C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | F E B R U A R Y 1 5 , 2 0 1 8
“AFRICANAMERICAN THING”
J.B. PRITZKER’S
THE BASICS OF
B LO C KC H A I N & B ITCO I N RUMI MORALES
B LO C KC H A I N & B I TC O I N
Advisory Board Member, Chamber of Digital Commerce As head of CME Ventures, Rumi launched and led one of the most successful corporate venture capital units in financial technology. She is an early specialist in digital currency and has been twice named one of the “most powerful dealmakers in financial technology.”
D AT E & T I M E March 1, 2018 | 6:30 - 8:30pm doors open at 6pm L O C AT I O N 1871 | 222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza TICKETS $20 includes appetizers, beer & wine
Learn about Blockchain, Bitcoin, Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), and more in an in-depth discussion with industry experts about these technologies and how they are changing our world. JENNIFER O’ROURKE B LO C KC H A I N
State of Illinois Blockchain Business Liaison
JIMMY ODOM
S O C I A L I M PAC T O F B LO C KC H A I N & C RY P TO C U R R E N C Y
Co-Founder & CEO, Bit Capital Group
COLLEEN SULLIVAN
C RY P TO C U R R E N C Y
CEO, CMT Digital Holdings LLC
HOWARD TULLMAN
CEO, 1871 Special opening remarks on Chicago’s role in Blockchain technology.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO PURCHASE TICKETS VISIT SUNTIMES.COM/BLOCKCHAIN
2 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
l
l
THIS WEEK
C H I C A G O R E A D E R | F E B R U A R Y 1 5 , 2 0 1 7 | V O L U M E 4 7, N U M B E R 1 9
TO CONTACT ANY READER EMPLOYEE, E-MAIL: (FIRST INITIAL)(LAST NAME) @CHICAGOREADER.COM
EXECUTIVE EDITOR MARK KONKOL CREATIVE DIRECTOR VINCE CERASANI DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JAMIE RAMSAY CULTURE EDITOR AIMEE LEVITT FILM EDITOR J.R. JONES MUSIC EDITOR PHILIP MONTORO ASSOCIATE EDITORS STEVE HEISLER, JAMIE LUDWIG, KATE SCHMIDT SENIOR WRITER MIKE SULA SENIOR THEATER CRITIC TONY ADLER STAFF WRITERS MAYA DUKMASOVA, LEOR GALIL, DEANNA ISAACS, BEN JORAVSKY, PETER MARGASAK, JULIA THIEL SOCIAL MEDIA EDITOR RYAN SMITH GRAPHIC DESIGNER SUE KWONG MUSIC LISTINGS COORDINATOR LUCA CIMARUSTI FILM LISTINGS COORDINATOR PATRICK FRIEL CONTRIBUTING WRITERS NOAH BERLATSKY, ADESHINA EMMANUEL, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, KT HAWBAKER, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, OLIVER SAVA, NEIL STEINBERG, TIFFANY WALDEN, KEVIN WARWICK, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS MADELINE HAPPOLD, ASHLEY MIZUO, MELISSA PARKER, RACHEL YANG ---------------------------------------------------------------ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER MARKETING AND EVENTS MANAGER BRYAN BURDA DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA ---------------------------------------------------------------DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com CHICAGO READER 30 N. RACINE, SUITE 300 CHICAGO, IL 60607 312-222-6920 CHICAGOREADER.COM ---------------------------------------------------------------READER (ISSN 1096-6919) IS PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY STM READER, LLC 30 N. RACINE, SUITE 300 CHICAGO, IL 60607. COPYRIGHT © 2018 CHICAGO READER. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CHICAGO READER, READER, AND REVERSED R: REGISTERED TRADEMARKS ®.
ON THE COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY GREG HOUSTON. FOR MORE OF GREG’S WORK, GO TO GREGHOUSTONILLUSTRATION.COM.
THE VIBE
W
ho are you really? Are your social media “stories” true or just self-curated propaganda crafted, like campaign ads, to further a personal legend scrubbed clean of the dirty bits? Can anyone—your sister, your best friend, your ma—ever know the totality of you? If your answer is yes, how can you prove it? Well, the late college basketball coach John Wooden famously offered this litmus test: “The true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is looking.” The character of J.B. Pritzker came into question when a 2008 federal wiretap made public last week let us listen in as the billionaire front-runner in the Democratic primary for governor talked race politics when he thought no one was listening. In today’s issue, the Reader boldly weighs in with a column by Adeshina Emmanuel that drops bombs on Pritzker’s “subtle racism” and the black politicians who stood by him as he apologized at a west-side soul food restaurant. Emmanuel followed up with the pols he name-checked to give them a chance to defend their decision to stand by Pritzker as the Democratic machine-backed candidate pulpits around the state. Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg makes a guest appearance on page 11 to offer his take on why Emil Jones is crass, among other things. We give the final word to J.B. Pritzker himself on page 13. (Listen on chicagoreader.com.) Today’s cover is a stand-alone work of art by illustrator Greg Houston. I’ll let Houston explain it for himself: “There was a time in America when certain things were socially acceptable without any thought to how dehumanizing they were to someone else. The image of the lawn jockey symbolizes the wink-and-a-nudge ignorance that puts racism into context historically and in this contemporary situation. As a Democrat, Pritzker indeed needs the black vote, and he puts all his weight on it in a most disrespectful manner.” We live in a society of spin where everyone—public school teachers and rich white power brokers alike—can use social-media platforms or, in Pritzker’s case, a bottomless campaign war chest, to gather a choir of “friends” from Facebook or the City Council Black Caucus to accept our apologies as a way of moving onward. Here’s the thing: Pritzker hopes to be forgiven as he hits the road to tell African-American voters that he’s changed, but being absolved of his sins offers no proof that he has changed. To some people his vow that he has sounds like a campaign promise just waiting to be broken. An American conversation about racism—whether it’s the overt bigotry of a Nazi running for Congress on the southwest side or the coded language that got Pritzker jammed up on that wiretap—should be uncomfortable. Hell, it should hurt, like a punch in the gut. That’s what today’s issue, my debut with the Reader, is all about. Well, that and we catch up with Vic Mensa as he takes a smoke break in Hyde Park, and film critic J.R. Jones gives us the lowdown on animated art-house movies Tehran Taboo and Have A Nice Day at the Gene Siskel Film Center. We journey with food critic Mike Sula to find out why Morena’s Kitchen isn’t just for breakfast, and get music writer Leor Galil’s take on Lupe Fiasco’s ode to Harold’s Chicken. If you want to talk about it, any of it, hit us up at thevibe@chicagoreader.com. Love always, MARK KONKOL EXECUTIVE EDITOR
IN THIS ISSUE 4 Agenda Bunny Bunny: Gilda Radner, a Sort of Love Story at Mercury Theater, the Mary Scruggs Works by Women Festival, the film The Wound, and more goings-on about town
CITY LIFE
7 Chicagoan Wardrobe stylist Paul Harris knows how to turn heads. 8 Politics Democratic state rep candidate Dilara Sayeed reflects on the gerrymandering of Chicago’s Fifth District. 10 Feature J.B. Pritzker is a sneak disser. 11 Feature The dangers of throwing around the L-word 12 Feature More about J.B. Pritzker’s “coded language”
the TRiiBE, Vic Mensa revisits his vanishing Hyde Park. 22 Chicken Lupe Fiasco: Harold’s “makes KFC taste like Mississippi river rat.” 23 In Rotation The Messthetics, the Wolfmanhattan Project, and more current obsessions 25 Shows of note Brockhampton, Cupcakke, Robert Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters, and more of the week’s best 26 Secret History Sorely underrecognized guitarist Smilin’ Bobby cut his teeth on Chicago’s west side, and more music news
FOOD & DRINK
ARTS & CULTURE
14 Theater The best and rest of Rhino Fest 15 Theater You Got Older doesn’t try for wiser.
16 Podcasts Mattachine uncovers the forgotten history of queer liberation. 17 Lit Neil Hilborn’s poems have reached millions of viewers on YouTube. 18 Movies Animation gets really real in Tehran Taboo and Have a Nice Day. 19 Movies Clint Eastwood finds his inner Eric Rohmer with The 15:17 to Paris. 19 Movies The final installment in the Fifty Shades trilogy goes for the big bucks.
MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE 20 Feature In the debut of the Block Beat multimedia series by
31 Restaurant Review: Morena’s Kitchen The pica pollo at this tiny Belmont Cragin storefront presents a compelling reason to get up in the morning. 33 Feature When you wonder why you don’t see black people in food media, start your own website.
CLASSIFIEDS
34 Jobs 34 Apartments & Spaces 35 Marketplace 36 Straight Dope Are there extinct species that we really wish we hadn’t wiped out? 37 Savage Love One binary person, two girlfriends. The setup’s not working, but what would? 38 Early Warnings Sleep, Big Sean, Mountain Goats, and more shows to look for in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Chicago shoegaze saviors Panda Riot bring their album Infinity Maps to vinyl, and other music news.
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 3
AGENDA R
READER RECOMMENDED
P Send your events to agenda@chicagoreader.com
b ALL AGES
F
DANCE
LIT & LECTURES
Stück 1998/Anchor 2018 Grandma’s House Poetry Show R Dancer-choreographer Ayako R This warm poetry showcase and Kato presents a four-part work inspired open mike welcomes Tim “Toaster” by the moments of silence in contemporary classical composer Manfred Werder’s 4,000-page score Stück 1998. Fri 2/16, Sun 2/18, Thu 2/22, and Sat 2/24, 7 PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-281-0824, linkshall.org, $12$15 in advance, $17 at the door.
)(-.* '#*" )-$%#.& )$$- -$!$+,$ /+-*"
-%#( $!# $-+
$%). *#3 6 -20 ('+%%151" ,& ** -2
COMEDY Bunny Bunny: Gilda Radner, a Sort of Love Story ò BRETT BEINER
THEATER
'",& %&"*&)
More at chicagoreader.com/theater
$%). *! / *4 ,& ** -2 #2/ .%2(+$4'. 03) 0)*03,' +$,"'+.1 *$.$+ +%'!2&03+%'0+/'-,24
RSM
R
www.BrewView.com 3145 N. Sheffield at Belmont
Movie Theater & Full Bar 0 $5.0 ion s admisthe for ies Mov
18 to enter 21 to drink Photo ID required
Sat-Sun, February 17-18 @ 6:30pm Tue, Thr, February 20, 22 @ 6:30pm
Coco
Sat-Sun, February 17-18 @ 8:30pm Tue, Thr, February 20, 22 @ 8:30pm
The Disaster Artist
4 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
Bunny Bunny: Gilda Radner, R a Sort of Love Story Alan Zweibel’s wonderful 1997 memory
play, which he adapted from his own book about his 14-year friendship with comedian Gilda Radner, is funny and poignant in equal measure in director Warner Crocker’s beautifully acted staging. Zweibel and Radner met in 1975 on the set of Saturday Night Live, for which Radner was a performer and Zweibel a writer. Zweibel has smartly structured his comedy as a fast-paced sketch revue a la SNL. This allows him to focus on his story’s emotional essence while avoiding maudlin sentimentality, even when the play addresses painful matters such as Radner’s struggle with bulimia and her final bout with ovarian cancer before she died in 1989. As Radner and Zweibel—two insecure, deeply emotional, whip-smart wisecrackers who were too much alike to ever completely mesh—Dana Tretta and Jackson Evans are engaging, spontaneous, and believable; Jason Grimm rounds out the cast in a string of marvelously caricatured supporting roles. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 4/1: WedFri 8 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport, 773-325-1700, mercurytheaterchicago. com, $30-$55.
the wounded, ambivalent Kari, suddenly face-to-face with a man she intensely loves and hates. —JACK HELBIG Through 3/18: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Open Door Repertory Company, 902 S. Ridgeland Ave., Oak Park, 708-385-5510, opendoortheater.net, $27, $24 seniors, $15 students. Row After Row It may be hard to imagine, but playwright Jessica Dickey manages to make too big a deal of the Civil War. In her 2017 one-act, two veteran battle reenactors—domineering Cal and milquetoast Tom—meet newbie reenactor Leah in a Gettysburg bar post faux Pickett’s Charge. Leah’s black, female, and costumed in historically inaccurate thread count, three grievous fouls in Cal’s exacting playbook. Over an hour of semicontrived arguments and perplexing flashbacks, Dickey tries to turn the Civil War into a metaphor for all manner of societal inequities and personal crises. Against tall odds, this ardent Comrades cast (under Ann Kreitman’s forthright direction) manages to make all but the most overwrought passages (including the untenable happyish ending) intellectually and emotionally compelling. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 2/27: Sun-Tue 7:30 PM, Apollo Theater, 2540 N. Lincoln, 773-312-3964, the-comrades.com, $15.
Zack Mast plays former White House chief strategist and former Breitbart News executive Stephen K. Bannon, who presents his magnum opus, a “dramatic portrayal of the struggle between good and evil.” Through 2/19: Mon 8 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance. com, $8. LOL: Laughing Off Leukemia R Improv comedy and circus acts take the stage at this fund-raiser for kids’ cancer charity Alex’s Lemonade Stand and the James Cancer Hospital. Sat 2/17, 8 PM, Aloft Circus Arts, 3324 N. Wrightwood, 773-782-6662, aloftloft.com, $7.
Mary Scruggs Works by Women R Festival Second City honors the late comedian and instructor Mary Scruggs with a female-focused comedy showcase, now in its seventh year. On Saturday 2/17 the festival hosts free workshops; the full schedule is at secondcity.com. Fri 2/16-Sat 2/17, 6 PM-midnight, Judy’s Beat Lounge, Second City Training Center, 230 W. North, second floor, 312-337-3992, $13.
The Vagina Melodies This parody production covers women’s rights, LGBTQ issues, and on a lighter note, Tinder. Through 3/16: Thu-Sat 8 PM; also Sun 2/18 and 2/25, 6 PM, Cornservatory, 4210 N. Lincoln, 773-650-1331, cornservatory. org, $10-$15.
Neil Hilborn The most-watched R YouTube slam poet shares selections from his best-selling books. For
more, see page 17. Thu 2/15, 8 PM, Logan Square Auditorium, 2539 N. Kedzie, 773-252-6179 or 866-468-3401, lsachicago. com, $16. I Shit You Not Storytelling and Chili Cook-Off Everybody poops, and ISYN is a safe space to share horrifying shit stories without being judged. This edition includes a chili cook-off judged by WBEZ food writer Monica Eng. Sat 2/17, 1 PM, Lincoln Lodge, 956 W. Newport, 773251-1539, thelincolnlodge.com, $10. Morgan Jerkins In her new R essay collection This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of
Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America, the critic and writer asks, “What does it mean to ‘be’—to live as, to exist as—a black woman today?,” exploring the question through subjects from Rachel Dolezal to being a black visitor in Russia. Jerkins joins journalist Britt Julious for a conversation about the book. Thu 2/15, 7 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299, womenandchildrenfirst.com.
VISUAL ART Trashhand Photo Exhibition Chicago-based Trashhand’s architecture photos, his specialty, are featured at this one-night exhibition sponsored by Chrome. Thu 2/15, 6-9 PM. Chrome Industries, 1529 N. Milwaukee, chromeindustries.com.
MOVIES More at chicagoreader.com/movies
The Pavilion If it were a romR com, Craig Wright’s The Pavilion, a quiet little play about a desperate
guy who shows up to his 20th high school reunion hoping to rekindle a lost romance, would end happily ever after. The charm of the play, though, is that Wright never indulges in such magical thinking. Instead, Peter is still the same flawed guy he was in high school, and what transpires between him and his intended, Kari, is in the end much more moving and life-affirming, at least in Jason Gerace’s graceful production. Kyle A. Gibson is great as a guy who’s both jerky and charming, but it’s Rebekah Ward who steals the show as
American Carnage: A Solo R Staged Reading of Select Screenplays by Stephen K. Bannon
Henderson, a stalwart of the slam poetry circuit. Thu 2/15, 8:45 PM, Kibbitznest Books, Brews & Blarney, 2212 N. Clybourn, 773-360-7591, kibbitznest.com, $5 suggested donation.
NEW REVIEWS
The Pavilion ò BRANDON WARDELL
A Ciambra Director Jonas Carpignano follows up his debut feature, Mediterranea (2015), with this look at a multicultural, lower-class community in the southern Italian town of Calabria. A 14-year-old Romani boy named Pio (who also appeared in the previous film) comes of age in the criminal underworld, learning to steal cars and other expensive goods and sell them on the black market. He finds guidance not only from his older brother, already a hardened robber, but also from some African refugees who take him under their wing once the brother lands in prison. This
l
l
Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of February 15
Grandma’s House Poetry Show ò ARIS THEOTOKATOS
is a vibrant if familiar art house drama, with rough-and-tumble camerawork, highly physical performances, and flyon-the-wall observations that recall the films of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. Carpignano’s compassion for his downand-out subjects is admirable but can’t obscure the derivative style. In Italian with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 118 min. Fri 2/16, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 2/17, 4:45 PM; Sun 2/18, 3 PM; Tue 2/20, 6 PM; Wed 2/21, 7:45 PM; and Thu 2/22, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center. Disappearance In this noirish Iranian melodrama, a woman fights for control of her own body in a theocratic society. The protagonist (Sadaf Asgari), a university student in Tehran, begins to bleed after making love with her boyfriend for the first time; seeking medical treatment at an emergency room, she conceals their unlawful sexual intercourse by claiming she was raped. Hospital protocol requires the consent of a male relative to treat her, so the couple drive across the city all night in search of a doctor who’ll perform the needed surgery to repair her hymen without exposing them. Ali Asgari directed this compelling debut feature. In Farsi with subtitles. —ANDREA GRONVALL 89 min. Sat 2/17, 6 PM, and Sun 2/18, 5 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center. Drifting In this silent melodrama (1923), an American drug smuggler in Shanghai (Priscilla Dean) dreams of getting out of crime and returning home to the States; meanwhile her supplier comes to suspect that the American mining engineer who just arrived in his village is plotting to shut down the local opium trade. Tod Browning directed, and though the film isn’t as sensationalistic as his better-known horror films (Dracula, Freaks), it still offers flashes of his perverse imagination (in one scene policemen blackmail Dean into giving them the clothes off her back). There are compelling supporting performances from Wallace Beery (as Dean’s hot-headed business partner) and Anna May Wong (as the opium grower’s lustful daughter); in fact their characters are more interesting than the heroine, who gets bogged down in a sappy romance with the engineer. —BEN SACHS 83 min. Dennis Scott provides live accompaniment. Restored 35mm archival print. Sat 2/17, 11:30 AM. Music Box.
Mercury in Retrograde This observant, nuanced indie opens with three Chicago couples poring over their horoscopes in a local paper during a getaway at a Michigan cabin. The astrological period of the title promises upheavals and self-reflection, and as the weekend progresses, the stars don’t lie. The men (Jack C. Newell, Shane Simmons, Kevin Wehby) have the funniest moments, haggling over the finer points of Frisbee golf and using a drunken discussion of Dashiell Hammett’s The Glass Key to skirt their deeper feelings; the women (Alana Arenas, Roxane Mesquida, Najarra Townsend) provide the soul baring needed for the film’s bittersweet denouement. Michael Glover Smith directed his own script. —ANDREA GRONVALL 105 min. Smith attends the screenings. Fri 2/16, 8:15 PM; Mon, 2/19, 7:45 PM; and Wed 2/21, 7:45 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center. Negar In this well-crafted thriller, an Iranian woman (Negar Javaherian) struggles to understand why her father, a real estate tycoon who killed himself, went bankrupt; when she discovers that several people owed him money, she begins to suspect foul play. Threatened with eviction from the house she shares with her grieving mother, the woman tracks down each offender to collect his debt while her father’s ghost leaves clues about the true nature of his demise. Iranian actor-turned-director Rambod Javan weaves surreal flashbacks, hallucinations, and dream sequences into the central mystery, smudging the line between the woman’s
Welcome to This House ExperR imental filmmaker Barbara Hammer (Nitrate Kisses) takes on the life of
Elizabeth Bishop, stressing the poet’s lesbian identity and pairing her agile verse (read on the soundtrack by Kathleen Chalfant) with evocative imagery. Bishop’s friends and colleagues provide intimate detail about her stormy romantic relationships, and Hammer revisits some of the “love houses” Bishop kept with other women in Florida and later Brazil. Raised by her grandparents after her mother was institutionalized, Bishop spent her adulthood looking for someplace to call home and someone to share it with, though her personal life was a succession of broken relationships. In the end Bishop (who died in 1979) rebuffs even Hammer’s attempts to get close, leaving this 2015 documentary with nothing but her verse as a point of entry; what more can a poet achieve? —J.R. JONES 79 min. Hammer takes part in a discussion by Skype. Sat 2/17, 7 PM. Logan Center for the Arts.
For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.
)/&.+;'& -27(+;23- #2/ )/&.+;'& 1&217& +/66751!-*: ,((!5<!8': 48. $74=9 &!5*01*. 23#0"71"*546# 48. >#6871"*546# (75 ,./=13
and Afrikaans with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 88 min. Fri 2/16, 6 PM; Sat 2/17, 7:45 PM; Mon 2/19, 6 PM; Wed 2/21, 6 PM; and Thu 2/22, 8:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.
6.! 80 -<.1&=5 7)-% ;7041*. !8 &7)817)8 %-483178
:$"4:""4*9$, !!!4-7%)27+3#45,-7%)27+3# $7,.45,-
"*$0 !&(%% "*$0 '/-0*1 +&0.0&&01 +&(#-10& !-,)2 +&0.0&&01 +&(#-10&
The Wound A stunning debut R from South African filmmaker John Trengove, this tense and intimate
drama unfolds in a rural Xhosa community in South Africa that initiates teenage boys into manhood through circumcision. The boys recover for weeks afterward in a camp near the mountains, supervised by men who have undergone the procedure themselves. Two of these caregivers use the annual retreat as a haven for their illicit gay romance, though in this homophobic culture they’re no safer in the wilderness than
"*'0)'6(*0'3*6 /3*1,*-3*&
The Wound REVIVALS Films by Barbara Hammer Seven shorts by the experimental filmmaker. Reviewing an earlier program, Fred Camper wrote, “I’ve seen two [of the films], which can be described as complex meditations: Optic Nerve (1985), on how and what Hammer’s grandmother, who’s in a nursing home, sees; and Endangered (1988), on the precarious situation of the independent, artisanal filmmaker. Both concentrate on the processes of seeing and both abound in striking, strobelike effects, superimpositions, and diverse split-screen and jigsaw-puzzle-like compositions. Endangered also features glimpses of endangered species from the bird and animal kingdoms. Their eloquently spare sound tracks were composed by Helen Thorington.” Also screening are Sisters! (1974), Psychosynthesis (1975), Still Point (1989), Sanctus (1990), and Vital Signs (1992). Hammer’s latest feature, Welcome to This House, makes its local premiere Saturday, February 17, at Logan Center for the Arts (see New Reviews). Fri 2/16, 7 PM. Nightingale. SPECIAL EVENTS Hump! Film Festival Sex columnist Dan Savage presents his annual festival of amateur porn. Fri 2/16-Sat 2/17, 7 and 9:30 PM. Music Box.
Welcome to This House imagination and reality. Though some melodramatic moments are clumsily handled, the film works as a queasy examination of grief, family secrets, and betrayal, bolstered by Javaherian’s committed performance and a supple, inventive story from first-time screenwriter Ehsan Goodarzi. In Persian with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 100 min. Sat 2/17, 8 PM, and Sun 2/18, 3 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.
in their patriarchal village, where one of them has a wife and children. Soon one of the initiates—a gay rich kid from Johannesburg—discovers their secret, which leads to violent and tragic consequences. Nakhane Touré, an openly gay South-African singer and novelist, is particularly good as the unmarried caregiver in the forbidden romance; close-ups of his face reveal the strain of his character’s hypocrisy. In Xhosa
The Unrepentant Cinephile book release screening Two restored genre films—James Bryan’s horror movie Jungle Trap (2016) and the English-dubbed version of Natuk Baytan’s Turkish adventure The Sword and the Claw (1982)—screen at this release party for The Unrepentent Cinephile, a new book by local author Jason Coffman. Coffman introduces the screenings. Sat 2/17, 7 PM. Chicago Filmmakers. v
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 5
164 North State Street
Between Lake & Randolph MOVIE HOTLINE: 312.846.2800
HAVE A NICE DAY
THE WOUND
February 16 - 22
Fri., 2/16 at 8:15 pm; Sat., 2/17 at 3 pm; Sun., 2/18 at 5:15 pm; Mon., 2/19 at 6 pm; Tue., 2/20 at 8:15 pm; Wed., 2/21 at 6 pm; Thu., 2/22 at 8:15 pm
February 16 - 22
Fri., 2/16 at 6 pm; Sat., 2/17 at 7:45 pm; Mon., 2/19 at 6 pm; Wed., 2/21 at 6 pm; Thu., 2/22 at 8:15 pm
CITY LIFE Street View
To boldly go Wardrobe stylist Paul Harris knows how turn heads.
“It’s like no other Chinese film you’ve ever seen.” — Screen Daily
“A milestone in South African cinema.” — Variety
FEB 16 - 22 • A CIAMBRA • BUY TICKETS NOW
“Compelling and accomplished ... The world is so realized that I felt as if I was living alongside its characters.” — Martin Scorsese
at
www.siskelfilmcenter.org
enter for A chance to win a pair of tickets
YOU GOT OLDER — L I V E AT —
FRIDAY, MARCH 2 AT 7:30PM A quirky dark comedy about a young woman following the thorny path to adulthood.
ò ISA GIALLORENZO
ENTER FOR A CHANCE TO WIN AT CHICAGOREADER.COM/WIN ON STAGE JAN 25 – MAR 11 • STEPPENWOLF THEATRE PURCHASE TICKETS AT STEPPENWOLF.ORG
Never miss a show again.
EARLY WARNINGS
chicagoreader.com/early 6 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
AS HE WALKED INTO A LUXURIOUS ROOM at the W Chicago filled with models, stylist Charles Harris, 29, still managed to turn heads. “It’s important to dress well because it brings a certain level of confidence— you walk into a room and you don’t even need to say anything before you get noticed,” he says. A wardrobe consultant for MP Factor modeling agency (Factor Chosen till recently), Harris was working as a stylist at a party benefiting the Anti-Cruelty Society when he was photographed. Clients at his wardrobe consultancy business, Live Limitless, have included Nike, Macy’s, and the Chicago Bulls, and he’s also a personal shopper. His best styling tip? Courage, he says. “Don’t say you can’t wear anything without trying it on first. Don’t create a glass ceiling with your own style.” —ISA GIALLORENZO
l
l
CITY LIFE
Chicagoans
One-woman shop Chelsea Rectanus, 30, owner, Heirloom Books
PRETTY MUCH EVERY morning when I wake up, I try to remember my dreams right away, and then gather myself and figure out where I am mentally for the day ahead. It always starts with: “OK, what do we do today? You own a bookstore. This is your life now.” I don’t have family in Chicago, I don’t live with anyone, I don’t have any pets, so it’s just me and the shop and my friends. I make myself coffee, I get ready for the day, just standard stuff. I usually walk or bike to the shop. Turn all the lights on. Do a little bit of dusting. I put my sign out. I open anywhere between 8 AM to 11 AM; it really just depends on how up-and-at-’em I am. I consider this place a second home, so I don’t have a rigid structure. I just want to be there when my sign is posted that I’m there. It’s just me on staff. I have a volunteer who helps me stock books sometimes. I set things up for customers, and then I go to answering e-mails and checking out inventory, making sure we have best sellers. I’ll return calls from people who have left messages about books they want. I do a little bit
of writing in the mornings when I’m here by myself. And then I just wait for the customers to come in. I obviously love when people buy books, but it’s not a prerequisite to being able to sit and hang out; it’s just an added bonus if they buy something. Some poet friends might stop in and do their work while I’m doing mine. And then around dinnertime, anytime between six and eight, I’ll start slowly shutting the lights off, and then I’ll head out for the evening. A lot of people just come in with boxes of books and say, “I’m going to throw these away or give ’em to you,” and I find a place for them. Today we spent all day shelving about eight boxes’ worth. It’s not easy work by any means, but it keeps me busy. I was a bartender for years, and one thing I miss about bartending is the constant movement. I don’t like sitting at a desk all day. I like doing things. Ironically, I read less now that I have a bookstore, because there’s so much else to do. I have investors, and my parents have been the co-owners. We’re slowly making the tran-
sition into me being the full owner, but to start out, I needed their help. At this point we’re in the black—we’re keeping our nose above water. We’re dog-paddling, but we’re keeping our nose above water, but that’s all we expected in the first place. I think people are very skeptical of my owning a bookstore, but they’re also very encouraging. It’s like the kid who wants to be a famous rock star and everyone’s like, “Well, you’ve got a great voice, and you’re very talented, but you’re asking for the world here, so don’t get your hopes up.” What I get the most is “You’re really brave!” Which I guess is true. And then I definitely run into people who romanticize it. I romanticize it. I pinch myself sometimes. It really is as great as the romance would lead you to believe. There’s obviously a lot of hard work, and it’s not all roses and garlands and angels singing from the rooftops or anything like that, but it’s as good as it’s cracked up to be. I’ll go down with the ship if the worst should happen, because this is really my life now. —AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD
Chelsea Rectanus ò MICHELLE KANAAR
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 7
Dilara Sayeed, Democratic primary candidate for state representative of the Fifth District ò RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES
CITY LIFE
So you see the gerrymandering as a good thing? No, I don’t necessarily, but I see it as what exists right now. This is the reality of our district. This may be a gerrymandered district, but it is a slice of America from wealth to poverty, from white to black, from gay to straight. This is a slice of America, and this is my America.
