Print Issue of March 22, 2018 (Volume 47, Number 24)

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | M A R C H 2 2 , 2 0 1 8

How to make Rauner and Pritzker pay a lot more taxes 9 Rapper and activist Ric Wilson on the church that taught him to fight back 22

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INTERIM EXECUTIVE EDITOR DAVE NEWBART 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, JORDANNAH ELIZABETH, ANNE FORD, ISA GIALLORENZO, JOHN GREENFIELD, ANDREA GRONVALL, KT HAWBAKER, JUSTIN HAYFORD, JACK HELBIG, IRENE HSIAO, DAN JAKES, MONICA KENDRICK, H. MELT, BILL MEYER, MICHAEL MINER, J.R. NELSON, MARISSA OBERLANDER, LEAH PICKETT, JANET POTTER, BEN SACHS, DMITRY SAMAROV, KATE SIERZPUTOWSKI, OLIVER SAVA, TIFFANY WALDEN, KEVIN WARWICK, BRIANNA WELLEN, DAVID WHITEIS, ALBERT WILLIAMS INTERNS ASHLEY MIZUO, RACHEL YANG ----------------------------------------------------------------

FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE

4 Agenda Sweeney Todd at No Exit Cafe, a reading from Reading Rainbow’s LeVar Burton, our take on the new Tomb Raider film, and more goings-on about town

CITY LIFE LIT

Jeremy Kitchen’s the most punk rock librarian in Chicago

He’s brought mosh pits and doughnuts to the Bridgeport branch and book chat to Lumpen Radio.

BY DMITRY SAMAROV 12

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

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8 Chicagoans A former FBI agent provides full-service personal protection and event security.

9 Joravsky | Politics Activists are working to replace the state’s regressive income tax with a fairer code.

10 Transportation How often does the CTA really clean those subway stops? Hint: not much

DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com

ARTS & CULTURE

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER BEST SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGER EVANGELINE MILLER DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL JOHN DUNLEVY ADVERTISING COORDINATOR HERMINIA BATTAGLIA

14 Theater Novid Parsi’s Through the Elevated Line is a slavish update of Streetcar.

15 Dance Lie Through My Skin attempts to confront the shame of white privilege.

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24 Visual Art Exploring the longlost Wesley Willis collection at Quenchers Saloon 26 In Rotation Chris Squire, Lou Miami, Sanford Clark, and other current obsessions 27 Shows of Note Exposure Series, Curtis Harding, Harm’s Way, and more of the week’s best

FOOD & DRINK

31 Restaurant Review: Eris

Brewery and Cider House The

food at Irving Park’s supermortal Eris is Brewpub 101.

33 Key Ingredient Margeaux Brasserie chef Brent Balika uses an Australian yeast spread to make duck a la Vegemite.

CLASSIFIEDS

34 Jobs 34 Apartments & Spaces 35 Marketplace

COPYRIGHT © 2018 CHICAGO READER. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. CHICAGO READER, READER, AND REVERSED R: REGISTERED TRADEMARKS ®.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

Ric Wilson testifies for the south-side church that taught him to fight back

ON THE COVER: PAINTING BY DMITRY SAMAROV. FOR MORE OF DMITRY’S WORK, GO TO DMITRYSAMAROV.COM .

17 Lit Survival in Hollywood is no joke if you happen to be female, says comedy writer, director, and producer Nell Scovell.

18 Small Screen The nation’s hottest entertainer is a suburban videogame streamer named Ninja who’s mastered the game Fortnite.

19 Documentaries Ten years after its makers embarked on an epic quest to skateboard to New York, Shred America hits the screen.

20 Movies Victim evokes the bad old days of sodomy laws and blackmail.

The Triibe travels to Fellowship Missionary Baptist—which Wilson grew up attending—as part of our ongoing Block Beat collaboration.

BY TIFFANY WALDEN 22

16 Opera Fellow Travelers brings the 1950s “lavender scare” to opera.

16 Dance Hubbard Street choreographer Alejandro Cerrudo creates a light in the darkness.

16 Dance See Chicago Dance wants the city to . . . well, you know.

36 Straight Dope What protects headbangers like woodpeckers from brain trauma?

37 Savage Love Is asexuality really a thing?

38 Early Warnings Liz Phair, Animal Collective, Lollapalooza, and more shows to look for in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Gothic stompers Hide celebrate their long-awaited debut full-length, and more music news.

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 3

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The Brink! Promo materials R describe this 70-minute Walkabout Theater show as an “exper-

imental cabaret” set in “a cafe at the edge of the world.” I didn’t really get that. To me it seemed as if the seven souls before me had already fallen off the world and were channeling bits of 20th-century culture they picked up on radio frequencies as they tumbled through space: movie scenes, torch songs and pop tunes, a snatch of Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon. A woman in a satin negligee suggested Jean Harlow in Dinner at Eight, and so did a man in a ball gown. But the premise didn’t matter in the end. Neither did any other rational concern. Directed

by Thom Pasculli and devised by the ensemble with Fides Krucker, The Brink makes fierce poetic sense of love, loss, and media. The physicality of the thing is gorgeous and exhilarating, with particularly sharp contributions from Cooper Forsman and McCambridge Dowd-Whipple. —TONY ADLER Through 3/30: Thu-Sun 7 PM; also Mon 3/26 7 PM and Sun 3/31 4PM, Links Hall at Constellation, 3111 N. Western, 773-2810824, walkabouttheater.org, $10-$20.

Hot Pink, or Ready to Blow R Johnny Drago’s charmingly vulgar satire of 80s high school comedies makes quite a splash in the shallow end of the pool. Once a year in the small town of New Pompeii, a virgin girl must be tossed into the nearby volcano to prevent it from erupting. Turns out this year’s sacrifice was inadequate, her teenage vagina’s “hunger for sweet, sweet peen” already satisfied. As the mayor marks more and more girls for imminent doom, besties Cadence (the pretty one), Brichelle (the smart one), and Tatanya (the rebel) get serious about self-preservation through defilement. It’s crisp, campy fun, nicely executed by director Derek Van Barham’s uninhibited cast. Although the show’s ultimate messages about gender inequity are easy and obvious, their riotous delivery is worth 90 minutes.

—JUSTIN HAYFORD Through 4/7: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 6 PM; also Mon 3/26, 7:30 PM, Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee, 773-609-2336, newamericanfolktheatre. org, $25.

The Next Big Thing The once R bratty, trashy Factory Theater is either losing its edge or growing

up. I vote the latter. Carrie J. Sullivan’s new play about starry-eyed teen singer-songwriter Beth trying to find her way in the cynical world of commercial recording is another in a recent spate of mature, full-length plays from the Factory. Sullivan uses Beth’s uphill climb toward stardom to question whether raw, idiosyncratic artistry stands a chance in a business that confuses marketability with talent. The answers aren’t terribly surprising, and Sullivan’s loose structure makes everything feel less urgent than it might. But her story is engaging nonetheless, populated with engaging, iconic characters—the burned-out producer, the long-suffering technician, the glam-infatuated assistant—all brought convincingly to life in director Robyn Coffin’s sure-footed production. —JUSTIN HAYFORD Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, the Factory Theater, 1623 W. Howard, thefactorytheater.com, $25, $18 students and seniors.

Our Country’s Good Timberlake R Wertenbaker’s brilliant 1988 play is well served by imaginative staging

and strong ensemble acting in Three Crows Theatre’s intimate, bare-bones production. Based on historical events, the story is set in a British penal colony in 1788 Australia—a brutal environment in which hunger, floggings, and hangings are daily facts of life—where convicts (women and men) and their male military overseers collaborate on a production of George Farquhar’s Restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer. The experience of rehearsing the show has a complex impact on the community, allowing Wertenbaker to explore an array of ever-relevant themes, from the redemptive value of art to the uses and abuses of power. The 12-member cast is fluent in Wertenbaker’s dense, thickly accented language, with Bradley Wilson as a morally upright army officer, Stephen Dunn as his guilt-crazed comrade, and Selena

Lopez as a hard-bitten prisoner making especially strong impressions. —ALBERT WILLIAMS Through 3/25: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2:30 PM, Piven Theatre, Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes St., Evanston, 312-469-0274, threecrowstheatre.com, Pay what you can.

Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 7 PM, No Exit Cafe, 6970 N. Glenwood, 773-347-1109, theo-u.com, $39-$44, $34-$39 students and seniors, $64-$69 with dinner.

She Kills Monsters The Cuckoo’s R Theater Project presents Qui Nguyen’s play about Agnes, an ordinary

woldt’s 2007 book, penned by ensemble members Heather Currie and Derek Czaplewski, is an uplifting one-hour musical. Dew Drop, a happy-go-lucky fairy played by Darian Tene, gets the opportunity to apply for the job of a lifetime: the next Tooth Fairy. It turns out to be a much harder gig than Dew Drop thought, though, and she undergoes specialized training under the supervision of a trio of vivacious firefly assistants and TTF (the Tooth Fairy) herself, played by a charismatic Diana Coates. In addition to Laura McKenzie’s catchy songs, accompanied by a host of dance numbers, the Tooth Fairy’s high-tech Command Central and Dew Drop’s difficulties bench-pressing quarters were a hit with young audience members on the afternoon I attended.

This show is recommended for ages five and up. —MARISSA OBERLANDER Through 4/22: Sat-Sun 11 AM and 1 PM; no performances Sun 4/1, Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, 773-761-4477, lifelinetheatre.com, $15.

Sweeney Todd This revival of R Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s 1979 musical adaptation of

DANCE

girl from small-town Ohio who must go on a role-playing adventure in order to get to know her oddball younger sister, Tilly, who died in a car crash with the rest of their family. After the accident, Agnes discovers a notebook Tilly left behind describing a Dungeons & Dragons saga. With the help of one of Tilly’s dorky high school friends, Agnes plays the game—sword fights, spells, monsters, and all. The fight scenes and sarcastic, self-aware asides keep the story moving, but it’s Agnes’s aching regret about not bothering to appreciate Tilly while she was alive that raises it above nerd escapist fantasy. I’ve never cared a bit for D&D, but I didn’t roll my eyes once. Angela Forshee directed.

—DMITRY SAMAROV Through 4/21: FriSat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM (no show 4/1); also Sat 3/31, 3 PM; Thu 4/19, 8 PM, Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston, 312-882-8201, thecuckoostheaterproject.com, $30.

Christopher Bond’s 1973 play about the murderous barber of Fleet Street squeezes the show into Theo Ubique’s smallish cabaret space. Director Fred Anzevino encourages the 13 cast members and four musicians to use every available square inch in the room—even the hall leading to the bathrooms. The result is electrifying and terrifying.

The close quarters amp up the show’s pathos; it’s hard not to feel characters’ pain when they’re only an arm’s length away. Philip Torres is truly disturbing as the homicidal Sweeney. And Jacquelyne Jones’s Mrs. Lovett seems so real, and so worthy of love, you easily forgive her for baking Sweeney’s victims into her meat pies. —JACK HELBIG Through 4/29:

You Think It’s Easy Being the R Tooth Fairy? Lifeline Theatre’s KidSeries adaptation of Sheri Bell-Reh-

Chicago Dance Month Kickoff Celebration Over the course of a month, this festival hosts 60 to 80 dance events citywide, beginning with performances

by Deeply Rooted, Cerqua Rivera, Natya Dance Theatre, and more. See preview page 16. Tue 3/27, 4:30-5:30 PM, Chicago Cultural Center, Preston Bradley Hall, 77 E. Randolph, 312-744-6630, chicagoculturalcenter.org; reservations requested. F Hubbard Street Dance Chicago The company’s resident choreographer, Alejandro Cerrudo, showcases work old and new. See preview, page 16. Fri 3/23-Sat 3/24, 7:30 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, 800-982-2787, hubbardstreetdance.com, $29-$110.

Hot Pink, or Ready to Blow é AUSTIN D. OIE

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of March 22

LIT & LECTURES MOVIES Julia Alvarez The lauded Dominican-raised poet shares some of her work, including selections from The Woman I Kept to Myself and The Homecoming. Thu 3/22, 7 PM, Dominican University, 7900 W. Division St., River Forest, 708-524-6942, dom.edu.

LeVar Burton The former Star R Trek: The Next Generation actor and host of PBS’s Reading Rainbow

Natya Dance Theatre, part of the Chicago Dance Month Kickoff Celebration é PHILAMONJARO

COMEDY

reads a short story as part of WBEZ’s “Podcast Passport” series. He’s joined by science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor, and the event includes music from percussionist Kahil El’Zabar. Fri 3/23, 7-8:30 PM, Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, 126 E. Chestnut, wbez.org, $35-$75.

Bring Your Own Diary Three performers read from their personal diaries, and a team of improvisers crafts a show based on these real-life stories. Open run: fourth Thursday of the month, 8 PM, Playground Theater, 3209 N. Halsted, 773-871-3793, the-playground.com, $10, $5 students.

Cedric the Entertainer The actor and stand-up, known for The Steve Harvey Show, Barbershop, and his solid hat selection, entertains Chicago. Sat 3/24, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, 175 N. State, 312-462-6300, thechicagotheatre.com, $63.50-$93.50.

R

Smut The performers at this monthly show stick to their sex material. Expect a wide variety of views, as the lineup is curated by comics Alex Seligsohn and Clare Austen-Smith to include stand-ups across the sexuality spectrum. Open run: Fri 11:30 PM, Laugh Factory, 3175 N. Broadway, 773-327-3175, laughfactory.com, $7 plus two-item minimum.

NEW REVIEWS Casting A female filmmaker prepares to shoot a remake of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s classic The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant with the title character’s younger lover now male rather than female.

Filming is only a week away, but the director hasn’t cast the lead role yet and tests one actress after another, losing focus with each successive audition. This tedious German drama won’t make much sense if you’re unfamiliar with Petra von Kant and will seem maddeningly trivial if you are; cowriter-director Nicolas Wacker has nothing to say about relationships or the art-making process that Fassbinder didn’t say already. The auditions are presented in thorough, painstaking detail, with lots of inside-baseball talk about the nature of acting; if you’re into that sort of thing, I recommend Chantal Akerman’s Les Années 80 (1983). In German with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 91 min. Screens as part of the European Union Film Festival; for a full schedule visit siskelfilmcenter. org. Sun 3/25, 5:15 PM, and Mon 3/26, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

Foxtrot A parent’s worst nightR mare befalls the middle-class Feldmanns of Tel Aviv when soldiers

LeVar Burton é RACHEL M. HEIMERMAN

Karaoke Storytellers With the R possible exception of JackhamComic Book Chicago Adam mer’s Monday-night 2 AM drag compeR Morgan, publisher of the Chicatition, stakes don’t get lower on the Chigo Review of Books, discusses the local

cago stage than they do at this low-key, encouraging open mike at iO. Host DJ Stephen Alec and in-character coordinator Franny Giroux emcee performances by a roster of comedians, amateur singers, and interested civilians who preface a karaoke song with a personal story that inspired their selection. It’s a creative twist on the Moth-style conventions that normally outline storytelling shows and serves as a welcome addition to Chicago’s rich storytelling scene. At the performance I attended, one singer recounted how her bar rendition of Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” introduced her to her late husband; another sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” after describing his first on-the-job panic attack. The results are bare, vulnerable, and truly unique. —DAN JAKES Open run: Sun 10 PM, iO Theater, the Mission Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/ chicago, $5.

More at chicagoreader.com/movies

comic book scene with artists and a cultural anthropologist. Thu 3/22, 7-8 PM, Chicago Literary Alliance, 641 W. Lake, 312-690-4227, chicagoliteracyalliance.org.

arrive at the door with news that their elder child has been killed in action.

The first quarter of this crafty Israeli drama focuses tightly on the father (Lior Ashkenazi of Norman) as his numbness gives way to grief, and writer-director Samuel Moaz elongates moments of pure anguish as few filmmakers do.

But Moaz is a daring, unpredictable

For more of the best things to do every day of the week, go to chicagoreader. com/agenda.

The Guardians French filmmaker Xavier Beauvois brought an extraordinary sense of solitude and contemplation to his 2010 feature Of Gods and Men, about Trappist monks walking a fine line between selflessness and survival in wartorn Algeria. That same hush pervades this leisurely drama about a French farming family during World War I, with Nathalie Baye in a decidedly unglamorous role as the beleaguered matriarch.

Her two sons and her son-in-law have all joined the army, leaving the farm understaffed; help arrives in the form of a hard-working young woman from town, but the mother turns against her after one of the sons, home on leave, falls for her. A story of women waiting for their soldiers to return, this unfolds in fairly predictable fashion, though the film’s solemnity is seductive—when Beauvois indulges in a bit of string music on the soundtrack, it seems almost extravagant.

