chat. 24/7. Must be 21+. located at: 616 W. Schubert Av, Fairfield, Iowa 52556.You are Credit/Debit Cards Accepted. 1E, Chicago, IL, 60614 The true notifi ed that there will be a pre- All Fetishes and Fantasies Are and real full name(s) and resi- trial conference before the Iowa Welcomed. Personal, Private dence address of the owner(s)/ District Court for Des Moines MARKETPLACE and Discrete. 773-935-4995 continued from 37 children if he doesn’t. You 1. Your girlfriend is keeping partner(s) is: Owner/Partner Full County (Juvenile Division), at Name Complete Address Apar- the Courthouse in Burlington, I shall now say something should have a conversation a secret from her family and na Sharma, 616 W. Schubert Av, Iowa, at 9:00 A.M. on the 18 th PERSONAL that will piss off my bisexual with BIL. Open it by telling friends, BASHED, and she 1E, Chicago, IL 60614 (2/28) day of March, 2019. The Court LEGAL has ordered if you fail to appear Single parent starting over readers: a family-minded bi him that life is long, mar- has to hide you to protect TO: PERRIE GREEN at said hearing, the Court may SWM NOTICE proceed at that time with hearing Attractive 57 black hair blue guy can have almost every- riages are complicated, and that secret. You’re keeping a You are notifi ed that there is now on the Petition for Termination eyes seeking SF. Attractive who thing he wants—spouse, that you know he loved your secret from your girlfriend: Notice is hereby given, pursu- on fi le in the offi ce of the clerk of Parental Rights. A person knows and understands the ant to “An Act in relation to the of court for Des Moines County, against whom a proceeding for meaning of starting over. house, kids—without ever sister. But to stick the dis- being hidden, being treat- use of an Assumed Business Iowa, a petition in case number termination of parental rights is Name in the conduct or trans- JVJV005487, which prays for a brought shall have the right to Can contact snlane@ having to come out so long mount here—to end his mar- ed like her dirtiest secret, is action of Business in the State,” termination of your parent-child counsel pursuant to Iowa Code chicagoreadercorp.com or call as that bi guy winds up with riage without destroying his making you miserable. Tell as amended, that a certifi cation relationship to a child born on § 600A.6A. 312 392 2934 for more info. was registered by the under- an opposite-sex partner. relationship with his kids, he her how you feel about being Coming out is a difficult con- can’t hide from them. If he hidden—because she needs versation, and it’s one many doesn’t want to tell his boys to know being hidden is mak- bi people choose to avoid. about his boyfriend because ing you miserable. And who can blame them? I he fears he might lose them, 2. “Don’t date closet wasn’t thrilled by the idea of then he’ll have to cut his cases” is one of my rules telling my mom I put dicks in kids out of his life—and that for out folks, but there are my mouth, but it was a con- means losing them for sure. exceptions to every rule. If versation I couldn’t avoid. And then butt the fuck out. an out person meets some- Your nephews should one on their way out or be told the truth, but you : I’m a 24-year-old lesbian someone who, for good rea- shouldn’t be the one to tell and I’ve been dating my sons, can’t come out this min- them. Their parents should. girlfriend for three years ute (they’re dependent on Sit down with your sister now. She’s incredible but bigoted parents) or possibly and make the argument: Yes, she isn’t completely out of ever (they live in a part of the your kids are upset about the closet. I’ve been out world where it’s too danger- the divorce, and it may add since 2010. It’s killing me. ous to be out), an out person to their upset to learn their We are compatible in every can date a closeted person. father is in a relationship way possible: sexually, But dating someone who can with a man. But they’re going emotionally, and spiritually. be out and isn’t and has no to be angry about being lied But I can’t help but feel she’s plans to come out? They’re to when they inevitably find ashamed of me. I bring her not dating you, they’re drag- out. And if she’s keeping this around all my friends, family, ging you back into the closet. secret solely at BIL’s request, and coworkers. She’s fully a Just say no. v well, he can’t ask that of her part of my life, and I feel like if doing so will damage her I’m never going to be fully a Send letters to mail@ relationship with her kids. I part of hers. What do I do? savagelove.net. Download don’t think she should imme- —B S H the Savage Lovecast every diately out BIL, but she can E D Tuesday at savagelovecast. and should let him know com. EARLY that she will have to tell the A: Two thoughts . . . @fakedansavage WARNINGS REAL PEOPLE NEVER MISS A SHOW AGAIN REAL DESIRE CHICAGOREADER.COM/EARLY REAL FUN.
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