POLITICS
State rep candidate Dilara Sayeed wants you to see her
The former Naperville teacher campaigns as a “bridge builder” in Chicago’s richest and poorest neighborhoods.
BY MAYA DUKMASOVA
W
hen state rep Juliana Stratton, scarcely a year in office, announced she was joining J.B. Pritzker’s campaign, a scramble ensued to represent the Fifth District in her stead. While it’s a majority-black district, gerrymandering has stretched its boundaries from Goethe Street in the Gold Coast to 80th Street in Avalon Park, running through some of the richest and poorest areas of Chicago with just 25 east-to-west blocks at its widest point. Three of the four candidates still in the race are African-American. Among them is Ken Dunkin, who held this seat for 15 years before Stratton and doesn’t appear to be actively fund-raising—his candidate committee received $1.3 million from the Bruce Rauner-aligned Illinois Opportunity Project in 2016. His two serious opponents are Lamont Robinson—a businessman receiving support from Fourth Ward alderman Pat Dowell, house speaker Mike Madigan, and many unions—and Dilara Sayeed, a 48-year-old former teacher and founder of an education start-up who’s presenting herself as the “unbought and unbossed” candidate in this race. We reached Sayeed at her South Loop apartment via video chat—she prefers to handle interviews that way if she can’t meet people in person.
Why do you prefer to do interviews in video chat rather than by phone? People see my name, they see Dilara Sayeed, and even though it’s 2018 in the United States of America, people still wonder: I wonder what that name looks like in real life? I wonder if she speaks English well? You know what I mean? It’s just the reality of our world.
8 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
And I think face-to-face, eye-to-eye is a really important way to communicate. I grew up in the city, I’m a Head Start kid, lived in the city all my life until we got married. And then my husband’s job took us to Naperville. We lived there for about 15 years and I became the first tenured American Muslim teacher in DuPage County. Helped introduce a race-and-class pluralism curriculum into the district. . . . Naperville taught me a lot about how to collaborate and work with different kinds of people and be a bridge builder. And then we moved back to the city five years ago. I found an article from 2002, when Rod Blagojevich was running for governor. You were quoted in the story talking about how you usually voted Republican. When you decided to get into politics why did you go into the Democratic Party? It’s interesting that I said that, because if you look at my voting record I haven’t voted Republican except in 2000 and 2001. I pulled a Republican ballot, and that was more because of how you take your Democratic values in a heavily Republican community. You try to sometimes be strategic and vote for the most Democratic of the Republican candidates. My first political contribution in my life was in 2003, when I gave a check to a young candidate for senator. My husband said, “Wait, we don’t even have money for political contributions. Why would you give him money?” And I said, “Honey, you don’t understand. His name’s Barack Obama. And I think he’s going to be president of the United States one day.” My values as a Chicagoan have always been Democratic.
You’re a Muslim woman of Indian descent running for office in a majority-black district with also very wealthy white areas—what’s that been like? I will knock on a door in South Shore and someone will open the door and they will say, “Oh, wow!”—I am not the typical candidate. So I get questions, we share things, we realize how many things we have in common. When I say “Last week I walked into a retail store and I was ignored by the saleswoman until somebody else walked in who didn’t look like me,” that resonates with people. Discrimination resonates. We live in a time when racism still resonates. We live in a time when people understand that to be a Head Start kid and then to be able to build a life, make it, live where I live—that’s a celebration for us. Sometimes I’m in South Shore, they’ll say, “Hey, wow, and you’re running for state rep? That’s always been a black seat. You’re not black . . . But you’re not white!” I’ll have someone open the door and say, “Assalamualaikum, may God’s peace be with you. My father was Muslim,” or “My sister is Muslim,” or “I’m dating a Muslim,” and so you’d be surprised how much we actually have a common. When I go to the Gold Coast [chuckles] I’ve heard everything from “You live in the South Loop?” “You’re a teacher? Your husband’s a doctor?” And then say, “You’re not white . . . But you’re not black!” As you’re traveling around the district campaigning, do you ever reflect on the gerrymandering that created it and connected such a disparate set of communities? My thoughts are: it’s an opportunity.
What are three issues that you’d want to advocate for down in Springfield that are particularly pertinent to your would-be constituents in River North, and three issues that would be particularly important to your constituents in Greater Grand Crossing? Can I tell you—the issues are the same. It’s just how they’re interpreted in different parts. The three issues that I’m espousing go hand in hand. Number one is a stronger education system everywhere in this state. If we have a stronger education system we’re able to help people have economic security. That’s number two. You have people ready for jobs, you have skilled workers, you have potential entrepreneurs if they’ve had a strong education. We help people who will grow up to run businesses and we have people who will retire and want to have the savings that they’ve created to be safe. That’s economic security. When you have a strong education system and economic security you are actually alleviating the issues around public safety—alleviating criminal activity, you’re alleviating illegal guns, crime. So all three of those issues impact the entire district. How do you explain why a Chicago Public School is a better quality school on the north side of your district compared to the south-side part of your district? There are two key reasons. If you want to look at the quality of a school, look at the investment in the community. The school’s not a bubble in itself. So when you walk around James Madison [Elementary] School [in Greater Grand Crossing], 30 percent, three out of every ten homes—and I’ve counted them—are boarded up. If you walk down the street—there is no grocery store. There is no pharmacy. There is no place for kids to hang out after school. There’s liquor stores at the corner, there’s run-down, boarded-up stores on the corner. Because there’s a divestment in the community, people then are moving out, families are moving out. Number two is the social capital of the peo-
l
l
CITY LIFE ple who live there. Lincoln Park residents call central [CPS] office and say, “Our school’s overcrowded, we need an annex. I pay this much in property taxes.” They’re well-intentioned parents who want the best for their kids, and they get it. Why? Because they do pay higher property taxes. The mayor knows it, the school district knows it, and they get what they need because they have social capital. When a parent in Englewood calls and says, “Our school is underfunded” or “There’s rats at Mollison [Elementary School],” somebody needs to come and fix that,” they’re very valid but they don’t have the social capital. But doesn’t this whole situation with Cook County Assessor’s Office and how they’ve been assessing property taxes show that the people in Lincoln Park are probably paying a lesser rate? You’re exactly right, but that’s not the perception. If you had communities that were rich and vibrant, the schools would be rich and vibrant. People would move there, and they
would want to live, work, play, pray, right in that district, right in that neighborhood. And they don’t right now. The social capital people bring—it’s the color of your skin, it is the kind of home you live in, it’s the perception that if you have more social capital you must be paying more in property taxes. The car you drive is nice—all of that changes the way we treat people. I went to Brennemann Elementary School [in Uptown]. Every day, though, I walked past Walt Disney Magnet School—one of the best schools in the country. And every day I wished I went to that school. Why didn’t I? My parents didn’t know how to navigate the system. It’s just the reality of my life. Many people say “I went to Chicago Public Schools” but will point out that they went to a selective school or a magnet school. I’m not a product of the magnet schools. I wish I was. My parents didn’t know what to do to get me in. What grades did you go to Brennemann? From kindergarten through third grade. Then we were unfortunately robbed by our
neighbor. My parents were very afraid, so we moved to where I went to Hitch Elementary School [in Norwood Park]. We were the first nonwhite family at Hitch. [Sighs] That was a whole ’nother way of looking at my color, my skin tone, and my racial background, because I was bullied at school. It was not easy during the 70s and 80s to be the first nonwhite kid in a school. And again there was a magnet school, there was a selective high school, I could’ve gone to Whitney Young—my parents didn’t know how to do that. And I don’t want a kid’s demographic or luck [to determine] how well they’re raised. I want James Madison to be a great neighborhood school, Emmett Till to be a great neighborhood school, and Ogden to be a great neighborhood school. Not because the parents know how to navigate the system. But because our responsibility as state legislators and government officials and CPS officials is to make sure there’s a great neighborhood school in every community. v
v @mdoukmas
ELKHATIB LAW, LLC
Selling Your Home? Legal Fees Only $250 • Business • Property Taxes • Real Estate • Auto Accidents • Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect
70 W. Madison, 14th Floor Chicago, IL 60602 www.ElkhatibLaw.com (312) 324-0944
FINISH STRONG
COMPLETE YOUR DEGREE AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Consider the value of a Northwestern bachelor’s degree in today’s competitive marketplace. You may be closer to a Northwestern degree than you think. • Restart your academic career at a premier university. • Choose from 12 bachelor’s degree majors. • Take advantage of competitive tuition rates. • Transfer in credit — many students create a shorter path to degree completion by applying transfer credit. • Explore financial aid and scholarship opportunities for qualified undergraduate students. Apply today — applications are accepted quarterly. sps.northwestern.edu/ugrad • 312-503-2579
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9
Pritzker the sneak disser might as well have said the N-word By ADESHINA EMMANUEL
J.B. Pritzker is a sneak disser.
For those of you who don’t know the lingo, o, let me explain. ck. He’s the guy who talks crap behind your back. In Pritzker’s case, it’s on an FBI wiretap. For leyoung black folk like me, to quote the Engleke. wood poet Chief Keef, that’s the shit I don’t like. ke The billionaire candidate for governor, like too many white so-called progressives, is a fake friend to the black community. Don’t let the army of African-American politicians who back Pritzker tell you otherwise. Be wary of assurances from people like Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle, alderman Roderick Sawyer and alderman Walter Burnett, and secretary of state Jesse White. Indeed, don’t believe any other black politician wedded faithfully to the Democratic machine who still supports Pritzker. Listen instead to what Pritzker said in a conversation with another powerful white man that we weren’t supposed to hear. The feds had tape rolling in November 2008 when Pritzker gave then-governor Rod Blagojevich his advice on whom to appoint to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama after his ascent to the White House. Pritzker’s idea: Appoint Jesse White. That, Pritzker told the corrupt former governor who now lives in a federal prison, “covers you on the African-American thing.” “Of all the African-Americans I can think that are sort of like, qualified, and vetted,” Pritzker says, White was “the one that’s least offensive.”
10 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
ò GREG HO
ed his thoughts thought hts on who Pritzker also shared shouldn’t get the U.S. Senate appointment. He starts with Emil Jones, the former Illinois senate president, who isn’t U.S. Senate material because “I mean, you know, he’s just, I don’t know how to say it exactly. But Emil’s a little more crass.” Crass, just to be clear, is an adjective that means “lacking sensitivity, refinement, or intelligence.” This is what happens when an African-American is deemed too aggressive because they’re not meek. If you’re a black politician in the Democratic Party, you’ll get slapped with the unelectable tag. Or miss out on a Senate appointment. If you’re a black person stopped by police or an overzealous neighborhood watchman, you might get hit with something else. These are all just branches from the same tree, and at its roots lie in racist stereotypes that have been used to exclude or harm African-Americans since slavery. The type of subtle racism revealed in Pritzker’s conversation with Blago hurts on a personal level more than the bigoted words from some politicians on the right. That includes President Donald Trump, Republican
USTON
gubernatorial candidate Jeanne Ives, and the self-described “white racialist” (Nazi) running unopposed in the Illinois Republican primary for U.S. Congress. These are people who we know don’t align with us politically. But Pritzker reminds us that the white Democratic establishment supports black power—as long as it’s black power they can control. The FBI wiretap lets us listen in on the secret conversation of two powerful white men callously deciding the terms by which black people are allowed political power. We know they aren’t the only Illinois power brokers who talk that way. They just got caught. Again, we’re not shocked by regressive politics from outed bigots like Ives, the Republican Party’s answer to Governor Bruce Rauner, because they never claimed to have our backs in the first place. Ives’s “Thank you, Bruce Rauner” political ad used what appeared to be an actor portraying deep-voiced trans woman, a white woman in a Pussyhat, a supposed immigrant wearing a red bandana over his face, and a black woman in a Chicago Teachers Union shirt to deride Rauner for his stance on various social
issu is sues es, which whic wh ich Ives implied don’t measure up to issues, cons co nservative standards. ns conservative We o racism. The We’re used to that brand of wa Pritzker talks in code, though, th way stokes the greatest fears of black folk who navigate whit into theirs. white spaces or welcome whites The fear of how white people rea really talk about ear you when you aren’t within earshot. The fear that your white allies really only value you as a token, and see your blackness as a commodity p to leverage toward their own popularity or a bo fides. What way to secure their liberal bona happens when you’re not “safe” in their eyes idea of an acceptor don’t conform to their ideas able black person? ab When the news first broke about Pritzker’s Blag Pritzker imcoded conversation with Blago, confere mediately called a press conference outside a we side, flanked soul food restaurant on the west by black leaders who answered the call. “I regret some of the things tthat I didn’t say and some of the things that I did, but my heart is in the right place—that I’ve tried really hard through the course of my life to do the right things for the African-American community and for communities across Illinois,” Pritzker said. That’s not good enough. And it certainly shouldn’t quell distrust spurred by Pritzker’s disrespect of the black community. The black politicians who stand by him as he tries to court votes in their communities are problematic too. His supporters insist the man who spoke on that November 2008 wiretap doesn’t speak for the man courting the black vote today. That kind of blind party loyalty is further proof of the political disconnect between the old guard and today’s black millennial. If the third of Democratic voters in Illinois who are black want to really see a Democratic Party that works for them, especially young folk, they need to oust power brokers who look the other way at transgressions from white allies. We need more of those African-American leaders who make people like Pritzker and Blago uncomfortable.
l
l
We need more people to fight back like Kina Collins, the Pritzker campaign worker who resigned after hearing the tape and explained herself on Facebook. “I am no longer a part of the JB Pritzker for Governor campaign. . . . I will not stand by a candidate who feels that way about Black folks,” she wrote. “Character is not what you do when the whole world is watching, character is what you do when no one is watching. I think we can continue to contribute to the problematic fabric of politics especially in IL or we can take a stand.” This isn’t just a local problem. It’s what’s wrong with national Democratic Party led by influential white fund-raisers, Mayor Rahm Emanuel among them. African-Americans are the most loyal bloc in the Democratic Party. Look no further than the push to keep the bigot and alleged child molester Roy Moore from winning one of Alabama’s U.S. Senate seats. In the December election for the seat, 98 percent of black women voters and 93 percent of black men voters cast ballots for Moore’s opponent, a Democrat named Doug Jones. In comparison, 34 percent of white women and 26 percent of white men voted for Jones. Moore would likely be in the U.S. Senate today if it wasn’t for African-American voters, especially black women. White politicians in the Democratic Party rely on black voters to put them in power, but the black community hasn’t seen a commitment from the party proportionate to our contributions. In Illinois like most other states, governor has always been a job for white men only. No people of color have successfully run for the office. And that won’t change this year. The current field of candidates includes eight contenders. Six are white men. Sure, Tio Hardiman is black. But everybody knows he’s got no shot. If a serious African-American contender ran for governor here they would be up against conservative downstate voters who overwhelmingly voted for Trump, and have to deal with people in their own party who talk like Pritzker and Blago on that call the FBI intercepted. When I first heard the audio recording there was something that struck a chord in me, something I know I’m not alone in feeling. Beyond the coded language, as the two men brainstorm ways to mitigate or eschew black political power, a smug and mocking tone permeates the conversation. It’s like they’re both in on some joke. It feels like one of them is about to laugh and say, “You know how niggers are.” v
v Public_Ade
J.B. Pritzker is (not) a bigot By NEIL STEINBERG
Do you remember
the word Bobby Rush used to describe anyone who might question the selection of toothless political hack Roland Burris to fill Barack Obama’s vacant senatorial seat? Think back. Almost a decade ago. December 2008. Rod Blagojevich was out on parole, having already so badly mangled the deliberation process that he was muscled out of his Ravenswood home in handcuffs by the FBI. Still, he insisted on appointing a senator as his final obscene gesture to the state he’d betrayed. Anyone with an ounce of personal integrity cringed away from the poisoned chalice Blago was proffering with both hands. But the septuagenarian Burris, who had space on his pharaonic tomb to list another accomplishment, grabbed it eagerly. No? Don’t remember? It was a long time ago. Rush, after thanking God that a black man had been made senator, urged anyone in the U.S. Senate who might oppose the former attorney general’s appointment not to “lynch” the man. He went there. Easily. From long practice. Because really, the only reason a person would not want a 71-year-old undistinguished political functionary dropped into a seat in the United States Senate had to be racial hate. Not to single out Rush. The charge of racism is a big hammer, and the temptation to grab it to bop whoever is saying something you don’t like is soooo tempting. Trust me. I’ve felt it reverberate against my skull many times—if you go on YouTube, you can see members of the black community picketing the Sun-Times, demanding I be fired for the obvious bigotry of pointing out that disgraced senator Carol Moseley-Braun was most certainly not going to defeat Rahm Emanuel and become mayor of Chicago, no matter how she cooked her poll numbers. Spoiler alert: she didn’t. So it’s tough to remain quiet while gubernatorial candidate J.B. Pritzker gets the treatment. His crime: discussing the self-same tainted senate vacancy with Blago—man, he’s the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t he?—on the FBI wiretap that was recently released, the same treasure trove being continually mined on every television courtesy of Governor Bruce Rauner. On the recording, Pritzker calls former state senate president Emil Jones “a little more crass” than other candidates. Then-con-
gressman Jesse Jackson Jr. is “a nightmare,” and secretary of state Jesse White is the “least offensive” choice Blago might make. Jones, who retired in early 2009, immediately popped up to bask in his sudden relevance, deftly pulling the entire African-American community in front of him as a human shield. “He insulted my whole community,” claimed Jones, demanding that Pritzker quit the race. Did he now? Watching various black leaders nodding in approval behind Jones left me with one thought: Have any of these people met Emil Jones? “Crass” might not be the word I would chose. Though neither is “polished.” I’ve seen “crusty” uttered in relation to Jones without drawing community outrage. “Old ward heeler” might be closer to the mark—if that offends you, don’t get mad at me, because I lifted it from Barack Obama’s Dreams of My Father, where he used it to describe the man, one of his mentors. The rule seems to be that black people can comment frankly on black people. But otherwise . . . Let’s set aside Jones for a second and move to the second politician Pritzker mentioned, Jesse Jackson Jr., then representing the Second District. Does “nightmare” reinforce the argument that Pritzker is a bigot? Or was that term, as I would argue, a fairly neutral description of a man who would soon be overwhelmed by mental illness and end up in prison, followed by his wife? “Nightmare” also seems a word that might be used to convey the essence of Jackson without tagging the speaker as a hardened hater. And Jesse White, “least inoffensive”—well, again, have you met the man? I spoke with him briefly at an event last Thursday. A very nice man. Could he also be considered bland, anodyne? I would say yes. Judge me accordingly. There is no question racism is at work when politicians are evaluated by white Americans. That the same people who embrace the lying venality of Donald Trump also excoriated Barack Obama has to be a function of racism. Or madness. Or both, and the two are without question related. But given the country’s horrendous history of racism, given the important role that bigotry still plays in so many aspects of modern life, it’s sad to see the term abused by those who really should know better. Like much trollery, the flinging of unwarranted charges of racism is designed to shut critics up. Commentary is a one-way street where certain mediocre politicians are concerned—you’re a valid voice so long as you’re praising them, but dare to disapprove and you’re George Wallace tightening his grip around an ax handle. That isn’t fair. To make it worse, Pritzker responded by apologizing to everyone in sight. Which, to be honest, doesn’t make him seem very gubernatorial. He might have said instead, “Why should an American citizen not accused of any crime, like me, be confronted with his mildly judgmental small talk a decade later?” I would have respected that more. But Pritzker isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, which is another column. Let’s end this by speaking plainly: Race is not just the third rail of American politics. It’s also the fire ax behind all-too-easily broken glass that irresponsible politicians of all colors grab for, accusations they start wildly swinging whenever they find themselves in a tight situation. They would have the public silently embrace the racism of low expectations by giving them a blanket pass because of the color of their skin. Don’t fall for it. v
v @NeilSteinberg FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 11
Black pols stuck in the Democratic machine’s spin cycle explain themselves By ADESHINA EMMANUEL
Now that I’ve cleared my throat,
.
let me explain: I was torn about spelling out in print all six letters of the hate-filled N-word. I don’t like saying it in mixed company. That means around white people, even at rap concerts. But I needed your attention. I had to relate the sinking feeling in my gut—one that a lot of African-Americans share—that doubled me over when I heard the coded language and racial subtext of billionaire J.B. Pritzker’s conversation with now-jailed former governor Rod Blagojevich about appointing Barack Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate. The sting of a hate-filled word alone isn’t enough to parse the clusterfuck of race and politics that is Pritzker’s “African-American thing” scandal, and, broadly speaking, business as usual. That’s why I called out the African-American elected officials who accepted Pritzker’s apology and still back him in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. To me, a black millennial, their seeming willingness to consider the way Pritzker spoke about race issues as displaying an acceptable level of racism is part of the problem too. They stood behind Pritzker and offered forgiveness that suggests to a lot of people— white people, that is—that they too should get a pass for sneaky racism so long as they don’t speak in vicious racial slurs. There are a lot of people—African-Americans and people of color across this city—who don’t forgive him. Some fear electing Pritzker is trading one racially insensitive billionaire governor for another. If you haven’t heard from those people, it’s because their opinions don’t matter
12 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
much to the Democratic machine orr the mainstream media. That said, Pritzker’s political apol-in ogists deserve a chance to explain ns why they think African-Americans should see Pritzker as a friend to their communities. y So I called them. Cook County le Board president Toni Preckwinkle te and secretary of state Jesse White never got back to me. And that’s a n shame. Those two African-American d leaders hold powerful posts and wield loads of influence in govern-y ment and in our communities. They e shouldn’t dodge this issue and hope it goes away. ng The black politicians supporting d Pritzker that did talk to me all shared d a common message: We should judge Pritzker’s history and entire person, not words from a decade-old private conversation. They touted him as the Democrats’ best chance to beat Governor Bruce Rauner. They said that Pritzker wouldn’t abandon them once the polls close, and would stay engaged through his tenure with economic development, income inequality, crime, and other issues plaguing many African-American neighborhoods. Alderman Michael Scott (24th), who represents troubled parts of the west side, said he’s “disappointed in the words that J.B. said” before explaining why he disagreed with my take on the whole mess. “He understands that, and he’ll try to do better,” Scott said. “But by no means do I think he meant it as a sneak dis or to call somebody the N-word. I just think that’s an unfair categorization.”
Alderman Emma Mitts (37th), another westside alderman, said, “I would use this incident to make sure he even does more for blacks.” “So whereas he was on tape saying he wanted one—we think this one is good—I want to show him we have a lot of good blacks in our community,” Mitts said. She told me she confronted Pritzker about how he spoke about black politicians, and he apologized to her and promised to do better. “I can tell you I felt he was remorseful. We’re not perfect, and we make mistakes. Thank God we’re still able to correct those mistakes while we’re here, and learn from them,” she said. Alderman Roderick Sawyer (Sixth), the south-sider who leads the City Council Black Caucus, described Pritzker as using “uncomfortable language” that falls short of being racist. Sawyer, the son of Chicago’s last black mayor, said there was something off about the
tone of the conversation, “because of that undertone white people talk with when they talk about other races.” “It sounds a little condescending,” he said. “That’s what I got from [the call]. I didn’t like it, what I heard, but the underlying conversation is can whoever the governor appoints for the U.S. Senate position be elected come that next special election. As elected officials, when we have vacancies, we sometimes talk ab about replacing a woman with a woman, an Af African-American with an African-American, a Polish guy with a Polish guy, a Latino with a La Latino. We go through these machinations and tr to find the best fit.” try The problem is, when you’re talking about th things like that, Sawyer said, “it might not co come out the best way, especially behind clos doors.” closed St Sawyer stands by Pritzker. Still, “I will say that I think he became enli enlightened and more sensitive to fa of how he speaks, particularthe fact a ly about somebody African-American, he said. can,” Bu Pritzker being sensitive to But what words he says doesn’t mean k we know what he really thinks about Afri African-Americans. Then again, the same goes for any politician. Howevth difference is most politicians er, the don’ have wiretaps released with don’t thei problematic language just their we weeks before a closely contested pr primary as they make a hard push to co court black voters. Alderman Walter Burnett (27th), a protege of Jesse White’s who represents gentrifying parts of the west side, said “th “this is nothing that African-Americans should be battling each other over.” “Eve “Everybody wants to race-bait and play on the African-American emotions, like we can’t read between the lines and we don’t know what’s going on, and I think folks don’t give us as much credit as they should, because we’re not ignorant, or stupid,” he said. Burnett argued that Pritzker said White was the “least offensive” African-American politician qualified for the U.S. Senate and singled Emil Jones out as “crass” and not fit for the Senate “because he was trying to explain to the governor why he thought Jesse White might have been a better choice.” Alderman Anthony Beale (Ninth), who represents a poor, black part of the far south side and supports Chris Kennedy for governor, has a different take. He said the wiretapped conversation between Pritzker and Blago reveals a lot about the relationship African-American leaders and voters have with the Democratic establishment.
l
l
“Every election, you have everyone fighting for the African-American vote, because the African-American vote is a key bloc of votes that everybody tries to cater to,” Beale said. “But after they come into the community and make all these false promises, nothing seems to change. We don’t get the attention our votes are dictating we should get.” Beale thinks that history will repeat itself with Pritzker. While I was talking with Burnett about how uncomfowwrtable I felt watching him and other black politicians standing behind Pritzker as he apologized outside a soul food restaurant on the west side, he interrupted me: “You sound like a young guy. “Maybe young people feel that way. Those of us who are older and know better. We know how people talk,” he said. “We’re not that thin-skulled to take all this stuff personal.” Damn, Walter. Give African-American millennials some credit. We have to deal with all kinds of symbolic attacks on blackness because, as it was in the old guard’s day and before them, blackness remains under assault on so many fronts. Our discontent is about much more than language and microagressions. Burnett’s jab hints at the black generational divide in politics. We have different expectations than our elders do when it comes to our relationship with political parties and white-led institutions. We have different visions of what it would look like to repair the multigenerational effects of slavery and white supremacy, and disagreements over whether we can get there by working incrementally within the traditional confines of the Democratic Party. Sure, young African-Americans like me should be thankful to the old guard of black leadership. Their ongoing march through the harrowing world of politics and race has yielded insights and victories that my generation can learn from and build on. But when we hear black politicians admit all the ways the needle hasn’t moved forward in their lifetimes despite their devotion to the establishment, we ponder what measure of change we can squeeze out of this society given the current system. It makes me wonder what my generation should do about politicians—in Chicago and around the country—who are stuck inside political machines that only want to control them. If we must oust them to redefine what political power looks like on our own terms, so be it. v
v @Public_Ade
The last word: Q&A with J.B. By MARK KONKOL
Do you think that the feds are listening to us right now? [Chuckles] I assume you’re . . . eh . . . you’re kidding . . . All right, so the Irish try to replace the Irish when somebody retires, there’s always talk about replacing a woman in public office with a woman. In the context of race politics what’s your take on thinking that way now, after what you’ve gone through with the release of the wiretap? Well, I mean, let’s say this. Politicians like to play identity politics in campaigns only often to leave communities behind after they’ve been elected. African-Americans are critical to electing Democrats across the country, but they’re often left out after someone gets elected. We’ve gotta remember that. This is not the kind of campaign I’m running. That’s not the kind of administration I intend to build. There are black staff members at all levels of this campaign. They’re helping guide us forward, they’re going to be part of this campaign throughout the general election and will help build a cabinet, an administration that reflects the diversity of the state. And I think you know I have a running mate in state representative Juliana Stratton who’s a fierce leader in the African-American community, and together we’ve crafted a number of policy proposals in collaboration with the community, and with many other communities. And we intend to govern the state that way, making sure that we’re very inclusive of a lot of different voices. Why do you think it was OK to talk about black politicians in those terms at the time you were recorded? My intentions on that call were to advocate for Secretary of State Jesse White to be named our senator. I stand by that fact, that Jesse White would have made a great United States senator for Illinois. I’ve known him for over 35 years. He sort of defines public service, and he’s a real statesman. My intentions, nevertheless, don’t excuse the words that I used, the word choices I made—and the words that I chose not to push back on,
that were spoken on the call—don’t reflect the commitment that I feel towards removing systemic barriers and increasing opportunities for people of color. I’ve spent a lifetime standing up for and with the African-American community, and I feel very sorry that I was using language that can be and often is used to, you know, limit the potential of African-Americans. And it was wrong. I didn’t intend it, but it happened, it was wrong. And when I’m wrong I say I’m wrong, and I take responsibility for it. What are you doing to change? Will you seek counseling? Well, there’s a long history of the Afric a n -A m e r i c a n co m mu n i t y p rov i d i n g really important support for Democrats, and ignoring African-Americans I think is wrong. To me, you know, it’s important to recognize that the kind of administration that I’ll build, the kind of policies I’ll put in place will be very good for the African-American community. And despite the mistake and the regret that I have over that mistake from ten years ago, my experience over a lifetime doing big things to help the community—like expanding the school breakfast program that President Obama put in place and providing early childhood education; working to change the law to expand and make universal preschool and child care for African-American children; and the fact that I ran the Illinois Human Rights Commission, the state’s civil rights court, and turned it around so people could get justice; and the fact that I supported in a major way [Northwestern’s] Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Children and Family Justice Center, both of which serve people who have been wrongly incarcerated or people who need representation when they’ve been caught up in the either the juvenile justice system or the criminal justice system more broadly—I think all of those things are demonstrations of a lifetime of commitment on my part. And I think you know I’m certainly—I think one very important thing is just recognizing that that call ten years ago was a mistake and wrong and that I’m apologizing and have apologized for it.
