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GRADY CHAMPION Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Blues harpist Grady Champion was born in Mississippi, the youngest of his father’s 28 children. He cites Rice Miller (Sonny Boy Williamson II) as his primary influence, though at 29 he isn’t even old enough to have seen his hero buried–in fact, his harp’s widemouthed sound owes more to James Cotton, who learned at Miller’s feet. On Champion’s Shanachie debut, Payin’ for My Sins, he ranges far afield from Miller’s juke-joint blues, tackling everything from churchy soul (“Good as New”) to hot-blooded blues rock (“My Rooster Is King”) to cornball country balladry (“Roberta”)....

Nineteen ninety-seven was a difficult year for police superintendent Matt Rodriguez. Seven Austin District police officers were under indictment on corruption charges, and several off-duty police died under suspicious circumstances. The 12th District commander made disparaging remarks about Hispanics. The Fraternal Order of Police announced a vote of “no confidence” against Rodriguez on November 3. Yet it was a friend of 38 years who effectively ended Rodriguez’s career. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

One Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, a sophisticated gentleman in the advertising profession stopped by Steve Austin Designer Menswear. He was the kind of customer, Austin says, who only comes along once or twice a year. “He cherry-picked the place. He was really refined, with great taste; he got two Armani sportscoats, size 42 long, and they fit him perfectly. Absolutely drop-dead gorgeous. I wanted them for myself, but I’m too skinny....

JUBILANT SYKES Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Jubilant Sykes isn’t a large man, but he can rattle the rafters of a cavernous concert hall–his limpid, exuberant high baritone is unspoiled by the artifice or timidity that bedevils so many other classically trained vocalists when they stray from opera. Sykes thrives in traditionally African-American genres: he played Jake in the Met’s 1990 production of Porgy and Bess; he delivers stirring renditions of hymns and spirituals; and his 1998 debut CD, Jubilant, a collaboration with trumpeter Terence Blanchard, blends jazz and gospel....

KONRAD BAUER Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A mainstay on the East German improv and rock scenes in the late 70s, German trombonist Konrad Bauer is the closest thing there is to a complete experimentalist. He’s absorbed the complex multiphonics perfected by Albert Mangelsdorff, he can spit out deft melodies like George Lewis, and he has the improvisational wherewithal of folks like Paul Rutherford....

Pretty Vacant Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “The movie’s all told in voice-over–it’s cheaper that way.” The last words in this energetic, low-budget, 33-minute film by Jim Mendiola, spoken by its narrator, Molly (Mariana Vasquez)–a 21-year-old Chicana who drums for an all-girl punk band and is working on the fifth issue of her zine, this one in Super-8–are a pretty fair description of what Mendiola is up to, technically speaking....

BIG SMITH 4/23, FITZGERALD’S; 4/24, THE HIDEOUT These college-edumacated Ozark boys go to great lengths to convince us of their authenticity–according to their bio, they’re genuine hillbillies and cousins to boot, descended from a fiddler grandpa who “couldn’t stay away from where the moonshine was.” The band photo is even done in nostalgic sepia. I’d have a ball skewering them for all this self-conscious crap if they didn’t have a pretty good grip on the music itself....

The Fierce Librarian “Um,” she said nervously. “I’m looking for the Times. December 21, 1996.” It was March 15. His last day at work. All the while he plotted his escape. He got his film degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He formed a punk-rock band. He looked around for work elsewhere. He found none. Four years ago he got passed over for a big promotion and realized what he had to do....

On the morning of March 8, two people Maria Espinoza had never seen before drove up to her elote stand at the corner of 25th and Kedzie. They were from the Health Department, and they told her this was a surprise inspection. “Where else can I work?” Espinoza says. “We have to work. We won’t quit. We have to continue working. Even if they take our carts. We’re going to have to fight....

Tonic water contains quinine, because (I gather) quinine was the “tonic” against malaria in Britain’s colony days. So is the dose in tonic water today the same as it was when it was being used medicinally? If so, does drinking tonic water today actually affect my chances of getting malaria? If not, why do soft drink companies keep putting it in? Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Nice try, sport, but no dice....

TIM BERNE’S BLOODCOUNT Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The LA-to-Lincoln Center crowd may get the hype now, but the future of jazz–not to mention its present–really rests with bands like Tim Berne’s Bloodcount, which confronts the continuing evolution of improvised music. Saxophonist Berne created Bloodcount in 1993 as a means of deconstructing the jazz combo–to “de-emphasize the usual soloistic approach and create more of a chamber-music approach to improvisation,” he said at the time–and of reconstructing the balance between structure and freedom....

