BIS 7/25, METRO On its second album, The New Transistor Heroes, the Scottish trio purveys a loud, high-energy new wave pop that at its best sounds like a cross between Sleater-Kinney and the Human League. But the capper is the cover, which portrays the trio as round-eyed Japanese cartoon characters, making them British kids paying tribute to Japanese reinventions of British pop, itself a reinvention of an American phenomenon. Ain’t this global village great?...

By Patrick Z. McGavin After he earned his degree in the mid-80s, Stern worked for 18 months for his father’s company, a manufacturer of appliances like air purifiers and handheld massagers, but he still longed to develop his own film and theater projects. “In the financial world, there’s a kind of reflexive crouch; you wait for the ceiling to fall in on you, so I was very much driven by not relying on anybody else to hire me....

At That Time Hello Neighbor at Live Bait Theater, through Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In a culture awash with electronic entertainment, live performances remain popular–because they remind those of us raised on TV, radio, and computer games that we exist, that we matter, that we are absolutely necessary. This is doubly true for solo performers like Lisa Buscani, Barrie Cole, and Jennifer Biddle, who prefer to work without much technological support: a few lighting cues and a handful of sound cues, a couple of props, and the right clothing are all any of these women need to pull off their shows....

The Caucasian Chalk Circle Can see his fellow man keenly with accuracy –Bertolt Brecht Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Of course Brecht’s affinity for contradiction spilled over into his art, and particularly The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In the traditional Chinese parable that is its inspiration, two women trying to prove to a judge which of them is the real mother try to yank a child out of a circle....

Friday 12/19 – Thursday 12/25 Tonight’s Turnstyles: Underground Expo is a combination dance party, art show, and record-release event put together by Jeremy “Sole” Ross, who’s mixed music all over town. The night kicks off at 8 with a free opening reception for the art exhibit; music starts at 10, and the cover then is $5. It’s at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division. Call 773-276-2906. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Derek BaileyMusic and Dance (Revenant)Guitar, Drums ‘n’ Bass (Avant) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Now, after three and a half decades, a genre devoted to avoiding cliches has given birth to a few of its own; there are free groups and players whose sounds and styles are as defined and predictable as the most hidebound classical music or hard bop. English guitarist Derek Bailey, one of free music’s originators and leading exponents, must know this, and on two recently released CDs he shows that one way to escape stasis is by, in a manner of speaking, learning to dance....

By Michael Miner The desperate passengers all decided to stay put. Plattner is 25 years old, and this was her first newspaper story. She’d approached it in the spirit of the aspiring film writer she is, taking creative liberties that punched up her material. Plattner assured Curwen that she did fly from Kariba to Hwange last October, though everything else she said happened to her was not, in a literal sense, true....

By Terri Kapsalis and John Corbett Dawn and Lou’s creation, in 1986, of Experimental Sound Studio was a logical extension of this philosophy. Recording studios normally charge high hourly prices, making speculative, experimental production prohibitively expensive. And most engineers are trained to follow industry conventions, so the notion of, say, arranging microphones in buckets of water or rolling dice to decide how to set up the mixing board would be unthinkable to them....

Sitting in the grandstand at high school and college basketball games, I’ve heard guys discuss how they enjoy watching women play hoops. The guys have an air of macho condescension about them. They speak of the women’s sound fundamentals, the passing and defense, the selflessness that distinguishes the women’s game from the men’s. Yet for all the surface sexual evenhandedness, they’re really just proving themselves basketball aficionados, students of the game more astute than the other guys....

My father’s friend Harold Raizes told him about living wills. Harold brought my father one and my father signed it and Harold signed his and they put them away. I don’t know where. Took them to safety deposit boxes, most likely. Or to Melvin Cohn, the lawyer. (There’s an old story my father used to tell. When he and my mother were in their early years of marriage, my father had Melvin draw up their wills....

august.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » His dismissal of the concept of live radio is particularly pitiful. I find his arguments against it ignorant and self-serving. “Live radio served audiences well in a bygone era,” he says, suggesting that one can now “time-shift anything you want,” claiming that tape and the Internet are viable ways of doing so. Places I can listen to the radio:...

