The sprawling psychedelia of the Japanese collective Acid Mothers Temple–more formally known as Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O.–makes the neohippie trappings of their countrymen in Ghost seem downright subtle. On their recently released second album, Pataphisical Freak Out MU!! (P.S.F.), about 15 of the 30-some “famous and unknown musicians, artists, dancers, farmers, etc” associated with the group spin through a kaleidoscope of guitar-driven psychedelic styles with an overarching theme of excess....

DOLLY VARDEN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Steve Dawson and Diane Christiansen spent many years trying to make a comfortable living from music, first with Stump the Host and then with their current band, Dolly Varden. But a few years ago–after several fruitless and excruciating dalliances with major labels–they decided instead to just make themselves happy, and signed to the New York indie Evil Teen....

HOWARD LEVY Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Multi-instrumentalist Howard Levy shape-shifts at will–from Balkan folk flutist to spiky jazz pianist to the quirky fusioneer who spent the first half of this decade with Bela Fleck & the Flecktones–but he’s best recognized as one of the world’s most inventive harmonica players. Using a lowly Marine Band blues harp, he attacks bebop burners and Coltrane classics with a technical wizardry that transcends the simple instrument’s limitations; he’s played convincing solos with everyone from Dolly Parton to Tito Puente....

JAD FAIR & YO LA TENGO Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In 1974 Jad and David Fair were living in a boathouse and attending Thomas Jefferson College in Allendale, Michigan. Neither could play an instrument, but they’d started a rock band, and to name it they drew two words out of a hat: “half” and “Japan.” Brilliant and gloriously uninhibited, Half Japanese’s early recordings inspired legions of musicians with their gleeful disregard for “proper” tuning, identifiable chords, metrical stability, and any other facet of what’s usually considered technical accomplishment....

JULIE WILSON Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Plaza Tavern, open since February in the First National Plaza space once inhabited by Nick’s Fishmarket, is positioning itself as a supper club in the classic New York tradition, hiring Susan Anderson (of the late, lamented Gold Star Sardine Bar) as entertainment director and importing some of Manhattan’s top cabaret talent. Its first major headliner, Andy Bey, appeared a couple of weeks ago under a free-admission policy that proved ill-advised (reviewers and fans complained about inattentive, loud-talking audiences), so you’ll have to cough up a $15 cover to see Julie Wilson when she opens there this week....

Marc Anthony Enrique Iglesias At the moment, the taste is for dark meat. Poised between lilting New Age chanteuse and power diva, Dion remains somewhat unique on the world stage (though her TV show marked the beginning of a temporary semiretirement), but Martin almost instantly created a trend. If the increasing confusion between worldwide and American pop culture could make this Menudo and General Hospital alum a stateside superstar, then it can do the same for sensitive Latino puffballs Marc Anthony and Enrique Iglesias....

koskiewi.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At one point during the late 50s, the Unity Playlot area was covered with two- and three-flat frame buildings, and on the corner of Drummond and Kimball stood a very large dark gray stucco mansion with a coach house in the rear. The city of Chicago purchased all of these properties for demolition in order to build a city parking lot to accommodate the burgeoning automobile population that was in steady growth in this part of the city....

APPLES IN STEREO 2/6, METRO The title of Tone Soul Evolution, the most recent album from kaleidoscopic popsters the Apples in Stereo, might just refer to the technological leap they made in recording it–leaving behind their beloved bedroom studio for 24-track luxury, the better to housebreak their unruly pet sounds. And their recent swiping from the indie Spinart by Sire means they’ll most likely be indulging their audiophilia further in the future....

THE SEA AND CAKE, ALUMINUM GROUP Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In the three years since the release of the Sea and Cake’s fourth album, The Fawn (Thrill Jockey), the band has nearly been eclipsed by its members’ other projects. Front man Sam Prekop and guitarist Archer Prewitt released substantive solo albums, and between playing in Tortoise and producing records for bands on both sides of the Atlantic, John McEntire built himself a real recording studio, Soma....

The Disco Box But what passes for disco now is a small group of pop hits that used disco’s rhythms and production sounds: “Ring My Bell,” “Fly, Robin, Fly,” “Boogie Nights,” “Funkytown,” and so on. These songs bypass disco’s campy crassness, but also its grandeur and peculiarity, the way it pumped up the drama of the rhythmic moment and drew it out as long as possible. The Disco Box, a four-CD Rhino set covering the era in approximate chronological order, is an almost completely redundant restatement of the established disco canon....