Why do you think millennials—especially African-American millennials—should support you? I’m glad you asked that, Mark. I’ve spent my life fighting to advance the values of social and economic justice, and equality, and inclusion. My record shows that. There’s no other candidate with a record as strong and long as mine is in doing exactly that—living up to those values of social and economic justice. I was raised in a home where we were taught not just the importance of living up to those values but the practice of them. That’s what I’ve tried to do during my life. My parents passed away a long time ago, but those values are carried on in me every day. In this campaign I’ve put forward real plans to make a difference and create opportunity among African-American millennials and young people all across this state. We need to make college more affordable and bring investment into our community colleges, and higher-education institutions need to thrive. We’ve gotta bring jobs to the state and raise the minimum wage, raise wages for everybody in the state. We need to expand access to capital for small businesses in the African-American community and draw businesses big and small to Illinois, ensuring that they hire locally. I’m a big believer that if we create profits in the African-American community, create businesses that are owned by people who live in the community, that we keep the capital and the wealth in the community and thereby we can build up prosperity in the community. That’s something hugely important to me. The African-American community and so many communities in Illinois are under attack by a racist and bigoted, misogynistic president, and I’m someone who’s gonna stand up to Donald Trump and to protect communities in Illinois that are under attack by him.
I know that I’m a white guy, but I live on the south side, in Pullman. Will you do anything to rebuild the south side? Can we talk about that another time, J.B.? Of course, Mark, it’s good to talk to you. v
Find a full transcript and listen online at chicagoreader.com.
v @KonkolsKorner FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 13
ARTS & CULTURE
R READER RECOMMENDED
b ALL AGES
F
Jiana Estes and Alex Hovi in Bad Boy World ò SOFIA BERGFELD
Belle of Austin Originally performed at the 2007 Rhinofest, Rory Jobst’s one-man show is back. The piece attempts to delve into the psyche of Daniel Johnston, the outsider singer-songwriter, by way of love letters in the style of Emily Dickinson. While this intent holds true to the mission of its presenter, Hawkeye Plainview Productions, as a “dramatic exploration and mash up,” it doesn’t create many Johnston/Dickinson synergies beyond general feelings of depression and longing. Under Dana Anderson’s direction, Jobst commits to Johnston’s mania and rides it full throttle, hauntingly illustrating the interior of his nonlinear, opaque mind. What’s unclear is what we’re supposed to walk away with. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 2/24: Sat 5 PM.
THEATER
The best and rest of Rhino Fest
By TONY ADLER, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, DAN JAKES, MARISSA OBERLANDER, AND DMITRY SAMAROV
R
hinofest turns 29 this year and remains one of the only fringe festivals in the U.S. that actively curates its acts instead of selecting them through a lottery. This time around artistic directors Jenny Magnus and Beau O’Reilly have chosen 41 different plays, cabarets, dance performances, workshops, and other things that defy classification. Of course Reader critics have opinions about what’s worth seeing. —AIMEE LEVITT
Accidents Karen O. Fort’s chosen-family dramedy examines the sexual revolution and women’s liberation movements of the 1970s through the lens of one cohabitating group of Pacific Northwest friends. An out-of-work teacher and her firefighter roommates have their own mid-midlife crises interrupted when a teenage runaway (Stella Akua Mensah) arrives unannounced at their cabin doorstep looking for help. What follows that promising setup is the sort of low-stakes, languid, talky drama that feels like the filler in a long-running series, not a condensed two-act story. But when it’s not spinning its wheels or winking too hard at history, Rose Freeman’s production has some lightly comedic and romantic dynamics that ring true. —DAN JAKES Through 2/25: Sun 7 PM.
14 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
Bad Boy World Jiana Estes and Alex Hovi of the Hot Kitchen Collective create a sloppy but heartfelt rumination on what, if anything, it means to be a boy in 2018. Estes and Hovi dump bottle caps, water, beer, ketchup, and fast food on the floor until the entire stage is a mess. They mess with each other in playful and menacing ways. Scene changes are indicated when one or the other says “I’m gonna take out the trash” while leaving everything just as it is. But behind the slapstick and splatter, the pair explore aspects of gender, intimacy, self-worth, and friendship. They may be too young and brash to know answers to the questions they raise, but they’re way smarter than their dumb jokes make them out to be. —DMITRY SAMAROV Mon 2/19 7 PM.
R
Direct My Woyzeck In Chris Zdenek’s preposterous hour-long event with the Official Theater Company of. Thyssenkrupp AG, the audience must select from its ranks a production team (director, designers), audition five actors (all at once), and then stage several scenes from Georg Büchner’s feverish 19th-century masterwork Woyzeck according to an inflexible schedule (three minutes for blocking, four minutes for “scene work,” etc). When it’s over, the audience must forge a mission statement for the impromptu theater company, then listen to a freshly written review of the performance. In robust Fluxus tradition, Zdenek celebrates amateurism while ridiculing the uptight conventions of “legit” theater. The scenes my audience staged were gleefully awful, one led by a director whose only instruction to his cast was “Act!” —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 2/21: Wed 7 PM.
R joyous,
Heartbleed Playwright-director Lon West has a message for us, and he’s chosen to communicate it through an allegory. Trouble is, the allegory is an inchoate mess—obscure in some ways and all too plain in others, sort of like that first love poem you wrote in high school. I get that the guy who represents rationality and science is not only irritable but doomed, while the kind people who serve others are fated for the light despite their remarkable simplicity (one of them is surprised to learn that the sun will eventually burn out). But what’s this weird facility
they live in, apparently lacking on-premises staff even though some of the residents are in a very bad way? And why has the satanic Heartbleed decided to treat them so badly? And how about the mute girl’s paintings? It’s all very frustrating. And poorly staged, to boot. An excruciating 45 minutes. —TONY ADLER Sat 2/17, 2 PM. Scheduled Demonstration of Virtual
R Reality With Guest Speakers From
the Santa Monica Institute of Technology Somewhere in the middle of Post-Meridian’s perplexing piece—part TED talk, part sketch comedy, mostly impish anti-theatrical insurrection—Victor Vivendi (Mario Guzman) dismisses ideas from cohost Ross Raminelli (Patrick TJ Kelly) about transitioning from a man to a woman (or perhaps from a man to a man playing a woman). “There’s no science in that,” Vivendi insists. “I mean, maybe there’s science . . . ” It’s a moment emblematic of this ingenious duo’s mastery of indeterminacy (Victor and Ross may be coworkers, lovers, or complete strangers), a skill that turns nearly every moment in this hourlong performance about gender, sexuality, and high technology inscrutable, contradictory, and hilariously banal. Guzman and Kelly are tremendously subtle performers who delight in finding comedic dissonance in material that’s resonant yet seemingly meaningless. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 2/21: Wed 9 PM. The Disconnected El Bear presents John Fisher’s bombastic, brash, and bright take on dystopian farce. A soon-to-bedivorced couple’s bitter argument is disrupted by bumbling time travelers on a mission to prevent humanity’s looming subjugation by search engines, androids, and other sinister technologies. Strobe lights, 3-D glasses, and a booming soundtrack herald the visitors’ arrival, but the dark future they reveal is, of course, not discernibly different from our own present: the chilling land of “likes” in 2099 looks much like 2018. No deep insights here, but this spirited reminder of the idiocracy we’re merrily marching toward is apt and welcome. Rauly Luna directed. —DMITRY SAMAROV Mon 2/19, 9 PM. v RHINOFEST Through 2/25: Wed-Mon, various times, Prop Thtr, 3502-04 N. Elston, 7 73-
R
492-1287, rhinofest.com, $15 or pay what you can, $12 in advance.
l
l
(L to R):Ensemble member Caroline Neff (Mae) and Gabriel Ruiz (Cowboy) ò MICHAEL BROSILOW
THEATER
You Got Older doesn’t try for wiser
When does a play resemble an Instagram of somebody’s meal?
reasons but because they remind her of her mortality as they pile up toward the horizon. The cumulative effect is wryly entertaining. As Mae’s sex talk indicates, Barron is very good at ingratiating herself even as she allows for a light whiff of edginess. Still, there’s that strange silence around the central business of You Got Older: Mae’s belated coming of age. We know it’s supposed to happen, if only because an old-style dumb show puts exclamation points on that theme at the end of the play. But as far as I can tell, Mae’s only discernible brush with transformation comes in a single, singularly touching moment when Dad knocks at her bedroom door late one night, unable to sleep and hoping to talk. Her childish egocentrism obstructs a possible communion, and she clearly knows it. Then the moment is gone. Dumb show notwithstanding, Mae doesn’t appear to grow up—she just gets older. I’ve been thinking about why. One thing I know for sure is that Mae is awfully difficult to parse, given her emotional inarticulateness as written and her guarded-to-sullen affect as embodied by Caroline Neff in Jonathan Berry’s
ARTS & CULTURE
staging. I also wonder whether the strong autobiographical content has misled Barron, deceiving her into thinking that Mae’s struggle is as self-evident to an audience as it must be to her—a classic case of being too close to the material. A point in favor of this theory would be the way Barron approaches the character of Dad: as a nice older fellow with nothing much to say and hardly any inner life at all. In short, as a projection of the father a loving daughter might cherish in her heart. Dad’s vacuity is especially disappointing, by the way, because he’s played by Francis Guinan, a normally fearless actor who communicates all the complexity here of a man waiting for a bus. Then again, maybe You Got Older is a harbinger of what plays will come to be like in an era when people share photos of their meals on social media. Maybe it’ll be enough to say, “This happened to me. That’s interesting, right?” v YOU GOT OLDER Through 3/11: Wed 2 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, steppenwolf.org, $20-$89.
v @taadler
By TONY ADLER
T
his play has an embarrassingly autobiographical origin story,” says playwright Clare Barron in the program for You Got Older, running now at Steppenwolf Theatre. And she runs down the real-life parallels to prove it. Like her 31-year-old alter ego, Mae, Barron (a) got dumped by her boyfriend; (b) was fired from her job by that same boyfriend, who was also her boss (which sounds like a lawsuit to me, though neither Barron nor Mae goes there); and (c) learned that her dad had an advanced case of cancer, all in short order. Barron and Mae both moved home, where, after what she characterizes as a prolonged taxi down the “free-spirit runway,” Barron finally put away childish things. And so, I guess, does Mae. I say “I guess” because, although Barron’s program comments are explicit about the rite of passage she experienced in tending to her sick father (“For me, it was the moment where . . . I became an adult”), what if anything happens to Mae isn’t so clear. Yes, she keeps Dad company in the kitchen and the garden. Yet most of her time is taken up in solipsistic fretting about her sex life (41 days without), the lump in her jaw, and the ugly, itchy, bumpy
rash that covers her back. Two of those problems seem to be solved simultaneously when she encounters the endlessly accommodating Mac at a bar. In a clever meet-cute, Mac mistakes Mae for her sister, on whom he had a crush in the fourth grade, but quickly adapts when he realizes his error. And as for the rash, he admits he’s actually into oozing pustules. Mae lets Mac rub salve on her back, but she reserves her deepest erotic energies for the Cowboy who comes to her in her dreams. A retro-macho type in the John Wayne, tie-’erup-if-she-don’t-behave mode, the Cowboy supplies a gauge of Mae’s infantile sense of helplessness, her desire to be helpless. And so it goes. We meet Mae’s siblings— bossy older sister Hannah, lesbian PC-language-policeperson Jenny, big friendly lug Matthew—all of whom live outside Seattle and bear a zeitgeisty resemblance to the Tim Robbins-Holly Hunter brood in HBO’s Portland-based Here and Now. They sit around Dad’s bed at the hospital, post-op, demonstrating their family dynamics as well as some sub-Sarah Ruhlian wackiness. Mae herself is engagingly uninhibited when it comes at least to talking about sex: she declines to give any more blow jobs, she says, not for the usual
The Burn By Philip
Dawkins Directed by Devon de Mayo
Tickets Only $20 Feb 17 – Mar 3, 2018 FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15
ARTS & CULTURE
PODCAST
Out of the closet, onto the streets
Mattachine uncovers the forgotten history of queer liberation.
By KT HAWBAKER
I
t’s fitting that writer Devlyn Camp chose to podcast the story of the Mattachine, the United States’ first successful gay emancipation movement. Like the majority of queer history, the movement’s inception took place deep in the closet—muffled and through word of mouth, relying on people operating outside conventional media networks. In order to communicate, queer folks had to take language, media, and distribution into their own hands. As a medium, the podcast totally falls in with this legacy. The Mattachine story itself begins like this: It was 1950, the second Red Scare was in full swing, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was playing his own sadistic game of smear the queer. In the Mattachine’s initial manifesto, “The Call,” founder Harry Hay, writing under the pseudonym Eann MacDonald, announced he was forming the group in “full realization that encroaching American Fascism, like unto previous impacts of International Fascism, seeks to bend unorganized and unpopular minorities into isolated fragments of social and emotional instability.” They borrowed the name from the Société Mattachine, a group of masked players in medieval France. With Mattachine, Camp, a 25-year-old Columbia College grad with a background in musical theater and television production, has created a smart series about the 20th-century emergence of gay liberation that acknowledges the movement’s predecessors (including Chicago’s Henry Gerber, the founder of the Society for Human Rights, the first gay emancipation organization in the U.S.) and its shortcomings—wow, was this shit white or what? I spoke with Camp—yes, they know they have the best last name for this project—about the experiences and research behind this big, queer podcast.
16 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
What’s the Mattachine movement? In 1950, there was a closeted communist named Harry Hay who was married to a woman, and he saw the government starting to use queer people as scapegoats for communism. He started gathering the only queer people he knew to work anonymously at organizing other queer people. They would just meet in living rooms; they just wanted to identify each other: “I’m not the only one, you’re out there, and I bet you know other people too.” Then it took off. And this is happening in Los Angeles? In LA, in 1950, just before McCarthy’s big speech alleging that there were 205 card-carrying communists working in the State Department. A few days after this initial speech, with all the hype, he gave another [speech] on the Senate floor in which he blurred communists and homosexuals. People were so unfamiliar with homosexuals that the blurring made sense to them, because communists and homosexuals both had their own literature, meeting places, culture, etc. Since everyone was already scared of communists, McCarthy made them panic about homosexuals simultaneously. So, naturally the government wanted to take down a gay group run by former communists, secretly meeting to take political action. [Episode 4 of Mattachine, “Lavender Scare,” covers this moment thoroughly.] And this gay group was mostly white folks? Mostly white, mostly male—that’s actually part of the problem. It’s a lot of white gay men, then it’s a lot of conservative gay men turning on feminine gay men. Many of them try to bring in women and people of color, but they fight a lot about it. This part of the narrative is in our most recent episodes.
Harry Hay posing outside a shack with a group of men. ò COURTESY OF ONE ARCHIVES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIBRARIES
It sounds like a deeply problematic survival mechanism. Absolutely. Because the Mattachine are being hunted by the FBI, they have to weed people out in order to keep the organization going. It’s that ongoing question of whether we’re normal or the minority. It made me reflect on my own gender. How so? When I read the arguments from genderqueer folks about having our own subculture separate from the outside [mainstream heterosexual] culture, I realized that was something I was fighting in myself. I’d been out of the closet for a decade and thought I had it all figured out, but I realized I was still picking on parts of myself. When did the project begin for you? I started researching two years ago. My mentor, [Reader contributing writer] Albert Williams, recommended some stuff to me about the Mattachine. This spun me into a bunch of different directions: books about the FBI hunting queer organizations in the 50s, the cold war, the “lavender scare”—it was all interconnected. I wound up at the ONE archives out in Los Angeles, which is the largest queer archive in the world, and they have all of the original Mattachine files there. It was like Christmas. I was there for days. There were documents from lesbian organizations, conservative gay groups, liberal gay groups—after the Mattachine, after Stonewall, they got to splinter off in a thousand ways. The stories are endless.
Why turn this story into a podcast? Mostly impatience. I want to write and produce television, and as I was reading up, I saw it as a TV series: there are lots of incredible twists, heartbreaks, love stories, and visual excitement. I don’t have the resources right now to make television, but serialized podcasts became popular as I was writing—I guess it was luck and impatience. Fortunately, podcasting is this brave, new medium where anything goes. There aren’t any gatekeepers, so you can do whatever you want. I think about that a lot too. It’s a medium that really lends itself to queerness. I was just getting mad about this the other day. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram remove posts about queer news because they see it as filthy. The Stonewall Gazette has a Twitter account, and when I went to follow them, it was all grayed out as “sensitive material.” It was just clean, queer news. On podcasts, they can’t really do that. They’ll look at you for copyright infringement, but they can’t take down anything explicit. How do you want to impact your listeners? Hopefully, they’ll see that the disagreements we have in the queer community right now, the issues with internalized homophobia and blatant misogyny, are problems that we’ve had since we found each other. Understanding the endurance of these problems can help us fight them within ourselves. v MATTACHINE New episodes Thu, mattachinepod.com.
v @kthawbaker
l
l
ARTS & CULTURE
LIT
ò EMILY VAN COOK
Meet Neil Hilborn, the most popular poet on YouTube By MADELINE HAPPOLD
Y
ouTube is known for creating Internet sensations—makeup gurus, live-action gamers, teenage heartthrobs, and now, poets. With more than 100 million overall page views, 13 million of them on his poem “OCD,” Neil Hilborn is the most-watched poet on YouTube. Hilborn’s career started with an ending. In 2013, he was a creative writing student at Macalester College in Minnesota, where he competed in slam poetry events. “OCD,” a poem describing love lost to the effects of mental illness, had been a slam-performance staple for Hilborn, but after reciting the poem hundreds of times he felt it was falling flat. He
wanted to retire the poem. His friend Dylan Garity, founder of the slam poetry production group Button Poetry, wanted to record it. Hilborn thought it would be his last performance. “I was so wrong,” Hilborn says now. Overnight, the video got more than one million page views via Reddit. Hilborn still doesn’t know who posted it. Button Poetry later posted the video on its own YouTube page, where views continued to rise. “OCD” suddenly went from being a pain to being popular. Hilborn writes: When you have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, you don’t really get quiet moments. . . .
Usually, when I obsess over things, I see germs sneaking into my skin. I see myself crushed by an endless succession of cars. But the poem’s real success was how Hilborn was able to share his personal experience with OCD millions of times to millions of different users. The poem is personal and heartbreaking. It’s not some teenager in his basement building a Minecraft utopia, or some bright-eyed girl with a brush showing you how to contour. It has a strong effect on viewers. “‘How can it be wrong when I don’t have to wash my hands after I touch her?’ I’ve suffered from severe OCD for 24 years,” writes YouTube commenter Dr. Fobik, “and that quote nearly made me break down. Lived that quote.” Hilborn released his book Our Numbered Days with Button Poetry in 2015. He now spends months at a time on tour, like a rock star. His show at the Beat Kitchen last November sold out within days. “All I’ve ever tried to do as a writer and performer is just try to be as open and genuine as
possible,” he says. When Hilborn performs, his voice booms, his arms flail desperately, and his face contorts with each line. YouTube helps transform his poetry from words on paper to miniature spoken-word one-acts. “What’s most helpful for me is when I can take those thoughts or feelings and literally externalize them,” says Hilborn. “When I can put that on a piece of paper in front of me, suddenly it’s not this huge, terrifying thing.” Hilborn supports social media as an avenue for art. After all, it did start his career. Social media is like layman’s PR: free and far-reaching. “People, especially young people like me, need this avenue to express themselves, and poetry is the cheapest art form,” says Hilborn. “All you need is a pen and a piece of paper, and you can steal those things.” v NEIL HILBORN: THE FUTURE TOUR Thu 2/15, 8 PM, Logan Square Auditorim, 2539 N. Kedzie, 773-252-6179, ticketweb.com, $16.
v @MadelineHappold
February 10–August 12, 2018 STYLE. CRAFTSMANSHIP. INNOVATION. POSTURE.
Thirty-seven exceptional chairs show all.
The Art of Seating is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, in collaboration with the Thomas H. and Diane DeMell Jacobsen Ph.D. Foundation and is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, D.C. Design and Manufacture Attributed to Pottier & Stymus and Company (Est. 1859), New York, NY, Egyptian Revival Side Chair, c. 1875 Photo by Michael Koryta and Andrew VanStyn, Director of Acquisitions, Conservation and Photography
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 17
Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.
ARTS & CULTURE Tehran Taboo
MOVIES
Animation gets real
Tehran Taboo and Have a Nice Day take viewers deep inside Iran and China. By J.R. JONES
N
atural realism has been the holy grail of animation since the 1920s, when Winsor McCay established the art of character animation with his groundbreaking Gertie the Dinosaur cartoons, and the 1930s, when Walt Disney elevated it to a new level with the supple, emotionally precise character movement of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The quest lives on in the age of 3-D digital animation, when motion-capture technology offers a new frontier in creating hyperrealistic characters. Social realism is another matter—with all those paychecks to sign, animation producers inevitably gravitate toward more bankable fantasy and sci-fi stories. But over the next two weeks Gene Siskel Film Center will present two new animation features that offer startling glimpses of modern life in strange lands: Ali Soozandeh’s Tehran Taboo, which explores the sexual underground in Iran, and Liu Jian’s Have a Nice Day, a gritty film noir about hopeless losers crushed by China’s ruthless market economy. Tehran Taboo, opening for a one-week run on February 23, is the more impressive of the two because it not only excels as social realism, it tells the story of a society so warped by Islamic fundamentalism that it’s unable to process reality. Soozandeh was born and raised in Iran but wrote and directed his film from the safe remove of Germany, where he’s lived since 1995; like no Iranian movie I’ve seen, Tehran Taboo reveals the routine hypocrisy of people who observe and even enforce
ssss EXCELLENT
sss GOOD
a strict religious code but secretly indulge in the pleasures of the flesh. In the opening scene, a cabdriver picks up a streetwalker who goes down on him in the front seat as her preschool-aged son stares out the side window in back; this sordid transaction doesn’t bother the cabbie, but when they happen to pass his grown daughter holding hands with a man as she walks down the sidewalk, he goes ballistic. In press notes Soozandeh explains that he chose animation to tell his story because it would enable him to show real locations inside Iran, and he settled on the rotoscoping technique, in which animators work from motion picture footage, because it “allows us to feel the characters realistically despite the animation.” Luckily for him, he has three strong actresses playing the trio of women who drive his story. Pari (Elmira Rafizadeh), the hooker from the opening scene, desperately needs a divorce from her incarcerated, drug-addicted husband, but her only recourse is a judge who demands sexual favors in return. As they ride together in a cab, two young men on motorcycles roll up, and through the open window one asks the judge, “Imagine if I accidentally fell on top of your sister and I somehow penetrated her. Would we be related?” The judge replies, “No, my son. We would be even. My regards to your sister.” Pari snorts at this but, as a woman, must conceal her amusement while the men roar with laughter. The judge installs Pari and her son, Elias, in a high-rise apartment, where the boy (who silently observes all) can drop water balloons
ss AVERAGE
18 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
s POOR
•
off the balcony onto unsuspecting neighbors many floors below. From an adjoining balcony Elias can hear trippy dance tracks made with an accordion and a delay pedal by Babak (Arash Marandi), a hip young musician with a poster of Miles Davis on his wall. Babak performs at an underground dance club where women shed their chadors to groove in slinky dresses. After a quickie in the bathroom with Donya (Negar Mona Alizadeh), he discovers that he has deflowered her and must pay to have her hymen repaired so the man she’s engaged to marry won’t learn of their tryst and murder Babak. The illicit lovers meet in a public park, sitting on different benches like spies, while police cruisers roll up and down the paths, the cops monitoring pedestrians for illegal displays of affection. “I’m getting married in a week,” Donya tells Babak. “I need to be a virgin again by then.” Closer to home, Pari strikes up a friendship with Sara (Zara Amir Ebrahimi), her shy nextdoor neighbor, who’s expecting a child after two miscarriages and who fruitlessly petitions her fundamentalist husband, Mohsen (Alireza Bayram), for permission to get a job. Though Pari passes herself off as a nurse, her more liberated perspective infects the other woman, and the couple’s marriage drifts toward the rocks. No one should be too surprised when Pari, working a shift at a brothel, welcomes her next trick into the room and discovers that it’s Mohsen. The two recoil from each other, burned by the moment in which their two lies have accidentally converged. The entire movie seems to take place in a world where people refuse to concede their own human impulses. Have a Nice Day, which opens Friday for a one-week run, springs from the same documentary impulse as Tehran Taboo. The plot is typical noir stuff: in a small town in southern China, Xiao Zhang, a driver for an organized crime ring, makes off with a bag containing one million yuan in order to finance his girlfriend’s plastic surgery. Meanwhile the canny mob boss, Uncle Liu, brutally interrogates Yuanjun, a fine artist who’s been sneaking around with the gangster’s wife. Yet director Liu Jian plays all this out against a detailed physical, social, and economic landscape. “The trends of rapid urbanization and industrialization in the country change a small town like this in vivid as well as in subtle ways,” Liu explains in press notes. “I am fascinated by all of these changes and the people whose lives are affected by these dynamics.”