In French with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 135 min. Screens as part of the European Union Film Festival; for a full schedule visit siskelfilmcenter.org. Sun 3/25, 2:30 PM, and Thu 3/29, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

A Hustler’s Diary Croatian R expatriate Ivica Zubak directed this energetic, incisive, and sometimes

hilarious Swedish feature about a restless young Turkish immigrant in a low-income suburb of Stockholm. The hero (Can Demirtas, who cowrote the screenplay with Zubak) senses he can do better than his current life of crime and fancies himself the next Al Pacino;

VISUAL ART

Never miss a show again.

Aura Aura Pop-Up Get your picture taken by a camera that picks up magnetic vibrational energy and returns a Polaroidesque photo. Admission includes the picture, an informational card, a box for storing the portrait, and a personalized analysis of the colors in your aura. Sat 3/24-Sun 3/25, 11 AM-7 PM. 311 N. Morgan, 312-764-1919, acehotel.com/calendar/chicago, $37, reservations required.

Foto Mercado Peruse photography-centric zines, all available for purchase. DJs spin in the background.

Produced by ZINEmercado, a Chicago-based organization responsible for many pop-up zine shops. Fri 3/24-Sat 3/25, 11 AM-6 PM. Ace Hotel, 311 N. Morgan, 312-764-1919, acehotel.com/ calendar/chicago.

Foxtrot storyteller, and his eccentric plot construction, which also takes into account the son’s last days, turns an intimate emotional drama into a larger statement about fate and justice. With Sarah Adler and Yonaton Shiray. In Hebrew with subtitles. —J.R. JONES R, 112 min. Landmark’s Century Centre.

during a disastrous audition at a prestigious acting school, he misplaces his diary, a vivid chronicle of his escapades, and it winds up in the hands of a posh book publisher (Jorgen Thorsson). The ensuing battle of wits between the thug, who fears exposure, and the snob, who smells a best seller, highlights the «

EARLY WARNINGS chicagoreader.com/early

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Madame

bB gaping class divide between them. In Swedish with subtitles.

—ANDREA GRONVALL 97 min. Fri 3/23, 2 PM, and Tue 3/27, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center.

occasionally insightful, more often tedious introspection. —J.R. JONES 93 min. Music Box.

Journey’s End R.C. Sherriff’s 1928 play Journey’s End was one of the most influential war dramas of its day—so influential that the material seems archetypal now. Set during the final months of World War I, it unfolds mainly in a British officers’ dugout on the French front; the characters include a fatherly lieutenant (Paul Bettany), an alcoholic captain (Sam Claflin), an idealistic new recruit (Asa Butterfield), and a timid cook (Toby Jones) who provides comic relief. All the major characters change in unsubtle ways, reflecting the transformative power of war, yet all preserve their humanity, and this gives the story its enduring poignancy. Director Saul Dibb doesn’t quite succeed in making the drama feel fresh, but this is a sensitive and handsomely performed adaptation. —BEN SACHS R, 107 min.

Landmark’s Century Centre.

Madame Spanish actress Rossy de Palma, a favorite of director Pedro Almodóvar, brings her heroic profile and bubbly personality to this pleasant social satire by French writer-director Amanda Sthers. A wealthy American couple vacationing in France (Toni Colette, Harvey Keitel) host a dinner party for their influential friends, and to avoid an unlucky 13 place settings, the hostess directs her effusive maid (de Palma) to pose quietly as a guest. Of course, the impostor can’t keep her mouth shut at dinner, and to her boss’s dismay, she attracts the romantic attentions of a debonair art broker (Michael Smiley), who’s charmed by her emotionalism and lack of pretense (she swoons at paintings of the Madonna and child, the sappier the better). In English and subtitled French and Spanish. —J.R. JONES 91 min. Fri 3/23-Thu 3/29. Facets Cinematheque.

Leaning Into the Wind British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy, who integrates elaborate artworks into natural landscapes, was the subject of Thomas Riedelsheimer’s award-winning Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time (2001), which documents his work with various bodies of water. For this reunion the men have moved farther inland, where Goldsworthy constructs a series of otherworldly shapes out of simple materials. In a small Brazilian village near Rio de Janeiro, Goldsworthy turns an abandoned hut into his giant Clay Dome, covering the interior with wet clay and incorporating the twisted form of a clay-coated tree branch into the vaulted ceiling. At one point a striking silhouette shows Goldsworthy laboriously hauling himself across a horizon of leafless trees; this elaborately staged shot tells you more about his creative instincts than you’ll learn from his

Tomb Raider After earning acclaim as a serious actress in such indies as Ex Machina and The Danish Girl, Alicia Vikander must have decided to earn some serious money—why else would she star in this tepid overhaul of Angelina Jolie’s Lara Croft movies? Based on the 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider video game, the CGI-driven adventure follows the British heiress as she travels to the Far East to seek her long-missing father, played by Dominic West, and solve the mystery of an ancient curse.

Vikander’s hard-muscled body is the only plausible element in a film that emphasizes pursuit, combat, and survival, with nods to the disaster genre as well. Roar Uthaug (The Wave) directed; his work feels derivative of Steven Spielberg’s first two Indiana Jones movies, though not half as entertaining. —ANDREA GRONVALL PG-13, 118 min. For listings visit chicagoreader.com.

Unsane A young professional (Claire Foy), looking over her shoulder in a new town, tries to join a support group for stalking victims but finds that she’s checked herself into a mental clinic and can’t get out; soon she begins identifying one of the orderlies (Joshua Leonard) as the man who pursued her. Steven Soderbergh shot this psychological thriller with an iPhone 7, which gives the images a dim, lo-fi quality consistent with the 70s drive-in vibe of the story.

Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1963), another thriller about a sane person trapped inside an asylum, must have provided Soderbergh with some inspiration as well, particularly in his semicomic treatment of the other patients (Jay Pharaoh of Saturday Night Live as a laconic wise guy, Juno Temple playing against type in cornrows and a country accent). With Amy Irving.

—J.R. JONES R, 97 min. For listings visit chicagoreader.com.

REVIVALS Cleopatra Jones Jack Starrett’s 1973 entry into the violent inner-city drug-bust genre is talkier and more subdued than the usual fare, with a surer technical polish. Tamara Dobson, a former fashion model, makes her acting debut as the beautiful undercover agent, and Shelley Winters contributes more than her customary share of grotesquerie in a shrill cameo as a lesbian gang leader.

Better than average. —DON DRUKER PG, 89 min. Comedian Big Keef introduces the screening; tickets are $15. Sat 3/24, 7:30 PM. Chatham 14.

Lust in the Dust Let us pass in silence over this unfortunate episode in the career of the talented Paul Bartel (Death Race 2000, Eating Raoul). With Tab Hunter, Divine, Lainie Kazan, Geoffrey Lewis, Henry Silva, and Cesar Romero. —DAVE KEHR R, 84 min.

35mm. Screens with a restored 16-millimeter print of Bartel’s The Secret Cinema (1966). Mon 3/26, 7 PM. Music Box. v

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NEW DISCOVERY IN BLADDER CONTROL

Until now, doctors believed it was impossible to strengthen the muscles that control the bladder. They are amazed to see that it can now be done with the nonprescription UriVarx™ pill.

“As you get older, and the involuntary muscles around your bladder weaken, you lose urinary control. With your bladder wall unable to properly seal, you constantly leak and feel pressure to urinate” explains Dr. Bassam Damaj of Innovus Pharmaceuticals.

“UriVarx™ targets the bladder muscles and help restores vital kidney health, reducing urgency and frequency. It also helps you “hold it” for hours so you never have to worry about embarrassing accidents ever again!”

FREEDOM FROM SUDDEN URGES AND LEAKS

Since hitting the market, sales for the patented UriVarx™ pill have soared and there are some very good reasons why.

To begin with, the double blind large clinical studies published in the clinicaltrials. gov have been impressive. Participants taking UriVarx™ saw a stunning reduction in urinary frequency, which resulted in fewer bathroom trips both day and night.

They also experienced a dramatic decrease in incontinence episodes, such as leaking and bed wetting.

The active ingredients in UriVarx™ comes from a patented formula. It is both safe and healthy. There are also no known serious side effects in its history of use.

Scientists believe that the ingredients target the muscles of the bladder to grow stronger. These muscles are responsible for keeping the bladder tightly sealed. They also help the bladder to completely empty, allowing bacteria to be flushed from the urinary tract.

Research has shown that as you get older, certain hormonal changes in the body cause these muscles to shrink and become lose.

This is what causes the bladder to be over active and the resulting urine accidents and why UriVarx™ seems to be so effective in the published clinical trials.

EXCITING RESULTS FROM URIVARX USERS

Many UriVarx™ users say their bladders have never been stronger. For the first time in years, they are confident and in complete control. Adult pads and diapers are no longer a big worry.

“After my third child, I couldn’t control my bladder. I was running to the bathroom all the time! And once I hit my 60s it became so unpredictable I needed to wear adult pads every day” explained Marie L. of Danbury, CT. “I was embarrassed so before going to my doctor I decided to try UriVarx and I’m so glad I did! The urgency is gone and I no longer feel like my bladder is about to explode. I can also “hold it” when I need to so I’m no longer living in constant fear of finding a bathroom.”

IMPRESSIVE CLINICAL RESULTS

The exciting clinical results published on the government clinical website clinicaltrials. gov show that UriVarx™ can strengthen your bladder fast, significantly reducing the urine urgency and leaks.

In a new double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical study, 142 men and women with

bladder control issues were separated into two groups. The first group was given a placebo while the other received UriVarx™.

The results were incredible. The participants who received UriVarx™ saw major improvements in leaking, pressure, and the urgency to go − all without the usual side effects seen in prescription drugs! They also reported fewer trips to the bathroom both day and night.

Overall, the UriVarx™ group experienced: • 56% Reduction in Urge Incontinence • 66% Reduction in Stress Incontinence • 61% Reduction in Urgency • 33% Reduction in Frequency • 46% Reduction in Nighttime Bathroom Trips Additionally, at the end of clinical trial NEW PILL MAY REPLACE DIAPERS FOR BLADDER and after seeing the results, 84% of the CONTROL: This new patented clinically proven participants taking UriVarx™ said it pill solution is now available nationwide significantly improved their quality of life.

“The clinical findings are incredible, but BLADDER people still wonder if it will really work” PROBLEMS GONE explains Dr. Bassam Damaj. “It’s normal to be With daily use, UriVarx™ can restore strong skeptical, but we’ve seen thousands of UriVarx™ bladder control and help users overcome users get results exactly like the participants in leakage without the negative side effects or the study. It’s an amazing product.” interactions associated with drugs.

Leakage sufferers can now put an end to HOW IT WORKS UriVarx™ is a pill that’s taken just once the uncontrollable urges, the embarrassing accidents, and enjoy an entirely new level of daily. It does not require a prescription.

The active ingredients are patented nat- comfort and confidence. ural extracts.

Research shows that as we get older, the muscles which surround the bladder weaken.

This is caused by hormonal changes in the body that causes the muscles to atrophy and weaken.

When they become too small and weak, they cannot seal your bladder shut, which causes leaking, accidents, among other incontinence symptoms.

It also prevents your bladder from fully emptying, which can result in persistent bacterial infections and UTIs. UriVarx’s™ active ingredient targets the muscles around the bladder, making them stronger.

Supporting ingredients in UriVarx™ support kidney function and overall urinary health.

HOW TO GET URIVARX IN ILLINOIS

This is the official release of UriVarx™ in Illinois. As such, the company is offering a special discounted supply to anyone suffering from bladder issues who calls within the next 48 hours.

A special hotline number and discounted pricing has been created for all Illinois residents. Discounts will be available starting today at 6:00AM and will automatically be applied to all callers.

Your Toll-Free Hotline number is 1-800-908-5611 and will only be open for the next 48 hours. Only a limited discounted supply of UriVarx™ is currently available in your region.

THESE STATEMENTS HAVE NOT BEEN EVALUATED BY THE FDA. THIS PRODUCT IS NOT INTENDED TO DIAGNOSE, TREAT, CURE, OR PREVENT ANY DISEASE. RESULTS MAY VARY. CONSULT YOUR PHYSICIAN BEFORE TAKING THIS SUPPLEMENT. URIVARX IS NOT A DRUG.

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 7

CITY LIFE

Chicagoans

The security expert Shahna Richman, 48, owner and CEO, Richman Forensic & Security Consulting

“I’m looking at people so closely that I know who has a gun on and who doesn’t,” says Shahna Richman. é JON SHAFT

IN THE FBI, I FOCUSED exclusively on bank robbers, fugitives, serial murderers, kidnappers, and sex traffickers. I have discharged my firearm, but I have never killed anyone, thank goodness. Like most law enforcement officers, I would not want to even begin to count the number of people that I could have shot in good faith, but I always made every effort to use an alternative method. But I’ve had to physically take down more individuals than I could count.

I am literally five feet two and 100 pounds on a good day. Strangely enough, I don’t view myself as small. I think I am a six-foot-something linebacker trapped in a five-foot-two body. So my size really never affected me professionally. It still doesn’t.

I’m now fully retired in good standing from

8 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

the FBI, and I own a forensic and security consulting company. The bulk of my work is large-scale event security planning. Clients hire me to design, plan, and execute security services for their events. In Chicago, I am familiar with almost every large-scale venue.

I’m looking at entry points, exit points, vulnerabilities. We provide everything— armed security, unarmed security, explosivedetection canines.

My best compliment comes when my client reports that one of their guests tells them, “There should have been more security,” when I know, and my client knows, that the event was very security heavy. For the record, we try to look like we’re with the venue. So if the guests are wearing business suits, we are wearing business suits; if the guests are in

cocktail attire, we are in cocktail attire. It’s a little harder as a female operative, but I’ll wear a beautiful pantsuit. My only downfall is the practical shoes.

Personal protection is another piece of what I do. A lot of times I pick up my protectee from the airport and deliver them safely to their hotel, and then I take them everywhere they’re going and I’m with them all the time. I don’t really stand around looking intimidating, but I never am complacent.

The minute you get bored, you aren’t doing your job. If you are standing around outside a hotel room where dignitaries are meeting for six hours, it may sound incredibly boring, but when you’re maintaining that vigilance, you’re not bored, because you’re memorizing everyone who comes and goes. You notice

when the same individual has walked by that meeting room too many times. I’m looking at people so closely that I know who has a gun on and who doesn’t. The average person is never gonna notice that someone’s clothes are fitting a little tight on one side. But it’s my job to notice.

Last week I approached a guest and asked him if he was armed, and he told me he was.

He was a lovely man, and he was carrying under the Illinois carry act. Except that the hotel where the event was being held had the signs with the gun with a slash through it, so he was not entitled to carry a weapon there.

So I politely asked him to return to his vehicle and put his weapon away, which he did. Had he not complied, I would have had to remove him.

—AS TOLD TO ANNE FORD

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CITY CIT TY LI LIFE POLITICS

The real battle starts now

Activists are working to replace the state’s regressive income tax with a fairer code. They’ll have to change the Illinois Constitution to do it.

By BEN JORAVSKY

W

hile your attention may have been diverted by the circuslike governor’s primary, activists have been methodically working behind the scenes to deal with the biggest state issue of our time: fair taxes.

The activists are members of the Responsible Budget Coalition, a collection of roughly 300 community groups and social service agencies throughout the state.

Their goal is to convince state legislators to put a referendum on the ballot asking voters to approve an amendment to the state constitution that would give Illinois a graduated income tax.

Uh-oh. Amendments, constitution, taxes—I can see eyes glazing over already. Focus, readers, focus.

I realize this isn’t half as interesting as, say, Governor Rauner’s curiously Nixonian aversion to legalizing recreational marijuana, as though it’s a demon weed driving our country crazy.

But I think the time has come to pay attention to the boring stuff, like finding the money to pave streets, police communities, operate schools, and otherwise continue with this experiment known as civilization. So without further ado . . .

Our problem is we don’t have enough money to pay for all the things we need from our government.

I know that’s hard to believe when you consider how much you pay each year in one tax or another. But it’s a reality underscored by the fact that Illinois has more than $15 billion in unpaid bills.

We can go in one of two directions. We could cut government, privatize schools, and basi-

é RICH HEIN/SUN-TIMES; KEVIN TANAKA

cally give up on helping the ill and indigent— as Rauner and his allies apparently want to do.

Or we could search for progressive ways of raising taxes and implement a fair tax, as the responsible budget coalition would put it.

Right now our system of taxation in this state is regressive. That means that generally the poorer you are, the higher the percentage of your income that goes to taxes.

I’m not saying that poor people literally pay more each year in taxes than, say, a Rauner or Pritzker. No, it just means a greater portion of their income goes to taxes.

Fairness really means flipping the switch so rich people like the Rauners and Pritzkers pay a more proportionate amount of taxes.