Xoinx Pulls the Plug Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Hunsinger and McLoraine, who also play together in the double-reed trio Corvus, had been scheduling experimental and improvised music at Xoinx, 2933 N. Lincoln, on Thursday nights since late December. The series provided valuable opportunities for acoustic musicians interested in exploring the boundaries between free jazz, classical, and improvisation; the great-sounding hardwood-floored back room where it took place, dubbed the Fusion Gallery, attracted not only local improv-scene mainstays like Jim Baker, Fred Lonberg-Holm, and Kent Kessler, but also Chicago sound sculptors like Lou Mallozzi and Steve Barsotti and international artists like violinist Malcolm Goldstein....

James Phelge leans against the bar at Sterch’s with a hand in his pocket, surrounded by obsessively devoted Rolling Stones fans. They’re bobbing their heads to a bootleg of “Happy,” and Phelge is surveying the scene with an indulgent smile. He’s probably the only person in the Lincoln Avenue bar who didn’t go to last night’s concert at the United Center. What Phelge didn’t know was that he was famous. Legions of fans had puzzled over his existence for decades, based on numerous but cryptic mentions in the vast library of Stones literature....

There’s a playpen in the corner of Hema’s Kitchen, a tiny, ten-year-old Indian restaurant on the edge of Rogers Park, where chef-owner Hema Potla keeps a careful eye on her two grandsons, Rahul and Rohan, while she works. As the aroma of Eastern spices wafts around them, the toddlers munch on M&M’s–a decidedly Western treat. The scene is a microcosm of the neighborhood, reflecting the convergence of cultures along bustling Devon Avenue....

This festival of films and videos by black artists from around the world continues Friday through Thursday, August 11 through 17, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson. Tickets are $7, $3 for Film Center members; a festival pass, good for all programs, is $50. For further information, call 312-443-3737. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Senegalese master Djibril Diop Mambety made these two 45-minute films as parts of a triptych called “Tales of Little People” but died of cancer before he could make the third....

This festival of films and videos by black artists from around the world runs Friday, August 4, through Thursday, August 17, at the Gene Siskel Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson. Tickets are $7, $3 for film center members; a festival pass, good for all programs, is $50. For further information, call 312-443-3737. Films marked with a 4 are highly recommended. Metal Best of Chicago voting is live now....

They say in recovery programs that the first step in getting help is admitting you have a problem. The start of the new TV season has persuaded me the networks might finally be on the verge of this momentous breakthrough. Oh, I know I say that every season, and every season I’m proved wrong. But I’m really serious this time. TV can’t get any worse. The new season is so bad that it has to represent some kind of ultimate creative vapor lock....

Dramatic Pause Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mike Greenfield, an attorney who’s represented the CSO musicians in most of their recent contract negotiations, described the meetings earlier this summer as “cordial and productive” but couldn’t predict what might happen this week. Attorney James D. Holzhauer, chief negotiator for management, did not return a phone call seeking comment. Compressing the time frame for negotiations is typical of management’s tactics; the previous contract was finalized only an hour before the first rehearsal was to begin, and in 1991, Daniel Barenboim’s first year as CSO music director, negotiations broke down, resulting in a strike that postponed Barenboim’s debut....

Everest Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The son of a man who climbed Mount Everest in 1953 is determined to follow in his father’s footsteps, and this Omnimax account of his journey with two colleagues and several assistants and photographers smoothly combines first-person storytelling with the virtual-reality aspects of special-format filmmaking. It’s filled with gently drawn characters, breathtaking scenery, and gripping suspense; picture-in-picture and other attention-getting editing and cinematographic techniques are deftly blended with a sparing narration (delivered by Liam Neeson) and extensive sound bites from the climbers....

Let’s say you’re finally through with the jerk. You’ve had enough of his oh-so-sincere lies, his hairsplitting excuses, his worthless, blubbering promises that it’ll never happen again. Enough of putting on a smile and pretending not to notice while the whole world wonders why you’re sticking with him. It’s done. You’ve made a decision. You want a divorce. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “If you’re living around here, you’ll need to find grounds,” says Evanston attorney David Carlson, who’s presenting a divorce workshop for women Tuesday at the YWCA Evanston/North Shore....

LURRIE BELL Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Guitarist Lurrie Bell, son of harmonica legend Carey Bell, spent his childhood at the feet of such fabled bluesmen as Eddie Taylor, Big Walter Horton, and Pinetop Perkins. By his mid-20s Bell’s resume included recording sessions with Eddie C. Campbell and Eddy Clearwater, stints with Billy Branch’s Sons of Blues and Koko Taylor, and several overseas tours....