Larry Ribs’s guitar is a work of art. The Fender Jazzmaster was new when he bought it in 1965, but after three years of abuse in south-side juke joints and Rush Street bars it was already beat to hell. A girlfriend took him to a theatrical-supply store on State Street, where he bought a bag of white rhinestones, and using seashell glue he pasted them all over the front of the guitar....
BANGS 5/12, METRO I enjoyed most of the quick, punchy tunes on Sweet Revenge (Kill Rock Stars), the second album by this Olympia trio, but the slower, translucent heartbreak song “Undo Everything” hit me the hardest. For a band that obviously came to classic girl-group pop via the Ramones, it’s a breakthrough moment: in a better world Sarah Utter (also of Witchypoo) would be holding her quivering chin up on Top 40 radio just like Ronnie Spector before her....
From the pages of Gastrolater ¥ Fall 1997 (Elizabeth M. Tamny, PO Box 60916, Chicago 60660-0916; $4) Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I Attended Traffic School to Avoid a Ticket (my first moving violation–I thanked the cop when he was done) and found myself, despite resentment and tiredness, totally involved in the experience, geek that I am. Raised my hand and answered questions too much....
From the pages of Guinea Pig Zero, A Journal for Human Research Subjects ¥ Number 5 (PO Box 42531, Philadelphia, PA 19101; $3) Last fall, while trying to figure out how I was going to scrape together the money to fly to England for my brother’s wedding, I stumbled upon an ad in the Daily Pennsylvanian for sleep studies at the University of Pennsylvania. They needed healthy non-smokers for 3-day to 3-week studies on sleep deprivation, and I needed cash, so I made the call and made my leap into the exciting world of human guinea pigging....
A Leaner Coyote Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » His boundless energy made for an exciting, cutting-edge festival in a decidedly bohemian community. But Bucktown and Wicker Park began to gentrify, and after Happy-Delpech left the festival in 1995 due to failing health, Around the Coyote lost its center. No one knew from year to year who would be in charge or what the festival would represent, and as recently as last winter its true believers were wondering whether the festival would happen this year....
Teaching and learning. Juli Wright’s first year of teaching first grade at Gladstone Elementary on the near west side was overwhelming, according to Elizabeth Duffrin, writing in Catalyst (September). “There were two big surprises. One was that so many children came to school without knowing letters, colors, numbers or even which end of a book to open. The other was the student mobility at Gladstone. ‘If you lost one, within the next couple of days you would always get one more and sometimes two....
The Removalists at Touchstone Theatre Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » At least on paper there are compelling reasons to stage The Removalists, a darkly satiric expose of corrupt and brutal police. Incendiary and brashly outspoken, this 1971 Australian play seems as immediate as today’s headlines. The ferocious dialogue and rough-and-tumble stage combat offer excellent opportunities for a company of fine actors to strut their stuff....
Friday 4/23 – Thursday 4/29 This weekend’s Anime Central convention offers fans of Japanese animation and comics a chance to enjoy some of that Trekkeresque camaraderie. Directors, designers, and actors will be on hand, and conventioneers can network during karaoke. It’s today and Saturday from 8 to 4 and Sunday from 8 to 3 at the Ramada Plaza Hotel O’Hare, 6600 N. Mannheim in Rosemont. Admission is $25 per day today and Saturday, $20 on Sunday, or $45 for the whole weekend....
Drinks on the House “It’s nothing,” Clem explained. “You stand behind the bar, you get people drinks, you take their money.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When it started raining I came out from behind the bar to close the front door, which was wedged open to let in the 70-degree breeze. Winter came up to me as I was shutting the door. He’s one of the four or five homeless guys I recognize by face in my neighborhood....
Fred Lonberg-Holm’s Lightbox Orchestra Classical musicians who enjoy some leeway nowadays can probably thank John Cage for it. While some of Cage’s long, feather-ruffling career was devoted to making sure his work was reproduced with no variance whatsoever–as in his string quartets–at other times he looked for ways to ensure that a piece would sound different each time it was played. One extreme manifestation of this experiment is his 1952 solo piano piece 4«33ÿFD....