UNION Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Count the eponymously titled album by this group, which arrived this summer on the British label Naim Audio, among the year’s great surprises: it documents an impeccable trio that few people even knew existed. Not that any jazz head in Chicago would at this point question the impact pianist Laurence Hobgood’s leviathan chords and intensely focused improvisations can have on an audience....

The Singing Cab Driver Show By Jack Helbig Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For his efforts St. Ray has been featured in the Sun-Times and Chicago magazine, on Wild Chicago and the Today show. He was even crowned “international taxi driver” of the year by a worldwide cabbie organization. The songs themselves are better, though St. Ray (working with Burnell) still hasn’t discovered his own voice as a tunesmith....

By Dan Savage Lamar Alexander: “We need to restore dignity to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, so our schoolkids can tour the Oval Office without snickering.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Considering the importance of dignity to Republican candidates and voters, one would expect the Iowa Straw Poll to begin on a dignified note. Yet, immediately after the national anthem was sung (all 68 verses) and a Christian prayer intoned, the official program began with a dozen over-made-up women in low-cut black halter tops and stretch pants running up onto the stage shaking lime green pom-poms....

blomm.qxd Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » While it is true that Edgewaterites lobbied for their own community area, they did not do so for the reasons ascribed. They sought their own community area because they believed that they deserved one based on the historical record. It had long been the policy of the Edgewater Community Council that Edgewater was a community in its own right, separate and distinct from, though related to, Rogers Park on the north and Uptown on the south, and not something called “South Rogers Park” or “North Uptown....

Friday 8/13 – Thursday 8/19 When playwright Martin McDonagh imbibes, it’s a bitter and twisted, a mixture of ale and fruit juice. The former, at least, will be on tap tonight at Steppenwolf Theatre’s special Pub Night performance of McDonagh’s play The Beauty Queen of Leenane. It starts at 7 with a preshow discussion led by dramaturge Michelle Volansky. The curtain is at 8; Irish music and boozing start around 10 in the lobby....

CAT POWER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When a songwriter, even a great one, records an album of other people’s songs, it’s almost never a good sign: Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait, Robert Forster’s I Had a New York Girlfriend, and John Lennon’s Rock ‘n’ Roll aren’t ever going to be considered crowning artistic achievements. If the artist isn’t suffering from writer’s block or a temporary lapse of judgment, usually he’s just fucking with his audience....

FOR COLORED GIRLS WHO HAVE CONSIDERED SUICIDE/WHEN THE RAINBOW IS ENUF, Journeymen, at the Chicago Cultural Center. Ntozake Shange’s 1976 “choreopoem” assembles seven “colored girls” (Lady in Orange, Lady in Purple, etc) who testify to the struggles that made them strong. A stirring ensemble piece, this 80-minute collage of poetry, movement, and song allows each woman to “sing her song of life,” derived from experiences of rape, selfish lovers, cultural dislocation, hot sex on graduation night, and disillusionment....

When fledgling photographer Taylor Lockwood moved to Mendocino, California, in 1984, he noticed mushrooms, lots of them, right outside the door of his cabin in the woods. He’d never seen so many in one place except in a grocery store. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Lockwood reveled in the solitude, but he liked getting together with friends to display his latest photographic bounty, and he found the easiest way to do so was with a slide show....

Ecologies Olafur Eliasson Similar splits can be found in the art world. Some artists see nature primarily as subject to human manipulation, while others center their work on growing or decaying plants, ceding a large part of their artistic control to natural processes; the best such work creates a tension between some container and the organic shapes within it. Seven site-specific installations by five different artists commissioned by three Chicago museums include works at various points on this spectrum....