There’s two ways to go with that, sales tax and income tax. Let’s take sales tax first. In Illinois, we don’t have a sales tax on services. So, for instance, if you buy a lawn mower to mow your lawn you pay a sales tax on the purchase.

But if you hire a lawn service to mow your lawn, you don’t pay a sale tax on that service.

Of course, any proposal to raise the sales tax would raise a huge ruckus. We learned that last year when Cook County Board president Toni Preckwinkle imposed a soda pop tax. The county board rescinded that tax after a grassroots rebellion, which was largely underwritten by Big Soda.

Now, Big Soda had a point—words I never thought I’d write. The soda pop tax was regressive since it taxed the poor and rich at the same rate.

You could try to slap a sales tax on services that only rich people tend to use. But I have a feeling there’d be a great uproar no matter what sales taxes were raised. So perhaps it would be politically more realistic to pass a progressive state income tax.

At the moment, the state constitution mandates a flat tax, meaning all people, regardless of income, pay the same: 4.95 percent.

The Responsible Budget Coalition is proposing to amend the constitution to allow for a graduated income tax, meaning the more money you make, the greater the rate you pay.

They’ve yet to figure out the details. But conceivably, you could lower the rate for people in the lower tax brackets, raise the rate on the Rauners and Pritzkers, and still have more money flowing into the state coffers.

Unless, of course, the Rauners and Pritzkers hide their money in offshore tax shelters. Another story for another time.

Amending the constitution requires that a statewide referendum be put to the voters.

To get that referendum on the ballot requires a vote of 60 percent of legislators in both the house and senate. In this case, they would be putting a referendum on the ballot asking voters if they want to adopt a graduated income tax.

If they want to get that referendum on the ballot in time for November’s election, both houses have to pass the resolution by May 8.

And what a legislative battle that will be.

Let’s take just the house—where it requires

71 votes to pass the resolution. There are only 67 Democrats, so they’ll need four Republicans to pass it. And that’s if all the Democrats vote for it.

If the past is a indicator of the future, you can bet house speaker Michael Madigan will look to protect Democratic legislators in swing districts from having to vote for any tax hike—no matter how progressive—that might leave them vulnerable to a barrage of Rauner-funded mailings blasting them as taxand-spend liberals.

Hey, man, no one said doing the right thing is easy.

“This is one of the most important things Illinois can do stabilize long-term and shortterm finances,” says John Bouman, president of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law and a member of the coalition. “It brings much-needed stability. It gets Illinois to a place where it can pay its bills and keep its promises to its people.”

On March 27 the coalition will hold a noontime rally at the Thompson Center. In the coming weeks, the action will shift to Springfield, where the real wheeling and dealing will begin.

Who knows? Before all is said and done this could be as entertaining as Rauner’s shifting stance on marijuana. v

The Ben Joravsky Show airs from 2 to 5 PM Monday through Friday on WCPT 820 AM. m @joravben

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 9

BASEBALL Premium Edition

CITY LIFE TRANSPORTATION

Urine el

How often does the CTA really clean those subway stops? Hint: not much

By JOHN GREENFIELD

PICK UP A COPY IN THE MARCH 25 ISSUE

THE CHICAGO SUN -TIMES PRESEN TS

FOR MORE INFO VISIT suntimes.com/baseball

10 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

HICAGO

TYLE

OUR CITY’S CE OF THE NATIONLEBRATION AL PASTIME

I

’m not going out on a limb saying that most CTA subway stations are nothing to write home about. They’re relatively cramped tunnels whose cream-colored walls are often streaked with grime and worn, brown platforms are caked with dirt.

Corners reek of garbage or worse.

The dingy underground spaces—especially those that haven’t been rehabbed—are downright embarrassing when compared to the clean, spacious, textured-concrete vaulted ceilings of, say, Washington, D.C.’s Metro system, let alone the art-filled, architecturally significant stations of the Paris and Moscow subways.

With thousands of riders every day, no one expects the CTA to be spick and span.

Any system with so many users is going to be pretty dirty. But could more regular cleanings encourage more people to use the system, increase ridership, and ultimately, the CTA’s bottom line?

If you use the lifts at CTA stations on a regular basis, you’re familiar with the alltoo-common indignity of the urine-flooded elevator car. But at the CTA’s Washington stop on the Blue Line, dark urine stains perpetually line the outer walls around the stairs and escalators that take you to and from the platform.

Dirt and grime is all over the place at the Washington station, which with 3.8 million rides in 2016 was the busiest stop on the line other than O’Hare Airport. The grit’s embedded in the floors and the blue edging on the platforms. It runs up and down support columns, covering lights, and even on and around the recycling containers encouraging passersby to keep the ctA CLEAN. At the Red Line’s Jackson stop during a recent visit, the platform is in better shape, but the tracks are littered with airplane liquor bottles, banana peels, a fingerless glove with a shamrock on it, and pizza wedges. (There’s no sign of Chicago’s answer to the New York Metro’s viral video star, Pizza Rat.) “The CTA obviously needs to do some additional work with cleaning up its els and sub-

ways,” says Bill, a sales consultant who lives in the South Loop and was waiting for the train.

“It’s just unacceptable.”

At the Blue Line’s Jackson stop, which was more recently renovated with a pleasing blueand-white ceiling mosaic, the platform seems moderately free of filth. There, EPA employee and Oak Park resident Pamela Grace tells me that station cleanliness seems to fluctuate by location. She says that, like most outdoor stations exposed to wind and rain, the Oak Park Avenue stop is usually fairly clean, and she saw CTA staffers emptying garbage cans there that morning. “But it gets a little hairier down the line, particularly Cicero and Pulaski,” she says.

The cleanliness problem appears particularly bad in the winter, when cold temperatures outside seem to prevent much maintenance inside. A CTA worker who was quickly spot-cleaning the Washington stop last week admitted the CTA almost never washes the stations down when it’s below 35 degrees.

Asked the last time such a cleanup was done, she couldn’t remember—she says it was possibly a year ago.

The CTA also can’t remember.

When I first ask about how often the stations are more thoroughly scrubbed, spokeswoman Catherine Hosinski tells me the busiest stations are “deep cleaned” every two weeks. She says the less busy stations are done every five to six weeks.

“CTA places a high priority on cleanliness,” she writes in an e-mail, noting the system’s 2018 budget for janitorial services is $24.8 million.

She claims that on a daily basis cleanings include sweeping, spot mopping, and wiping down the station houses, platforms, and elevators several times as well as removing graffiti.

The work also includes cleaning escalator and stairway handrails; wiping down stainless steel surfaces like turnstiles, the customer assistant booth, and vending machines; cleaning station entrance doors and windows; and emptying garbage.

Also on a daily basis, workers use foaming cleaner, alkaline disinfectant, degreaser, bleach, stainless steel cleaner, graffiti remov-

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CITY LIFE Top: the Blue Line stop at Washington in 2006; the stop earlier this month é JOHN WHITE/SUN-TIMES; DAVE NEWBART/READER

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er, and “spill control solidifier”—a powder that turns blood and other body fluids into a gel to eliminate splashing, she says.

Deep cleanings, meanwhile, involve a more thorough version of the daily ritual, plus a major scrubbing or power washing of all floors. Crews also regularly clean areas not accessible to the public, including outside lighting and windows, elevator pits, platform weather canopies, break rooms, and offices, she says.

But when I push for evidence of the deep cleanings, she admits they’re done far less frequently. The eight downtown stations in the Blue Line were cleaned a total of 50 times last year. The Washington station was deepcleaned just three times—far less than every two weeks.

Hosinski acknowledges that CTA facilities are sometimes less than pristine. “With about 1.5 million weekday rides and service provided at nearly all hours of the day, spills, accidents and other incidents are bound to occur,” she

says. She adds that customers should feel free to let CTA employees know when they see a major mess.

Grace suggests that riders should cut CTA workers some slack as they try to accomplish the Sisyphean task of keeping the massive system clean at all times. “You’re literally cleaning up behind hundreds of thousands of people every day, so if you can keep the trash off the subway for the most part, you’re doing a good job,” she says.

And even if some of the stations aren’t pretty, there is one thing that riders and CTA staff agree on.

“Chicago is a great, clean city—New York is the pits,” says Bill, the South Loop resident.

“It’s dirty. It’s bad,” acknowledges the CTA worker. “But everybody says it’s cleaner than New York.” v

John Greenfield edits the transportation news website Streetsblog Chicago. m @greenfieldjohn

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MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 11

LIT

Jeremy Kitchen’s the most punk rock librarian in Chicago DMITRY SAMAROV

He’s brought mosh pits and doughnuts to the Bridgeport branch and book chat to Lumpen Radio

By DMITRY SAMAROV

I

f you’re involved with art or music or writing in Chicago and keep at it for any length of time, odds are you’ll meet everyone else involved sooner or later. I’d first met Jeremy Kitchen, the head librarian at the Chicago Public Library’s Richard J. Daley Branch and host of its semiregular Punk Rock and Donuts shows, a decade ago through the artist Tony Fitzpatrick. Last year, after a chance meeting at Jackalope Coffee in Bridgeport, not far from the library, he invited me to be a guest on his radio show Eye 94, which airs Sundays and Thursdays on Lumpen Radio, with monthly live shows at Pilsen Community Books.

12 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

Kitchen, who’s 47, doesn’t look like a stereotypical librarian.

He’s a tough-looking, tattooed guy who favors ball caps and Hawaiian shirts in clashing Day-Glo patterns. He’s been a singer in several punk bands and is a gulf war vet. His unconventional path to becoming a librarian makes him well qualified to meet the needs of a public that is increasingly uninterested in traditional academic matters. He’s able to reach those who aren’t naturally bookish. If libraries have a role to play in our tech-besotted, forgetful age, we could do a lot worse than Kitchen as a guide.

Kitchen and his cohosts, Jamie Trecker and Mike Sack, had actually read my books before having me on the show, which

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John Almonte and January Overton of Jackalope Coffee é JANUARY OVERTON

put them in select company. Any attention a writer gets for his or her work is welcome, but it means that much more when an interviewer has done some homework. They asked me specific questions, and Shanna VanVolt’s recorded readings added to the sense that they’d taken the time to consider my work, rather than just using it as a pretext to hear themselves speak.

“We read every book cover to cover,” Kitchen tells me. “I think we are reading something like 2,000 pages this month.”

Eye 94, named for I-94, the highway that connects Chicago and Detroit, where both Kitchen and Sack grew up, began in 2017. It’s also a publishing venture: the hosts solicit original writing for their website.

The monthly tapings are lively and well attended. Recent events have featured authors like Anne Elizabeth Moore and Eve Ewing. Kitchen and company are able to be engaging and insightful without being pretentious or pedantic. The down-toearth approach is Kitchen’s calling card. Their next live show is March 29, with Michael Daley, author of Bobby BlueJacket: The Tribe, The Joint, The Tulsa Underworld.

Though Kitchen considers books a driving force in his life—he reads one or two a week—it took him some time to settle on the library as a career. Before that, he worked a number of what he described as “shit jobs”: artillery observer in the army, worker in a flashlight factory, a brief stint at Whole Foods, social work.

“I wanted to do something that involved literature that was not teaching,” he says. “I spent an inordinate time in libraries in my youth, and always loved the intellectual freedom that libraries entail. I got into punk to escape being a nerd. I learned very young that book dudes are not popular. That has changed somewhat, but in the early 80s in suburban Detroit that was not the case.” He finally went back to library school at Dominican University, and when he graduated started working as a temp in a photo library. He started at CPL in 2000, at the Northtown branch in West Rogers Park.

When he became head librarian at the Daley branch about a decade ago, he decided to bring some of his past—like his time

Scenes from a recent edition of Punk Rock and Donuts é JANUARY OVERTON

fronting punk bands like Night of the Hunter—to the job. Every few months bands like Wet Wallet, led by Keith Herzik (who also illustrates the Reader music column Gossip Wolf), take over a back room at his library for Punk Rock and Donuts. Many punk shows around town advertise themselves as all-ages, but few could boast of toddlers dancing around in the mosh pit—a regular sight at these Saturday concerts.

Kitchen started Punk Rock and Donuts after working on a project with the design firm IDEO, which led to a library conference in Aarhus, Denmark, and inspired him to create a nontraditional event at his own branch in Bridgeport. He partnered with January Overton and John Almonte of Jackalope Coffee; they supply the coffee and doughnuts at every show.

The program has proved so popular that other branches have started having their own punk-rock shows, but Kitchen is quick to give credit to the CPL administration and his collaborators for its success.

Of course, the primary mission of a librarian is to give his or her community access to information and culture. Kitchen is a

positive, no-nonsense advocate for learning and knowledge. “A good librarian can sort out reliable sources, [which] is now of utmost importance in our political climate,” he says. “We are bombarded with a 24-hour news cycle and, of course, social media. Most good librarians can sort out the bullshit and provide people with useful information.” Kitchen assures me that e-books are decreasing in popularity and that interest in the old-fashioned paper-and-ink formats remains alive and well.

He’s bullish about the neighborhood outside his library’s doors too. It bears little resemblance to the inward-looking, exclusionary home base of Boss Daley, the man Kitchen’s library is named after. Today’s Bridgeport is an ever-shifting mix of older residents, art kids, and yuppies, with Chinatown making inroads for good measure. “I am friends with a lot of folks from both old and new Bridgeport,” Kitchen says, “including police and a few of the Daleys, bikers, recovering alcoholics, artists, freaks, geeks, and punks, and I love them all.” v EYE 94 Thu 3/29, 7 PM, Pilsen Community Books, 1102 W. 18th, pilsencommunitybooks.org. F

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 13

ARTS & CULTURE

R

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

F

Salar Ardebili (foreground) with Joshua J. Volkers, Catherine Dildilian, and Alison Plott é AIRAN WRIGHT

T

THEATER

Streetcar redux—with a vengeance

Novid Parsi’s Through the Elevated Line is a slavish update of a masterpiece

By TONY ADLER

hrough the Elevated Line honors Tennessee Williams and A Streetcar Named Desire,” writes Silk Road Rising artistic director Jamil Khoury in a program note, “yet it was never intended to be an adaptation.”

Well, intended or not, an adaptation is what the thing’s turned out to be—to its great detriment. Novid Parsi’s new play so slavishly mimics each plot point and set piece in Streetcar that if you’re at all familiar with Williams’s 1947 masterwork you find yourself spending its 135-minute running time just counting up the equivalences.

Parsi has a noble use for Streetcar, which is to take Williams’s classic tale of Blanche DuBois, ruined southern belle, and update it for our present, brutish moment. His Blanche is Razi, a fey 27-year-old carrying a triple whammy of Otherness: he’s Muslim, Iranian, and gay. Razi’s experience is meant to speak to real-world horrors, but the overloud echo of Belle Reve drowns it out.

Like Blanche, Razi’s burned his bridges, having lost the family home, squandered the family fortune, and acquired a reputation as a sexual outlaw. Like Blanche, too, he’s moved in with his pregnant sister—Stella in the original, Soraya here—who’s married a coarse, beer-guzzling American plebe in a T-shirt because the guy makes her colored lights go ’round. And like Blanche, he runs afoul of said plebe—Stanley Kowalski, of course, in the original, Chuck here—in a struggle for love and territory.

But that’s not all. Blanche has lost her one and only. So has Razi. She seeks solace in alcohol and promiscuous sex while cherishing a woozy romantic ideal. So does he. She’s got a fetish for low lights. Him, too. He even takes lots of baths like she does.

Yet still that’s not all. Parsi’s homage extends to putting new spins on subsidiary scenes from Streetcar. Most egregiously, where (in one of the most delicate passages in any play ever) Blanche kisses a young man who’s come to the door collecting for the Evening Star newspaper, Razi allows himself to be seduced by a construction worker who tells him, “Blow me, señor.” Now I’m going to have to live with the memory of that line the rest of my life.

The one element Through the Elevated Line lacks of Streetcar is a growing sense of dread over Razi’s fate. Director Carin Silkaitis never finds a way to bring urgency to the inevitability that he’ll end up much as Blanche does. But then Silkaitis never achieves the more basic goal of establishing the physical space, either.

Late in the show, we find Chuck eavesdropping on Razi and Soraya; exactly where he’s supposed to be and how he manages to hear them through what I could’ve sworn was an outside wall is a mystery. v THROUGH THE ELEVATED LINE Through 4/15: Fri 8 PM, Sat-Sun 4 PM, Tue 7:30 PM, Silk Road Rising, 77 W. Washington, 312857-1234, silkroadrising.org, $17.50-$38.

m @taadler

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ARTS & CULTURE

DANCE

White tears Lie Through My Skin investigates privilege and shame—vaguely.