While most of the action of Tehran Taboo happens in the foreground with the actors, Have a Nice Day is all about the backgrounds. Liu opens with a long shot of an industrial site on the edge of town, a wall cutting a horizon across the frame, behind it a twisting ribbon of black smoke, a pounding jackhammer, and clusters of gray high-rises in the distance. These outskirts of town are a hodgepodge of the modern and the ancient, every horizon bisected by a construction crane, every cement-hued building covered with stenciled lettering. The chase after the stolen money unfolds against highly detailed streetscapes of tacky signage, cluttered storefronts, and cold, solid institutional buildings. Even the interiors have a cheap, smacked-together quality, with functional mass-produced furniture, peeling walls, and posters of Western entertainment (Rocky, The Fast and the Furious). The town is just plain ugly, and it makes the characters ugly too. In this desolate environment, people are enthralled with entrepreneurism. After Xiao Zhang doses off at an Internet cafe, a diner owner named Yellow Eye relieves him of the stolen cash, which he wants to use to realize his dream of being an inventor. “Today God has opened his eyes and sent an authentic package of start-up capital,” he exults to his wife. Later Liu gives us a couple of two-bit hoods discussing their prospects for the future. “What’s the point of studying anyway?” asks one. “It’s Harvard dropouts like Gates and Zuckerberg who make big money. . . . Let’s drop out of school and start our own business. Something useful in today’s society. But that will follow future trends of industry development.” The philosophical centerpiece of Have a Nice Day is a conversation between two low-level hoods lounging in a restaurant, one of whom explains that there are three different kinds of freedom: farmers’ market freedom, supermarket freedom, and the most prized of all, online shopping freedom. Tehran Taboo takes place in a society where morality is a kind of shared illusion; in Have a Nice Day money has the power to create illusions and just as easily destroy them. Numerous scenes focus on the chilling Uncle Liu as he questions his lifelong friend Yuanjun, now tied to a chair half naked and bleeding from a severe beatdown. “Three fucking years ago you were still a broke-ass bum,” Liu points out. “Who bought your first painting? Who rented this studio for you? And who the fuck kept J
WORTHLESS
l
l
ARTS & CULTURE
MOVIES
Soldiers of love
Spencer Stone in The 15:17 to Paris
Clint Eastwood finds his inner Eric Rohmer with The 15:17 to Paris
By LEAH PICKETT
never expected to be reminded of French master Eric Rohmer while watching a film by Clint Eastwood, but The 15:17 to Paris shows that the 87-year-old director is still capable of surprises. In the middle section of Paris, three young men knock around Europe, flirt with attractive women, and muse on the nature of fate—things one would typically find Rohmer’s characters doing. Moreover, Eastwood’s direction of these scenes is relaxed and affectionate (they may be the most laid-back he’s shot since Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in 1997). The director clearly enjoys watching these characters bask in the liberty of early adulthood and investigate the world around them. Like Rohmer, who returned to the theme of youth in such later films as A Summer’s Tale (1996) and The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (2007), Eastwood suggests that the characters’ behavior is timeless, reflecting attitudes that young people have always had. The three leads seem particularly green because they’re played by men with no previous acting experience. The press materials for Paris play up the fact that Eastwood cast Sacramento natives Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler, and Alek Skarlatos as themselves to add an air of verisimilitude to his re-creation of the terrorist plot they thwarted on a French train in 2015. Yet only a fraction of the film concerns their heroic feat, and screenwriter Dorothy Blyskal fills out the story with other episodes from the men’s
childhood and early adulthood. Eastwood considers the men as they interact with their families, friends, and the people they meet on their trip to Europe before boarding that fateful train to Paris, and he takes advantage of the leads’ inexperience in front of a camera to convey a sense of naturalness and youthful naivete. Some of the men’s experiences (such as Stone’s basic training in the air force) may seem familiar from other movies, but the performances create the illusion that we’re seeing them anew. As the men’s stories develop, Eastwood flashes forward periodically to the men’s adventure on the French train, implying that they were fated from childhood to stop the attack. This introduces a certain metaphysical element, as do Stone’s meditations on his purpose in life. Regardless of whether fate led these men to board the train, Eastwood suggests that what drove them to act when faced with a crisis was their youthful impetuosity. When he finally shows the encounter on the train in full, the sequence proceeds quickly and without sensationalistic effect. Eastwood refrains from using music, and he doesn’t belabor the Americans’ efforts to incapacitate the terrorist. The men’s heroism seems to materialize and disappear in a flash—much like youth itself. v THE 15:17 TO PARIS sss Directed by Clint Eastwood. PG-13, 94 min. For listings visit chicagoreader.com/movies.
continued from 18
realistic body movement, but no one appreciates reality like a man locked in the trunk of a car. v TEHRAN TABOO sss Directed by Ali Soozandeh. 96 min. In Persian with subtitles. Fri 2/23-Thu 3/1. HAVE A NICE DAY ss Directed by Liu Jian. 77 min. In Mandarin with subtitles. Fri 2/16-Thu 2/22. Gene Siskel Film Center, 164 N. State, 773-846-2800, siskelfilmcenter.org, $11.
on raising the placards at auctions to raise the price of your bids?” The next time Yuanjun turns up again, he’s lying hogtied in the trunk of a car, huffing through a gag in his mouth, while Liu and his deputy stand over him. “We all have dreams,” Liu remarks. “Didn’t Steve Jobs say that?” We’ve all seen enough scenes like this to know it’s all over for Yuanjun. Animators can spend endless hours studying
How to marry a billionaire The final installment in the Fifty Shades trilogy goes for the big bucks.
By BEN SACHS
I
MOVIES
T
he final installment in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy proves that the series’ BDSM-flavored sex scenes have always been the icing on the cake, a fluffy confection of wish fulfillment. In Fifty Shades Freed the wealth and lifestyle porn are more aggressive than the sex—which, by this point, newlyweds Ana Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) mostly giggle through, along with the viewer. Far more titillating are the loving camera sweeps over palatial residences, designer threads, and souped-up cars; two of the sex scenes double as product placements (for Audi and Ben & Jerry’s). The film’s title connotes liberation, yet this is the most conservative of the three films based on E.L. James’s naughty novels. In a somewhat surprising twist, the finale rigorously upholds traditional gender roles, reactionary family values, and a decidedly capitalist take on meritocracy. Strangely puritanical scenes abound, such as when Ana warns a flirtatious female architect to stay away from her man, or when Christian and Ana argue over whether she should change her last name on her work e-mail address. Later, when Christian wonders aloud if he’s a billionaire mainly because his wealthy adoptive parents plucked him out of the foster care system, Ana reassures him: “You were raised with advantages, yes, but look what you made
of it!” In turn, Christian assures Ana that her promotion to fiction editor at the publishing house he owns is the result of her hard work and talent (the film shows neither). A paean to hetero norms, Freed begins with an extravagant wedding and ends with the well-heeled couple moving into a fairy-tale mansion with two little Greys in tow. The film’s deviance amounts to little more than a few campy in-jokes: when the villain breaks into Ana and Christian’s penthouse, a member of their security detail pins him down and laments her lack of restraints. We have some of those, Ana admits. This self-aware humor suggests that the filmmakers are finally in on the joke (even the tagline, “Don’t miss the climax,” seems to snigger at itself). The Fifty Shades trilogy is a ruse, peddled to and for the most part absorbed by heterosexual female fans. Freed reveals that the series was never about the overhyped sex but rather the glamorous lifestyle that ostensibly comes with taming and keeping a rich, handsome man. The movie appeals to women’s biological urges—to secure a protective mate, to nest, to procreate—and depends on them leaving their brains at the theater door. v FIFTY SHADES FREED s Directed by James Foley. R, 105 min. For listings visit chicagoreader.com/movies.
v @leahkpickett
v @1bsachs
v @JR_Jones
Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan in Fifty Shades Freed
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19
MUSIC 20 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
Vic Mensa at Hyde Park Records, one of his favorite teenage hangouts ò MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON
l
l
ò MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON
Mensa with a copy of Pastor T.L. Barrett’s gospel-soul album Do Not Pass Me By ò MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON
“CAN WE GO SMOKE A CIGARETTE?” VIC MENSA ASKS.
VIC
MENSA REVISITS HIS VANISHING HYDE PARK The rising rapper considers his teenage stomping grounds home, even though gentrification has killed his favorite hangouts. The BLOCK BEAT BY Words BY TIFFANY WALDEN
We’re inside Hyde Park Records, on 53rd Street, one of the 24-year-old rapper’s favorite teenage hangouts, catching up with the Roc Nation signee before he packs up his hometown apartment and heads for Los Angeles to record— though he’s not sure when he’ll move. “I am in between right now,” he says. “I’m pretty much always in between.” Fresh off the 4:44 Tour with Jay-Z, Mensa is back at his boyhood hang to do research for a new music project. He says he’s experimenting with African sounds, Radiohead-style chords, and Lil Wayne-esque flows. He’s scooped up an armload of obscure vinyl—including the 1984 spoken-word LP Our Time Has Come by Louis Farrakhan and Jesse Jackson. Mensa grew up in Hyde Park—his family lived in Kenwood at 47th Street and Woodlawn. Chicagoans have been able to watch him become a star almost overnight. In 2010, he nearly electrocuted himself on an elevated transformer trying to scale a fence to sneak into Lollapalooza. The next year he was onstage with rebellious indie band Kids These Days, and he’s appeared three times as a solo artist since then. Last year, Jay-Z tapped Mensa as his latest protege and took the south-side MC on a two-month arena tour. Hyde Park has changed since a teenage Mensa went for gyros on 53rd Street—that strip is now a shopping district with gastropubs, a sushi joint, and a new skyscraper. “A lot of the places I went to as a kid here on this street don’t exist anymore,” Mensa says.
“Ribs ’n’ Bibs [was] next door. Across the street was Hyde Park Gyros. The owner of Hyde Park Gyros always showed me a lot of love when I was a kid. It’s getting kind of gentrified here, you know? It’s like they want to make it into a Lincoln Park type of area.” Hyde Park Records, though, remains. The indie shop took over the space in 2004 from a 2nd Hand Tunes that had been a neighborhood institution since the 70s, and it’s helped Mensa develop his diverse musical taste. On this visit the woman behind the counter, Angel Elmore, a Participatory Music Coalition member, is surprised to see him again so soon—he recently dropped in to buy a Christmas gift for Dion “No I.D.” Wilson, a key architect of modern Chicago rap and now an executive vice president at the Capitol Music Group. Mensa makes a beeline for the back of the store to listen to the albums he’s picked out—research for his new project. “When did I start coming to Hyde Park Records?” Mensa asks himself. “Probably when I was like 11 years old. I would get high, get a gyro across the street, and then come sit in here and listen to records all day.” His teenage bad-boy act eventually got Mensa banned from the store. “I was stealing records in my big fucking Timberland jacket. Then the weather thawed out and all I had on was a hoodie, and I tried to do the same thing,” he said. “[When] I came back, they was like, ‘So you gon’ bring that record back or what?’ They banned me. Now I gotta try to buy a lot of shit to even out my karma.” It’s time for that smoke. When Mensa readies himself for a square, it’s like something from a movie—he looks like one of those cool-ass OGs lighting up outside the corner store just before enlightening the crowd with a legendary hood tale. But Mensa is way colder with it. He leans his head slightly forward, then back, to clear his long dreads from his face. He reaches into his trenchcoat pocket and throws on his shades. Cigarette in, lighter flicked, and voila: he eases into storyteller mode. “I was a bad kid—tagging things, getting into fights, getting arrested,” Mensa says. He looks
at a roof on the northeast side of the street, tagged with graffiti that reads “Free Eddie & Free Eddie,” referring to two neighborhood guys he grew up with. There used to be a Save Money stencil underneath it, which Mensa painted himself—he cofounded that rap crew in high school, and it includes other rising stars and friends such as Chance the Rapper, Joey Purp, Towkio, and Brian Fresco. “When I was painting that roof, I was watching the police the whole time at Dunkin Donuts just being gluttonous,” Mensa says. “So much so that they didn’t even realize I was painting the roof across the street from them.” As a kid, Mensa listened to a lot of rock music thanks to his mom, who’d gone to Woodstock and kept the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Who in rotation in their house. It was graffiti that introduced him to hip-hop. Mensa and his boys were regular taggers at the 50-foot “permission wall” in the alley behind 1300 E. 53rd Street. The wall was torn down in 2014 to make room for the Vue53 apartment complex. “Took the 6 instead of the 28 to get home faster,” Mensa raps. The Jackson Park Express, that is, instead of the Stony Island route. It’s a line from Common’s “Nuthin’ to Do,” the seventh track off the 1994 classic Resurrection. “That was my reality. I took the 6 bus every day,” Mensa says. In high school, he commuted to Whitney Young on the Near West Side. “I used to come to these record stores, and I would buy the records that were sampled in my favorite N.W.A and Common songs, and I would dive deeper into those samples and [get] introduced to a different world of music.” Mensa hasn’t lived in Hyde Park for five years, but he says that the neighborhood—and Chicago—will forever be home. “What’s special about Hyde Park is that Hyde Park is a very multicultural neighborhood,” Mensa said. “I want people to know that the south side is a place with culture and lifeblood, not just homicide and gangbanging.” v
v @TheTRiiBE
The Block Beat multimedia series is a collaboration with the Triibe (thetriibe.com) that roots Chicago musicians in places and neighborhoods that matter to them. Video accompanies this story at chicagoreader.com.
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 21
1800 W. DIVISION
Est.1954 Celebrating over 61 years of service to Chicago!
MUSIC
(773) 486-9862 Come enjoy one of Chicago’s finest beer gardens! FEBRUARY 16 ......... STRAYFLABBY BOLTS HOFFMAN SHOW 8PM JANUARY 11.................. JANUARY 12.................. AMERICAN FEBRUARY 17 ......... DJ SKID LICIOUS DRAFT JANUARY 13.................. DJ SKID LICIOUS FEBRUARY 18 ......... TONY TONY DO ROSARIO GROUPGROUP 9PM JANUARY 14.................. DO ROSARIO JANUARY 17.................. WAGNER & FRIENDS FEBRUARY 21 ......... JAMIEJAMIE WAGNER & FRIENDS JANUARY 18.................. MIKEHUBER FELTON FEBRUARY 22 ......... ANDREW 8PM JANUARY 19.................. SITUATION DAVID MAXLIELLIAM ANNA FEBRUARY 23 ......... MIKE FELTEN JANUARY 20.................. FIRST WARD PROBLEMS FEBRUARY 24 ......... DARK ROOM MEN JANUARY 21.................. TONY DO ROSARIO GROUP WHITEWOLFSONICPRINCESS JANUARY 22.................. RC BIG BAND 7PM JANUARY 24.................. MOJOPETER 49 CASONOVA QUARTET JANUARY 25.................. THE WICK FEBRUARY 25 ......... WHOLESOMERADIO JANUARY 26.................. THE HEPKATS DJ NIGHT ROCK FEBRUARY 26 ......... RC BIGSKIPPIN’ BAND 7PM JANUARY 27.................. THE STRAY BOLTS FEBRUARY 28 ......... PETER CASANOVA QUARTETDJ8PM JANUARY 28.................. WHOLESOMERADIO NIGHT
EVERY TUESDAY (EXCEPT 2ND) AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMIJON AMERICA
Harold’s fried chicken ò ASHLEE REZIN
EXCITING OPPORTUNITY TO BECOME A TROLLEY DRIVER AND TOUR GUIDE! Learn about Chicago history while we teach you to drive our iconic trolleys. Perfect for actors, comics, musicians, and people who don’t fit in a typical office setting.
Trolley Driver/Tour Guides narrate and drive in Chicago’s Original Hop On Hop Off Tour and also drive for private events ranging from parades & parties to weddings & TV shows! Apply and interview in person at: The Annoyance Theatre (851 W. Belmont Ave.) on 2/16 from 3:30pm - 7:30pm; 2/20 & 2/22 from 11:30am-6:00pm Or at our office Chicago Trolley & Double Decker (4400 S. Racine Ave.) on 2/19, 2/21 & 2/23 from 10:00am-4:00pm
Chicagotrolley.com 773-648-5000
{ {
*Our driver/tour guides must be 21+ years old and pass pre-employment drug screening*
YO U R AD HERE
365,000 of our readers
have attended a rock or pop concert in the last 12 months.
CONTACT US TODAY!
312-222-6920 22 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
Lupe Fiasco: Harold’s ‘makes KFC taste like Mississippi river rat’ By LEOR GALIL
T
wo Sundays ago, Lupe Fiasco tweeted the video for an unreleased track called “Harold’s” he composed as a birthday gift for a friend, and, yes, it’s all about the beloved fried chicken joint. The lithe soul number barely crosses the two-minute mark, but that’s more than enough time for Lupe to unload delectable descriptions of the restaurant’s fried fowl, a “southern delight, supper color the white.” Lupe’s tune adds a new chapter to the book of Harold’s references in Chicago hip-hop. You can trace the history back to Common’s 1992 debut, Can I Borrow a Dollar?, which includes a couple tracks produced by the team of the Twilite Tone and No I.D. under the name “2pc DRK” (yep, that’s a Harold’s order). More recently, Chance the Rapper gave his favorite Harold’s location a shout-out on “First Mixtape Based Freestyle,” a track on the collaborative mixtape he cut with Bay Area iconoclast Lil B, Free (Based Freestyles Mixtape). And who can forget Chance’s birthday cake from last year, which was decorated with the Harold’s logo and icing resembling fried chicken, fries, and mild sauce? Lupe makes a persuasive case for Harold’s bird, which, as he aptly describes it, “makes KFC taste like Mississippi river rat.” A song called “Harold’s” was on the potential track list for Drogas Light, Lupe’s sixth full-length album and first since leaving Atlantic Records. Maybe it wouldn’t have sagged quite as bad with this “Harold’s” in the middle. One thing did stick in my craw about that track, though: Lupe’s a west-side native, which means his allegiance should be to the lesser-known but fiercely loved chicken chain Uncle Remus. Confused, I posted my question about why
the west-sider would make a song about a south-side institution on Twitter. Lupe responded rather quickly: “Uncle Remus fry they chicken in lard. #NoPorkOnTheFork.” That makes more sense, considering Lupe is Muslim and pork ain’t halal. I tried to reach Lupe for more insights about the track, but couldn’t get him on the phone. Undeterred, I decided to call up a few Harold’s locations to see whether any managers had listened to Lupe’s track. I got in touch with Norm Lewis, who runs the West Loop joint. “Yeah, I heard it,” he tells me. “That’s my store that’s in the video.” In fact, the video, which Lupe ripped from YouTube, opens with a shot of the restaurant’s sign and its address before rolling through tantalizing B-roll footage of Lewis’s employees frying chicken and squeezing mild sauce on a combo order. Lewis had no idea footage of his restaurant would wind up in a Lupe Fiasco video, though he’d noticed a cameraman pop by the restaurant months ago. “Yeah, I seen the guy in the kitchen [filming] and everything,” Lewis says. “But I didn’t know he was doing the video for Lupe Fiasco.” The video arrived at a great time for Lewis. In September, the West Loop location moved to 1505 W. Madison, roughly a mile west of the previous location at the corner of Washington and Halsted. Lewis has already noticed an effect. “Business picked up a little bit this week,” he says. Mostly he seems happy the video shows what his restaurant does best, reflecting the very thing Lupe raps about in the song. “It was real nice,” he says. “It shows how we cook everything fresh. It’s shows how we handle the customers.” v
v @imleor
l
l
MUSIC IN ROTATION
A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.
4544 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG • 773.728.6000
JUST ADDED • ON SALE THIS FRIDAY! 3/20 3/31 5/28 & 5/29
David Hidalgo & Marc Ribot Steve Earle & The Dukes with special guest The Mastersons The Mountain Goats with special guest Erin Rae
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16 8PM
Masters of Hawaiian Music:
George Kahumoku Jr., Led Kaapana & Jeff Peterson SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17 5PM & 8PM TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 20 7:30PM
The cover of Insect Ark’s Marrow Hymns
Habibi release the EP Cardamom Garden in March. ò BAILEY ROBB
JAMIE LUDWIG
The Kickback in 2012, with front man Billy Yost in green ò DOM NAJOLIA/SUN-TIMES MEDIA
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18 11AM
HEATHER WEST Founder of Western
JIM KOPENY, AKA TANKBOY
Reader associate editor
Publicity, publicist for Riot Fest
Music critic
Insect Ark, Marrow Hymns I was looking forward to new material from Insect Ark, and the new Marrow Hymns surpasses my expectations. The bicoastal duo of multiinstrumentalists Dana Schechter and Ashley Spungin painstakingly crafted its exploratory, mind-expanding doom over 18 months, employing recurring themes of time, space, and discontent. The album’s slow-burning, wordless soundscapes of shape-shifting bass and synth, forlorn lap steel, and instinctive drums seem to contain stories of their own.
The Wolfmanhattan Project Ever since I saw the Gun Club live in London eons ago, I’ve been fascinated by Kid Congo Powers and his louche guitar stylings, including his snarling contributions to the Cramps. Imagine my delight to discover that he’s joined up with Bob Bert (Pussy Galore, Sonic Youth) and Mick Collins (the Gories, the Dirtbombs). The Wolfmanhattan Project is here to shake your rafters and fill you with the feral stank of stripped-down rock.
Songs to get divorced to Chicago band the Kickback released one of the best albums of 2017 that you probably haven’t heard. Weddings & Funerals documents Billy Yost’s imploding marriage and manages to wed acidic hooks to visceral lyrics in a way that tugs at your guts yet still keep your hips shaking. Brutal. And beautiful.
The Messthetics This instrumental trio—guitarist Anthony Pirog and Fugazi’s rhythm section, bassist Joe Lally and drummer Brendan Canty—release their self-titled debut album on Dischord Records next month, but they’ve been tearing up the east coast for over a year. Given their lineup, of course the Messthetics are good, so I’ll just say that if you dig punk, jazz, and torrents of proggy guitar interspersed with moments of shimmering tranquility, you’ll want to keep an ear out for these guys. Utro Utro is an offshoot of dreamy indie band Motorama, also from Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia. Utro warp the light in Motorama’s sound with a fun-house mirror, and I can’t stop listening. The lo-fi, minimalist postpunk of Utro’s 2010 self-titled debut (with vocals in Russian) is bleak, menacing, and bizarre. On the EP The Sun and the full-length Third Album, both from 2017, they’ve stripped back that maniacal edge while enhancing their music’s foreboding, hypnotic qualities.
Ladysmith Black Mambazo
Habibi Speaking of the Cramps, their cover of the eponymous classic by Texas protopunk/ garage legends Green Fuz introduced its mighty stomp to a new generation—and now perhaps the most engaging version yet has appeared. The women of New York’s Habibi throw down Middle Eastern-tinged psychrock replete with 60s girl-group singing—their cover of “Green Fuz” with Farsi vocals is spellbinding. Their EP Cardamom Garden arrives March 2—don’t sleep on this one. Ron Gallo Ron Gallo is a kid from Philly with an outsize personality and talent to spare. On record, he sounds like a hyperliterate Screamin’ Jay Hawkins fronting a power-pop band, backed by thunderous drumming and the fuzziest bass playing I’ve ever heard. Gallo’s songs are urbane but juvenile, puerile but perceptive: when he sings “Why Do You Have Kids?” you can practically see the cigarette ashes falling in the strollers of the dead-eyed zombies shuffling toward ignominy. Live is the way to go on this: I recommend the Audiotree session for the midsong guitar freakout.
Bar rock that raises the bar Sonny Falls are an odd outfit. When you look at this Chicago group, they seem like a bunch of disheveled mountain men, but their sound takes Bruce Springsteen’s America and infuses it with a wanton punk approach, making even the most mundane things feel profoundly moving. Their live sets never fail to impress, and their sixsong 2016 debut is free on Bandcamp—I can’t wait for the proper full-length they’re currently working on. Slacker power-pop My biggest surprise of 2018 has been Seattle’s Unlikely Friends. Their new album, Crooked Numbers, takes midwestern power-pop and laces it with northwestern slacker sensibilities. The result is a collection of songs that feels immediately familiar—your dorm-room record player would explode with nostalgia if you threw this vinyl on top of it. Pull on your Sub Pop “Loser” T-shirt and then drop this album into the mix.
Sonia De Los Santos Kids concert • In Szold Hall
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18 7PM
Idan Raichel
Piano Songs at Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N Southport Ave
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 18 7PM
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy MONDAY, FEBRUARY 19 7 & 9:30PM
Ana Tijoux
presents Roja y Negro
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23 8PM
Maria Pomianowska with special guests • In Szold Hall
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25 7PM
Ten Strings & A Goat Skin In Szold Hall ACROSS THE STREET IN SZOLD HALL 4545 N LINCOLN AVENUE, CHICAGO IL
2/16 Global Dance Party: Cajun Vagabonds 2/25 Ten Strings & A Goat Skin 3/2 Väsen 3/8 Mary Gauthier 3/10 California Guitar Trio
WORLD MUSIC WEDNESDAY SERIES FREE WEEKLY CONCERTS, LINCOLN SQUARE
2/21 Black Umfolosi 2/28 Alejandro Ziegler Tango Quartet
OLDTOWNSCHOOL.ORG FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 23
3855 n lincoln ave.
chicago
for complete listings, tickets, and social updates...
martyrslive.com
facebook.com/martyrslive
@martyrslive
1035 N WESTERN AVE CHICAGO IL 773.276.3600 WWW.EMPTYBOTTLE.COM
BIG DIPPER
THU
2/15
GLITTER MONEYYY • SUPER KING REZA FREE
FRI
2/16
SAT
2/17
2/19
WILD PINK ADAM TORRES
GOOSE ISLAND BEER CO. & EMPTY BOTTLE PRESENT
2/22
1PM FREE
MUSIC FROZEN DANCING
A WINTER BLOCK PARTY FEAT.