Joey Defrancesco Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You’d think twentysomethings would have latched on to Joey DeFrancesco in a bigger way: considering the jazz organ’s return to fashion in the 90s and DeFrancesco’s precociousness, he certainly ought to be a star with his own generation. He made his recording debut a decade ago, at the age of 17, with a keyboard technique that stretched to the horizon and a fire-breathing, big-soul style; his resume includes a brief stint with Miles Davis in the late 80s (he appears on Davis’s Amandla) and several years’ membership in fusion-guitar guru John McLaughlin’s organ trio of the mid-90s....
Julia Margaret Cameron’s Women Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It’s fitting that the Art Institute’s current exhibition of Julia Margaret Cameron’s often haunting portraits of women should be augmented by performances: the 19th-century English photographer specialized in dramatic tableaux inspired by the heroines of British legend and literature. The first is a series, Idylls of the King, featuring Lia Mortensen and Christopher Cartmill in dramatic readings of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s epic retelling of the King Arthur saga....
In the spring of 1949, poet Langston Hughes–one of the powerhouses of the Harlem Renaissance–taught at the University of Chicago’s Laboratory Schools. Essentially a creative person at large, he dealt with kids at every grade level (he especially relished the kindergarten class) and passed on to anyone who was willing to listen everything he knew about poetry, prose, jazz, and the blues. Playwright John Biser’s loving two-act portrait of Hughes during this period re-creates the excitement he must have generated in the halls of the school John Dewey founded....
LITTLE LOUIE VEGA Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Little Louie Vega and his longtime creative partner, Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez, are a Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards for the 90s, auteurs who’ve condensed wide-ranging influences–hip-hop, disco, salsa, Latin freestyle, early Chicago house, dancehall reggae–into a tough but ebullient groove that dominates their corner of the world. If you’ve gone to a house club even once this decade, you’ve almost certainly danced to one of their tracks....
Lead Stories Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » In March a federal judge in Syracuse, New York, rejected the latest lawsuit by Donald Drusky of East McKeesport, Pennsylvania, in his 31-year battle against USX Corporation for firing him in 1968. Drusky had sued “God…the sovereign ruler of the universe” for taking “no corrective action” against Drusky’s enemies and had demanded that God compensate him with professional guitar-playing skills and the resurrection of his mother....
ROBBIE HARDKISS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Given the techno diaspora’s tendency toward psychedelic excess, it’s surprising that more DJs and producers don’t flaunt the connection between 90s beat science and 60s studio wizardry more explicitly. Lots of them pursue disorienting effects and mind-warping sounds–most notably the producers of the squiggling, wriggling, giggling, manipulated-bass-line acid sound–but few go all the way toward exploring the lush, florid soundscapes of psych’s most feelingful moments....
I’ve heard of people under general anesthetic who become physically paralyzed but remain mentally alert. They feel the surgeon’s scalpel but are helpless and unable even to blink an eye or make a sound. Could you give me the straight dope on this phenomenon? –Pandora, via the Internet Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » One patient in the UK required an operation that involved cutting open his leg and drilling into the bone....
When an alderman leaves the Chicago City Council, or this life, the other aldermen traditionally pop up like giant Weebils to hail their departing colleague. Strangely, the council skipped fond farewell speeches last week for Alderman Jesse Evans, who was attending his final meeting. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A rap sheet hasn’t stopped the speeches before. In the past year, the council has lovingly eulogized former alderman Thomas Keane, convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy, and former Illinois state treasurer Jerry Cosentino, convicted of bank fraud for a multimillion-dollar check-kiting scheme....
Captured at www.tcsn.net/fbchurch/fbccrock.htm Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Today there is a musical movement away from this biblical standard among Christian youth called rock ‘n’ roll. Our young people have grown up with this rock music, and now see no reason to give it up. The idea that rock music is a valid biblical tool for the evangelization of the lost and the edification of believers is also becoming more accepted by older saints, and more popular with pastors and Christian leaders....
ELLIOTT SMITH Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Success hasn’t spoiled Elliott Smith: on the new Figure 8 (Dreamworks), his second major-label album, he’s as mopey as ever, moaning and groaning about his romantic troubles, unable to accept responsibility for any of them, and by turns venomous and indifferent: on one song he croons “Everything means nothing to me” over and over. (Guess you can take the kid out of indie rock, but you can’t take the indie rock out of the kid....