é VIN REED

By IRENE HSIAO

A

man crawls on all fours across the stage. His eyes remain fixed on the ground directly beneath him. Two women sit astride him looking out, faces neutral as they progress through the space. One moment it’s a show of wanton subjugation—

pageant queens swanning on a laboring human float. Another moment the three are a single body, an insect, or maybe a chimera, something fascinatingly wrong.

“Shame is an emotion we all experience.

It is also an emotion we work hard to avoid,”

writes choreographer Joanna Read in the program notes to Lie Through My Skin, which, she reveals, “began as an honest confrontation of my white privilege and the shame it induced.” However, using an all-white team of collaborators seems a disingenuous way to address the issue. Unfortunately, because white privilege is not a metaphor for the rest of society, Lie Through My Skin indeed works hard to avoid addressing the subject it purports to examine.

As performed by four strong dancers, a vivid succession of scenes emerge that indicate emotional possibility but then do not develop or cohere. The dancers stand in a circle, touching each other, sometimes confrontationally, sometimes intimately. As they clasp their hands behind their backs, their movement becomes inhibited without the tension of a genuine obstacle, so consciously is it done and so easily undone. Jess Duffy’s belt unravels to become dual whips that smack an insistent rhythm against the floor as she balances on exquisitely arched feet. Michelle Giordanelli’s sleeves accordion out to wrap her in a straitjacket before she slips out, sheathing it over

her partner’s head. Late in the work, they begin to vocalize in stentorian giggles. Tennis balls scatter over the floor, and three dancers stuff them under the shirt of a prone fourth like children secreting a mess under a rug.

Costumes by Vin Reed, which might be Thneeds woven from the storied Truffula Tree, seem the most consciously designed element of the hour-long work. The male dancers (Jacob Buerger, Michael O’Neill) wear a costume piece that looks in various lights and angles like a deflated tool belt, a fanny pack, an apron, a loincloth, or a diaper. Yet while each of those articles has a function, like a chastity belt that doesn’t lock, this flat bit of fabric doesn’t do more than flap. Perhaps the insistence on form following function is a modernist principle that has outlived its value.

Perhaps the earnest proposition of meaningful investigation is the only mistake or lie of Lie Through My Skin. v LIE THROUGH MY SKIN Fri 3/23-Sun 3/25, 7 PM, Dovetail Studios, 2853 W. Montrose, 773-550-6533, same-planet.org, $22, $15 students.

m @IreneCHsiao

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 15

ARTS & CULTURE

DANCE

Joseph Lattanzi and Jonas Hacker é TODD ROSENBERG

OPERA

Fellow Travelers brings the 1950s ‘lavender scare’ to opera

By DEANNA ISAACS

F

or much of the last half century, the paranoia and tyranny of the McCarthy era in America has seemed more like a bizarre anomaly than an evil that could easily reappear.

Recently, not so much.

That makes the anti-communist and anti-homosexual panics that swept Washington, D.C., in the 1950s (and the witch-hunting investigations led by Wisconsin senator Joseph McCarthy that fueled them) resonant context for Fellow Travelers, a groundbreaking 2016 opera that sets a gay love story in the environment of both the red and lavender scares.

Fellow Travelers is being presented by Lyric Opera’s outreach arm, Lyric Unlimited, in a brief run, through this weekend at the Athenaeum Theatre. It’s based on Thomas Mallon’s 2007 novel of the same title, which embedded a romance in a detailed, seriously researched account of the McCarthy years. The opera, as it must, sheds most of the historical detail to focus on the love story.

And that story is an old one: virgin meets cad. Timothy Laughlin (tenor Jonas Hacker) is a recent college graduate—an endearingly dorky, devotedly Catholic intern at a D.C. newspaper seeking a future in public policy. A chance meeting with Hawkins Fuller (baritone Joseph Lattanzi)—a dashing Harvard graduate, state department careerist, and serial seducer—lands him a job on a senator’s staff and introduces him to the exhilaration and heartbreak of first love. It’s a familiar plot, but not one usually encountered in opera as boy meets boy. Laughlin’s heartbreak is multifaceted: attributable not only to his lover’s betrayal

16 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

and a personal religious crisis, but also to a culture of persecution in which survival depends on constant, furtive duplicity.

To the credit of librettist Greg Pierce, composer Gregory Spears, and director Kevin Newbury, the malice of that lavender scare environment still comes through.

Fuller, for example, is such a consummately cool character, he can ace a lie detector test, but the interrogation we see him subjected to—which includes a ludicrous evaluation of his gait and diction—is galling. As Newbury notes in a director’s statement in the printed program, more than 5,000 people lost their jobs after a 1953 presidential order that branded homosexuals as security risks and purged them from federal employment.

Spears incorporates the theme of duplicity in the music, using repetitious minimalism in the orchestral score to represent the political and cultural “surface” world, and meandering, often lyrical, vocal lines—inspired by medieval troubadours— to express the emotional life roiling under that surface. You won’t go home humming this music, but it works. Sets are spare but effective (a bench, a bed, a set of file cabinets), and performances are strong all-around, especially by the two leads, but also notably by Devon Guthrie as Laughlin’s loyal and wary friend, Mary, and by Will Liverman and Vanessa Becerra as denizens of the senator’s office. Daniela Candillari conducts the 16-piece orchestra. v R FELLOW TRAVELERS Through 3/25: Wed and Fri 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, 773-935-6860, athenaeumtheatre.com, $29-$75.

m @DeannaIsaacs

A light in the darkness CHOREOGRAPHER ALEJANDRO Cerrudo thrives in darkness. On a creative level, he starts each new project in the dark, abandoning what he discovered with his previous work to move down a fresh path. “When you try to reinvent yourself, when you try to push each work to be different, that creates a thrill, but it can be scary as well,” says Cerrudo. “You find each work with nothing in front of you because you start from zero.”

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, where Cerrudo has been the resident choreographer since 2009, returns to the Auditorium Theatre this weekend after 20 years with an evening of Cerrudo’s work. The opulent space is a severe departure from the stark, industrial design of the company’s resident home at the Harris Theater. For the program’s world premiere, Out of My Mind, Cerrudo took inspiration from the new surroundings to shape his piece, and the depth of the Auditorium stage allows him to intensify the theatrical impact of darkness.

“Having too much depth is not a problem,” says Cerrudo. “It’s something that I love. You can bring the light line further forward and have this beautiful never-ending darkness behind the dancers rather than seeing a backdrop. If you have enough depth on the stage, you can get the sense that there’s nothing but darkness behind them. It sounds scary, but it’s beautiful. You’re not focused on that, you’re focused on the dancers.” —OLIVER SAVA AN EVENING OF ALEJANDRO CERRUDO Fri 3/23-Sat 3/24, 7:30 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, 312-850-9744, hubbardstreetdance. com, $29-$110.

Hubbard Street dancers Jacqueline Burnett and Jeffery Duffy in Niebla by Alejandro Cerrudo é TODD ROSENBERG

SummerDance at Wrigley Square é PHILAMONJARO

DANCE

Rite of spring SEE CHICAGO DANCE. The name is direct and specific, and the nonprofit organization formerly known as Audience Architects has wisely adopted it as part of an ongoing rebranding strategy.

Audience Architects began in 2006 with a grant from the Chicago Community Trust to figure out ways to increase interest in dance in Chicago.

For 13 years SeeChicagoDance.com has provided free promotional services for more than 200 local dance organizations. Unifying the website and the nonprofit under the same name strengthens the brand and intensifies the drive to build a bigger dance audience.

Chicago Dance Month is See Chicago Dance’s biggest promotional push, and since 2014, April has been packed with events spotlighting the city’s dance talent and pop-up performances that bring dance directly to the public. “Sometimes there’s a perception barrier with dance, and people are just not quite sure what they’re going to see,” says See Chicago Dance executive director Heather Hartley. “So we now have a series of pop-up performances in various locations. These events are free and quick, and we do them wherever people are.”

With its Moving Dialogs series, See Chicago Dance partners with museums to explore different cultures. “We really focus on cultural and societal issues so that we can get new audiences to think about dance as a lens for viewing and understanding these topics,” says Hartley. Ultimately, it’s not just about seeing Chicago dance, but using art to look at the world in a new way. —OLIVER SAVA CHICAGO DANCE MONTH 4/2-4/30, times and locations vary, see website, 312-846-6357, seechicagodance.com.

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ARTS & CULTURE LIT

No joke

Nell Scovell é ROBERT TRACHTENBERG

Give us an idea of what you and Mellody plan to talk about.

In addition to being president of Ariel Investments, Mellody was the longtime chair of the board of directors of DreamWorks Animation. [She’s also married to George Lucas.]

So it’s a good bet that women in the workplace will come up. Mellody wrote a wonderful essay for Lean In for Graduates about the additional problems women of color face. In Just the Funny Parts, I tell a story about working [on a short-lived sitcom] with the stunningly talented Larry Wilmore. One day Larry and I got into a friendly argument about who had it tougher in TV writers’ rooms: women or African-Americans (you can guess who took which side). Larry and I argued our cases to a stalemate. We did, however, agree on one thing: African-American women had it the hardest.

How to survive as a woman in Hollywood, according to comedy writer, director, and producer Nell Scovell

By ALLISON DUNCAN

Y

ou might not know it, but you’ve most likely laughed at one of Nell Scovell’s jokes. It’s just that President Obama, Conan O’Brien, and Kermit the Frog were delivering them. The veteran Hollywood comedy writer, producer, and director has worked behind the scenes of iconic television shows such as The Simpsons, The Muppets, and Late Night With David Letterman and was the creator of the cult favorite Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Scovell used her time with Letterman—hired in 1988, she was only the second woman ever to write for his show—as the basis of a 2009 essay in Vanity Fair that detailed a hostile, sexually charged toxic work environment.

The morning after the essay’s publication, Scovell was inundated with appearance requests, including one from The Today Show, which she turned down. Then-anchor Matt Lauer, who’s since had his own fair share of scandal, called her personally to try and change her mind. But when Scovell pushed back about wanting to discuss gender in writ-

ers’ rooms rather than interns in the bedroom (Letterman had publicly admitted to having affairs with female employees), Lauer joked, “Hey, I couldn’t be held to that high a standard.” So she passed again.

The only public reaction from the Letterman show came when an anonymous male staffer smeared Scovell in the press, saying she’d never had any jokes on the air and had quit because she was going to be fired. Both were lies. “After speaking out that I’d felt demeaned by the show in 1990,” she writes, “the show’s knee-jerk response was to demean me again.”

But the essay would later fuel a cultural debate about the lack of gender diversity in late-night TV writers’ rooms. And now, she’s telling all in her fun, honest, and sometimes shocking memoir Just the Funny Parts: And a Few Hard Truths About Sneaking Into the Hollywood Boys’ Club. In advance of her upcoming appearance in Chicago with Chicago Ideas, Scovell, 57, shared with us what to expect in her conversation with Mellody Hobson, how pop culture really gets made, and more.

You’ve worked behind the scenes at iconic TV shows and have called out the lack of gender diversity in late-night TV writers’ rooms. Any advice for women hoping to break into the field?

Once, while we were walking through Central Park, an actress friend said to me, “The only way to move forward creatively is to allow yourself to be judged.” I stopped in my tracks and dug out a pen so I could jot her words down. This is the best advice I’ve ever heard.

Writing is not what you start. It’s not even what you finish. It’s what you start, finish, and put out there for the world to see. It’s harder for women to do this because, (a), we’re often judged more harshly than men and, (b), ugh, who wants to be judged? But writing for TV means learning how to appeal to an audience, and sharing your work and getting feedback is an essential part of the process.

What would you like to see late-night TV look like in the future?

I would like to see the hosts, producers, writing staffs, and crews of late-night shows reflect the audience that watches them, which is an almost equal split of men and women and also includes people of color, people with disabilities, and people from the LGBTQ community.

First, with your Vanity Fair essay and, more recently, in your 2017 Washington Post

op-ed on how Hollywood can protect future victims of abuse, you’ve taken a public stand on sexual harassment in Hollywood. Why is that important to you?

A recent study showed 94 percent of all women in Hollywood say they’ve experienced some type of harassment or abuse by an older, more powerful person. Twenty-one percent said they’d been forced to do something sexual. Only one in four reported the incident, and only 28 percent said the workplace improved after they reported.

My #MeToo story happened a long time ago [on one of her very early jobs working for the Smothers Brothers]. It was before Anita Hill, so I didn’t even have the vocabulary to describe what I’d been through. It’s important for women to speak up so we can close the gap between transgression and reporting. In the future, I want women to report within 30 days, not 30 years.

In this era of #MeToo and Time’s Up, do you think progress has been made?

Not yet. The inclusion rider [suggested by Frances McDormand in her Best Actress acceptance speech at this year’s Academy Awards] is a good start. For my entire career, I’ve been told (mostly by men) that “things are getting better.” I want statistical proof, not anecdotal. The year after Kathryn Bigelow won the Academy Award for Best Director [2010], there was a dip in the number of female directors of major motion pictures. It’s also important to note that Bigelow won for a movie [The Hurt Locker] that had zero female speakers. So one step forward, one step back.

You cowrote the best seller Lean In with Sheryl Sandberg. How did that come about?

When I tell you how Sheryl and I met, you’ll kick yourself for not figuring it out.

We met through Facebook.

What’s next?

I’d love to direct another movie. I wrote a feature loosely based on Lean In, and I’m still hoping that will get made. v FROM THE HOLLYWOOD BOYS’ CLUB TO #METOO: IN CONVERSATION WITH NELL SCOVELL Wed 3/28, 7 PM,

Venue Six10, 610 S. Michigan, 312-906-7419, chicagoideas.com, $15.

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ARTS & CULTURE

SMALL SCREEN

For score

The nation’s hottest entertainer is a suburban Chicago video-game streamer named Ninja who has mastered the game Fortnite.

By RYAN SMITH Tyler “Ninja” Blevins é COURTESY THE ARTIST

R

eady or not, welcome to 2018—the year that the hottest emerging entertainer is a 26-year-old man who wears a yellow headband and goes by the nickname Ninja. His job?

Broadcasting himself playing video games in the basement of his suburban Chicago house.

Meet Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the spiky bluehaired phenom who reportedly earns more than $560,000 a month from subscribers who pay to watch him play games on his personal computer. The Lake Villa native first broke the Internet when he joined forces with Drake and a small cast of other rappers and celebrities last Wednesday night to play the megapopular survival shooter Fortnite. The unlikely teamup with the Canadian hip-hop artist instantly began trending on Twitter and shattered viewership records on video-streaming platform Twitch. The event attracted 628,000 concurrent eyeballs at its peak—more than, for instance, the 445,000 who witnessed Shaun White win his third Winter Olympics gold medal on an Internet device last month or the 372,000 viewers who watched Amazon’s first livestream of Thursday Night Football in 2017.

Not all of the hundreds of thousands of viewers were there for the online presence of the Grammy winner. Ninja is currently the top video-game streamer on the Internet, and one of his avid followers is Drake, who played the role of fawning fanboy to the gamer during their casual shooting-and-chatting session.

Drake’s avatar was killed by enemy gunfire in the midst of one early match, prompting Ninja to offer to finish the game alone while earning a win for both members of the team. “You can back out, I can carry the win,” he told Drake.

“Nah,” the rapper responded. “I want to watch the god work.”

18 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

It was a surreal moment—the musical superstar behind the number one single “God’s Plan” calling Ninja “the god.”

Ninja leaped back into the national consciousness just two days later due to his online interactions with NCAA tournament darling UMBC. The 16th seed’s bench celebrated big moments of its history-making win over topranked Virginia on Friday night with various Fortnite-themed choreographed celebrations.

In the locker room after the game, UMBC forward Nolan Gerrity compared the feeling of beating a top seed to being “like your first Fortnite victory” and bragged that “we got the number one Fortnite player in the world, Ninja, to tweet about us.”

This once-in-a-lifetime surge of mainstream fame isn’t all the result of dumb luck. Blevins has been served well by a combination of superior hand-eye coordination, onscreen charisma, and dogged perseverance. His professional gaming career began almost a decade ago. The young Illinoisian competed in Halo tournaments for cash prizes starting in 2009, but eventually left the grind of what’s now dubbed “eSports” to focus on the pursuit of streaming games.

The act of streaming games might sound banal or easy—but it’s more than being skilled with a keyboard or controller. Ninja has earned more than 890 wins in Fortnite solo matches, and does so while broadcasting himself for hours at a time while constantly interacting with a community of fans. Imagine if, for instance, Tom Brady was asked to beat the Bears while simultaneously doing color commentary and giving fans in the stands quarterbacking advice. Streaming doesn’t take the physical toll of pro football, of course, but it’s more than just fiddling with a controller.

Ninja was a marvel of relentless multitasking during his Sunday-night broadcast, a team-up with Connecticut rapper Witt Lowry.