OH SEES • ADULT. • B BOYS DJ TAYE • C.H.E.W. + LUMPEN RADIO DJs (INSIDE)
9PM
WINDY CITY SOUL CLUB CHICAGO HONKY TONK PRESENTS
THE DON DIEGO TRIO
MUSIC FROZEN DANCING AFTERPARTY
OH SEES
) CAFE RACER ( ETHERS • GOSH! • MAX PELT DJs RECORD RELEASE
FREE
MINOR CHARACTERS
HUNTSMEN (
THU
RECORD RELEASE
)
LIVID • REZN
STARCRAWLER
FRI
2/23
SUNDOWN CLUB • ALOUETTE
SAT
TIGHT PHANTOMZ
2/24
DAN WHITAKER & THE SHINEBENDERS
RASH • SKIP CHURCH MON
WED
GLYDERS
BONNY DOON • FLAMINGO RODEO
2PM FREE
SUN
THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE • THE HECKS
2/21
9PM
2/18
HARD COUNTRY HONKY TONK WITH
THE HOYLE BROTHERS
PALM
TUE
2/20
RICHARD VAIN
12PM-FREE
SUN
2/25 MON
2/26
SURF ROCK SUNDAY WITH DJ MIKE SMITH EMPTY BOTTLE BOOK CLUB DISCUSSES
‘HUNGER OF MEMORY: THE EDUCATION OF RICHARD RODRIGUEZ 3PM-FREE BY RICHARD RODRIGUEZ 9PM FREE
BANDITOS • GUN
SUZIE • WAVY ID WOONGI • FEELTRIP DJs
2/27: VoA, 2/28: WONDER & SKEPTICISM (6PM-FREE!), 2/28: PUSSY FOOT, 3/1: HIGH UP • WHISPERTOWN, 3/2: THE YAWPERS, 3/3: TREEHOUSERECORDSSHOWCASE FEAT. THEEVENINGATTRACTION (RECORDRELEASE),3/4:WINTERSLUMBER (2PM,FREE!),3/4:FRAN,3/5: SO PRETTY (FREE!), 3/6: TINY FIREFLIES, 3/7: JUICEBOXXX, 3/8: MARLON WILLIAMS, 3/9: DREDAY FEAT. LOW DOWN BRASS BAND, 3/11: SHY TECHNOLOGY, 3/14: BASEMENT FAMILY, 3/15: BARK BARK DISCO, 3/16: VAMOS (RECORD RELEASE), 3/17: ONEIDA, 3/18: BLOOM, 3/20: MOANING, 3/21: GEORGE CLANTON • NEGATIVE GEMINI, 3/22: STELLA DONNELLY, 3/23: HIDE (RECORD RELEASE) NEW ON SALE: 4/3: LAUREL HALO, 4/18: PAUL DE JONG [OF THE BOOKS], 4/24: RUSSIAN CIRCLES, 4/28 @ CO-PRO: PREOCCUPATIONS, 5/14 @ AIC: MIDORI TAKADA, 5/16: RIVAL CONSOLES, 5/17: CHARLY BLISS, 6/22: WE ARE SCIENTISTS
24 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
l
l
Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of February 15
MUSIC
b ALL AGES F
THURSDAY15
PICK OF THE WEEK
Sprawling boy band Brockhampton refashions pop music in their own image
ò ASHLAN GREY
BROCKHAMPTON
Sun 2/18 and Mon 2/19, 8 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, sold out. b
BLESS BROCKHAMPTON FOR spiking pop’s punch bowl. This sprawling group of rappers, producers, singers, video directors, designers, and a webmaster have ambitions to be America’s next great boy band—scratch that, the world’s next great boy band. As leader Kevin Abstract raps on “Boogie,” off December’s Saturation III (Question Everything, Inc. / Empire), Brockhampton are the “best boy band since One Direction.” Who cares if American audiences think boy bands have to be made up of five twiglike young white men who belt out songs that glisten with the wellfinanced pizzazz of a Michael Bay blockbuster? Brockhampton do it their way—embracing pop’s past while twisting its shape to build a better future. Their acknowledgement of the history of the pop industrial complex extends into the scope of their lineup. Their nonperforming members have the same rank as those who hold a mike; behind every boy band is a team that made the machine work, and Brockhampton are nothing if not up-front with their fans. When asked about their expansive band roster in a video interview with MTV News, Abstract replied, “Everybody’s a part of the process—we’re like Apple. We’re like Apple and
McDonald’s before that Kroc [bleep] ruined everything.” That sort of transparency stems in part from the fact that the version of pop their members grew up listening to was designed to keep listeners at arm’s length—even Brockhampton’s most recent predecessors, One Direction, maintain a distance between themselves and their fans. On “Sweet” rapper-singer Joba condenses the group’s beginnings and perspective into personal anecdotes about growing up aspiring to be like Justin Timberlake and gnawing on ramen after moving to LA to make his dreams come true with Brockhampton: “Wanted to do big things, had to fulfill a dream / One might say I was doomed from the get-go / But those same people assume, ’cause they’ll never know.” Their stylistic goulash of hardcore rap, uptempo 90s club, velvety R&B, and scintillating Top 40 pop doesn’t sound like most contemporary musical acts, but with it, Brockhampton have managed to do what most boy bands hope to achieve: Succeed. In June they self-released their debut album, Saturation, and followed it up with two more Saturation full-lengths before the end of 2017—the third one debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200. —LEOR GALIL
Rock, Pop, Etc Blank Range, American Grizzly, V.V. Lightbody 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Hazytones, Black Road, Starless, Sun God Ra 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Lindsay & the Lights Go Out 8:30 PM, Hideout Netherfriends, Vantablac Sol 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Nothing More, Big Story, Contortionist, Kirra 5:15 PM, House of Blues b Orphan, Poet 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 18+ Pho, Murley 8 PM, Martyrs’ Velcro Lewis Group, Dark Fog, 8 PM, Burlington Whitney, Kevin Krauter, Baby Blue 8 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 18+ Van William 6 PM, Cubby Bear F Hip-Hop Big Dipper, Glitter Moneyyy 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Flynt Flossy & Turquoise Jeep 8 PM, Subterranean Dance Bass Banditz, Soljazz Live, RP Smack, Fiyafly 10 PM, Smart Bar F Don Diablo, Lost Frequencies 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Folk & Country Easton Corbin, Towne 7:30 PM, Arcada Theatre b Valerie June, Birds of Chicago 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Jazz Cyrille Aimee 8 PM, City Winery b David Boykin Expanse with Marvin Tate 8 PM, the Promontory Christian Dillingham Quintet 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Tammy McCann Quartet 8 and 10 PM, also Fri 2/16 and Sat 2/17, 8 and 10 PM; Sun 2/17, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Casper Townkeepers, Kent Kessler, and Hamid Drake 9 PM, Elastic b International Karl “Kofi” James & the New Roots Band 9 PM, Wild Hare Classical Daniel Kurganov & Constantine Finehouse Violin and piano. 7 PM, PianoForte Studios b Fairs & Festivals Dunn Dunn Fest with Moonrise Nation, Michigander, Emily Blue, Hoyle Brothers, Allegra Malone, and Milkmoney 7:30 PM, FitzGerald’s
FRIDAY16 Atomic See also Saturday. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $18, $15 in advance. 18+
On last year’s Six Easy Pieces (Odin), the longrunning Scandinavian freebop quintet Atomic truly settled into life with drummer Hans Hulbækmo, who replaced founding percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love in 2014. As anyone who’s ever experienced the volcanic, shape-shifting work of Nilssen-Love can imagine, he left some massive shoes to fill. Hulbækmo wisely made no effort to replicate his predecessor’s presence, opting instead for a more gentle, swing-oriented approach. Compared to his J
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 25
l
Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of February 15
MUSIC
b ALL AGES F
THURSDAY15
PICK OF THE WEEK
Sprawling boy band Brockhampton refashions pop music in their own image
ò ASHLAN GREY
BROCKHAMPTON
Sun 2/18 and Mon 2/19, 8 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, sold out. b
BLESS BROCKHAMPTON FOR spiking pop’s punch bowl. This sprawling group of rappers, producers, singers, video directors, designers, and a webmaster have ambitions to be America’s next great boy band—scratch that, the world’s next great boy band. As leader Kevin Abstract raps on “Boogie,” off December’s Saturation III (Question Everything, Inc. / Empire), Brockhampton are the “best boy band since One Direction.” Who cares if American audiences think boy bands have to be made up of five twiglike young white men who belt out songs that glisten with the wellfinanced pizzazz of a Michael Bay blockbuster? Brockhampton do it their way—embracing pop’s past while twisting its shape to build a better future. Their acknowledgement of the history of the pop industrial complex extends into the scope of their lineup. Their nonperforming members have the same rank as those who hold a mike; behind every boy band is a team that made the machine work, and Brockhampton are nothing if not up-front with their fans. When asked about their expansive band roster in a video interview with MTV News, Abstract replied, “Everybody’s a part of the process—we’re like Apple. We’re like Apple and
McDonald’s before that Kroc [bleep] ruined everything.” That sort of transparency stems in part from the fact that the version of pop their members grew up listening to was designed to keep listeners at arm’s length—even Brockhampton’s most recent predecessors, One Direction, maintain a distance between themselves and their fans. On “Sweet” rapper-singer Joba condenses the group’s beginnings and perspective into personal anecdotes about growing up aspiring to be like Justin Timberlake and gnawing on ramen after moving to LA to make his dreams come true with Brockhampton: “Wanted to do big things, had to fulfill a dream / One might say I was doomed from the get-go / But those same people assume, ’cause they’ll never know.” Their stylistic goulash of hardcore rap, uptempo 90s club, velvety R&B, and scintillating Top 40 pop doesn’t sound like most contemporary musical acts, but with it, Brockhampton have managed to do what most boy bands hope to achieve: Succeed. In June they self-released their debut album, Saturation, and followed it up with two more Saturation full-lengths before the end of 2017—the third one debuted at number 15 on the Billboard 200. —LEOR GALIL
Rock, Pop, Etc Blank Range, American Grizzly, V.V. Lightbody 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Hazytones, Black Road, Starless, Sun God Ra 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Lindsay & the Lights Go Out, Daniela Sloan, Plucky Rosenthal 8:30 PM, Hideout Netherfriends, Vantablac Sol 8 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Nothing More, Big Story, Contortionist, Kirra 5:15 PM, House of Blues b Orphan, Poet, Friday Pilot’s Club, Burst & Bloom, Better Love 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 18+ Pho, Murley 8 PM, Martyrs’ Velcro Lewis Group, Dark Fog, Protovulcan 8 PM, Burlington Whitney, Kevin Krauter, Baby Blue 8 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 18+ Van William 6 PM, Cubby Bear F Hip-Hop Big Dipper, Glitter Moneyyy 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Flynt Flossy & Turquoise Jeep, Handsome Naked, Scan, Ano Ba 8 PM, Subterranean Dance Bass Banditz, Soljazz Live, RP Smack, Fiyafly 10 PM, Smart Bar F Don Diablo, Lost Frequencies 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 18+ Folk & Country Easton Corbin, Towne 7:30 PM, Arcada Theatre b Valerie June, Birds of Chicago 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Jazz Cyrille Aimee 8 PM, City Winery b David Boykin Expanse with Marvin Tate 8 PM, the Promontory Christian Dillingham Quintet 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Tammy McCann Quartet 8 and 10 PM, also Fri 2/16 and Sat 2/17, 8 and 10 PM; Sun 2/17, 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Casper Townkeepers, Kent Kessler, and Hamid Drake 9 PM, Elastic b International Karl “Kofi” James & the New Roots Band 9 PM, Wild Hare Classical Daniel Kurganov & Constantine Finehouse Violin and piano. 7 PM, PianoForte Studios b Fairs & Festivals Dunn Dunn Fest with Moonrise Nation, Michigander, Emily Blue, Hoyle Brothers, Allegra Malone, and Milkmoney 7:30 PM, FitzGerald’s
FRIDAY16 Atomic See also Saturday. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $18, $15 in advance. 18+
On last year’s Six Easy Pieces (Odin), the longrunning Scandinavian freebop quintet Atomic truly settled into life with drummer Hans Hulbækmo, who replaced founding percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love in 2014. As anyone who’s ever experienced the volcanic, shape-shifting work of Nilssen-Love can J
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 25
MUSIC continued from 25
first release with Atomic, 2015’s Lucidity (Jazzland Recordings), he definitely sounds more unified with the band on the latest. His confidence shows in his wonderfully staggering solo after saxophonist Fredrik Ljungvkist’s theme statement on “Fålt Strid” (a piece named for two of Sweden’s most expressive and original drummers, Jon Fålt and Raymond Strid, respectively). The focus on Hulbækmo’s ascendance doesn’t obscure how the rest of the band continues to meld structural constructs and chamberlike interplay gleaned from 20th-century classical music with ferociously driving postbop and free jazz. Ljungvkist and pianist Håvard Wiik once again share composing responsibilities, and while they both favor multipartite pieces that snap crisply from one episode to the next, there’s a clear difference between their styles. The former has a thing for thrilling, rhythmic wind-ups; the patterns of ascending and descending melody he creates help to convey a giddy, hurtling sense of momentum, which he interrupts with teetering passages of stop-time intimacy, as on the hyperactive opener “Be Wafted.” Wiik can’t help but convey a meditative tension informed by the music of Morton Feldman—his concise “Five Easy Pieces” hovers ominously as stately lines and quietly mewling improvised shapes by Ljungvkist’s clarinet and Magnus Broo’s trumpet embroider a shimmering fabric of cascading notes from the piano that, by the flow of their repetition, creates an appealing sensation of static motion. When the group unleash their rhythmic power, they get ridiculous energy from Hulbækmo and bassist Ingebrit Håker Flaten— whose approach to the double bass is so muscular and agile he makes it seem like a toy. —PETER MARGASAK
Cassandra Jenkins Bunny and Jodi open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10. 21+
On her 2017 album, Play Till You Win (Cassandra Complex), New York singer-songwriter Cassandra
Cassandra Jenkins ò JOSH GOLEMAN
26 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
Jenkins recorded a song called “Tennessee Waltz.” It’s an original, rather than the country classic by Pee Wee King made famous by Patti Page, but the older tune ingeniously turns up in her song— as she echoes its sentiment of lost love, its iconic theme haunts her solitude. That postmodern trick is emblematic of her music, which deftly collides sleepy honky-tonk balladry with ambient chill. She pulls it off with the strength of her beguiling melodies and the rich details in her arrangements, especially the woozy lead guitar on “Candy Crane,” which sounds like it was lifted straight from a George Harrison album. Jenkins, who previously played bass and sang behind Eleanor Friedberger (the Fiery Furnaces), moves easily between elements that would seem strange bedfellows, evoking early Rosanne Cash as much as Julee Cruise. She observes it all at a remove that allows her combine things in fresh ways. The creepy, pedalsteel-drenched “Jan Lee Jansen” describes a ghost emerging from the sea to search for her titular lover and killer. “The fish have sucked the wounds you left / Found shelter in my thighs,” she sings. The song’s mordant sensibility fits right in with the postTwin Peaks aura of “Red Lips.” I could use a bit more energy at times—the gloomy torpor gets a bit stultifying by the end—but there’s doubt that Jenkins has cooked up an absorbing sound. Bunny and Jodi open. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Frightened Rabbit 8 PM, also Sat 2/17, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 17+ Glyders, Bonny Doon, Flamingo Rodeo 9 PM, Empty Bottle Hippo Campus, Sure Sure 7:30 PM, the Vic, sold out b Infamous Stringdusters, Leftover Salmon, Last Revel 8 PM, also Sat 2/17, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Lauv, Jeremy Zucker 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, sold out, 18+ Nequient, Burning Churches, Abyssal, Apotheosis 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Oshun, Mother Nature 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Portugal. The Man, Twin Peaks 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, sold out b Screeching Weasel, CJ Ramone 7 PM, also Sat 2/17, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, sold out, 17+ See Through Dresses 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Hip-Hop Charlie Curtis-Beard, Aced Space, Marko Stats, Life After Youth 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Dance DJ Heather 10 PM, Smart Bar Gene Farris, Paco Osuna, Max Chapman 10 PM, the Mid Gabriel Sordo 10 PM, Spy Bar Folk & Country Cajun Vagabonds 8:30 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b George Kahumoku Jr., Led Kaapana, and Jeff Peterson 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Little Big Town, Kacey Musgraves, Midland 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena Blues, Gospel, and R&B Frank Bang, Joanna Connor 9 PM, also Sat 2/17, 9 PM, Kingston Mines Lurrie Bell 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Blue Roots, Harlem Avenue, Jammerz 8:30 PM,
Wire, Berwyn Cash Box Kings 10:30 PM, California Clipper Dvsn 8 PM, House of Blues b Kindred the Family Soul 7 and 10 PM, City Winery, sold out b Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Claudette Miller, Tenry Johns Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 2/17, 9 PM, Blue Chicago John Primer 6 PM, the Promontory b Saint Bottleneck 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Cheryl Youngblood, Charlie Brown 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Jazz Peter Bernstein Quartet 9 PM, also Sat 2/17, 8 PM, Green Mill Tammy McCann Quartet 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Alfonso Ponticelli Trio 7:30 and 9:30 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Pharez Whitted Quintet 9:30 PM, also Sat 2/17, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club
International Kevin Burke 7 PM, Irish American Heritage Center b El Haragan y Cia 9 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Classical Aether Ensemble 8 PM, Heaven Gallery b Lyric Opera’s I Puritani 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House Fairs & Festivals Dunn Dunn Fest with J.C. Brooks Band, Charley Crockett, Blackfoot Gypsies, Wild Earp, Cole DeGenova, Bailey Dee, Fox Crossing Stringband, Bonzo Squad, Heavy Sounds, and Gar Clemens 6:30 PM, FitzGerald’s
SATURDAY17 Atomic See Friday. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $18, $15 in advance. 18+
l
MUSIC continued from 25
imagine, he left some massive shoes to fill. Hulbækmo wisely made no effort to replicate his predecessor’s presence, opting instead for a more gentle, swing-oriented approach. Compared to his first release with Atomic, 2015’s Lucidity (Jazzland Recordings), he definitely sounds more unified with the band on the latest. His confidence shows in his wonderfully staggering solo after saxophonist Fredrik Ljungvkist’s theme statement on “Fålt Strid” (a piece named for two of Sweden’s most expressive and original drummers, Jon Fålt and Raymond Strid, respectively). The focus on Hulbækmo’s ascendance doesn’t obscure how the rest of the band continues to meld structural constructs and chamberlike interplay gleaned from 20th-century classical music with ferociously driving postbop and free jazz. Ljungvkist and pianist Håvard Wiik once again share composing responsibilities, and while they both favor multipartite pieces that snap crisply from one episode to the next, there’s a clear difference between their styles. The former has a thing for thrilling, rhythmic wind-ups; the patterns of ascending and descending melody he creates help to convey a giddy, hurtling sense of momentum, which he interrupts with teetering passages of stop-time intimacy, as on the hyperactive opener “Be Wafted.” Wiik can’t help but convey a meditative tension informed by the music of Morton Feldman—his concise “Five Easy Pieces” hovers ominously as stately lines and quietly mewling improvised shapes by Ljungvkist’s clarinet and Magnus Broo’s trumpet embroider a shimmering fabric of cascading notes from the piano that, by the flow of their repetition, creates an appealing sensation of static motion. When the group unleash their rhythmic power, they get ridiculous energy from Hulbækmo and bassist Ingebrit Håker Flaten— whose approach to the double bass is so muscular and agile he makes it seem like a toy. —PETER MARGASAK
Cassandra Jenkins ò JOSH GOLEMAN
26 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
Cassandra Jenkins Bunny and Jodi open. 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10. 21+ On her 2017 album, Play Till You Win (Cassandra Complex), New York singer-songwriter Cassandra Jenkins recorded a song called “Tennessee Waltz.” It’s an original, rather than the country classic by Pee Wee King made famous by Patti Page, but the older tune ingeniously turns up in her song— as she echoes its sentiment of lost love, its iconic theme haunts her solitude. That postmodern trick is emblematic of her music, which deftly collides sleepy honky-tonk balladry with ambient chill. She pulls it off with the strength of her beguiling melodies and the rich details in her arrangements, especially the woozy lead guitar on “Candy Crane,” which sounds like it was lifted straight from a George Harrison album. Jenkins, who previously played bass and sang behind Eleanor Friedberger (the Fiery Furnaces), moves easily between elements that would seem strange bedfellows, evoking early Rosanne Cash as much as Julee Cruise. She observes it all at a remove that allows her combine things in fresh ways. The creepy, pedalsteel-drenched “Jan Lee Jansen” describes a ghost emerging from the sea to search for her titular lover and killer. “The fish have sucked the wounds you left / Found shelter in my thighs,” she sings. The song’s mordant sensibility fits right in with the postTwin Peaks aura of “Red Lips.” I could use a bit more energy at times—the gloomy torpor gets a bit stultifying by the end—but there’s doubt that Jenkins has cooked up an absorbing sound. Bunny and Jodi open. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Frightened Rabbit 8 PM, also Sat 2/17, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 17+ Glyders, Bonny Doon, Flamingo Rodeo 9 PM, Empty Bottle Hippo Campus, Sure Sure 7:30 PM, the Vic, sold out b Infamous Stringdusters, Leftover Salmon, Last Revel 8 PM, also Sat 2/17, 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Lauv, Jeremy Zucker 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, sold out, 18+ Nequient, Burning Churches, Abyssal, Apotheosis 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Oshun, Mother Nature 9 PM, Schubas, 18+ Portugal. The Man, Twin Peaks 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom, sold out b Screeching Weasel, CJ Ramone 7 PM, also Sat 2/17, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, sold out, 17+ See Through Dresses, Sore History, Basement Family, Brass Calf 6:30 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Veil of Maya, Speaking With Ghosts, Tanzen, Vctms, Ryno 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Hip-Hop Charlie Curtis-Beard, Aced Space, Marko Stats, Life After Youth 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Dance DJ Heather 10 PM, Smart Bar Gene Farris, Paco Osuna, Max Chapman 10 PM, the Mid Gabriel Sordo 10 PM, Spy Bar Folk & Country Cajun Vagabonds 8:30 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b George Kahumoku Jr., Led Kaapana, and Jeff Peterson 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of
Folk Music b Little Big Town, Kacey Musgraves, Midland 7:30 PM, Allstate Arena Blues, Gospel, and R&B Frank Bang, Joanna Connor 9 PM, also Sat 2/17, 9 PM, Kingston Mines Lurrie Bell 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Blue Roots, Harlem Avenue, Jammerz 8:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn Cash Box Kings 10:30 PM, California Clipper Dvsn 8 PM, House of Blues b Kindred the Family Soul 7 and 10 PM, City Winery, sold out b Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Claudette Miller, Tenry Johns Blues Band 9 PM, also Sat 2/17, 9 PM, Blue Chicago John Primer 6 PM, the Promontory b Saint Bottleneck 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Cheryl Youngblood, Charlie Brown 9 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends
Jazz Peter Bernstein Quartet 9 PM, also Sat 2/17, 8 PM, Green Mill Tammy McCann Quartet 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Alfonso Ponticelli Trio 7:30 and 9:30 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Pharez Whitted Quintet 9:30 PM, also Sat 2/17, 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club International Kevin Burke 7 PM, Irish American Heritage Center b El Haragan y Cia 9 PM, Joe’s Live, Rosemont Classical Aether Ensemble 8 PM, Heaven Gallery b Lyric Opera’s I Puritani 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House Fairs & Festivals Dunn Dunn Fest with J.C. Brooks Band, Charley Crockett, Blackfoot Gypsies, Wild Earp, Cole DeGenova, Bailey Dee, Fox Crossing Stringband, Bonzo Squad, Heavy Sounds, and Gar Clemens 6:30 PM, FitzGerald’s
l
l
MUSIC Oh Sees ò JOHN DWYER
Thomas Lehn & Marcus Shmickler 8 PM, Graham Foundation, Madlener House, 4 W. Burton, free. b RSVP at thomaslehnmarcusschmickler.eventbrite.com These two purveyors of experimental electronic music based in Cologne, Germany, have forged a dynamic partnership over the last two decades, bridging differences in age, musical backgrounds, and the hardware they prefer to produce music of uncanny visceral power. Lehn’s analog synthesizer mastery is rooted in free improvisation, while Schmickler’s digital synthesis has a foundation in techno. Working together, they find a elusive yet thrilling common ground. On last year’s terrific Neue Bilder (Mikroton) their fast-moving, rapidly morphing collisions defy identification. I have serious trouble figuring out who’s doing what, but that certainly doesn’t matter much in the end: aqueous, sci-fi long tones are pitted against splattery, acidic noise bursts; echo-laden oscillated abstractions are slathered in blorpy, viscous drips; and so on. Each musician is deeply attuned to what the other is doing, and there seems to be zero latency in their reaction time; as their alien machinations unfold in quicksilver sprints, they pull the listener along for a disorienting, yet exhilarating ride. In their first local duo performance since 2005, the pair will premiere a new work called Prediction Control Allocation, a three-part improvisation where each section is built around different forms inspired by the ideas of composers Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Ligeti. —PETER MARGASAK
Oh Sees See also Sunday. Today’s set is part of the Music Frozen Dancing festival. Adult., B Boys, DJ Taye, and C.H.E.W. open. 1 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western. F b It’s hard to keep up with the prolificacy of John Dwyer, who devotes most of his creative energy to his long-running and often flawless Oh Sees. While I was in the process of digesting the lacerating riffs and pummeling double-drummer grooves on August’s Orc for a preview of their September Chicago performance, they announced their second album of the year. Released in November, Memory of a Cut Off Head (Castle Face) features Dwyer collaborating with former band member Brigid Dawson (who remained in the Bay Area when he took his act to Los Angeles a few years ago), and is something of an outlier in the band’s voluminous catalog. Though it cleaves to the sort of down-and-dirty directness the band delivers at its most visceral, it’s been hyped as a baroque, orchestral pop effort. Heath-
er Lockie, who crafted lovely string arrangements for the recent solo album by Wand’s Cory Hanson, does the same here, adding dancing, delicate counterpoint, and Mikal Cronin plays layers of postminimal saxophone on the spooky instrumental “The Baron Sleeps and Dreams.” Focus, however, is on the whispery vocal interplay of Dwyer and Dawson and trippy mellotron arpeggios rather than the band’s characteristic wigged-out guitar. It’s a charming record that has an appealing psych-folk veneer that borders on glam—“The Chopping Block” does little to hide its debt to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”—but by the end of its ten songs it comes off as a single-note affair; while both singers bring hooky melodic strengths to the band at its most aggressive, their vocal limitations are highlighted in this setting. I admire Oh Sees’ desire to shake things up and try something different, but I’m glad Memory of a Cut Off Head was a one-off. These shows include an outdoor performance as part of the Empty Bottle’s annual outdoor winter block party, Music Frozen Dancing. —PETER MARGASAK
Charles Joseph Smith Ono, Mykele Deville, and Jawns open. 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10. 21+ DIY spaces come and go, but people such as Charles Joseph Smith give the city’s nebulous underground scene a sense of cohesion. Smith, who performs under both his own name and that of his performance-art alter ego, Mr. Forefinger, is a champion of the outre, odd, and endearing. A familiar face around independent shows, Smith is likely to be found in the thick of the crowd, busting out dance moves that blur together breakin’ and ballet, which he showed off on local cableaccess dance program Chic-a-Go-Go (a fine feather in any underground Chicago musician’s cap). Beyond the world of unlicensed venues, Smith has established himself as a gifted classical composer and pianist; in 2002 he earned a doctorate in piano performance and literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And he’s an aspiring author; he’s currently working on a memoir, I Am Doctor Charles Joseph Smith, which digs into his experiences in the arts as a person with autism. Tonight he celebrates the War of the Martian Ghosts (Sooper Records), an album of ten piano compositions that chronicle Smith’s fantastical journey to Mars, the ensuing war upon his arrival, and the aftermath. I’ve taken pleasure in the sonorous, stately piano scales on “March to War,” and though I hope Smith wrote a detailed narrative for the casette’s liner notes, I’ve taken cues from the music to fill in the narrative J
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27
l
MUSIC Oh Sees ò JOHN DWYER