TRANS AM Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Trans Am’s mix of testosterone rock and dispassionate drum-machine electronica has all the alchemy of oil-and-vinegar salad dressing–the elements are together in the same bowl but unwilling to really combine. Rather than fuse distinct genres into an elaborate new mutation, Trans Am strips each down and rides it out on its own terms. The trio recorded its third record, The Surveillance (Thrill Jockey), at its own new studio in Maryland, abandoning John McEntire’s elegant producerly touch in favor of a gritty live sound the band describes as “no bullshit....

Rock, Pop, etc. ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND, PAT McGEE BAND Saturday, 6:30 PM, New World Music Theatre, I-80 and Harlem, Tinley Park. 708-614-1616 or 312-559-1212. COSMIC CUP OF CAPPUCCINO Hieroglyphic Being spins “experimental groove and funky techno.” Tuesdays, 6-9 PM, Starbucks Coffee, 6738 N. Sheridan. 773-743-0417. MICHAEL FEINSTEIN, LINDA EDER Friday, 8 PM, Pavilion, Ravinia Festival, Green Bay and Lake Cook Rds., Highland Park. 847-266-5100. GIPSY KINGS Thursday, August 31, and next Friday, September 1, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N....

RUSHMORE opened only three weeks ago, but the staff at this contemporary American restaurant already has an air of confident professionalism. Considering the team behind the place, that’s not such a surprise: the owners are Rodney Alex of Bin 36 and Franco Gianni of Sushi Wabi, with chef Michael Dean Hazen, formerly a sous chef at Blackbird. Pushing the Randolph Street restaurant scene slightly northward, Rushmore sits on Lake under the rumbling Green Line tracks....

“The Otis Redding Story” (Try A Little Tenderness), Black Ensemble Theater. If you walk out of this production without having clapped your hands to or hummed along with some of Otis Redding’s tunes, you better take a moment to check your pulse. The artists celebrating “the messenger of soul” are so exuberant and joyful in their portrayals that the energy of Redding’s music pours from the stage through the audience. Penned and directed by collaborators Jackie Taylor and Jimmy Tillman, “The Otis Redding Story” not only gives an overview of the singer’s tragically short life but places his contributions in their social and historical context....

In 1986, journalist Michele Weldon married the perfect husband–an attractive, smart, ambitious fellow whose family she had known since childhood. During nine years of marriage, he became a successful lawyer and they had three sons. Weldon continued to work as a freelance writer from their home in Oak Park and everything was wonderful–except when he was beating her up. In the book she published last year, I Closed My Eyes, Weldon describes the expertise she developed in hiding the wounds he inflicted in order to preserve the appearance of a happy family: the ice cubes to stop the swelling, the makeup to cover the bruises....

BARBARA ANN MARTIN Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Knowing full well that many composers since Schoenberg have cared more about new methods of vocal expression than a singer’s physiological limits, Barbara Ann Martin has made herself a champion of the contemporary, performing grueling works by Shostakovich, Gubaidulina, Kurtag, Argento, Babbitt, and Hovhaness, to name a few. Yet despite all this wear and tear, her voice is still a splendidly clear and nimble instrument, boasting a flexible timbre and an unusually wide range....

The final weekend of the 11th annual festival offers lectures, readings, and discussions by scientists, writers, historians, and others organized around the theme of “Now!,” as well as movies and musical and theatrical performances (see listings in this section and in Section Three). Events take place at: Alliance Francaise, 54 W. Chicago; Art Institute of Chicago, Michigan and Adams (use east entrance); Chicago Historical Society, Clark at North; Field Museum, 1400 S....

Friday 9/4 – Thursday 9/10 5 SATURDAY When Princess Diana died last August, local royalists bedecked one end of the Michigan Avenue bridge with a monstrous load of flowers, stuffed animals, and letters of condolence expressing a collective sorrow as profound as the spelling errors and grammatical mistakes within them. Presumably editors Rick Blalock and K. Thomas Oglesby employed modern proofreading techniques when compiling Remembering Diana: The People’s Tribute to Their Princess, a collection of over “400 heartfelt words of sympathy, reflections and original works of poetry” culled from the global eulogy....

By Michael Miner Lenz, whose magazine provides, by virtually everyone’s account, the most savvy coverage of the public schools, was more subdued. “In its test score press release,” she wrote, “the Reform Board credited programs and people. However, there was a glaring omission: Student retention, which inflates scores.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Surely there’s enough perspicacity at the daily papers for them to have produced this caveat on their own....