As 200,000 viewers tuned in, he kept one eye on a TV to watch his pals at UMBC play Kansas State while simultaneously dominating Fortnite games with Lowry and bantering with fans who were typing comments and questions into his Twitch channel. “What’s my favorite animal? A dog,” he said in rapid response to a viewer who tipped him $20 while knocking down an opponent with a sniper rifle from 150 yards away.

Over the next 30 minutes, Ninja delivered gaming tips and relationship advice, gave a few Casey Kasem-like shoutouts to family and friends of fans, and muttered his way through a Seth Rogen impression, all while skillfully winning three games in a row. Then between matches, he donned his yellow headband and enthusiastically danced to a techno track as animated ninjas popped up in the background.

He stopped only to go to the bathroom and eat pizza delivered by his wife/manager, Jessica.

Still, Ninja might be doing these same things in relative obscurity if not for striking virtual gold when he switched to Epic Games’ Fortnite. The shooter’s thrilling “Battle Royale” mode is loosely based on the 2000 Japanese film of the same name about a group of randomly chosen junior high schools taken to an island and forced to fight to the death by the Japanese government. Fortnite’s cartoonish take on the dystopian movie involves 100 solo players or teams of two or four people packed into a flying bus who parachute down onto an island with only the clothes on their back. Once they land, players quickly become scavengers who hunt for hidden guns, grenades, shields, and other items that help them

conquer each other by force. The last person— or team—standing wins.

The free-to-play Battle Royale mode exploded in popularity in December after taking home the prize for Best Multiplayer Game at the 2017 Game Awards, and as of January it had been played by more than 45 million people worldwide and upwards of 3.1 million players concurrently on PC and console systems.

Of the 26 Xbox consoles available to play at Ignite Gaming Lounge in Avondale, Fortnite is being played on an average of 20 of them, said Matt Garrity, Ignite’s general manager. “It’s growing massively and quick, we have calls about it all the time. We’ve had whole parties of 20 people and it’s the only game they play,” says Garrity.

Ninja’s rise has been equally as meteoric as Fortnite’s: he hit 10,000 Twitch subscribers in December, 18,000 in mid-January, and 60,000 in late February, and now nearly 200,000 people pay $5 a month to watch him. He and Witt marveled at this and other recent milestones during one of their duo matches on Sunday night: “I can’t believe it, five million subscribers on YouTube, almost a million followers on Twitter and Instagram.” And now after his star-making gaming session with Drake and his flirtation with America’s new darling college basketball team, he’s earned international headlines and is suddenly in demand everywhere.

This newfound popularity also means adjusting to new demands. He rescheduled an interview with the Reader during a brief break on Sunday in order to fit in other appointments, including facetiming with members of the UMBC Retrievers just before their second-round loss to Kansas State to try to inspire them to make the Sweet Sixteen. On Monday, he was interviewed on CNBC. Fame has brought new challenges that can’t be conquered with a video-game controller.

“Dude, this has been an insane week,” Ninja said to Witt later that night as they kept gunning down virtual islanders. “I’m getting so many e-mails and interview requests, and I’m only sleeping like five or six hours a night. . . .

I can’t do it all, but it’s like, this is it. You only get one moment like this on the Internet.”

In other words, this Ninja won’t be pulling a ninjalike disappearing act anytime soon. v

m @RyanSmithWriter

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ARTS & CULTURE

A kickflip in Love Park in Philly, the skate mecca of the US. é COURTESY OF SHRED AMERICA

DOCUMENTARIES

Later, skaters

Ten years after its makers embarked on an epic quest to skateboard to New York, Shred America hits the screen.

By KEVIN WARWICK

W

e told a lot of people when we were leaving that we had the trip planned out,” Arthur Swidzinski says now. “That we had trained, that we were in tip-top shape. In reality we had gone on the Internet to Mapquest and printed a 150-page document of turn-by-turn directions to New York City.

Everything sort of fell apart from the get-go.”

Today Swidzinski, now 30, might as well be brutally honest about the hiccups—and occasional full-body dry heaves—that he and Mike Kosciesza, also 30, endured during their 36-day, 950-mile skateboarding trek during the summer of 2008 that began in Millennium Park in Chicago and finished in Times Square in New York City. Because that wayward journey has finally (finally) been converted into a proper documentary, nearly ten years to the day since they first got confused about how to skate their way into Indiana.

Making Shred America the film had always been part of the itinerary. It’s why the two

longtime skateboarding friends from Niles recruited Tony Michal of Park Ridge and James Lagen of Des Plaines to trail them on bikes with video cameras in tow to document it. There was to be no grand overarching theme, really, no existential commentary. The narrative of the film essentially boiled down to there not being much of a narrative at all.

It was about four kids in their early 20s with very little responsibility, some basic experience in film and broadcasting, and a binding love of skateboarding. Fuck it, why not make a memory?

“We were adventurous and wanted to make a movie—so we figured we’d just go out and do it,” Kosciesza, who was working as a security guard in 2008, explains.

Swidzinski, who at the time worked at a hospital transporting patients to the morgue, adds, “We developed a passion for radio and making short films in high school. Once we got to college, we wanted to apply what we’d learned and do something coming-of-age that

we could talk about when we were 90 years old.” Prior to and during the trip, the pair operated as their own DIY press and hype machine (which hasn’t changed now that they’re

promoting the film). They did local radio spots and regularly took calls on their not-smartphones to give updates to the Chicago media outlets following their often illegal slog along the shoulders of state routes. The New York Post took an interest; so did Good Morning America. Aside from the time the foursome has a run-in with cops or when they’re impelled to interrupt Joe Ohio’s leisurely grilling to ask for rides or places to stay, Shred America’s greatest moments occur when everyone is actively processing his 15 minutes of fame.

Though that celebrity is fleeting, and though it’s tied to an outrageous (sometimes ridiculous) stunt, the team learn to revel in it. The crew collectively buy into and believe in the greater good of the adventure—particularly once they come to the understanding that they mostly don’t know what the hell they’re doing—and, well, it occasionally turns damn near precious when they do.

“Had it been planned out, the trip wouldn’t have been what it was. A lot of the adventure would’ve been lost,” Swidzinski says now.

“Today if we had gotten in trouble we could’ve just called an Uber. I recently got in a bit of trouble during a bike tour up in Door County . . . and I called an Uber.”

The Shred America crew eventually made it to New York City, though they did have to take a train in from New Jersey to get there.

(As they discovered, you can’t skate on the shoulder of U.S. Highway 1 in order to make a grand entrance.) But upon their return to Chicagoland—now with dozens of hours of footage laid out scattershot in front of them—the film stalled and fell flat. Even J

Arthur after falling on a hill in Pennsylvania é COURTESY OF SHRED AMERICA

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 19

ARTS & CULTURE continued from 19 with the adrenaline of the journey fueling them early on during postproduction, Swidzinski admits that the edit became way too long and he and Kosciesza lost grasp of the story they were trying to tell. They alluded to the circumstance as another example of their lack of preparation. And so the documentary sat on the shelf for years.

“Shred America almost didn’t get made,” Swidzinski admits.

But sometimes all it takes is quitting a demoralizing corporate job to inspire you.

And in 2012 Swidzinski did just that. “I didn’t know what to do with my time after I quit, so I opened up the project again. I sat down and wrote out each scene, what it meant, its purpose. Then I called Mike.”

“I had moved to New York City in 2011 to pursue a career working in postproduction,” Kosciesza remembers. “I ended up as an assistant editor on a documentary film, learning how to cut and structure a film. And then Arthur called. We spent two years trimming the fat of Shred America, figuring out what the story is. He eventually came up with the idea that we should interview ourselves.”

That proved crucial. Now so far removed from the shooting of the film, the two friends— along with Michal and Lagen—were able to reflect on the days and weeks of the trip, helping provide context and building bridges between the scenes. “Arthur put on the director’s hat, and I put on the editor’s hat,” Kosciesza says.

“We were passing edits back and forth via Vimeo and YouTube, just building the film.”

Now the documentary a decade in the making is set to make its world premiere March 24 at the Patio Theater. The proceeds will go to helping get it on Amazon and iTunes. And to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of their initial trip, Swidzinski and Kosciesza plan to take Shred America on tour for a month—in a car this time, but following roughly the same route—to screen the film at libraries, skate shops, colleges, skate parks . . . wherever will have them.

Even though today Kosciesza lives in Brooklyn, there was never much of a doubt about where Shred America would open (even prior to the festival circuit). “It was always going to premiere in Chicago first,” he says. “We weren’t going to do it anywhere else.” v SHRED AMERICA Sat 3/24, 7 PM, Patio Theater, 6008 W. Irving Park, 773-283-7244, thepatiotheater.com, $10.

hen the British drama Victim was released in 1961, homosexual acts between consenting adults were still illegal in England, and though police had grown tired of prosecuting these victimless crimes, the British tabloids pounced on any sort of sex scandal, creating a rich market for blackmailers. Four years earlier, an influential government report had rejected the notion of homosexuality as a mental illness and recommended that it be legalized. Into this climate the Rank Organisation, a giant in British entertainment, cast Dirk Bogarde, the UK’s most popular matinee idol, as Melville Farr, a married, middle-aged barrister who’s being blackmailed for his romantic attachment to a young construction worker. “It is extraordinary, in this over-permissive age, to believe that this modest film could ever have been considered courageous, daring or dangerous to make,” Bogarde remembered in 1978. “It was, in its time, all three.”

Victim is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel, and it screens this coming Monday as part of Facets Cinematheque’s free “teach-in” series, with Northwestern University professor Nick Davis lecturing on the theme “Why Are LGBTQ+ Rights Necessary?” That should be a worthwhile topic, though Victim stops well short of laying down a marker in gay cinema. Screenwriters Janet Green and John McCormick take care to point out that Farr’s illicit attraction to the construction worker, Boy Barrett (Peter

m @kevinwarwick

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MOVIES

Money for silence

The 1961 British drama Victim evokes the bad old days of sodomy laws and blackmail.

By J.R. JONES Dirk Bogarde and Sylvia Sims in Victim

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McEnery), was never consummated, nor was an earlier one between Farr and a college classmate. In line to become a queen’s counselor and maybe even a judge, Farr is portrayed as a happily married man nobly fighting off his worst impulses, and at the end, he and his prim wife (Sylvia Sims) live hetero ever after. Victim may be more illuminating now for the smaller characters on the periphery, whose remarks constitute an inventory of British attitudes in a rapidly changing era.

Green and McCormick deserve credit for attacking such a taboo subject, yet the commercial imperative of insulating their hero from any implication of gay sex forces them into a fair amount of narrative convolution.

As the movie opens, Barrett is being chased by police detectives for having embezzled 2,300 pounds from his construction firm, money he needs to pay off blackmailers who’ve captured a suggestive photograph of him with the barrister. This makes little sense—any blackmailer would go straight to Farr, a wealthy and well-known man with everything to lose—and it rests on the unlikely characterization of Barrett as an innocent with a schoolboy crush. We’re asked to believe that Barrett, apprehended by the police, is so romantically devoted to Farr that he would hang himself in his cell rather than sully the attorney’s reputation, and that Farr, chastened by Barrett’s sacrifice, would resolve to track down the blackmailers at the risk of his own marriage and career.

Victim is said to be the first English-lan-

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guage film to use the word homosexuality, but that’s far from an endorsement. Farr keeps an enormous portrait of his wife, Laura, on his desk at work—it’s so large, you wonder if he’s overcompensating—and the couple seem truly to love and care for one another. Laura knows all about the scandal in Farr’s past: when he was studying at Cambridge, another student formed a romantic attachment to him and also committed suicide. (There’s just something about this guy that makes young men want to kill themselves.) Farr married Laura soon afterward in an effort to straighten himself out, so Laura is terribly alarmed when Barrett phones their house, looking for her husband. After reading in the newspaper that the young man has killed himself, she decides to confront Farr about the relationship.

A number of English actors turned down the role of Farr, including James Mason and Stewart Granger, and certainly Bogarde was sticking his neck out to play the character, given that he himself was living in the closet.

“This is a marvelous part, and in a film that I think is tremendously important, because it doesn’t pull any punches,” he told a TV interviewer on the eve of the movie’s release.

Bogarde reportedly wrote the pivotal scene in which Farr comes clean with Laura about his secret dalliance with Barrett, which means the actor may have been responsible for the movie’s roundhouse punch. When Laura demands to know why Farr broke off his relationship with Barrett, the even-tempered barrister finally explodes: “I stopped seeing him because I wanted him!”

WORTHLESS

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Get showtimes at chicagoreader.com/movies.

ARTS & CULTURE Focusing so much on Farr’s sexuality may be a mistake, though, because Victim, for all its compromises, offers a rich mosaic of minor characters, none of them particularly complex but each articulating some British attitude toward homosexuality and the law surrounding it. “I hate their bloody guts,” offers one bartender. “Every newspaper you pick up, it’s excuses. Environment, too much love as kids, too little love as kids. They can’t help it, part of nature. Well, to my mind it’s a weak, rotten part of nature. And if they ever make it legal, they may as well license every other perversion.”

The same sort of thinking turns out to be a motivating factor in the movie’s blackmail ring.

“They disgust me,” spits one of the criminals.

“They’re everywhere! Everywhere you turn!

The police do nothing, nothing! Someone’s got to make them pay for their filthy blasphemy.”

As one climbs the social ladder in Victim, characters take a more liberal view of the matter. “If the law punished every abnormality, we’d be kept pretty busy,” argues the crusty

Detective Harris (John Barrie); when his sergeant disagrees and identifies as a puritan, Harris reminds him that puritans were illegal once as well. Later in the film, Farr receives a mysterious summons from Lord Fullbrook (Anthony Nicholls), a social friend from his posh club, and learns not only that Fullbrook is a closeted man being targeted by the blackmailers, but that he’s engaged in a three-way relationship with his personal secretary and a famous stage actor. “You’re a sophisticated man, you know the invert is part of nature,” says Fullbrook. “Sherry?” The three lovers pressure Farr to drop his crusade against the blackmailers and join them in a payoff scheme that will free all four of them from future harassment. Somehow Farr winds up defending the nation’s sodomy laws, though the actor, Calloway (Dennis Price), will have none of it. “I’ve never corrupted the normal,” he tells Farr. “Why should I be forced to live outside the law because I find love in the only way I can?”

The class divide that begins to emerge as Farr investigates the blackmailers is a particularly British aspect of Victim. No matter how unjustly men such as Farr, Fullbrook, and Calloway are treated, their wealth provides them with more insulation than the more modest victims enjoy. On a tip, Farr pays a visit to Mr. Henry (Charles Lloyd Pack), who’s selling his barbershop to pay off the blackmailers. “I’ve been to prison four times,” Henry tells Farr.

“I couldn’t go through that again, not at my age. I’m going to Canada! I’ve made up my mind to be sensible, as a prison doctor used to say. Don’t care how lonely, but sensible. I can’t stand any more trouble.” Another tip leads Farr to Phip (Nigel Stock), a car salesman reduced to a sweating, fidgeting mass by the threat of exposure. “You look broke,” Farr observes, offering to take Phip’s place the next time the blackmailers demand a rendezvous.

“I wish I had the guts to trust you,” says Phip, to which the barrister replies, “You can trust my bank balance.” Later, Farr learns that Phip,

in lieu of paying off, has been supplying the blackmailers with the names of other men.

The British Board of Censors gave Victim an X rating upon its initial release, classifying it for adults only and citing, in particular, Farr’s shouted admission that he wanted Barrett sexually. In the U.S. the film was released unrated, though a quarter century later, when it came out on VHS, it was rated PG-13. Thirty years after that, when gay marriage is the law of the land, Victim may seem archaic. But even its compromises teach us something about the era that produced it. The final shot shows Farr, safe at last, dropping the last print of the damning photograph into the fire of his study and watching it warp and burn; his life—like the movie—is a balancing act. v VICTIM sss Directed by Basil Dearden. 100 min. Streaming on the Criterion Channel. Also: Mon 3/26, 6:30 PM, Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton, 773-2814114, facets.org. F

m @JR_Jones

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 21

é MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON

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Ric Wilson in the pews at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church é MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON

RIC WILSON TESTIFIES FOR THE SOUTH-SIDE CHURCH THAT TAUGHT HIM TO FIGHT BACK THE CHICAGO RAPPER AND ACTIVIST GREW UP ATTENDING FELLOWSHIP MISSIONARY BAPTIST, ONE OF THE BLACK CONGREGATIONS THAT NURTURED THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT. The BLOCK BEAT BY

Words BY TIFFANY WALDEN

EVERYTHING ABOUT CHICAGO RAPPER RIC WILSON IS ROOTED IN THE BAPTIST CHURCH. As a teenager, the

22-year-old began working as an organizer for Black Youth Project 100 and We Charge Genocide, and his drive to fight for black lives arises from his upbringing in the black church—placing his activism in the tradition of the civil rights movement, also born from the black church. At the same time, his desire to stitch messages of black power and black inspiration into the fabric of his music connects him to the likes of gospel legend Mahalia Jackson, whose omnipotent voice helped soundtrack that fight for racial justice—and who lived in Chatham in the late 50s and throughout the 1960s.