SATURDAY17 Atomic See Friday. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $18, $15 in advance. 18+ Thomas Lehn & Marcus Shmickler 8 PM, Graham Foundation, Madlener House, 4 W. Burton, free. b RSVP at thomaslehnmarcusschmickler.eventbrite.com These two purveyors of experimental electronic music based in Cologne, Germany, have forged a dynamic partnership over the last two decades, bridging differences in age, musical backgrounds, and the hardware they prefer to produce music of uncanny visceral power. Lehn’s analog synthesizer mastery is rooted in free improvisation, while Schmickler’s digital synthesis has a foundation in techno. Working together, they find a elusive yet thrilling common ground. On last year’s terrific Neue Bilder (Mikroton) their fast-moving, rapidly morphing collisions defy identification. I have serious trouble figuring out who’s doing what, but that certainly doesn’t matter much in the end: aqueous, sci-fi long tones are pitted against splattery, acidic noise bursts; echo-laden oscillated abstractions are slathered in blorpy, viscous drips; and so on. Each musician is deeply attuned to what the other is doing, and there seems to be zero latency in their reaction time; as their alien machinations unfold in quicksilver sprints, they pull the listener along for a disorienting, yet exhilarating ride. In their first local duo performance since 2005, the pair will premiere a new work called Prediction Control Allocation, a three-part improvisation where each section is built around different forms inspired by the ideas of composers Stockhausen, Xenakis, and Ligeti. —PETER MARGASAK
Oh Sees See also Sunday. Today’s set is part of the Music Frozen Dancing festival. Adult., B Boys, DJ Taye, and C.H.E.W. open. 1 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western. F b It’s hard to keep up with the prolificacy of John Dwyer, who devotes most of his creative energy to his long-running and often flawless Oh Sees. While I was in the process of digesting the lacerating riffs and pummeling double-drummer grooves on August’s Orc for a preview of their September Chicago performance, they announced their second album of the year. Released in November, Memory of a Cut Off Head (Castle Face) features Dwyer col-
laborating with former band member Brigid Dawson (who remained in the Bay Area when he took his act to Los Angeles a few years ago), and is something of an outlier in the band’s voluminous catalog. Though it cleaves to the sort of down-and-dirty directness the band delivers at its most visceral, it’s been hyped as a baroque, orchestral pop effort. Heather Lockie, who crafted lovely string arrangements for the recent solo album by Wand’s Cory Hanson, does the same here, adding dancing, delicate counterpoint, and Mikal Cronin plays layers of postminimal saxophone on the spooky instrumental “The Baron Sleeps and Dreams.” Focus, however, is on the whispery vocal interplay of Dwyer and Dawson and trippy mellotron arpeggios rather than the band’s characteristic wigged-out guitar. It’s a charming record that has an appealing psych-folk veneer that borders on glam—“The Chopping Block” does little to hide its debt to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity”—but by the end of its ten songs it comes off as a single-note affair; while both singers bring hooky melodic strengths to the band at its most aggressive, their vocal limitations are highlighted in this setting. I admire Oh Sees’ desire to shake things up and try something different, but I’m glad Memory of a Cut Off Head was a one-off. These shows include an outdoor performance as part of the Empty Bottle’s annual outdoor winter block party, Music Frozen Dancing. —PETER MARGASAK
Charles Joseph Smith Ono, Mykele Deville, and Jawns open. 8:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $10. 21+ DIY spaces come and go, but people such as Charles Joseph Smith give the city’s nebulous underground scene a sense of cohesion. Smith, who performs under both his own name and that of his performance-art alter ego, Mr. Forefinger, is a champion of the outre, odd, and endearing. A familiar face around independent shows, Smith is likely to be found in the thick of the crowd, busting out dance moves that blur together breakin’ and ballet, which he showed off on local cableaccess dance program Chic-a-Go-Go (a fine feather in any underground Chicago musician’s cap). Beyond the world of unlicensed venues, Smith has established himself as a gifted classical composer and pianist; in 2002 he earned a doctorate in piano performance and literature from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And he’s an aspiring author; he’s currently working on a memoir, I Am Doctor Charles Joseph Smith, which digs into his experiences in the arts as a person with autism. Tonight he celebrates the War of the Martian Ghosts (Sooper Records), an album J
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27
MUSIC
Charles Joseph Smith ò COURTESY THE ARTIST
continued from 27
Enrico Lagasca & Victor Asuncion Bass-baritone and piano. 6 PM, PianoForte Studios b Skokie Valley Symphony Orchestra with Tabby Rhee 3 PM, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, Skokie Mitsuko Uchinda Piano (Schubert). 3 PM, Symphony Center Stanislava Varshavski & Diana Shapiro Piano Duo 3 PM, PianoForte Studios b
blanks. —LEOR GALIL
Rock, Pop, Etc Belleisle 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Blue Water Highway Band, Remington Pettygrove 9 PM, Schubas Boise Noise, Steel, 12:59 6 PM, Martyrs’ b Bonelang, Brandon Markell Holmes, Carlile 8:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ City Mouth, Out the Car Window, Cup Check, Short Handed, the Flips 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 18+ Cold Mourning, Killing Gods, 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Reina Del Cid, Signal to Noise 9 PM, Martyrs’ Faux Co., One More Moon 8 PM, Burlington Frightened Rabbit 8 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 17+ Gin Blossoms 8 PM, Arcada Theatre, Saint Charles b Gold Web, Fiona Silver 9 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Infamous Stringdusters, Leftover Salmon, Last Revel 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Locals, Red Moons, Aaron Williams 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Mac Sabbath, Galactic Empire 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Nomorado 10 PM, Cole’s F Panda Riot, Silver Liz, Sleepwalk 10 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Joe Russo’s Almost Dead 9 PM, Riviera Theatre, sold out, 18+ Samson the Aviator, Spit G & the Most Low, Horrible/Beaut, Nubile Thangs 8 PM, Elbo Room Hip-Hop Chi-Kanda, Ill Legit, Drunken Monkee, Neodotcom, Blackdaylight 10 PM, Subterranean Dance Anjunadeep, James Grant, Luttrell 10 PM, the Mid Chus & Ceballos 10 PM, Spy Bar Simon Patterson 10 PM, Sound-Bar Soft Machine, Mike Huckaby, Justin Aulis Long, Kiddo 10 PM, Smart Bar Blues, Gospel, and R&B Linsey Alexander, Mike Ledbetter 9:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Frank Bang, Joanna Connor 9 PM, Kingston Mines Ronnie Baker Brooks 8 PM, SPACE b Kindred the Family Soul 8 PM, the Promontory, sold out Claudette Miller, Tenry Johns Blues Band 9 PM, Blue Chicago John Primer & the Real Deal Blues Band 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Demetria Taylor 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Jazz Peter Bernstein Quartet 8 PM, Green Mill Sean Harris 11 AM, PianoForte Studios b Nick Mazzarella Quintet 10:30 PM, California Clipper Tammy McCann Quartet 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Eric Schneider Quartet 7:30 and 9:30 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Pharez Whitted Quintet 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club International Chongqing Chuanju Opera Theatre, Zhejiang Symphony Orchestra 3 PM, Symphony Center Indika 9 PM, Wild Hare Ladysmith Black Mambazo 5 and 8 PM, also Tue 2/20, 7:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Rebelution, Raging Fyah 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+
28 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
MONDAY19 Classical Lyric Opera’s Cosi Fan Tutte 7:30 PM, also Wed 2/21, 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House Fairs & Festivals Dunn Dunn Fest with Alanna Royale, Toronzo Cannon, Hannah Wicklund & Steppin’ Stones, Matthew Ryan, High Divers, Carson McHone, Ryan Joseph Anderson, Chicago Funk Mafia, Ian Leith, Josefina, and the Family Gold 6:30 PM, FitzGerald’s
SUNDAY18 Oh Sees See Saturday. Rash and Skip Church open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, sold out. 21+ Rock, Pop, Etc Big Bad Voodoo Daddy 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Patrizio Buanne 7 PM, City Winery b Forq, Spare Parts, Happy Time 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Ghost of Paul Revere, Parsonsfield 8 PM, Schubas House of Waters 7 PM, SPACE b John 5 & the Creatures, Pavlov3 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club 17+ John Maus, Gary War 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ New Politics, Dreamers 7 PM, Metro b Parsonsfield, Ghost of Paul Revere 8 PM, Schubas That 1 Guy, Jaik Willis 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Today Is the Day 8 PM, GMan Tavern Hip-Hop Devvon Terrell, Kid Quill, Jay Watts, Gianni Taylor 6 PM, Subterranean b Jazz Mike Finnerty & the Heat Merchants 7 PM, Heartland Cafe Tammy McCann Quartet 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Wills McKenna Quartet 9 PM, Whistler F Jason Stein, Josh Berman, Casper Townkeepers, Ingebrit Haker Flaten, and Paul Giallorenzo 9 PM, Hungry Brain International Indika Feb. 17, 9 PM; 9 PM, Wild Hare Orkesta Mendoza, Las Cafeteras 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Idan Raichel 7 PM, Athenaeum Theatre b Classical Fonema & Spectrum: Three Burials 8:30 PM, Constellation
Brockhampton See Sunday. 8 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, sold out. b
Ethers Cafe Racer headlines; Gosh! and Ethers open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western. 21+ F Though reckless garage-rock foursome Heavy Times weathered several mutations, one consistent component of the band was the subtle, yet heady hooks in underrated frontman Bo Hansen’s songwriting. A second was his charming, cynical onstage banter. Luckily, with his newest venture, Ethers, both of these qualities remain firmly intact. More solemn and dare I say reflective than Hansen’s previous projects, Ethers is filled out by organ and backing vocals from Mary McKane (Outer Minds, Runnies) and steady bass courtesy of Russ Calderwood (Heavy Times, Runnies, and also McKane’s husband). Ostensibly it’s a local rock group made up of friends and former bandmates— stop me if you’ve heard that story before—but it’s also a testament to howsimplicity and the familiarity of working with a group of collaborators over a stretch of time can eventually lead to catching lightning in a bottle. The stark melodies of “Something,” one of two demo tracks the band currently has available, drift with such a pleasant, lazy lo-fi ease that when McKane and Hansen hit their vocal stride together during the chorus it has unexpected resonance. Ethers just finished recording their debut full-length with Dave Vettraino at Jamdeck Recording Studio, and it’s expected to be released via local can’t-miss Trouble in Mind in the late summer or early fall. —KEVIN WARWICK Rock, Pop, Etc Dead Deads, Hot Dang, Lever 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+b Hip-Hop Steven Cannon 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Blues, Gospel, and R&B Travis Greene 8 PM, Lincoln Hall b Jazz Isabelle Oliver 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Ryan Shultz Trio, Kathy Kelly Quartet 9 PM, Elastic b International Chicago-Andalusian Music Project 7:30 PM, City Winery b Ana Tijoux 7 and 9:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b In-Stores Alex Inglizian & Will Faber Modular synthesizer and fretless guitar. 7:30 PM, Myopic Books F b
l
Charles Joseph Smith
MUSIC continued from 27
of ten piano compositions that chronicle Smith’s fantastical journey to Mars, the ensuing war upon his arrival, and the aftermath. I’ve taken pleasure in the sonorous, stately piano scales on “March to War,” and though I hope Smith wrote a detailed narrative for the casette’s liner notes, I’ve taken cues from the music to fill in the narrative blanks. —LEOR GALIL Rock, Pop, Etc Belleisle 8:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Blue Water Highway Band, Remington Pettygrove 9 PM, Schubas Boise Noise, Steel, 12:59 6 PM, Martyrs’ b Bonelang, Brandon Markell Holmes, Carlile 8:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ City Mouth, Out the Car Window, Cup Check, Short Handed, the Flips 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 18+ Cold Mourning, Killing Gods, Bubbles Erotica, Hoodie Life 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Reina Del Cid, Signal to Noise, Oblio & Arrow 9 PM, Martyrs’ Faux Co., One More Moon, Brian Doherty, Western Canon 8 PM, Burlington Frightened Rabbit 8 PM, Thalia Hall, sold out, 17+ Gin Blossoms 8 PM, Arcada Theatre, Saint Charles b Gold Web, Fiona Silver 9 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar F Infamous Stringdusters, Leftover Salmon, Last Revel 8 PM, Park West, 18+ Locals, Red Moons, Aaron Williams 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Mac Sabbath, Galactic Empire 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Nomorado 10 PM, Cole’s F Panda Riot, Silver Liz, Sleepwalk 10 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Joe Russo’s Almost Dead 9 PM, Riviera Theatre, sold out, 18+ Samson the Aviator, Spit G & the Most Low, Horrible/Beaut, Nubile Thangs 8 PM, Elbo Room Screeching Weasel, CJ Ramone 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Hip-Hop Chi-Kanda, Ill Legit, Drunken Monkee, Neodotcom, Blackdaylight, Funk Solo, Epik 1, Justin Boyd 10 PM, Subterranean Dance Anjunadeep, James Grant, Luttrell 10 PM, the Mid Chus & Ceballos 10 PM, Spy Bar Simon Patterson 10 PM, Sound-Bar Soft Machine, Mike Huckaby, Justin Aulis Long, Kiddo 10 PM, Smart Bar Blues, Gospel, and R&B Linsey Alexander, Mike Ledbetter 9:30 PM, Buddy Guy’s Legends Frank Bang, Joanna Connor 9 PM, Kingston Mines Ronnie Baker Brooks 8 PM, SPACE b Kindred the Family Soul 8 PM, the Promontory, sold out Claudette Miller, Tenry Johns Blues Band 9 PM, Blue Chicago John Primer & the Real Deal Blues Band 9:30 PM, Rosa’s Lounge Demetria Taylor 9 PM, B.L.U.E.S. Jazz Peter Bernstein Quartet 8 PM, Green Mill Sean Harris 11 AM, PianoForte Studios b Nick Mazzarella Quintet 10:30 PM, California Clipper
28 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
ò COURTESY THE ARTIST
Tammy McCann Quartet 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Eric Schneider Quartet 7:30 and 9:30 PM, Winter’s Jazz Club Pharez Whitted Quintet 9:30 PM, Andy’s Jazz Club International Chongqing Chuanju Opera Theatre, Zhejiang Symphony Orchestra 3 PM, Symphony Center Indika 9 PM, Wild Hare Ladysmith Black Mambazo 5 and 8 PM, also Tue 2/20, 7:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Rebelution, Raging Fyah 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 17+ Classical Lyric Opera’s Cosi Fan Tutte 7:30 PM, also Wed 2/21, 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House Fairs & Festivals Dunn Dunn Fest with Alanna Royale, Toronzo Cannon, Hannah Wicklund & Steppin’ Stones, Matthew Ryan, High Divers, Carson McHone, Ryan Joseph Anderson, Chicago Funk Mafia, Ian Leith, Josefina, and the Family Gold 6:30 PM, FitzGerald’s
SUNDAY18 Oh Sees See Saturday. Rash and Skip Church open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, sold out. 21+ Rock, Pop, Etc Big Bad Voodoo Daddy 7 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Patrizio Buanne 7 PM, City Winery b Forq, Spare Parts, Happy Time 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Ghost of Paul Revere, Parsonsfield 8 PM, Schubas House of Waters 7 PM, SPACE b John 5 & the Creatures, Pavlov3 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club 17+ John Maus, Gary War 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ New Politics, Dreamers 7 PM, Metro b Parsonsfield, Ghost of Paul Revere 8 PM, Schubas That 1 Guy, Jaik Willis 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Today Is the Day 8 PM, GMan Tavern Hip-Hop Devvon Terrell, Kid Quill, Jay Watts, Gianni Taylor 6 PM, Subterranean b Jazz Mike Finnerty & the Heat Merchants 7 PM, Heartland Cafe Tammy McCann Quartet 4, 8, and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Wills McKenna Quartet 9 PM, Whistler F Jason Stein, Josh Berman, Casper Townkeepers, Ingebrit Haker Flaten, and Paul Giallorenzo 9 PM, Hungry Brain International Indika Feb. 17, 9 PM; 9 PM, Wild Hare Orkesta Mendoza, Las Cafeteras 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Idan Raichel 7 PM, Athenaeum Theatre b Classical Fonema & Spectrum: Three Burials 8:30 PM, Constellation Enrico Lagasca & Victor Asuncion Bass-baritone and piano. 6 PM, PianoForte Studios b Skokie Valley Symphony Orchestra with Tabby Rhee 3 PM, North Shore Center for the Performing
Arts, Skokie Mitsuko Uchinda Piano (Schubert). 3 PM, Symphony Center Stanislava Varshavski & Diana Shapiro Piano Duo 3 PM, PianoForte Studios b
MONDAY19 Brockhampton See Sunday. 8 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, sold out. b
Ethers Cafe Racer headlines; Gosh! and Ethers open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western. 21+ F Though reckless garage-rock foursome Heavy Times weathered several mutations, one consistent component of the band was the subtle, yet heady hooks in underrated frontman Bo Hansen’s songwriting. A second was his charming, cynical onstage banter. Luckily, with his newest venture, Ethers, both of these qualities remain firmly intact. More solemn and dare I say reflective than Hansen’s previous projects, Ethers is filled out by organ and backing vocals from Mary McKane (Outer Minds, Runnies) and steady bass courtesy of Russ Calderwood (Heavy Times, Runnies, and also McKane’s husband). Ostensibly it’s a local rock group made up of friends and former bandmates— stop me if you’ve heard that story before—but it’s also a testament to how simplicity and the familiarity of working with a group of collaborators over a stretch of time can eventually lead to catching lightning in a bottle. The stark melodies of “Something,” one of two demo tracks the band currently has available, drift with such a pleasant, lazy lo-fi ease that when McKane and Hansen hit their vocal stride together during the chorus it has unexpected resonance. Ethers just finished recording their debut full-length with Dave Vettraino at Jamdeck Recording Studio, and it’s expected to be released via local can’t-miss Trouble in Mind in the late summer or early fall. —KEVIN WARWICK Rock, Pop, Etc Dead Deads, Hot Dang, Lever 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+b Hip-Hop Steven Cannon 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Blues, Gospel, and R&B Travis Greene 8 PM, Lincoln Hall b Jazz Isabelle Oliver 8 and 10 PM, Jazz Showcase Ryan Shultz Trio, Kathy Kelly Quartet 9 PM, Elastic b
l
l
Want to play? We’ll teach you how.
Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.
TUESDAY20 Keren Ann 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $18-$25. b After releasing her middling 2011 album, 101, and giving birth to her first child, French-Israeli singer Keren Ann largely retreated from the music business apart from some work in theater and film. In 2016 she returned with her strongest effort in years, You’re Gonna Get Love (Polydor), which sadly hasn’t been released in the U.S. Working with producer Renaud Letang (who’s wracked up credits with Feist, Amadou & Mariam, and Jarvis Cocker) and benefiting from arrangements by Brazilian great Eumir Deodato, she maintains the placid, shimmering beauty of her past work. She summons the soaring poeticism of Leonard Cohen on “The Separated Twin” (with its bald evocations of “Hallelujah”), and on the druggy languor of “My Man Is Wanted but I Ain’t Gonna Turn Him In,” she seductively decides to go down in flames with a lover on the run from the law. But this record stands on its own, thanks to the injection of unexpected raw bite both on pretty ballads and on driving tunes where taut grooves toggle between rhythmic propulsion and limber sprawl. “Easy Money,” an austere portrait of an ex-lover lost in the grip of drugs and sex, throbs with a Can-like pulse, while the slinking title track has an insistent thrum that seems to reinforce its themes of the frustrations of trying to forge a connection. Keren Ann’s songs address love in shifting contexts—healthy or destructive, nurturing or romantic, present or missing—with an impressive sense of economy and directness. In interviews she’s said they aren’t about motherhood, but the newfound urgency of the songs on You’re Gonna Get Love suggests that since her last release she’s gained a greater appreciation for life. She’s not pussyfooting around, and that’s made all of the difference in the world. —PETER MARGASAK
Martin Arnold 6 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago. F b One thing’s for sure—you can’t pin Martin Arnold down. On The Split Veleta, his volume in Another Timbre Records’ recent five-album survey of Canadian composers, the pensive violin and piano melodies wind and wander but never quite resolve. Abberare, a collection of his work performed by the Montreal-based Bozzini String Quartet, is split between Renaissance-vintage sonorities, gentle dissonances, and cheerily meandering airs. Arnold, who lives in Toronto, holds down a monthly gig contributing subtly off-kilter guitar accompaniment to the smooth lounge pop of pianist Ryan Driver, with whom he has also recorded entropic treatments of English folk tunes in the alt-folk band Mermaids. Whatever form his music takes, it seems more concerned with lazily lingering than with getting to any particular point. Arnold kicks off the third Frequency Festival, a celebration of new music selected by Reader staff writer Peter Margasak, with a new piece called “Sheath and Knife” that will feature local bassist Joshua Abrams, cornetist Josh Berman, and vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz. He’ll also play “Fergus” and “Willie O’Winsbury, a pair of solo pieces for voice, melodica, and effects. The Bozzi-
Keren Ann ò AMIT ISRAELI ni Quartet’s program on Thursday will also include some of Arnold’s music. —PETER MARGASAK
Robert Plant & the Sensational Space Shifters Seth Lakeman opens. 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, sold out. 18+ A few years ago Robert Plant returned to England, where he reunited with some of his trusted bandmates and forged some new bonds. During his fruitful stay in the U.S. he immersed himself in country roots, and since going home his records have shown a kind of syncretic approach that melds the various threads his curiosity has pulled him toward over his career. Last year’s Carry Fire (Nonesuch) retains the restrained, soulful approach he’s embraced since first collaborating with Alison Krauss more than a decade ago. On “New World . . . ,” one of a handful of tunes addressing colonialism, hostile invasions, and war, he sings in a measured, richly nuanced tone even when his band kicks up dust with tribal thrum. His lyrics on the churning “Bones of Saints” name no specific time or place as they depict bombing raids that could stand as a metaphor for unchecked power. Most of the album’s songs revolve around love, and have a similar strain of universality in their themes. The title track—where long-time collaborator Justin Adams plays twangy oud patterns and Dave Smith injects Arabic undertones with his minimal rhythms on bendir, a Turkish frame drum—could be about either a woman or a country, with lines like “I was a stranger there / Inside your promised land.” Brass countermelodies suggest old British folk celebrations on “Dance With You Tonight,” while the tightly coiled groove of “Keep it Hid” evokes the language of an early blues lament, braiding a pulsing low-end synth pattern and almost motorik beats. Chrissie Hynde’s lovely, smoky cameo on the swirling “Bluebirds Over the Mountain” is a pleasant surprise. A few tracks have a commercial sheen that trips up the album a bit—anything that makes me think of U2 is almost always unfortunate. But Plant is that rarest of beasts: like Scott Walker, Patti Smith, and Bob Dylan, he’s a veteran rock star who continues to evolve and excel decades into his career instead of clinging pathetically to his youth. British folk musician Seth Lakeman, who plays viola on several tracks, opens the show. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Haunted Summer, Melody Angel 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Magical Beasts with Caroline Campbell 6 PM, Whistler F
Take a class with us in 2018! We’ve been teaching Chicago to play music since 1957. Come join the band with a class in guitar, banjo, dance, ukulele, and much more. New group classes begin the week of March 5.
Sign up today at
oldtownschool.org
J FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 29
l
Want to play? We’ll teach you how.
Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard. International Chicago-Andalusian Music Project 7:30 PM, City Winery b Ana Tijoux 7 and 9:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b In-Stores Alex Inglizian & Will Faber Modular synthesizer and fretless guitar. 7:30 PM, Myopic Books F b
TUESDAY20 Keren Ann 8 PM, City Winery, 1200 W. Randolph, $18-$25. b After releasing her middling 2011 album, 101, and giving birth to her first child, French-Israeli singer Keren Ann largely retreated from the music business apart from some work in theater and film. In 2016 she returned with her strongest effort in years, You’re Gonna Get Love (Polydor), which sadly hasn’t been released in the U.S. Working with producer Renaud Letang (who’s wracked up credits with Feist, Amadou & Mariam, and Jarvis Cocker) and benefiting from arrangements by Brazilian great Eumir Deodato, she maintains the placid, shimmering beauty of her past work. She summons the soaring poeticism of Leonard Cohen on “The Separated Twin” (with its bald evocations of “Hallelujah”), and on the druggy languor of “My Man Is Wanted but I Ain’t Gonna Turn Him In,” she seductively decides to go down in flames with a lover on the run from the law. But this record stands on its own, thanks to the injection of unexpected raw bite both on pretty ballads and on driving tunes where taut grooves toggle between rhythmic propulsion and limber sprawl. “Easy Money,” an austere portrait of an ex-lover lost in the grip of drugs and sex, throbs with a Can-like pulse, while the slinking title track has an insistent thrum that seems to reinforce its themes of the frustrations of trying to forge a connection. Keren Ann’s songs address love in shifting contexts—healthy or destructive, nurturing or romantic, present or missing—with an impressive sense of economy and directness. In interviews she’s said they aren’t about motherhood, but the newfound urgency of the songs on You’re Gonna Get Love suggests that since her last release she’s gained a greater appreciation for life. She’s not pussyfooting around, and that’s made all of the difference in the world. —PETER MARGASAK
Martin Arnold 6 PM, Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago. F b One thing’s for sure—you can’t pin Martin Arnold down. On The Split Veleta, his volume in Another Timbre Records’ recent five-album survey of Canadian composers, the pensive violin and piano melodies wind and wander but never quite resolve. Abberare, a collection of his work performed by the Montreal-based Bozzini String Quartet, is split between Renaissance-vintage sonorities, gentle dissonances, and cheerily meandering airs. Arnold, who lives in Toronto, holds down a monthly gig contributing subtly off-kilter guitar accompaniment to the smooth lounge pop of pianist Ryan Driver, with whom he has also recorded entropic treatments of English folk tunes in the alt-folk band Mermaids. Whatever form his music takes, it seems more con-
Keren Ann ò AMIT ISRAELI cerned with lazily lingering than with getting to any particular point. Arnold kicks off the third Frequency Festival, a celebration of new music selected by Reader staff writer Peter Margasak, with a new piece called “Sheath and Knife” that will feature local bassist Joshua Abrams, cornetist Josh Berman, and vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz. He’ll also play “Fergus” and “Willie O’Winsbury, a pair of solo pieces for voice, melodica, and effects. The Bozzini Quartet’s program on Thursday will also include some of Arnold’s music. —PETER MARGASAK
Robert Plant & the Sensational Space Shifters Seth Lakeman opens. 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 4746 N. Racine, sold out. 18+ A few years ago Robert Plant returned to England, where he reunited with some of his trusted bandmates and forged some new bonds. During his fruitful stay in the U.S. he immersed himself in country roots, and since going home his records have shown a kind of syncretic approach that melds the various threads his curiosity has pulled him toward over his career. Last year’s Carry Fire (Nonesuch) retains the restrained, soulful approach he’s embraced since first collaborating with Alison Krauss more than a decade ago. On “New World . . . ,” one of a handful of tunes addressing colonialism, hostile invasions, and war, he sings in a measured, richly nuanced tone even when his band kicks up dust with tribal thrum. His lyrics on the churning “Bones of Saints” name no specific time or place as they depict bombing raids that could stand as a metaphor for unchecked power. Most of the album’s songs revolve around love, and have a similar strain of universality in their themes. The title track—where long-time collaborator Justin Adams plays twangy oud patterns and Dave Smith injects Arabic undertones with his minimal rhythms on bendir, a Turkish frame drum—could be about either a woman or a country, with lines like “I was a stranger there / Inside your promised land.” Brass countermelodies suggest old British folk celebrations on “Dance With You Tonight,” while the tightly coiled groove of “Keep it Hid” evokes the language of an early blues lament, braiding a pulsing low-end synth pattern and almost motorik beats. Chrissie Hynde’s lovely, smoky cameo on the swirling “Bluebirds Over the Mountain” is a pleasant surprise. A few tracks have a commercial sheen that trips up the album a bit— anything that makes me think of U2 is almost always unfortunate. But Plant is that rarest of beasts: like Scott Walker, Patti Smith, and Bob Dylan, he’s a J
Take a class with us in 2018! We’ve been teaching Chicago to play music since 1957. Come join the band with a class in guitar, banjo, dance, ukulele, and much more. New group classes begin the week of March 5.