“It’s interesting, because now church music is blending into secular music with Kirk Franklin, and him making music with Kanye West and Chance [the Rapper],” Wilson says. He also mentions Sam Cooke, another Chicagoan famous for crossover success—in the 1950s, already established as a gospel singer, he experimented with pop and R&B, alienating his sanctified audience but in the process helping invent the new genre of soul music. Wilson’s most recent release, the 2017 EP Negrow Disco, has a bit of soul in it too, though it’s clearly inspired by disco and driven by pop. He’s still exploring what he wants his sound to be, and to do it he’s still listening to the church.

“People can learn something from church music. It’s authentic,” Wilson says. “Look at Elvis. He used to go to church and watch black people and then appropriate them. He literally stole all of his macho from the Baptist church in the south.”

To teach us about his artistry, Wilson takes us to its birthplace: Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, at 45th Place and Princeton Avenue. It’s where his family’s history in the north begins— his maternal grandmother, born in Brownsville, é MORGAN ELISE JOHNSON Tennessee, took the Great Migration train to Chicago at around the same time another relocated Brownsville native, the Reverend Clay Evans, music,” he says. “There’s a lot of times when we’ll start with music, and the music would just keep founded Fellowship Missionary Baptist in 1950.

Wilson’s family have been members of the sto- going because the Holy Spirit just be so [real].”

Most important, Wilson took to heart the ried church since arriving in the city. As it grew, it became a cornerstone of its neighborhood and stories of activism shared by the church’s ela powerhouse in the gospel-music world—the ders. Reverend Evans, who’s now 92 years old Reverend Evans’s distinctively raspy voice not and retired in 2000, is revered as a civil rights only led the way on some of the church’s most icon in Chicago. He cofounded Jesse Jackson’s beloved songs, such as “I’m Blessed” and “It Is Operation PUSH in 1971, and when Martin LuNo Secret (What God Can Do),” but also became ther King Jr. came to North Lawndale in 1966 to a Sunday-morning staple in black households via energize the Chicago open housing movement, Wilson says, Evans was among the weekly radio and TV broadcasts of few pastors in Chicago who defied the program What a Fellowship Hour.

MUSIC EVERYWHERE: threats from Mayor Richard J. Daley Grammy-nominated gospel singer FOUNDATIONS OF and welcomed the civil rights leader Anita Wilson served as the church’s MUSIC BENEFIT into his church. choir director from 2005 till 2012.

CONCERT WITH RIC WILSON “When King moved here, [Daley] “When I was younger, we used to told all the preachers and pastors go through those doors right there,” Thu 3/22, 6:30 PM, not to let King come speak at their Wilson says, pointing not to the main Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $25, 21+ church,” Wilson explains. “They sanctuary doors but to an entrance tell the story in church all the time. on the other side of the building, to the northwest. “We would park on that side and Daley made sure that the sanctuary we’re in enter through the basement, because after ser- now, that was being built in the 60s, wasn’t finished till the 70s.” vice they would serve food in the basement.”

Black congregations are no longer so reliably Wilson still attends Fellowship Missionary Baptist, though not with the same regularity at the forefront of the struggle for justice, and he used to. When we visit with him, it’s a frigid Wilson thinks that change began when church Tuesday, with no services and just a few people folks backed away from the Black Panthers around. He instructs us to close our eyes and in the late 60s. He knows his history, though, imagine the sounds of the church on a busier and he’s honored to carry on the tradition. In day, guiding us on a tour through his nostalgic 2014 he traveled to Geneva, Switzerland, with vision: Outside, a lady sells cookies and kids a delegation from We Charge Genocide, and slow up their parents by begging for money to they spoke about Chicago police violence at the buy a treat. Inside, before the service, he says, 53rd session of the United Nations Committee “You gon’ hear a black woman probably checking Against Torture.

When Wilson sits in the pews of the church somebody on something they doing that ain’t right. Then you gon’ hear another black woman that Daley couldn’t stop, he sits proudly. “The probably preaching to somebody about what sanctuary we’re in now is like a historic artifact they should be doing, and how you doing, and and, I want to say, a symbol of resistance against somebody asking somebody, how’s your mother, white supremacy and white capitalism and structural racism,” he says. “Because [Reverend how’s your son?”

Wilson jokes about how often he arrived at Evans let] King come here to speak to folks in the church late—before he got inside, he could hear church.” v singing and the sounds of praise coming through the windows and doors. “We start service off with m @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.

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 23

MUSIC Wesley Willis drew this view of the corner of Halsted, North, and Clybourn in 1990, long before the Apple store arrived.

Exploring the long-lost Wesley Willis collection at Quenchers

é JAMIE RAMSAY

By LEOR GALIL

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ast month word got out that Quenchers Saloon, a beer-lover’s pub that straddles the border of Logan Square and Bucktown, was up for sale. Owner Earle Johnson, 75, put the building on the market in November, but word didn’t spread widely till after he placed a big sign above the door. Johnson has owned the place for nearly four decades, and as he recently told Tribune reporter Josh Noel, he doesn’t have the energy to run a bar anymore.

Given the rapid gentrification of Logan Square, neighbors quickly expressed concerns online about the future of Quenchers. Johnson’s current asking price is $1.65 million, and many folks are worried that an opportunistic developer will come up with the money before anyone with their heart set on keeping the character of the place intact. But Johnson says he wants to sell Quenchers to someone who understands its role in the community.

“We’ve got a number of people that would want to keep it very close to what it is, as far as what’s here,” he says. That said, one of my favorite things about Quenchers will leave with Johnson: an original drawing of Quenchers by cult musician and outsider artist Wesley Willis, which hangs in a corner between the restrooms and the cabinet-size sound booth.

Willis was a regular, and Johnson says he started coming the bar a couple years before making the drawing of Quenchers in 1991.

“Most bars need to have somebody that is special in order to give their place character.

We’ve had several over the years—he was one,” Johnson says of Willis. Standing six foot five and weighing more than 300 pounds at the time of his death in 2003, Willis was an outsize

24 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

presence in lots of ways, and he remains part of Quenchers. I’ve cherished his drawing ever since I spotted it a few years ago, in part because I like looking at it while standing in the building it depicts. I also like Willis’s feverish, detailed style, which lets me see a familiar place in a different time—and through the eyes of someone who seemed like a myth when I first learned about him.

Johnson didn’t always appreciate Willis’s art, but he’s come to see its charms. “I regarded his drawing style as kind of primitive, and as I began looking at it, I realized that there’s a lot of precision in these things,” he says. “He would see something and he would create that momentary scene.” In his Quenchers piece, beer signs appear in the bar’s windows (I think I can identify Bass and Heineken), and Johnson says some of them hung there for only a short time. The green awning Willis drew came down sometime in the mid-90s.

The potentially imminent sale of Quenchers spurred me to inquire after the artwork’s fate.

I posted Noel’s story on Twitter, joking that I wanted to buy the Quenchers drawing—and Noel replied to say Johnson had more of Willis’s art. When I reached Johnson, he confirmed that he owned several drawings, and that he’d kept them in the bar’s basement for years. He turned out to own eight more, and he was kind enough to dig up the poster-board pictures to show me and Reader director of

Quenchers owner Earle Johnson é JAMIE RAMSAY

photography Jamie Ramsay. “You’re the first people who’ve seen them—I haven’t even really looked at them for years,” Johnson says.

“I was afraid I’d lost these, because I’d lost track of them and I couldn’t find them. I went looking for them several times. And then when I reorganized the whole basement and categorized everything, I came across them and had a great sense of relief.”

Johnson is a bit of a collector—he made hoarding jokes as he gave Ramsay and me a tour of the Quenchers basement, which is filled with antique beer bottles, broken neon

signs, and a whole lot of other miscellaneous breweriana. “I don’t throw anything away— I’m always thinking that somewhere along the line some of this is gonna be worth something, so I can leave it to my heirs or something,” he says. “I’ve been fortunate; I had all this space. I used to be an accumulator. I’d seek out things, even online. Particularly if people brought things in, I might buy them from them—that sort of thing. People knew that I was in the market for stuff.”

Willis certainly knew. In the 90s he’d haunt the corner of Fullerton and Western, drawing at Genesis Art Supply or eating at the Fullerton Restaurant or Quenchers. “We would negotiate,” Johnson says. “A turkey sandwich, a glass of orange juice, and 20 bucks would buy me a portrait or a picture of some sort—or one of his CDs.” He’s held onto Willis’s CDs too, though he’s only listened to a few of them— Willis’s chintzy looped piano melodies and growled vocals aren’t quite Johnson’s speed.

“He kept saying he was gonna do a song to include Quenchers,” Johnson says, “but I never saw that one.”

Johnson says his relationship with Willis never got terribly deep. “I don’t recall having any extended conversation with him, or having any idea who he was as a person or who he might associate with or any of that kind of thing,” he says. “I was more of an early patron.” Including the Quenchers picture,

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PUDDLES PITY PARTY THIS FRIDAY! MARCH 23 VIC THEATRE Johnson shows off a 1996 Willis drawing of the World Trade Center in New York City. é JAMIE RAMSAY

Johnson bought nine drawings from Willis, all between 1990 and 1998.

A few of Willis’s frequent subjects appear in Johnson’s collection, including Wrigley field, the Dan Ryan Expressway, and downtown Chicago. Two of his depictions of the city skyline from the lake are nearly identical, except that one shares space with an image of Wrigley Field, the other with the U. of C.’s Rockefeller Chapel. One of the most detailed pictures is of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, which Willis drew in 1996 after performing in New York. My favorite is a 1990 drawing of the intersection of Halsted, North, and Clybourn, ages before the Apple store took over the intersection.

Johnson has tinkered with the idea of showing Willis’s art. “It’s something that should be displayed,” he says. “They should be someplace where people can see them.”

He’s considered exhibiting the drawings at Quenchers, but he’s afraid one would go missing. “The security isn’t always the best here,” he says. “We lost a moose head out of here.

It had been on the wall, and we were redoing something—I think it was just sitting on the stage. Somebody took it.”

People can probably take Willis’s drawings, but only if they pay for them. Johnson says he plans to sell off items from his basement separately from the sale of Quenchers.

“I would like to sell them,” he says. But the drawing of Quenchers will stay with him: “I won’t sell my own.”

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CRAZY EX GIRLFRIEND LIVE –April 4-SOLD OUT! • ROB BELL –April 5-SOLD OUT! • “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC – April 6 & 7-SOLD OUT! • TY SEGALL – April 8 - Moved from Riviera Theatre. Tickets purchased honored • JEFF TWEEDY – April 27 & 28 JESSIE WARE –April 30 • STEVEN WILSON – May 1 & 2 • UNKNOWN MORTAL ORCHESTRA –May 3 • THE BREEDERS –May 8 • FLATBUSH ZOMBIES –May 10 • THE BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE –Friday, May 11 ANDREW W.K. –May 12 • ANTHONY JESELNIK –May 13 • SHAKEY GRAVES –May 22-SOLD OUT! • THE KOOKS –May 30-SOLD OUT! • BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE –June 13 • GOMEZ –June 15 & 16 • BELLY –Saturday, Oct. 6

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m @imLeor MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 25

MUSIC IN ROTATION

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.

Yes bassist Chris Squire onstage in South Carolina in 1974 é HUNTER DESPORTES

Solid Freex é KUBLA KHAN

The best country record of all time, according to Adam Luksetich

LUCA CIMARUSTI

HANNA HAZARD Guitarist and singer in Lifestyles and Lil Tits

ADAM LUKSETICH Works for Numero Group, plays in Lifestyles and Foul Tip

Self-Inflicted Aural Nostalgia podcast Jeff Gomez’s yearlong podcasting project is a must-listen for anyone even slightly interested in the music of Guided by Voices. Every two weeks starting this January, he’s breaking down every single full-length by the band, releasing an episode dedicated to each one in chronological order. He’s just now entering the era of the really good shit, so this is a good time to start listening.

Current Wisconsin punk/rock My favorites are Solid Freex, No Hoax, and Platinum Boys. I especially dig Solid Freex, a trio with a badass drummer (from the better-known Trin Tran) and his two sons, one of whom is I think still in high school. The music is everything I want to hear, and my love for it is partly inspired by how I imagine their home life: it’s gotta be great growing up with a talented musician dad who shows you the deepest cuts of rad music and then encourages you to play DIY basement shows after school. If you haven’t heard them, get to it before they blow up.

Steve Hiett, Down on the Road by the Beach Steve Hiett is known more for his fashion photography than for his guitar playing. But in 1983 he recorded his one and only album, Down on the Road by the Beach, released exclusively in Japan on CBS/Sony. You could call it AOR, smooth jazz, or ambient, but to me this perfect summer record sounds like a guitar-pop version of relaxing new age music.

Its shimmering, layered riffs create soft waves of melody. With warmer weather around the corner, this is what I’m listening to in preparation for lying in the sun on the warm sand.

Lou Miami A few years ago I was introduced to Boston glam punk Lou Miami. At first I laughed at the “Dance With Death” video, but the song turned into an earworm—I had fun singing it in a weird, mocking tone. A year or two ago I dove deeper, discovering his rad band, Lou Miami & the Kozmetix. They only toured for a few years in the late 70s and early 80s. Their first single included a cover of “To Sir With Love” by Lulu—one of my all-time favorite songs. Also check out “Ghosts”—you’ll be convinced you’ve heard it before, because it’s amazing.

Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo score A couple months ago I rewatched Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo. I left the theater thinking not about the colorful cinematography, the groundbreaking use of zoom, or James Stewart’s weird voice, but instead obsessing about Bernard Herrmann’s eerily beautiful score.

I’ve revisited this soundtrack an embarrassing number of times since then. It’s darkly romantic, moody, and genuinely haunting.

Reader music listings coordinator

Chris Squire, Fish Out of Water This 1975 solo record by Yes bassist Chris Squire was a $3 bargain-bin find and has spent a whole lot of time on my turntable over the past year. On these largely bass-led songs, Squire is backed

by Yes alums Bill Bruford on drums and Patrick Moraz on organ, and the group walks the line between epic, knotty prog a la Yes and beautiful, orchestral pop. Easily a top-three album in the massive Yes and Yes-adjacent discography. Rest in peace, Chris.

Blink-155 podcast Another podcast that aims to cover a band’s entire career, Blink-155 is an effort by Canadian musicians and writers Sam Sutherland and Josiah Hughes to provide incredibly in-depth analyses of all 155 songs Blink-182 has written and recorded, one song per episode. The episodes are hilarious, with plenty of sarcastic bite, and an astounding amount of thought and research goes into each one. Sutherland and Hughes occasionally welcome guests to the podcast, including Canadian punks such as Mish Way of White Lung and Ben Cook of No Warning and Fucked Up.

26 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

Dolly Parton If you’ve ever heard the saga of Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, you know she’s a deep lover. The fact that she wrote “I Will Always Love You” for Porter, who basically tried to usurp her talent, blows my mind.

She wrote one of the most bitchin’ songs of all time—and growing up, she slept four to a bed with her brothers and sisters and often woke up covered in somebody’s pee. She is a god.

Sanford Clark, They Call Me Country Here’s my hot take: This is best country record of all time. Released in 1968, it has that classic sound and covers all the themes we love in the genre. It’s set apart mainly by the conviction in Sanford’s unique and deadpan baritone voice.

He sings about bar fights, heartache, and drinking till you can’t stand with more feeling than most of his peers. The album is cleverly produced by Lee Hazlewood, and Waylon Jennings provides distorted guitar leads and twangs. So yeah, get real—it’s the best.

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Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of March 22

MUSIC

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THURSDAY22 Exposure Series Featuring Dave Rempis, Tashi Dorji, Luke Stewart, Brandon Lopez, Michael Foster, and Molly Jones. Runs through Mon 3/26. Events at Elastic, Hungry Brain, Experimental Sound Studio, and May Chapel at Rosehill Cemetery. Single tickets and five-day passes available at artful.ly/store/events/14712.

PICK OF THE WEEK

Curtis Harding pours postmodern sounds into vintage soul templates on Face Your Fear é MATTHEW CORREIA

CURTIS HARDING, UN BLONDE

Fri 3/23, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $20, $18 in advance. 18+

SOUL SINGER CURTIS Harding opens his second album Face Your Fear (Anti-) with a wobbly wash of sampled strings that sound as if they were lifted from a 40s pop record before being chopped and looped over a descending, fuzzed-out groove that recalls vintage Bobby Womack. As that song, “Wednesday Morning Atonement,” opens up with a woozy, sorrowful atmosphere and mournful melody, Harding navigates its hooky vocal lines, swooping from his natural rasp into a biting falsetto to convey a range of emotions. The arrangements draw freely on decades of pop music history, and pour those sounds into an old-school soul template; the production balances heaps of strings, synthesizers, and distorted guitars; and the arrangements include elements of rock and pop. But thanks to the gut-punch beauty of his singing, the end result never sounds like a postmodern pastiche.