Sign up today at
oldtownschool.org FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 29
MUSIC
Cupcakke ò SHAUN MICHAEL
continued from 29
Palm, Spirit of the Beehive, Hecks 9 PM, Empty Bottle Jazz Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten 9:30 PM, Whistler F Erwin Helfer 7:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Greg Ward 9 PM, Hungry Brain F International Ladysmith Black Mambazo 7:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Classical Picosa 7:30 PM, PianoForte Studios b
WEDNESDAY21 Cupcakke 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, sold out. b Last year an independent Chicago rapper who found success while making bold, insightful tracks about black life on the city’s south side appeared onstage at Lollapalooza. I could be describing Chance the Rapper, but I’m actually talking about Elizabeth Harris, better known as Cupcakke. Sure, technically Lolla didn’t list her as one of the festival’s acts, but she showed up for Charli XCX’s performance, and according to Tribune critic Jessi Roti, Cupcakke turned out to be the “set savior.” She’s made a career out of hyper-raunchy raps; on last month’s self-released Ephorize she grafts blunt sexuality onto the Smurfs (on “Cartoons”), insects (“Meet & Greet”), and sloppy joes (“Duck Duck Goose”), among other subjects that are generally bereft of eroticism. Cupcakke’s discourse on intercourse has earned her both critical acclaim and fame—98 percent of her 309,000 Twitter followers are real, which is more than three times the number of users Richard Roeper didn’t pay to follow him—but she has no desire to play to a type. Some of her most incisive work is her most personal— on “Reality, Pt. 4,” off last year’s Queen Elizabitch, she delves into her difficult upbringing, rapping “I had a empty fridge would eat me a stale bagel / Thanksgiving Day with only me at the table.” Ephorize opens with the somber “2 Minutes,” on which Cupcakke makes no bones about overcoming adversity, and how both hardship and perseverance have colored her current life: “I done placed so many flowers on different graves / I tell my dates now, don’t bring a rose.” She knows that her refusal to limit herself to any one theme pushes against her audience’s expectations—on “Self Interview” she remarks that most folks have skipped the track because of a lack of sexually explicit raps— but I like to think her fans understand she’s got so much more to give. —LEOR GALIL
Jeezy 7 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, $45-$78. b Let’s be real. Trap music, in all its glitzy mainstream flair, wouldn’t exist today without one of Atlanta’s most storied dope boys, Jeezy. Though T.I.’s Trap Musik (2003) made the phrase a household name, Jeezy gave the 808-driven subgenre several crossover assists on his 2005 debut, Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101, collaborating with Akon on “And Then What” and international hit “Soul Sur-
30 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
vivor.” Though Jeezy was already a solidified trap star, thanks to DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz stamp of approval on Tha Streets Iz Watchin and Trap or Die mixtapes, his career as a sought-after hitmaker soared even higher from there. In 2008 Jeezy showed outsiders that trappers can be sexy on Usher’s “Love in This Club,” and the following year he gave Rihanna street cred, contributing guest bars on her bad-gal anthem “Hard.” Though Jeezy’s eighth studio album, Pressure, doesn’t offer the same swaggering dominance as his earlier material, Jeezy will have the House of Blues rocking as he cycles through the hood classics. Give us “White Girl” and “Hustlaz Ambition,” and on “Put On” let us rap Yeezy’s entire verse because, well, this is Chicago. If you’ve been down with trap since its humble early-millenium beginnings, the Cold Summer tour will be a hearty trip down memory lane. However, don’t expect Jeezy’s current tourmate Tee Grizzley. According to his publicist, Grizzley can’t make the Chicago stop. —TIFFANY WALDEN Rock, Pop, Etc Elliot Root 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn Early show sold out. 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE b Half Gringa, Nunnery 9:30 PM, Whistler F Porches, Girl Ray 7 PM, Thalia Hall b Sarah Louise; Bill MacKay, Charles Rumback, and Doug McCombs 9 PM, Hideout Wild Pink, Adam Torres, Minor Characters 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Wrong Numbers, Recreational Drugs, Special Death 8 PM, Subterranean. 17+ Hip-Hop Lil Xan, Steven Cannon 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, sold out b Folk & Country Lanco 8:30 PM, Joe’s Bar, sold out Left Lane Cruiser 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Blues, Gospel, and R&B Majid Jordan, STWO 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Jazz Birdland All-Stars with Tommy Igoe 8 PM, City Winery b Hamid Drake, Beyond This Point Part of Frequency Festival, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Tamir Hendelman 8 PM, PianoForte Studios b International Black Umfolosi 8:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music F b Classical Narek Hakhnazaryan & Noreen Cassidy-Polera Cello and piano. 12:15 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center F b Lyric Opera’s Cosi Fan Tutte 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House Music803 Haydn, Dohnanyi, Vaughan Williams. 6:30 PM, Symphony Center v
l
MUSIC continued from 29
veteran rock star who continues to evolve and excel decades into his career instead of clinging pathetically to his youth. British folk musician Seth Lakeman, who plays viola on several tracks, opens the show. —PETER MARGASAK Rock, Pop, Etc Haunted Summer, Melody Angel 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Magical Beasts with Caroline Campbell 6 PM, Whistler F Palm, Spirit of the Beehive, Hecks 9 PM, Empty Bottle Jazz Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten 9:30 PM, Whistler F Erwin Helfer 7:30 PM, Hungry Brain F Greg Ward 9 PM, Hungry Brain F International Ladysmith Black Mambazo 7:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Classical Picosa 7:30 PM, PianoForte Studios b
WEDNESDAY21 Cupcakke 8 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, sold out. b Last year an independent Chicago rapper who found success while making bold, insightful tracks about black life on the city’s south side appeared onstage at Lollapalooza. I could be describing Chance the Rapper, but I’m actually talking about Elizabeth Harris, better known as Cupcakke. Sure, technically Lolla didn’t list her as one of the festival’s acts, but she showed up for Charli XCX’s performance, and according to Tribune critic Jessi Roti, Cupcakke turned out to be the “set savior.” She’s made a career out of hyper-raunchy raps; on last month’s self-released Ephorize she grafts blunt sexuality onto the Smurfs (on “Cartoons”), insects (“Meet & Greet”), and sloppy joes (“Duck Duck Goose”), among other subjects that are generally bereft of eroticism. Cupcakke’s discourse on intercourse has earned her both critical acclaim and fame—98 percent of her 309,000 Twitter followers are real, which is more than three times the number of users Richard Roeper didn’t pay to follow him—but she has no desire to play to a type. Some of her most incisive work is her most personal— on “Reality, Pt. 4,” off last year’s Queen Elizabitch, she delves into her difficult upbringing, rapping “I had a empty fridge would eat me a stale bagel / Thanksgiving Day with only me at the table.” Ephorize opens with the somber “2 Minutes,” on which Cupcakke makes no bones about overcoming adversity, and how both hardship and perseverance have colored her current life: “I done placed so many flowers on different graves / I tell my dates now, don’t bring a rose.” She knows that her refusal to limit herself to any one theme pushes against her audience’s expectations—on “Self Interview” she remarks that most folks have skipped the track because of a lack of sexually explicit raps— but I like to think her fans understand she’s got so much more to give. —LEOR GALIL
30 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
Jeezy 7 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, $45-$78. b Let’s be real. Trap music, in all its glitzy mainstream flair, wouldn’t exist today without one of Atlanta’s most storied dope boys, Jeezy. Though T.I.’s Trap Musik (2003) made the phrase a household name, Jeezy gave the 808-driven subgenre several crossover assists on his 2005 debut, Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101, collaborating with Akon on “And Then What” and international hit “Soul Survivor.” Though Jeezy was already a solidified trap star, thanks to DJ Drama’s Gangsta Grillz stamp of approval on Tha Streets Iz Watchin and Trap or Die mixtapes, his career as a sought-after hitmaker soared even higher from there. In 2008 Jeezy showed outsiders that trappers can be sexy on Usher’s “Love in This Club,” and the following year he gave Rihanna street cred, contributing guest bars on her bad-gal anthem “Hard.” Though Jeezy’s eighth studio album, Pressure, doesn’t offer the same swaggering dominance as his earlier material, Jeezy will have the House of Blues rocking as he cycles through the hood classics. Give us “White Girl” and “Hustlaz Ambition,” and on “Put On” let us rap Yeezy’s entire verse because, well, this is Chicago. If you’ve been down with trap since its humble early-millenium beginnings, the Cold Summer tour will be a hearty trip down memory lane. However, don’t expect Jeezy’s current tourmate Tee Grizzley. According to his publicist, Grizzley can’t make the Chicago stop. —TIFFANY WALDEN Rock, Pop, Etc Elliot Root 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn Early show sold out. 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE b Half Gringa, Nunnery 9:30 PM, Whistler F Porches, Girl Ray 7 PM, Thalia Hall b Sarah Louise; Bill MacKay, Charles Rumback, and Doug McCombs 9 PM, Hideout Wild Pink, Adam Torres, Minor Characters 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Wrong Numbers, Recreational Drugs, Special Death 8 PM, Subterranean. 17+ Hip-Hop Lil Xan, Steven Cannon 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall, sold out b Folk & Country Lanco 8:30 PM, Joe’s Bar, sold out Left Lane Cruiser 8 PM, Beat Kitchen Blues, Gospel, and R&B Majid Jordan, STWO 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Jazz Birdland All-Stars with Tommy Igoe 8 PM, City Winery b Hamid Drake, Beyond This Point Part of Frequency Festival. 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Tamir Hendelman 8 PM, PianoForte Studios b International Black Umfolosi 8:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music F b Classical Narek Hakhnazaryan & Noreen Cassidy-Polera Cello and piano. 12:15 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center F b Lyric Opera’s Cosi Fan Tutte 7:30 PM, Lyric Opera House Music803 Haydn, Dohnanyi, Vaughan Williams. 6:30 PM, Symphony Center v
l
l
FOOD & DRINK
Clockwise from top left: sancocho; kipe and yuca bollitos; beef stew with Moros y Cristianos; Los Tres Golpes (the Three Strikes) with mangú; pollo guisado with white rice and maduros ò JAMIE RAMSAY
RESTAURANT REVIEW
Morena’s Kitchen is Dominican food for the soul
The pica pollo at this tiny Belmont Cragin storefront presents a compelling reason to get up in the morning. By MIKE SULA
MORENA’S KITCHEN | $ 5054 1/2 W. Armitage R 773-622-7200
facebook.com/ComidaDominica
T
wo years ago a taqueria in Santa Ana, California, filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against KFC seeking damages from the death-peddling corporate protein merchant for using “Para chuparse los dedos” (“to suck the fingers”) as the Spanish-language analog to “finger-licking good.” Plaintiff Taqueria El Amigo, which had trademarked the Spanish phrase, settled its case with KFC in confidence, but I think it’s probably safe to employ it to describe the proper way to finish an order of pica pollo at the Belmont Cragin storefront Morena’s Kitchen. Also known as Dominican fried chick- J
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31
Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your own review—at chicagoreader.com/food.
FOOD & DRINK
Pica pollo and tostones; owner Mirian “Morena” Monteszeoca ò JAMIE RAMSAY
continued from 31
en, these hot, salty nuggets of brittle-battered, citrus-bathed bird flesh, served with crisp tostones and blazed with laser-guided splashes of house-made habanero hot sauce, present a compelling reason to lick your fingers. They present a compelling reason to get up in the morning. The siren alerting me to this extraordinary poultry was sounded by taco scholar Titus Ruscitti, whose powers of inspection can always be counted on to detect extraordinary food. In this case he sniffed out Morena’s Kitchen, the wee eight-seater where Mirian Monteszeoca cooks the food of her birthplace, the Dominican Republic. Open for almost three years, Morena’s derives from the 38-year old chef’s childhood nickname, Morena, meaning “dark-skinned.” On Monday through Saturday, Monteszeoca wakes at 5 AM, walks a block to the restaurant, and
32 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
starts cooking. She breaks at 6:45 to head back and send her three girls off to school before returning to start breakfast service at ten. That meal features, among other things, the Dominican Desayuno of Champions: Los Tres Golpes—the Three Strikes—fried eggs, salami, and queso frito with a side of mangú, mashed green plantains garnished with pickled red onion. Saturday and usually Monday mornings—for those in need of recovery— she serves a silky menudo, bright with sour orange and the hot breath of Dominican oregano, both of which she orders from a New York distributor who imports them from the D.R. The two ingredients permeate the chicken, and also a number of the homey, life-affirming plates she put out. Chef Monteszeoca, who’s most ly a one-woman operation, fries pica pollo to order every day she’s open, and marinates a
batch for the next. But not everything on the menu hanging above the register is always available. She doesn’t have the room in the tiny kitchen to make everything, which is why after you walk in the door and she greets you like you’re the most delightful surprise of the day, it’s best just to ask what she has on hand. If you’re lucky she’ll have sancocho, a meaty stew with beef, chicken, dumplings, squash, yuca, carrots, and plantains that, once ingested, turns your gut into an internal furnace that’ll warm your bones long after you’ve returned to the cold outside. A heated glass case displays empanadas and kipe, the Dominican adaptation of kibbeh, brought by Middle Eastern immigrants in the late 19th century, its bulgur jacket and ground-beef core scented with sweet basil and that characteristic oregano. Mangú isn’t just for breakfast. Morena’s serves it all day, along with a few similarly re-
storative warm and stewy options like slowly braised goat, fall-off-the-bone chicken, and carne guisado, Dominican braised beef. The warmly spiced liquids these muscly meats tenderize in are sopped up by ample portions of rice: perhaps Moros y Cristianos (“Moors and Christians”), firm, fat grains tinted by black beans; or orange achiote-stained rice mined with plump pigeon peas; or plain white rice, simple and buttery tasting, and perhaps the best canvas for these stews. Each of these plates is preceded by a salad of shredded iceberg dressed in oil and vinegar to scour the insides in preparation for the feeding to come. On Saturdays expect more labor-intensive dishes like oxtails, their flesh, fat, and collagen almost jiggling off the bone, and bacalao, mildly salty reconstituted dried codfish with potatoes and olives in tomato sauce. In the late afternoon she starts griddling chimichurri—not the herbal Argentine steak sauce but the Dominican hamburger, the beef marinated in lemon and mustard and topped with cabbage, tomato, ketchup, mayo, and mustard. Monteszeoca usually has someone helping her expedite the plates, but she says she likes to do the cooking itself alone. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t seem to love the company anytime anyone drops in. She’s one of the most radiantly cheerful people I’ve ever encountered in the restaurant industry. It’s a confident spirit that transfers to her food in the way of all the best chefs. Morena’s is set up mostly for takeout, but Monteszeoca has plans to take over the defunct computer repair store next door, which will roughly double her size—and her ability to accommodate anyone who wants to stick around and absorb her energy while absorbing her energizing food. v
v @MikeSula
l
l
BLACK FOOD AND BEVERAGE
FOOD & DRINK
https://www.blackfandb.com/
Angela Burke; Alisha Sommer ò COURTESY THE ARTIST
FEATURE
When you wonder why you don’t see black people in food media, start your own website By JULIA THIEL
F
or several years Angela Burke, who owns a PR company that specializes in food marketing, had noticed that black people in the food and beverage industry weren’t being represented in media coverage. “I decided to just start telling the stories myself,” she says. She’d followed Alisha Sommer, a freelance writer and photographer, on Instagram and admired her work, so four months ago, she invited the other woman to have coffee and discuss collaborating. “We were completely on the same page,” says Burke. “Nobody’s picking up on these up-andcoming black men and women, chefs and cooks, the trends that they’re starting, what’s hot that they’re doing,” Sommer says. “Maybe white writers just aren’t aware of it? It’s important that you’re including a variety of voices, because [otherwise] you’re missing out on a lot of talent.” So the two women set out to create their own online publication dedicated to black professionals in the food and beverage industry: Black Food & Beverage.
Last November they started contacting potential subjects—some they already knew of, and others whom other people had recommended. “We were reaching out to a lot of people during their busiest season,” Burke says. “They’re like, things are crazy here and you want to interview me? But people still took the time to sit and talk with us.” Burke did the interviews, while Sommer photographed their subjects. “I spent a lot of long nights,” Burke says. “Alisha was editing photos forever. I did the majority of the profile writing, so I’m cranking it out. And I’m nine months pregnant, [so I was] trying to get it done before the baby comes.” Because Burke’s baby was due in February, the two women wanted to get the site launched by the end of January. “We had a really tight deadline,” says Sommer. She lives in Oswego, 45 miles west of Chicago, and has three kids, so arranging schedules was tricky and sometimes stressful. “But there was a lot of excitement, a lot of passion. We really believed this is necessary, so that helped carry us through getting it done so fast.”
Both Sommer and Burke worked on building the website—and they met their deadline, launching Black Food & Beverage on January 26. The nine in-depth profiles include Julius White, beverage manager and assistant general manager at Vie; Stephanie Hart, owner of Brown Sugar Bakery; and Lamar Moore, executive chef at the Currency Exchange Cafe. “We wanted to share the journey,” Burke says. “A lot of times you’ll see the success, the accolades. But you don’t get an understanding of the training, all the years it took, the blood, sweat, and tears that got people to where they are today.” Sommer notes that when she goes out to eat, she rarely sees a black sommelier or restaurant manager. “How come there’s so few? The talent is there, but what are the barriers? That’s what we were asking in these profiles,” she says. She and Burke also hope that the site will help change that. “One thing we need to think about when it comes to media is that your reality is based upon images. We believe the things we see. When you don’t
see yourself in these lists, you think it means that these options are not for you, that this career is not for you,” Sommer says. “It helps give people inspiration to know that there are black men and women who are doing this and they’re really successful.” One unexpected result of the project, Burke says, is that the website has become a resource. Local culinary schools have asked the creators about inviting their profile subjects to speak at the schools. “People are starting to use our expertise,” she says. They’re realizing that if they’re having an event and looking for more diversity in their chefs, for example, Burke and Sommer may know people who’d be a good fit. The two women plan to publish a new batch of profiles at least annually, and possibly more often than that. While they focused on Chicago first, next they’re going to expand nationally. “This is the tip of the iceberg,” Burke says of the nine people currently featured on the website. “There are so many more talented black food and beverage professionals across the country, but especially in our city. We’re just giving a small sampling of it.” v
v @juliathiel
king crab house 1816 N. Halsted St., Chicago
Lenten Specials $19.95
February 14th thru March 31st All You Can Eat Fried Perch 10 Fresh Fish of the Day During Lent (from regular menu)
DAILY SPECIALS Mon - King Crab Legs $24.95 Tues - Snow Crab Legs $19.95 Wed - Crab & Slab $19.95 Thur - Fried Jumbo Shrimp $19.95 Not Valid with any other Promo, Discounts, VIPs, etc BYOB / $10.00 Corkage Fee
Call For Reservation 312-280-8990
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33
JOBS SALES & MARKETING Telephone Sales Experienced/aggressive telephone closers needed now to sell ad space for Chicago’s oldest and largest newspaper rep firm. Immediate openings in Loop office. Salary + commission. 312-368-4884. DO YOU NEED EXTRA CASH? I NEED EXTRA WORKERS. Tele-Fundraising Veterans.. Part-time, Full-time, Set your own schedule.
TECHNOLOGY ADVISORY SENIOR ASSOCIATE, CYBERSECURITY & PRIVACY (Mult. Pos.), PricewaterhouseCoopers Advisory Services LLC, Chicago, IL. Assist clients with the assessment & improvement of their security infrastructure. Req. Bach’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Bus Admin, Econ or rel. + 2 yrs rel. work exp.; OR a Master’s deg. or foreign equiv. in Comp Sci, Bus Admin, Econ or rel. + 1 yr rel. work exp. Travel req. up to 80%. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1607, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management, 4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607.
START TODAY! 847-863-2275
General TOUCHSENSOR TECHNOLOGIES, LLC seeks Software Engineer in Wheaton, IL to develop software libraries for TouchSensor’s proprietary touch algorithms. Document front-end software developments, including requirements specifications, tuning guides, and flow charts. Bachelor’s degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related, 3 years of experience in a position involving microcontroller firmware design, and more than 6 months of professional experience with: ST, Atmel, Cypress, or Microchip 8-bit touch microcontrollers; RS-232, I2C, or SPI serial communications; reading and knowledge of assembly language; programmers, oscilloscopes, in-circuit emulators, and compilers; analog and digital circuit design. Experience can be gained professional or through academic coursework. Send resumes to: C.Wiemer, 7401 W. Wilson Avenue, Harwood Heights, IL 60706
BUSINESS MU SIGMA, INC. has multiple openings for the following positions in Northbrook, IL & various, unanticipated sites throughout the U.S.
Engagement Manager I (11089. 144) conduct organizational studies and evaluations, design systems and procedures. Regional Head (11089.83) responsible for overall delivery of organizational studies and evaluations, design systems and procedures and work simplification and measurement studies to assist in operational efficiency.
BUSINESS & INTEGRATION ARCHITECTURE ASSOCIATE MANAGER (Multiple Positions) (Accenture LLP; Chicago, IL): Define, analyze, solution, and document the business requirements and processes for Accenture or our clients’ program/ project specifications and objectives. Must have willingness and ability to travel domestically approximately 80% of the time to meet client needs. For complete job description, list of requirements, and to apply, go to: www.accenture.com/us-en/careers (Job# 00554550).
FINANCIAL: Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC seeks a Sr. Manager, Finance to work in our Chicago, IL office and own the financial rituals and routines for a segment of the US Business to ensure quality, consistency & reliability of meetings, reporting & analysis are in place. Will coordinate team on budgeting, tracking results & forecasting. Degree & commensurate exp req’d. Apply online: kraftheinzcompany.com/applyNA. html at req# R-4231
COMPUTER/IT: Kraft Heinz Foods Company seeks a Group Lead – IT Project Management to work in our Chicago, IL office and serve as project manager for SAP Logistics and Transportation IT projects. Will plan project stages, assess business implications, and monitor progress. Degree & commensurate exp req’d. Apply online: kraftheinzcompany.com/applyNA. html at req# R-4121
QA Analysts – Bach Deg or for deg equiv in CS, CIS, IT, Info Sci, Eng or Math + 2 yrs exp in position or IT field; and exp with: Ruby, Rspec, Capybara, Selenium, Poltergeist, PostgreSQL & Git. Travel to various unanticipated client sites req. May reside anywhere in US. Apply to (inc Ref # 10031) HR, Sphere Consulting, 220 N. Green St., Chicago, IL 60607
openings for SR SOFTWARE ENGINEER: Analyze, design, program, debug & modify software enhancements &/or new products used in local, networked, cloud-based or Internet-related computer programs. TO APPLY: Email resume to recruithr@slalom.com & indicate job code KB043.
COMPUTER/IT: Kraft Foods Heinz Company seeks a Manager, IT Sales Function to work in our Chicago, IL office and manage complex IT projects for the sales function of the business using Waterfall and Agile project management methodologies. Degree & commensurate exp req’d. Apply online: kraftheinzcompany. com/applyNA.html at req# R-4237
Northbrook, IL ASTELLAS US LLC seeks experienced Senior Manager, Real Work Informatics (“RWI”) Data Scientist. Provides expertise in the creation of research protocols and the assessment and understanding of each database used by RWI as part of the statistical data analysis using real-world databases across Astellas’ entire value chain, geographic footprint, and therapeutic areas, among other duties. Interested candidates should submit detailed resume by mail, referencing Job Code SM/RWIDS, to: Mr. Walter Garcia, Astellas US LLC, 1 Astellas Way, Northbrook, IL, 60062.
34 CHICAGO READER | FEBRUARY 15, 2018
STUDIO $500-$599
7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt
CHICAGO, BEVERLY/CAL Par k/Blue Island: Studio $625 & up; 1BR $700 & up; 2BR $885 & up. Heat, Appls, Balcony, Carpet, Laundry, Parking. Call 708-3880170
CHICAGO, 6838 S. JEFFERY. Studio, $575 & 1BR, $650. Hardwood floors, gas & heat incl. No security deposit! Call 773-412-5368
STUDIO $600-$699
7601 S. SOUTH SHORE. 1BR, $650. Laundry room, in elevator bldg. Appls, gas & heat incl. Parking avail. No Deposit. 773-908-3076
CHICAGO, HYDE PARK Arms Hotel, 5316 S. Harper, maid, phone /cable, switchboard, fridge, priv bath, lndry, $165/wk, $350/bi-wk or $650/mo. Call 773-493-3500
STUDIO OTHER LARGE SUNNY ROOM w/fridge & microwave. Near Oak Park, Green Line & Buses. 24 hr Desk, Parking Lot $101/week & Up. (773)378-8888 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,
Chicago - Hyde PARK 5401 S. Ellis. 1BR. $625/mo. Call 773-955-5106
NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442
bly Clean Highrise STUDIOS, 1 & 2 BEDROOMS Facing Lake & Park. Laundry & Security on Premises. Parking & Apts. Are Subject to Availability. TOWNHOUSE APARTMENTS 773-288-1030
2018 NEW YEAR SA VINGS! Newly Remod. Studio $550, 1BR $650 w/Heat. 2BR and up starting at $750. Qualified Applicants rcv. up to $400/month off rent for 1 year. No App Fee. (773)412-1153 Wesley Realty
N RIVERSIDE: 1BR new tile, energy efficient windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat - natural gas, $955/mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg
Find a concert, buy a ticket, and sign up to get advance notice of Chicago’s essential music shows at chicagoreader.com/early.
BURNHAM 1BR APT. Stove & fridge included. C/A. Newly decorated. $695/month + 1 month security. Call 708-288-3255
Ashland Hotel nice clean rms. 24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air. Low rates daily/weekly/monthly. South Side. Call 773-376-5200
PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - CHICAGO South Side Beautiful Studios, 1,2,3 & 4 BR’s, Sec 8 ok. Also Homes for rent available. Call Nicole 312-446-1753; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556;
EARLY WARNINGS
1BR $690 & 2BR $750. Newly decorated, heat & appls incl. Section 8 ok. 888-249-7971
CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188
7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-
Never miss a show again.
108TH & PRAIRIE: Studio $595,
CHICAGO 70TH & King Dr, 1BR, clean, quiet, well maintained bldg, Lndry, Heat incl. Sec. 8 Ok Starting at $720/mo 773-510-9290
1 BR UNDER $700
TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS
SENIOR MANAGER, REAL WORLD INFORMATICS DATA SCIENTIST:
NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios starting at $580. No sec dep, move in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot water. 1155 W. 83rd St., 773-619-0204
SLALOM’S Chicago office has
Must be available to work on projects at various, unanticipated sites throughout U.S. To apply, send resume to recruitmentgc@ mu-sigma.com. Must reference title & job number to be considered. Advisors for Chicago IL, location to provide technical leadership, planning & project management for info. tech. applications. Master’s in Comp. Sci./Comp. Eng./any Eng. field + 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Comp. Sci./ Comp. Eng./any Eng. field + 5yrs exp. req’d. Req’d Skills: Oracle HCM Cloud (Fusion), Oracle modules: Core HR, Goal Management, Performance Management, Workforce Compensation, Benefits, Recruitment, Labor, OBI; PeopleSoft HCM architecture, concepts, processes; File Base Loader, Fast Formulas, XML, Taleo Connect Client, Taleo Recruiting & Onboarding, exp. w/workflow process improvement, project management, & all project phases: Project Preview, Fit/Gap Analysis, Configuration, Testing. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: LRC, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661
BUS DRIVER - Six Hours Per Day. Cass School District 63, $17/hr. Passenger CDL Required Apply online at www. CassD63.org or call 331/4814000
CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up. 773-637-5957
RENTALS
BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping. $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970
CHATHAM 8642 SOUTH Maryland 1BR, modern with appliances, off street parking. $600/mo + sec. 773-618-2231 Newly updated, clean furnished rooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk. $395/mo. 815-722-1212
S. SHORE 7017 S. Clyde. 1 & 2BR, reno Kit/BA, hdwd flrs, ten pays heat, nr Metra & shops. $600-$655 + $350 move In fee 773-474-0363 û NO SEC DEP û 1431 W. 78th St. 2BR. $605/mo. 6829 S. Perry. Studio/1BR. $465$520. HEAT INCL 773-955-5106 CHICAGO - South Shore Large 1BR, $680/mo. Free heat. Near Transportation. Section 8 Welcome. Call 708-932-4582 76TH & PHILLIPS: 2BR, 1BA $825-$875; Remodeled, Appliances available. FREE Heat. 312-286-5678.
6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country Club Apts 773-752-2200
SUBURBS, RENT TO OWN! Buy with No closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com
1 BR $800-$899 HUMBOLDT PARK. ONE
CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com
bedroom apartment for rent. Newly remodeled. Next door to food store. $880/mo plus security deposit. Includes gas. Near shopping area. Tim, 773-592-2989.