Dangermouse is behind some of the album’s production work, which explains some of its attractive temporal displacement, but Harding’s melodies, which work their charms slowly and slyly, along with his authoritative command of the material, make the hodgepodge of influences behind it feel peripheral despite the definition they provide. On “Dream Girl” he embraces a slinky groove with slithering synth flutters that sound like an early Bee Gees’ gem before shifting to the feel of mid-70s Marvin Gaye. The midtempo burner “Ghost of You” strolls with acoustic guitar strumming, string swells, and chill cascades of Fender Rhodes licks, with Harding’s vocals fitting snugly into the pocket. Every element of his sound has roots in the past, but the way he assembles it all gives it a vitality that transcends its retro veneer. —PETER MARGASAK

The third installment of this annual event organized by saxophonist Dave Rempis, also the longtime programmer of the Thursday-evening improvisedmusic series at Elastic, shifts gears from its predecessors. In the first two iterations, a single musician (reedists Tony Malaby and Silke Eberhard, respectively) visited the city to engage in workshops and performances with local players. This year Rempis has invited six stylistically diverse musicians from the east coast and midwest, some of whom he worked with on his 2017 Lattice solo project, to participate in ad hoc groupings and workshops with Chicago players. His guests, some familiar here, include versatile guitarist Tashi Dorji from Asheville, North Carolina, and bassists Luke Stewart (the forceful engine in the powerful quintet Irreversible Entanglements) and Brandon Lopez, a muscular player who on the freely improvised The Industry of Entropy (Relative Pitch) helms a woolly quartet with saxophonist Matt Nelson, drummer Gerald Cleaver, and vibist Andria Nicodemou. I’m equally enthused about some of the new faces. Detroit saxophonist Molly Jones has impressed me with the agile postbop on her 2017 septet album Microliths, which features three horn players and three bassists. She’s a strong soloist fluent on soprano and tenor saxophones as well as flute, and she’s just as distinguished as a composer and arranger. Though Jones embraces jazz tradition, Brooklyn saxophonist Michael Foster rejects it, forging a decidedly abstract approach rooted in extended techniques and sonic abstraction. On his duo album with cellist Leila Bordreuil, The Caustic Ballads (Relative Pitch), I frequently have a hard time telling which astringent line comes from which player. While his playing with drummer Ben Bennett on the tape In It (Astral Spirits) cleaves to a more familiar saxophone language, he rarely touches on jazzrooted gestures, instead taking the palette of Albert Ayler from the church into secular space. The lineup also includes Buffalo saxophonist Steve Baczkowski.

—PETER MARGASAK

Stella Donnelly Fauvely and Girl Valley open. 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12, $10 in advance. 21+

Before Australian singer-songwriter Stella Donnelly released her debut EP on cassette last year, she played in an aggressive all-woman band that pulled from punk and thrash metal. That musical background inspired both the name of her EP, Thrush Metal, which Secretly Canadian will reissue on vinyl with a bonus track in June, and the ferocity that smolders beneath its songs’ stripped-down arrangements. Donnelly’s own fierceness is evident in the prescription-strength steeliness of opener “Mechanical Bull,” and it quietly courses through the unvarnished single “Boys Will Be Boys,” on which she denounces those who’ve allowed for a system that punishes victims of sexual abuse to persist. When she raises her voice to a near howl singing “They said, ‘Boys will be boys,’” the anger bubbling beneath her performance delivers extra lashes to those who would charge a rape victim with complicity in her attack for “wearing her shirt so low.” —LEOR GALIL

Lil Skies Verite opens. 7 PM, House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, $22.50-$27.50. b

Pennsylvania rapper Lil Skies likes to talk about his face tattoos, specifically about how his decision to permanently install a small gallery’s worth of art all over his head (and neck) provided him the fuel he required to focus on a career in music—he’s well aware that no conventional workplace would hire a guy who looks like a walking Sailor Jerry billboard. Regardless of whether or not his explanation is in earnest, Skies has found some musical success in music at the moment, which shows on his Atlantic debut, January’s Life of a Dark Rose.

Of all the personalities who have emerged from the ambiguous underground aesthetic known as Soundcloud rap (for lack of a better term), Skies is the most approachable—in no small part because he’s got the most endearing voice this side of Ohio rapper Trippie Redd. But while Trippie leans hard into his screamo and metal influences, which dovetail nicely with the brash elements of Soundcloud rap, Skies’s vocals are sweet, clean, and frictionless. And so Life of a Dark Rose is the least immediately offensive Soundcloud rap album, J Stella Donnelly é EVIE MACKAY

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 27

MUSIC continued from 27

which also makes it the Muzak of Soundcloud rap: its songs can fit on any rap playlist, have a generally pleasant sound, and at worst just seep into the background. The qualities of Skies’s music are a boon in this age of corporate streaming—his whole “mixtape” could litter big-time playlists without ruffling too many feathers—and indeed, Life of a Dark Rose quickly ascended to the top ten on the Billboard 200. That tracks such as the woesome, austere “Red Roses” come equipped with strong hooks is just an added bonus. —LEOR GALIL

FRIDAY23

Exposure Series See Thursday. Runs through Mon 3/26. Events at Elastic, Hungry Brain, Experimental Sound Studio, and May Chapel at Rosehill Cemetery.

Bowlcut Tim Daisy & Josh Berman open.

8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $10. 18+ On Bowlcut’s sizzling debut album, Semaphore (Amalgam), it’s easy to hear the bond that saxophonist Jake Wark, guitarist Matt Murphy, and drummer Bill Harris have formed perform-

28 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

Find more music listings at chicagoreader.com/soundboard.

ing together over the last few years. The group cleaves to improvisation, allowing its deeply interactive attack to direct its proceedings even when employing loose structural devices, moving easily between raucous, abrasive free jazz and cool, harnessed sound sculpture. On “All Toes, Part 1” Harris generates a synthetic low-end vibrato that conjures the sound of a distant helicopter as Murphy spreads out a blanket of long tones embroidered by cool arpeggios and Wark unleashes a precarious balladic improvisation with a striated tone that hovers ominously on the brink of chaos—but the track effectively concludes before they surrender control. They relinquish that sense of measure on other pieces, including the lengthy “Catadramous,” which winds though nearly ten minutes of ebb and flow. As noisy, explosive blowing recedes into hushed friction, Harris skitters across his kit, Wark unfurls astringent yet gently articulated curlicues, and Murphy complements quiet tangles of flickering string scratching with elusive electronic abstractions—only to morph into explicit melody that embraces jazz orthodoxy in its harmonic interplay and shreds it to pieces in rhythmic mayhem. I admire that Bowlcut sometimes adds novel elements such as tapes, electronics, and synthesizer into its mix; the found audio on “Stereo Detective” is distracting, but that’s a minor miscue on an album rich with promise. —PETER MARGASAK

SATURDAY24 Exposure Series See Thursday. Runs through Mon 3/26. Events at Elastic, Hungry Brain, Experimental Sound Studio, and May Chapel at Rosehill Cemetery.

Meshell Ndegeocello See also Monday.

6 and 8:30 PM, the Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park, $28-$48. 21+

Lil Skies é JIMMY FONTAINE

Meshell Ndegeocello is a monster bassist and captivating singer who can mine gold in numerous styles, including funk, soul, electric jazz, pop, and rock. Her versatility once seemed to hold her back—early in her career she rapidly bounced between ideas— but she refined her style as time passed, and now she’s one of the most satisfying, rigorous, and varied artists in contemporary pop music. Ndegeocello’s new album, Ventriloquism (Naïve), carries on her winning streak. Though it’s composed of 11 modern R&B covers, her ability to make each song her own positions her more as a jazz artist than a pop star reflecting on her favorite tracks. Most of the material was originally waxed in the late 80s and early 90s, but instead of the pounding drum machines, plastic synthesizers, or treacly production residue associated with that era she gives them warm, deeply

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MUSIC Harm’s Way é NICHOLAS ADAMS

1800 W. DIVISION

Est.1954 Celebrating over 61 years of service to Chicago!

(773) 486-9862 Come enjoy one of Chicago’s finest beer gardens!

MARCH 22 ...................

AMERICAN TROUBADOUR JANUARY 11..................

FLABBY HOFFMANNIGHT SHOW 8PM FEBRUARY 23 .....MIKE FELTEN WITHAMERICAN MIKE FELTENDRAFT JANUARY 12..................

MARCH 23 ...................

ELECTRIC MEDICINE FEBRUARY 24 .....DARK MEN JANUARY 13..................

DJROOM SKID LICIOUS JIMIJON AMERICA WHITEWOLFSONICPRINCESS MARCH 24 ...................

OFF THE VINEDO9PM JANUARY 14..................

TONY ROSARIO GROUP BITCHIN’ 11:30 PM MOJO 49SEAHORSE JANUARY 17..................

JAMIE WAGNER & FRIENDS

MARCH 25 ...................

LIME MIKE FORESTFELTON JANUARY 18..................

WHOLESOMERADIO DJ NIGHT MAXLIELLIAM ANNA MARCH 26 ...................

RC BIG BIG BAND 7PM7PM FEBRUARY 26 .....RC BAND MARCH 28 ...................

PETERFIRST CASANOVA JANUARY 20..................

WARDQUARTET PROBLEMS MARCH 29 ...................

DANNY FOX DO & JOSHUA QUARTET NICHOLAS MIRANDA JANUARY 21..................

TONY GROUP FEBRUARY 28 .....PETER CASANOVA 8PM MARCH 30 ...................

DJ SKID LICIOUSROSARIO JANUARY 22..................

RC BIG BAND 7PM MARCH 311............SMILIN’ ...................

GUNNELPUMPERS MARCH BOBBY AND THE CLEMTONES JANUARY 24..................

PETER CASONOVA QUARTET THE TELEPATHS APRIL 2........................

PROSPECT FOUR JANUARY 25..................

THE AND WICK MARCH 2............ICE BOX HOUSE APRIL 4........................

JAMIE WAGNER &BIG FRIENDS JANUARY 26..................

THE HEPKATS APRIL 5........................

MR. WIGGLES 8PM SKIPPIN’ ROCK MARCH 3............CHIDITAROD AND TARRINGTON 10PM SMILIN’ BOBBY AND THE CLEMTONES 9PM JANUARY 27..................

STRAY BOLTS APRIL 7........................

STRAYTHE BOLTS MARCH 7............JAMIE WAGNER & FRIENDS JEFF AND MARIO JANUARY 28..................

WHOLESOMERADIO DJ NIGHT STAINS REMREMREM STAINS FEBRUARY 25 .....WHOLESOMERADIO JANUARY 19..................

SITUATION DAVID DJ NIGHT

EVERY TUESDAY (EXCEPT 2ND) AT 8PM OPEN MIC HOSTED BY JIMIJON AMERICA

human readings with lean, sensual arrangements and vocals that convey the essence of their source material without duplicating their often-frothy energy: Al B. Sure’s fizzy “Nite and Day” becomes a breathy act of seduction, the proto G-funk of George Clinton’s 1982 classic “Atomic Dog” is remade with an acoustic guitar into an introspective psychedelic ballad with a churning bottom, and Tina Turner’s AOR smash “Private Dancer” becomes a profound dirge of weightless sophistication and grace. Ndegeocello also tackles Prince’s “Sometimes It Snows in April,” TLC’s “Waterfalls,” and Sade’s “Smooth Operator,” and though she leaves crucial DNA intact, she otherwise reinvents them.

Ndegeocello is a terrific songwriter, but these days no matter what she plays she turns it into something compelling and beautiful. —PETER MARGASAK

SUNDAY25 Exposure Series See Thursday. Runs through Mon 3/26. Events at Elastic, Hungry Brain, Experimental Sound Studio, and May Chapel at Rosehill Cemetery.

Harm’s Way Ringworm, Homewrecker, Vein, Detain, and Ledge open. 5 PM, Subterranean, 2011 W. North, $15. b The progression of Chicago’s Harm’s Way has been interesting to watch. The four-piece band started out in 2006 with the intent of playing short ’n’ fast powerviolence blasts. By their own admission, they weren’t too serious about the band in those early days—in a 2015 interview with Decibel, drummer Chris Mills described performances where singer James Pligge “would put on a mask and sing silly lyrics about beating up frat boys or whatever”—but they soon progressed into a sturdy hardcore outfit.

The last few years have seen the group shift their interests toward various forms of extreme metal, and incorporate moments of death metal, black metal, and pummeling Sepultura-style nu-metal into their punk framework. More recently, the members of Harm’s Way have been seen taking the stage in Godflesh T-shirts, and on their brand-new LP, Posthuman (their first for Metal Blade), they’ve finally fully realized their fascination with the industrial/

postmetal pioneers. Posthuman finds Harm’s Way scarier and more intense than ever. Their crushing guitar tones, punishing drums, and animalistic vocals are frequently augmented with mechanical industrial flourishes, dissonant inhuman wails, and factory-floor rhythms. If the members of Harm’s Way set out to create the ideal soundtrack for anger, frustration, and misanthropy, they’ve certainly succeeded: Posthuman is one of the darkest, heaviest records you’ll hear this year. —LUCA CIMARUSTI

Shanna Gutierrez 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $15, $10 in advance. 18+ As a founding member of Ensemble dal Niente— and in the solo and duo programs she has presented since leaving them—flutist Shanna Gutierrez has consistently championed new music that pushes compositional and performance boundaries. The four pieces she’ll perform tonight include two world premieres and a work being performed in Chicago for the first time, and each one proposes a different role for her instrument. Opening the performance is David Means’s “Berliner Andenken” (1990), which blurs the line between live performance and installation by requiring the flute player to play at a succession of fixed music stands while another musician wreathes squelchy electronic tones around intricate woodwind phrases. The two world premieres follow: Eric Chasalow’s “Ariel Fantasy” (2017) reframes solo instrumental performance as monodrama, a term usually applied to a single opera vocalist relating a melodramatic song sequence.

Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf’s “Atsiminimas” (2016) is a solo piece for bass flute, an instrument Gutierrez favors because of the access it provides to microtones and multiphonic effects. The final piece will be the local debut of Marco Stroppa’s “Little I” (1996), which will showcase Gutierrez’s flute, piccolo, and alto flute dueting with electronic musician Eric Honour. —BILL MEYER

Colter Wall Josh Morningstar opens. 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln, $20, $18 in advance.

18+ For years now, producer Dave Cobb has worked to revive the aesthetic of 70s country—the sometimes dusky, sometimes cosmic sound adopted by J

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 29

bottom lounge ON SALE NOW

UPCOMING SHOWS

03.28 FOZZY

THROUGH FIRE / DARK SKY CHOIR

THE NOISE PRESENTS

03.29 ICED EARTH

Want to play?

MUSIC Shopping é CJ MONK

We’ll teach you how.

SANCTUARY / KILL RITUAL

04.06 ALBERT HAMMOND JR. THE MARIAS

continued from 29

04.07 COAST MODERN BAD BAD HATS / REYNA

04.08 CAPITAL VICES

SPEAKING WITH GHOSTS / ERABELLA

04.11 TURNSTILE

TOUCHE AMORE / CULTURE ABUSE 1833 PRESENTS

04.20 CHROME SPARKS X MACHINEDRUM 04.21 FORTUNATE YOUTH TATANKA / CONCRETE ROOTS

04.22 RED SUN RISING

MOLEHILL / BALLROOM BOXER

LUNAR TIDE FESTIVAL PRE-PARTY

04.26 FREDDY TODD b2b ESSEKS

CHARLESTHEFIRST / TSURUDA / KROMUH

REACT PRESENTS

04.27 DUMBFOUNDEAD 04.28 IAMX 05.05 H2O REACT PRESENTS

05.06 TRICKY 05.09 ALICE GLASS PICTUREPLANE

RIOT FEST PRESENTS

05.11 SMOKING POPES

Browse our class schedules online at

oldtownschool.org

the era’s most rebellious and cantankerous figures, whether outlaw stars or psychedelic singer-poets. Among the records he’s shepherded through the studio process is the 2017 self-titled debut by singer-songwriter Colter Wall, a husky baritone from Saskatoon, Canada. Cobb has given the album an austerity rooted in folk tradition, with no trace of the pop that’s infected so much contemporary country. The arrangement on “Codeine Dreams” adds just enough delicate instrumentation to Wall’s intimate delivery, letting his voice take center stage as he describes blunting a heartbreak with the opioid hallucinations of the title. In some ways Colter Wall feels like a honky-tonk album spun at 16 RPM, its portraits of misunderstood loners, grifters, and tragic heroes moving at a druggy crawl. That lugubrious pace suits the murder ballad “Kate McCannon,” where the narrator goes straight to win a woman’s affection, only to shoot her when he finds her with another lover. Somewhat incongruously, the album also includes a silly skit where somebody playing a radio DJ praises Wall’s music, but the singer is his own best advocate: “Transcendent Ramblin’ Railroad Blues” expresses his existential darkness and restless searching better than any DJ, real or fake, ever could. —PETER MARGASAK

RED CITY RADIO / THE DOPAMINES / KALI MASI

RIOT FEST PRESENTS

05.12 SMOKING POPES

THE MR. T EXPERIENCE / KEPI GHOULIE

05.17 HELMET PRONG

05.18 EMMURE

COUNTERPARTS / KING 810 / VARIALS

RIOT FEST PRESENTS

MONDAY26 Exposure Series See Thursday. Runs through Mon 3/26. Events at Elastic, Hungry Brain, Experimental Sound Studio, and May Chapel at Rosehill Cemetery.