NO SECURITY DEPOSIT NO MOVE IN FEE 1, 2, 3 BEDROOM APTS (773) 874-1122
1 BR $900-$1099
ACACIA SRO HOTEL Men Preferred! Rooms for Rent. Weekly & Monthly Rates. 312-421-4597
HYDE PARK 1BR. $995. 2BR. $1195. Newly decor, hdwd flrs, free heat & hot water, appls, laundry fac, free credit check, Sec 8 OK. no app fee 1-773-667-6477 or 1-312-802-7301 LARGE ONE BEDROOM APARTMENT near the Metra and Warren Park. 1902 N. Wolcott. Hardwood floors. Cats OK. $900/month. Heat included. Available 3/1. (773) 761-4318
1 BR OTHER APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. Hot Summer Is Here Cool Off In The Pool OUR UNITS INCLUDE HEAT, HW & CG Plenty of parking 1Bdr From $795.00 2Bdr From $925.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** APTS. FOR RENT PARK MGMT & INV. Ltd. SUMMER IS HERE!! Most units Include.. HEAT & HOT WTR Studios From $475.00 1Bdr From $550.00 2Bdr From $745.00 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath From $1200 **1-(773)-476-6000** ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for subsidized 1BR apts. for seniors 62 years or older and the disabled. Rent is based on 30% of annual income. For details, call us at 847-546-1899 ∫ W. AVALON, 1 & 2BR NEWLY DECOR. 8059 ELLIS & 11200 S. VERNON. HDWD FLOORS, HEAT & APPLIANCES INCL, $685 & $785. 708-769-6902
2 BR UNDER $900 CHICAGO 7600 S ESSEX PRE-SPRING SPECIAL - 2BR $599, 3BR $699, 4BR $799 w/apprvd credit, no sec dep. Sec 8 Ok! Also Homes for Rent avail. Call Nicole 312-446-1753; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556; Call Nicole for Houses 773-287-9999 BRONZEVILLE SEC 8 OK! 4950 S. Prairie. Remod 1BR. $700+. Heat, cooking gas & appls inc, lndry on site. Z. 773.406.4841 NEWLY DECORATED, 2BR,1st floor, heat incl. 7610 S Maryland, well maintained, ample parking. $850/mo. 773-487-0008
East Chicago, IN 2BR $675 heat incl; tenant pays utils. 1 mo. free rent w/lease. Call Malcolm 773577-9361
2 BR $900-$1099 2, 3 & 4BR Central/Jackson. $900-$1550. 5BR House. $1600. 3BR. Pulaski/Cermac $900. Tenant pays utils & sec 847-720-9010
2 BR $1100-$1299 ROGERS PARK, 1547 W. Birchwood (at Ashland) Very large 2 bedroom vintage flat with Hardwood floors and updates. 3 blocks from lake. $1100.00 (no utilities included). Call EJM at 773-935-4426
SECTION 8 WELCOME 4851 S Ashland, 2BR apts, stove/refrig,hrdwd floors, Nice, quiet, remodeled. Ready. $1250/mo. Call 312-929-6106 EVANSTON 2BR: 1 MO FREE/ NO DEP, new kit, SS appl, granite, oak flrs, OS lndry, $1295/incl heat. 773-743-4141 www.urbanequities. com
2 BR $1300-$1499 UPTOWN,
4346
NORTH
BR $735, Includes Free heat & appliances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt
CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939
Clarendon (at Montrose) Very large 2 bedroom vintage apartment with hardwood floors and updates. 2 blocks from lake. $1350.00 Heat Included. Call EJM at 773-935-4425
RENTALS
RENTALS
RENTALS
7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2
Cyril Court Apartments, a Section 8 Apartment Community located in the quiet South Shore Community, just minutes away from Lake Michigan. Enjoy living in our spacious studio and one-bedroom apartments designed for your comfort and convenience. You can enjoy an array of amenities including a clubhouse, elevators, laundry on site, and gated secure parking lot. We as well offer controlled access, and after hours emergency maintenance assistance. Residents enjoy monthly activities with their neighbors which creates a sense of community. Come in and fill out an application and see why Cyril Court Apartments should be your new home.
FREE APPLICATION! JUST WALK IN, IT’S THAT EASY! *Must have valid state ID to apply
Applications accepted 10AM-3:30PM Tuesday-Thursday Only.
BUILDING HAS A SENIOR PREFERENCE!!
Preference as well given to disabled, homeless or displaced. Applicants subject to HUD income eligibility and other screening requirements. Rent based on 30% of adjusted monthly income.
7130 S. Cyril Court, Chicago, IL 60649 Half Block West of Jeffrey Ave.
(773) 588-7767 ext. 108 • TTY (711 National Relay)
www.CyrilCourtApts.com • Email: CyrilCourt@m2regroup.com
l
l
WICKER PARK/UKRAINIAN VILLAGE; 2 Bedrooms, hardwood floors, vintage, spacious, yard, laundry, 2025 W. Cortez, great location near Division/Damen, Available 3/1 or sooner. $1500. 773-616-4056.
2 BR OTHER ROUND LAKE BEACH, IL Cedar Villas is accepting applications for Subsidized 2 and 3 bedroom apt waiting list. Rent is based on 30% of annual income for qualified applicants. Contact us at 847-546-1899 for details
Stop Renting!!! You can BUY a Home with only $1500 down! Credit repair assistance avail.708-722-1100 www. ths4you.com CHICAGO, DELUXE, NEWLY Decorated 2 & 3 BR, by 71st & Union. Free heat. $750-$850/mo. Section 8 Welc. Mr. Wilson, 773-491-6580
SECTION 8 WELCOME , two Different LocaTions. 944 W. 95TH ST. 6714 S. EBERHART. 312804-020 RECENT REHAB, 4-6BR SF Homes. Dolton, Harvey, Markham, S. Holland. Section 8 OK. (630)247-5146
HARVEY - 167 W. 157th St., 3BR Home, 1BA, 2 car garage, $1100/mo +utilities. Call 708-299-0055
3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499
7134 S. NORMAL, 4BR/2BA.$1100. 225 W. 108th Pl. 2BR w/heat. $950. 9116 S. So Chgo Ave, 2/1. $675. 312-683-5174
CALUMET CITY, 3BR, 1.5BA,, balc, $1100/mo + 2 months sec. Newly renovated, C/A &. Utils not incl. 708-259-8720
SOUTH CHICAGO 7824 S. Champlain. 3BR, bsmt apt, close to transportation, no pets, $675/mo. Call 708-692-9177
6343 S. ROCKWELL - 3BR, incl heat. hdwd flrs, laundry facility, fenced in bldg, fireplace. $1000/ mo + move-in fee. 773-791-6100
SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo. 708-288-4510
ADULT SERVICES
OTHER PRE-SPRING SPECIAL CHICAGO Houses for rent. Section 8 Ok, w/app credit $500 gift certificate 3, 4 & 5 BR houses avail. Call Nicole: 312-446-1753; W-side locations: Tom 630-776-5556
AUSTIN 1143 S. Monitor Newly Remod 3BR, 1ba garden apt, C/A, ceramic tile, all SS appls incl. $1000. Sect 8 Welc. 773-474-3266
10234 S. CRANDON, small home, 3BR, 1BA, kit & util room, totally ren a/c, all appls incl, nice bkyrd. CHA welcome. 773-3174357
65TH AND CARPENTER 3BR, 2BA, carpeted, heat & appls incl, 1 mo free rent (with Sec 8). No Sec Dep. $1250/mo. 773-684-1166 337 W. 108TH ST., N e w l y refurb, 5BR, 1.5BA, on quiet street, semi-fin bsmt, new appls. $1300 + sec. Mr. Williams. 773-752-8328
3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799 BUDLONG WOODS, 5500N/ 2600W. Three bedrooms, full dining room, spacious living room, 1.5 baths, many closets, near transportation, $1500 includes heat. Available May 1. Marty 773-784-0763.
3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 BRONZEVILLE, 4542 S King Dr. 2nd flr, 3BR, 2BA, hdwd flrs, kitchen, pantry, LR & DR, lots of closets, sun porch, ten pays gas & heat.$1100 +$1200 sec. 773965-1584 aftr 6pm
3 BR OR MORE
SPACIOUS & BRIGHT 3BR, 5614 W. Division, 2nd flr, new decor, 1BA, gracious Liv & din rm. $1695 +sec. Sec 8 OK. 708-369-6791
3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499 LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont. Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors. Cats OK. $2175/month. Special! Sign a lease starting by March 1, get April rent free! Available 3/1. 773-761-4318.
ROGERSPK 3BR, 2BA+DEN, 1 MONTH FREE! No Dep. New kit w/ granite, SS appl, Close to lake! $18 75/incl ht 773-743-4141 urbanequ ities.com
3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER
SELF-STORAGE
CENTERS.
T W O locations to serve you. All units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue. 773-685-6868. South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.
roommates FURN RMS, $350. Rm w/ Pvt BA. $525. Utils incl. Nr good trans. $200 clean up fee req. Fixed income invited. Call 312-758-6931 CHICAGO, NEAR CHICAGO STATE, to share with a senior.$125 a week, references required. 773-629-6105 WEST SIDE 5126 W. Madison, single rm, utils incl, $400/mo. prk avail, shared BA & Kit, stores/ shopping, sec dep neg. 773-988-5579
MARKETPLACE GOODS
GENERAL BARBARA JEAN WRIGHT Courts Apts., 1354 S. Morgan, 2 & 3 bdrms. Certain income requirements must be met. Spacious kitchens/ stainless steel appliances, bathrooms with built-in storage, light-filled rooms. Free parking on-site, laundry on-site, and security. Close to public transportation, grocery stores and lots of shopping, restaurants on Halsted and Canal Streets. Call office: 312-421-7613.
ST. BERNARD PUPPIES. AKC SOUTH CHICAGO HOMES
& APTS. FOR RENT NO SEC DEPOSIT/1ST MONTH’S RENT FREE 2-3 BDRMS, NEWLY REMODELED, APPLIANCES INCLD. CALL PINNACLE 708-981-3488. AVAILABLE TODAY
registered. Health guaranteed. Ready now. www.vonduewerhaus.com. 217370-7669.
CLASSICS WANTED ANY CLASSIC CARS IN ANY CONDITION. ’20S, ’30S, ’40S, ’50S, ’60S & ’70S. HOTRODS & EXOTICS! TOP DOLLAR PAID! COLLECTOR. CALL JAMES, 630-201-8122
CHICAGO SOUTH - You’ve tried the rest, we are the best. Apartments & Homes for rent, city & suburb. No credit checks. 773-253-2132 or 773-253-2137
2122 W. 68TH PL. Remodeled 5BR House, 2BA, Central Air, Tenant pays utilities, security system. Sec 8 ok. Call Roy 312-405-2178
GARY NSA ACCEPTING applications for SECTION 8 STUDIO, 1 & 2BR UNITS ONLY. Apply Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 2pm FOR SALE ONLY at 1735 W 5th Ave. Applications are to be filled out on site. STOP RENTING-SELLER Adult applicants must provide a FINANCING : Buy a single family current picture ID and SS card. house in Gary, IN for $7,000 down &
ADULT SERVICES
non-residential
SERVICES WE FINANCE EVERYONE Good Credit - Bad Credit No Credit. We Get It Done! 224-600-8200 www.washingtonautogroup.com
HEALTH & WELLNESS FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90
$600/mo MTG payment. 2&3BR’s. Available 2/1. Call Mike 847-280-1204
special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025
ADULT SERVICES
ADULT SERVICES
Find hundreds of Readerrecommended restaurants, exclusive video features, and sign up for weekly news chicagoreader.com/ food. FEBRUARY 15, 2018 | CHICAGO READER 35
REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.
Try FREE: 773-867-1235 More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000
Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+
FIND HUNDREDS OF
READER-RECOMMENDED
RESTAURANTS EXCLUSIVE VIDEO FEATURES AND SIGN UP FOR WEEKLY NEWS CHICAGOREADER.COM/FOOD
36 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
EARLY WARNINGS chicagoreader.com/early
STRAIGHT DOPE By Cecil Adams SLUG SIGNORINO
Never miss a show again.
Q : Are there extinct species that we
really wish we hadn’t wiped out? I don’t mean we now say “Gee, what a shame.” I mean, is there anything where we now say “Oh $#!&, we screwed ourselves!”? Like when the Chinese thought getting rid of all the sparrows was a good idea. —LUMPY, VIA THE STRAIGHT DOPE MESSAGE BOARD
A : If you’re not as up on your People’s Repub-
lic history as Lumpy here, allow me to read you in. Having become concerned about sparrows eating the grain Chinese farmers were growing, in 1958 Mao ordered the birds’ extermination, and an estimated billion of them were killed. Problem was, those sparrows had also been eating locusts that liked to eat grain themselves, and with nothing keeping them in check, the bugs commenced to eat the fields bare. Together with various other agricultural policies of the Great Leap Forward, the sparrow campaign helped lead to the starvation deaths of tens of millions of people; as far as history’s gravest unintended consequences go, this one’s in the hall of fame. And as Lumpy suggests, it’s a particularly vivid illustration of how humans can bollocks up a functioning ecosystem by intervening without thinking through the bigger implications. Are there others? Sure. Turn your attention to present-day India, where since just the early 90s three once-abundant species of vulture have all but died off. This one’s on us too: the birds were feeding on the decaying flesh of cows that Indian farmers had fed with a particular painkiller, diclofenac. In cows it soothed aching hooves; in vultures it led to fatal kidney failure. Appearance-wise vultures don’t do much to pretty up a biome, true, but in South Asia their carrion eating was a vital public service. Remember, these are birds that can put away an anthrax-infected carcass and go back for more. This made them a reliable firebreak between humans and some major infectious diseases, including tuberculosis and rabies, whereas the less hardy rats and wild dogs that have taken over the carrion gig tend to spread these around. With vultures on the ropes, India faces a public health disaster. So far we’ve yet to mention an animal that’s been wiped out altogether, but the consequential problem is a species’ general disappearance from an ecosystem even if a few individuals keep on keeping on. Just a modest decline in the populations of key creatures can screw things up, and a steep drop can be devastating; however circuitously, those effects will come back to bite us.
For instance:
• In the late 1880s, Italian army livestock in East
Africa introduced a highly lethal bovine disease called rinderpest: it devastated sub-Saharan herbivores from pigs to wildebeest, and starved a lot of people who relied on cattle for food, nomadic herders and colonial farmers alike. The deaths of all those grazers and browsers also led to a steep growth in plant biomass, leading to a century of worse and more frequent wildfires—leading in turn to property damage, fire-suppression costs, and tons of carbon dumped into the atmosphere.
• These days sub-Saharan Africa is contending
with the decline of its apex predators via hunting, habitat loss, etc. Fewer lions and leopards means, among other things, more olive baboons, who’ve encroached further into human territory, bringing competition for food and an uptick in intestinal parasites for both the humans and the baboons.
• In the centuries since wolves were hunted out
of the British Isles, deer have become rampant in the UK. With their numbers now at a thousand-year high, they’re responsible for some 50,000 traffic accidents annually, plus they impede forest regeneration by eating all the seedlings. The animals represent such a pain in Britain’s ass that there’s a project afoot (inspired by a successful initiative at Yellowstone) to bring back the wolves.
One hears a lot about how we’re in the midst of a mass extinction, the sixth in history. Ecologists believe that losing large carnivores will be the really big deal here, setting in motion widespread ecosystem malfunction that reconfigures the whole food chain, and whose costs to us keep compounding over time. The technical name for this process is “trophic cascading,” but I can think of more colloquial phrases that might work here too— “You break it, you bought it,” for one. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.
l
l
SAVAGE LOVE
By Dan Savage
One nonbinary person, two girlfriends The setup’s not working, but what would? Plus: dealing with a family abuser Q : I’m a 24-year-old
nonbinary person living in Florida. I have two wonderful girlfriends. One I have been with for four years (we live together). The other I have been with for a year and a half. They’re both brilliant, interesting, and kind. Both relationships have their issues, but they’re minor. They know each other but aren’t close. They have both said that they see a future with me, but something doesn’t feel right. I’ve been having fantasies about leaving them both. It’s not about wanting to find someone I like better. I just feel like neither relationship can progress while both exist. My other friends are getting married. Even if my girlfriends liked each other, which they don’t, I don’t want sister wives or two families. But I also can’t imagine choosing between them. I feel like a scumbag for even thinking about it. The only thing I can think to do (besides running away) is wait and see if one of these relationships fizzles out on its own. Are my fantasies of escape normal? Is wanting to be with “the one” just straight nonsense?
—ENGAGED NOW BUT YEARNING
A : “The one” is nonsense,
ENBY, but it’s not straight nonsense—lots of queer people believe that “the one,” their perfect match, is out there somewhere. But despite the fact that there are no perfect matches, people are constantly ending loving relationships that could go the distance to run off in search of “the one” that doesn’t exist. As I’ve pointed out again and again, there are lots of .64s out there and, if you’re lucky, you might find a .73 lurking in the pile. When you find a serviceable .64 or
(God willing) a spectacular .73, it’s your job to round that motherfucker up to “the one.” (And don’t forget that they’re doing the same for you—just as there’s no “the one” for you, you’re no one’s “the one.” Everyone is rounding up.) Zooming in on your question, ENBY, you say what you have now—two girlfriends who don’t like each other—is working. Are you sure about that? While fantasies of escape are normal, it’s odd to hear someone with two girlfriends wish for one or both to disappear. Perhaps it’s not who you’re doing that’s the problem, ENBY, but what you’re doing. The kind of polyamory you’re practicing— concurrent and equal romantic partnerships—may not be right for you. I’m not trying to YDIW you here (“You’re doing it wrong!), but if you’re envious of your friends who are settling down with just one partner, perhaps you’d be more comfortable in an open-not-poly relationship (sex with others OK, romance with others not OK) or a hierarchical poly relationship (your primary partner comes first, your secondary partner[s] come, well, second). Finally, ENBY, it could be the stress of having two partners who don’t like each other that has you fantasizing about escape and/or one of your partners evaporating. Each of your girlfriends might make sense independently of each other, but if having to share you doesn’t work for them, it’s never going to work for you.
Q : I’m 27 years old and I’ve
been married to my partner for two years. A relative sexually abused me a handful of times when I was younger. I’ve never told anyone other than my partner. I’m now struggling to decide not
whether I should tell my parents (I should), but when. The abuse fucked me up in some ways, but I have been working through it with a therapist. The problem is my siblings and cousins have started having their own children, and seeing this relative—a member of my extended family—with their kids is dredging up a lot of uncomfortable memories. I see this relative frequently, as we all live in the area and get together as a family at least once a month. I don’t have children of my own yet, but my partner and I have already decided that this relative will never touch or hold the ones we do have. So do I tell my parents now? My extended family is tightly knit, and I fear the issues that sharing this secret will inevitably create. Am I starting unnecessary drama since I’m not even pregnant yet? —MY FAMILY KINDA
60 MINUTES FREE TRIAL
THE HOTTEST GAY CHATLINE
Meet sexy friends who really get your vibe...
Try FREE: 312-924-2066 More Local Numbers: 1-800-811-1633 1-800-811-1633
1-312-924-2082 More Local Numbers: 800-777-8000
vibeline.com 18+
www.guyspyvoice.com
Ahora en Español/18+
&$!#%&" !! #$!%#"! !!
SUCKS
A : Your kids may not yet
exist, MFKS, but your young nieces, nephews, and cousins do—and your abuser has access to them. So the drama you fear creating isn’t unnecessary—it’s incredibly necessary. But let’s say you wait to tell your parents until you have children of your own. How will you feel if you learn, after the curtain goes up on this drama, that this relative sexually abused another child in your family (or multiple children in your family, or children outside your family) in the weeks, months, or years between your decision to tell your parents and the moment you told them? v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage
$2"- # 1,#+!/(!
.,#0 7,1 (. !+1
{ { YO U R AD HERE
+&15*+3"-).1 477%2 $76/6''' 0%)' *! &3 '. !/'!+
1 MILLION
REACH OVER PEOPLE MONTHLY IN PRINT & DIGITAL.
CONTACT US TODAY! | 312-222-6920 FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 37
b Wonder Years, Tigers Jaw 6/3, 5 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM b
UPDATED Peter Perrett 3/5, 7:30 PM, Subterranean, canceled Russian Circles 4/22, 8:30 PM and 4/24, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, second show added Midori Takada 5/14, 7:30 PM and 5/19, 7:30 PM, Fullerton Hall, Art Institute of Chicago, second show added b
UPCOMING
L7 ò DON GIOVANI RECORDS
NEW
3Teeth, Ho99o9 4/20, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ James Bay 3/31, 8 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM b Baylor Project 4/11, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/15, noon b Belly 10/6, 8 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM, 18+ Big Sean, Playboi Carti, Shy Glizzy, Gashi 5/27, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Ryan Bingham 4/23-24, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/15, noon b Jean-Michel Blais 5/16, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Bone Thugs-N-Harmony 3/25, 7 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM, 17+ California Honeydrops 5/11, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 2/16, noon, 18+ Peter Case 4/27, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b Paul De Jong 4/18, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Def Leppard, Journey 7/14, 7 PM, Wrigley Field, on sale Sat 2/17, 10 AM Depeche Mode 6/1, 7:30 PM, United Center, on sale Fri 2/16, 11 AM Steve Earle & the Dukes 3/31, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/16, 8 AM b Emmure 5/18, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge b GBH, Fireburn 6/10, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM, 17+ Grouplove 6/1, 7:30 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM b Tootie Heath Trio with Emmet Cohen 4/10, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+
David Hidalgo & Marc Ribot 3/20, 7:30 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/16, 8 AM b Dave House 4/13, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Damien Jurado & the Heavy Light 5/14, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM L7 4/20, 8 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM, 18+ Greg Laswell 6/15, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/15, noon b Lawrence 5/26, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM, 18+ Lissie 5/18, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM b Lucky Boys Confusion 4/27, 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/16, noon, 18+ Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks 6/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Manhattans 6/24, 5 and 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/15, noon b Melvins 7/31, 7:30 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM b Luis Miguel 5/23, 8:30 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM Steve Miller Band, Peter Frampton 6/14, 7:30 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM Gurf Morlix 4/5, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn Mountain Goats 5/28-29, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 2/16, 8 AM b Okkervil River, Star Rover 6/12, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM, 17+ Ozzy Osbourne, Stone Sour 9/21, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Sat 2/17, 10 AM
38 CHICAGO READER - FEBRUARY 15, 2018
Pink Mexico 4/21, 7 PM, Schubas, 18+ Greta Pope & the Spaniels 3/18, 3 PM, the Promontory b Preoccupations 4/28, 8:30 PM, Co-Prosperity Sphere b Projecto Acromusical 4/29, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Punchline 4/11, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Red Wanting Blue 6/28, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 2/15, noon b Saxon 4/1, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Ed Sheeran 10/4, 7 PM, Soldier Field, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM Sirenia 4/24, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Sleep 8/1, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM b Kelley Stolz 5/5, 8 PM, Szold Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music b The Struts 5/9, 9 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 2/16, noon, 18+ The Suffers 5/3, 9 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM Sum 41 5/18, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM b Supa Bwe 4/6, 7:30 PM, Metro b Tesseract 5/19, 7:30 PM, Metro b Thirty Seconds to Mars 6/15, 6 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 2/16, 10 AM Trampled by Turtles, Actual Wolf 5/19-20, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Travelin’ McCourys 3/18, 7 PM, Park West, 18+ Turnstile, Touche Amore, Culture Abuse, Razorbumps, Bib 4/11, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Matthew Logan Vasquez 5/29, 8 PM, Schubas, 18+ Emmanuelle Waeckerle 4/22, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+
Alt-J 6/7, 8 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Alvvays 3/23, 7:30 PM, Metro b American Nightmare, No Warning 2/25, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Trey Anastasio Band 4/20-21, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Bad Bunny 3/16, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Jeff Beck & Paul Rogers, Ann Wilson 7/29, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Black Angels, Black Lips 3/26-27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 18+ Terry Bozzio 9/18, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Buckethead 3/25, 7:30 PM, the Vic b Cactus 3/3, 7 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Carpenter Brut 4/26, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ George Clanton, Negative Gemini 3/21, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Copyrights 3/23, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Darlingside 4/19, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Beth Ditto 3/19, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Eagles 3/14, 8 PM, United Center Earthless, Kikagaku Moyo 3/24-25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Enslaved, Wolves in the Throne Room 2/23, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Fall Out Boy, Rise Against 9/8, 7 PM, Wrigley Field Fortunate Youth, Tatanka 4/21, 8:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Godspeed You! Black Emperor 3/18-19, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Grendel 5/11, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Stu Hamm 3/1, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Kristen Hersh & Grant Lee Phillips 3/20, 7:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston b High Up 3/1, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Alex Zhang Hungtai 4/4, 9 PM, Sleeping Village Iced Earth 3/29, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+
ALL AGES
WOLF BY KEITH HERZIK
EARLY WARNINGS
CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME
F
Never miss a show again. Sign up for the newsletter at chicagoreader. com/early
Jimmy Eat World, Hotelier 5/8, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Tom Jones 5/12-13, 8 PM, House of Blues Stephen Kellogg 3/15, 8 PM, City Winery b Kaki King 3/13, 8 PM, City Winery b King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 6/10, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Natalia Lafourcade 5/3, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Lightning Bolt 3/28, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Lorde 3/27, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Matt & Kim, Tokyo Police Club 4/17, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ MGMT 3/3-4, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre b Mountain Heart 4/21, 7 PM, SPACE, Evanston b No Age 5/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Norma Jean, Gideon 3/21, 6 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Oneida 3/17, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Pedro the Lion 8/24, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Pink 3/9-10, 8 PM, United Center Primus, Mastodon 6/6, 7 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion Jeff Rosenstock 4/26, 6:30 PM, Logan Square Auditorium b Sammus 3/3, 9 PM, Hideout Screaming Females 3/10, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Ty Segall 4/8, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Shopping 3/28, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Slayer, Anthrax, Testament 5/25, 5 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Soft Moon 3/31, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Titus Andronicus 3/15, 7 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Tune-Yards 3/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Shania Twain 5/19, 7:30 PM, United Center Jeff Tweedy 4/27-28, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Unknown Mortal Orchestra 5/3, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Vitalic 3/14, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Watain, Destroyer 666 3/2, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ We Are Scientists 6/22, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Jimmy Webb 4/13, 8 PM, City Winery b Wedding Present 3/26, 7:30 PM, Lincoln Hall v
GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene GOSSIP WOLF SOMEHOW missed it when shoegazy Chicago dream-pop quartet Panda Riot dropped Infinity Maps last June, but the band are definitely on this wolf’s radar now! To kick off February they released a warm-hued video for the standout cut “Night Animation,” and on March 2 they’ll finally put out an LP version of Infinity Maps (on 140-gram white vinyl). The ambitious 18-song album has more than enough shimmering guitars, swelling electronics, and sci-fi movie samples to soundtrack any recreational moper’s dark (but totally pleasant) night of the soul. Fans of 90s UK acts like My Bloody Valentine and Lush should definitely take heed! Panda Riot celebrate with an LPrelease show at Beat Kitchen on Saturday, February 17, sharing a bill with fellow local ethereal rockers Silver Liz and Sleepwalk. The fine folks at Dark Matter not only make stellar coffee, they also know how to brew up great tunes. The roaster’s limited monthly blend for February, Intellectual Curiosity, comes packaged with Electronic Buffet Vol. 1, a cassette of instrumental hip-hop curated by local label ETC Records—the tape shares its name with a live electronic-production series run by producer and ETC honcho Radius (formerly held at Double Door’s Door No. 3, now sadly infrequent). Electronic Buffet Vol. 1 features more than a dozen ace local producers, including Shon Dervis, Tewz, and Fess Grandiose. Over the past couple years Cafe Racer have become one of this wolf’s favorite local rock groups. On Monday, February, 19, they headline the Empty Bottle to celebrate the release of their second album, Famous Dust, a blissed-out blur of droning postpunk and resplendent psych. As luck would have it, one of Gossip Wolf’s favorite local rock labels, Maximum Pelt, is putting out Famous Dust on vinyl. You can grab a copy at Monday’s release show; Ethers and Gosh! open, and the Maximum Pelt team DJs throughout the night. —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.
l
l
FEBRUARY 15, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 39
®
322 W. Armitage • parkwestchicago.com
FRIDAY, MARCH 9
APRIL 4
2ND SHOW ADDED 10:30PM! SUNDAY MAY 13
FRIDAY APRIL 27
8PM SHOW SOLD OUT!
ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT NOON!
ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM! 2018 DOVE TOUR
S LEEP
MELVINS MEL VINS
AUGUST 1 RIVIERA THEATRE
JULY 31
ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!
ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!
SATURDAY OCTOBER 6
ON SALE THIS FRIDAY AT 10AM!
BUY TICKETS AT
l