05.19 FU MANCHU MOS GENERATOR

REACT PRESENTS

05.20 BHAD BHABIE ASIAN DOLL

05.31 COMBICHRIST

WEDNESDAY 13 / NIGHT CLUB / PRISON

RIOT FEST PRESENTS

06.01 MAD CADDIES REACT PRESENTS

Meshell Ndegeocello See Saturday. 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston, $28-$75, early show sold out b

WEDNESDAY28

08.18 SPAG HEDDY

Shopping Tyvek and Ganser open. 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, 2100 W. Belmont, $12. 17+

www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

With The Official Body (FatCat), the third album of tuneful, wiry, and crudely funky postpunk from British trio Shopping, the group have maintained their foothold on a sound that’s nearly four decades old

PORN AND CHICKEN

30 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

while sounding more contemporary than on past material. Producer Edwyn Collins—who once covered vaguely similar terrain in his Scottish pop band Orange Juice—expertly accentuates the rudimentary postdisco grooves of drummer Andrew Milk, the rude yet propulsive bass lines of Billy Easter, and the scratchy guitar licks of front woman Rachel Aggs with a straightforwardness that lends the music extra frantic urgency. Over their career, Shopping have slowly but surely developed a greater melodic sophistication and have slightly expanded their timbre, which shows in elements like the needling synthesizers on “Discover.” While Aggs hasn’t abandoned her distinct clipped style of hectoring, she’s never done so more tunefully. On “Asking for a Friend,” which carries traces of early B-52s, she expresses existential dissatisfaction over a galloping beat, and on “Overtime,” which closes the album with a potential emotional release, she answers her own mounting relationship confusion, singing triumphantly, “Think I finally found a way out.” —PETER MARGASAK

Caleborate Oddcouple opens. 8 PM, SPACE, 1245 Chicago Ave., Evanston, $10. b If you ever use Twitter to express your fandom of a famous rapper and have the “good” fortune of said rapper retweeting you, you’ll likely experience the bad fortune of receiving replies meant for the superstar from aspiring MCs thirsty for any inkling of attention. Rap spam is as common and easy to ignore as the ads that eat up space on your favorite website, so it takes a little something special to find your audience by plastering your work in online spaces where it’s generally seen as unwelcome— and 24-year-old Berkley MC Caleb Parker, aka Caleborate, has “it.” A few years ago, Parker began plugging his music in the YouTube comments section for songs and videos by hyperpopular rappers who share his proclivity for emotional vulnerability, including Chance the Rapper and Childish Gambino, and effectively built a following. Parker raps with a conversational friendliness: on October’s Real Person (TBKTR) his lines feel like they’ve been lifted from eye-opening late-night chats with buddies and set to sumptuous, easygoing soul songs.

Older heads may say—and some have said—that Parker harkens back to hip-hop’s golden age, but Real Person reminds me of what it’s like to explore the world in one’s early 20s, with all its joy and anxiety. —LEOR GALIL v

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FOOD & DRINK

ERIS BREWERY AND CIDER HOUSE | $$$ 4240 W. Irving Park 773-943-6200 erischicago.com

Eris Brewery and Cider House é ALAN SHORTALL

RESTAURANT REVIEW

Irving Park’s Eris is a space of supermortal dimensions The food, on the other hand, is Brewpub 101.

By MIKE SULA

N

obody liked Eris, the Greek goddess of strife. That’s why, when her invitation to Peleus and Thetis’s wedding on Mount Olympus got lost in the mail, she crashed it and threw the Golden Apple of Discord into the mix, a present for the hottest goddess at the party. This led to a contest, judged by Paris, to determine the fairest of them all, resulting in—long story short—Aphrodite bribing the lad with the gift of the mortal Helen, queen of Sparta, which of course was the infamous case of human trafficking that started the Trojan War. Worst wedding ever. Thanks, Eris.

Many ages later, Eris is back. She’s taken the form of a brewery and cidery in the 108-yearold Myrtle Masonic Temple, designed by architect Clarence Hatzfeld, who was something of a specialist at building for the Masonry.

But the Masons eventually left. Korean Bethel Presbyterian Church took over. That’s in Palatine now, and it looks like the ancient Greeks have regained a toehold just west of Pulaski, the Kennedy, and the Blue Line, across from the Irving Park YMCA. This has been good news for Irving Parkers, who evidently had been dreaming of worshiping in this space for quite some time.

They started getting excited about it almost four years ago when word snuck out that Michelle Foik, who’s worked at Goose Island and Revolution Brewing, and her business partner, Katy Pizza, were making moves to acquire the building to make and pour ciders and beer—and to open a kitchen.

It’s a magnificent space, consummate for Olympian-style feasting: a cavernous brickand-steel gilded chamber with tall windows, a mezzanine, a second-floor Masonic ceremony room for private parties and sacrifices to the gods, and an as-yet unfinished and unused third floor.

At the moment there are a half-dozen ciders and seven beers made on the premises under the guidance of Hayley Shine, a former brewer for Rock Bottom Brewery, all varied and interesting enough to warrant keeping an eye on the place to see what she comes up with next. In addition to the effervescent dry cider positioned as a crowd-pleaser and called, appropriately enough, Pedestrian, there’s the sweeter, stickier semidry It’s Tricky and the dark-cherry fruit bomb called Blush. And then there are three dry-hopped ciders. Those are made employing the still somewhat suspicious American practice of adding bittering hops to the mix, but there’s nothing aggressive or even untoward about them. On the contrary, they present as the most austere and enjoyable of the lot—even the blueberry Van Van Mojo.

The bridge between the cider and the beer is the Original Snub, a light ale fermented with apple juice that seems the analog to the Pedestrian as a gateway to the heavier, more complex brews, among them two IPAs, a wheat beer, and an ESB (Extra Special Bitter).

With nearly two dozen guest taps, cans, and bottles, there’s enough variety to keep even the most obsessive zymurgy nerds absorbed.

But what to feed them? The kitchen is J

MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 31

FOOD & DRINK

Search the Reader’s online database of thousands of Chicago-area restaurants—and add your own review—at chicagoreader.com/food.

Posole rojo é ALAN SHORTALL

continued from 31 led by chef Jonathan Trubow, a veteran of Mrs. Murphy & Sons Irish Bistro and Chief O’Neill’s, which on its face doesn’t portend a decisive takedown of the cliche that most brewpub food is an afterthought to the liquids.

Indeed, there’s a lot of what you’d expect at a place that needs to traffic in moderately fancy pub food. Snacks: popcorn, nuts, olives, a cheese board, and some bacon, of course.

Then you have your burger, steak frites, mussels (here in cider), and a smattering of global nods like duck tacos, banh mi, and posole.

Come again? Let me say right up front that the posole rojo is the best thing I ate at Eris. I’m sure it would offend some purists, but its broth is at once bright and deeply meaty, loaded with chewy hominy, crunchy cabbage and radishes, and a mound of the cider-braised pork that in two other dishes on the menu presents as dry and stringy but is right at home in this brick-red pool of ancho-powered broth.

The pork is less agreeable on the banh mi, with a roll that while robust provides too little textural contrast and stands up better to packaging a bacon-wrapped Polish sausage with caramelized onions, brown mustard, and pickled vegetables. The burger, too, is one of Eris’s standouts: blanketed in cheddar and bacon jam, it’s simple and substantial even down to its elastic gluten-free bun.

Naturally, many of dishes are cooked or sauced in some way that incorporates Eris’s liquid products, not that you’d necessarily

32 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

notice. Larger plates include a slab of forktender porter-braised short rib with a thin white-bean-and-sausage soup identified as cassoulet and a roasted half chicken with cauliflower puree draped in a jellylike wheat-beer gravy, while a salad of shaved brussels sprouts with cranberries, walnuts, and goat cheese is drizzled with a maple-stout vinaigrette.

That’s one of a number of dishes that are gluten free, as befits a place that largely traffics in cider, and there are concessions to the vegans as well, including a nominal Cobb salad with squash, kale, chickpeas, and lemon-tahini dressing.

On the other hand, sometimes you can’t get enough gluten, which is why the brewery’s Moral Warpitude stout is the appropriate pairing for a heavy lump of chocolate-stout bread pudding drizzled with white- and milk-chocolate ganache and stabbed with a shard of almond bark. An equally dense personal peanut butter pie with a sugary chocolate-cookie crust and caramel sauce is available for supermortal metabolisms, and a lighter apple-cinnamon creme brulee is there for the rest of us.

While the surroundings at Eris are certainly supermortal themselves, the food at present isn’t quite their equal in either ambition or scale. It’s fine, probably just as good as it needs to be to feed a crowd more interested in the drink than in what it goes down with, but food of the gods it’s not. v

m @MikeSula

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○ Watch a video of Brent Balika working with Vegemite in the kitchen—and get the recipe—at chicagoreader.com/food.

FOOD & DRINK

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

BRUNCH SPECIALS! 11:00 - 3:00 Sat/Sun

Not Valid with any other Promo, Discounts, VIPs, etc

Call For Reservation 312-280-8990 Left: Vegemite-marinated duck with pommes fondant and Vegemite-glazed carrots é JULIA THIEL

KEY INGREDIENT

Brent Balika invents a new classic: duck a la Vegemite In which the cuisines of Australia and France unite

By JULIA THIEL

V

egemite, ubiquitous in Australia, its country of origin, is barely known elsewhere. BRENT BALIKA (MARGEAUX BRASSERIE) was aware of the existence of the savory spread, which is made from leftover brewers’ yeast extract and various flavorings, but had never tried it before CHRISTOPHER THOMPSON of CODA DI VOLPE challenged him to cook with it. “It’s straight umami, superintense,” he says. “Like bouillon: superintense savory.”

It’s similar in flavor to the British spread Marmite, and was developed in Melbourne after World War I interrupted British imports, leaving Australia with a Marmite shortage.

Kraft, which has owned Vegemite since the 1930s, has incorporated it into products like Vegemite CheesyBite (Vegemite with cream cheese) and the now-discontinued Vegemite Singles (the same but with Kraft Singles), while Cadbury once released a Vegemite chocolate bar. Mostly, though, Vegemite is eaten on toast with butter.

Balika, however, went with a less classic

preparation. One thing Margeaux Brasserie is known for, he says, is its whole roasted duck, carved tableside. Specifically, the restaurant uses Rohan duck, a crossbreed created by the company D’Artagnan that includes Pekin and mallard, among others. Balika first tried using Vegemite in a rub, but discovered that it would burn during the roasting process. Instead, he combined it with soy sauce, sake lees (the solids left over after sake is made), mandarin orange juice, and honey to make a marinade that he injected into the duck breast. He then let it sit overnight, long enough for the marinade to flavor the meat but not long enough for it to break down the proteins too much, which, he says, causes a mealy texture. After rubbing the duck breast with honey and salt, he roasted it in a 375-degree convection oven for 20 minutes.

While a little Vegemite goes a long way, one application wasn’t enough: Balika also used it for sauteed carrots, combining it with butter that he added to the pan along with honey and mandarin orange juice and zest. “Mixing in sweetness and acidity helped play off the intense quality of Vegemite, tone it down to make it approachable and not overpower everything else,” he says. The final element of the dish was pommes fondant, potatoes cooked in butter, braised in stock, and then seared to a golden brown.

Compared to the more classic duck a l’orange, Balika says, duck a la Vegemite has a deeper umami flavor that “accentuates the richness and iron quality” of the meat. In the carrots, meanwhile, the Vegemite adds an “intense earthy quality that helps accentuate and play off the sweetness. Balance is the key ingredient to the success of any cuisine.”

WHO’S NEXT:

Balika has challenged chef CJ JACOBSON of EMA to create a dish with DRIED SCALLOPS. “I love what it adds to dishes—sweetness, umami, funk,” says Balika. v

m @juliathiel

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MARCH 22, 2018 - CHICAGO READER 33

JOBS

ADMINISTRATIVE DISPATCHER WANTED.

Experience preferred. Basic computer skills are required.

Must know your way around city.

Good pay, benefits and bonuses.

Call Sheri @ 847-864-2828 Monday thru Friday.

SALES & MARKETING TELEMARKETING/ FUNDRAISING/VETERANS

Spring/Memorial Day Campaign.

Part-time, Full-time, Set your own schedule. START TODAY!

Call/text 312-256-5035

food & drink LOOKING FOR LINE COOK.

Must have experience in Italian food.

Apply in person at 6340 N Lincoln Ave, Chicago via Veneto, or send your resume at tbarbanente@aol. com. Evening full-time.

General TRANSUNION, LLC SEEKS Sr.

Analysts for Chicago, IL location to assist in the design, implementation & administration of strategic compensation programs. Master’s in Eco nomics/Applied Economics, Compensation, or Statistics + 2yrs exp. or Bachelor’s in Economics/Applied Economics, Compensation, or Statistics + 5yrs exp. req’d. Req’d Skills: statistical models (pricing simulation & cost/expense calculation models), pricing & data analysis (data gathering, using data for analyses purpose, building/running statistical models using the data, interpreting results, explaining findings to stakeholders), performing industry pricing competitive research, spreadsheets, analyzing sales performance, workload, identifying weaknesses in existing sales strategies, & making recommendations, Business Intelligence (sales data analysis, reporting & visualization), revenue & profitability analyses, general rate increase impact analyses. Send resume to: C. Studniarz, REF: CG, 555 W Adams, Chicago, IL 60661

ACCOUNTING CORE ASSURANCE MANAGER (MULTI POS).

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chicago, IL. Examine acctng recs, docs & tangible equipment of clnts.

Req. Bach’s deg or foreign equiv. in Acctng, Bus Admin or rel. + 5 yrs post-bach’s progressive rel. work exp; OR a Master’s deg or foreign equiv. in Acctng, Bus Admin or rel. + 3 yrs rel. work exp. Must have an active US CPA license or foreign equiv. Travel up to 40% rep. Apply by mail, referencing Job Code IL1668, Attn: HR SSC/Talent Management.

4040 W. Boy Scout Blvd, Tampa, FL 33607

NORTHWESTERN MEMORIAL HEALTHCARE seeks Application

Analysts for Chicago, IL to provide technical knowledge, implementation & support of systems for a large healthcare system. Master’s in Comp Sci/Technology field +3yrs exp OR Bachelor’s in Comp Sci/Technology field +5yrs exp req’d. Skills req’d-2yrs w/ea: Peoplesoft HCM (Core HR); People Tools; People Code; Component Interface; Application Engine; SQR; Integration Broker; XML Publisher. Bkgd check & drug test req’d.

Apply at: http://jobseeker.nm.org/ Requisition ID: 0035001 EOE

Lycée Français de Chicago seeks Director of Primary School, Chicago, IL: Administer, develop & implement K-6 curriculum in French lang. immersion envir. Req. Bach. in Edu. or Edu. Admin. & 2 yrs exp. as Dir. of Primary School, Dir. of Elem. School or rltd. In lieu of BS+2, will accept 4 yrs. exp. Any suitable combo of edu., training, or exp. is acceptable. Also reqs. French fluency.

Send resume to L. Raynaud, 1929 W. Wilson Ave., Chicago, IL 60640 Communications Director: Promote Public Image for organization. Arrange for student internships & collaboration w/US Universities. Prepare select materials for release to media & donors.

Req’d: Bach’s deg in journalism, communications, or rel fld. Resumes to: Kyiv Mohyla Foundation of America, P.O. Box 46009, Chicago, IL 60646.

34 CHICAGO READER | MARCH 22, 2018

Capital One seeks a Software Engineer in Chicago Metro Area, IL (multiple positions available) to perform technical design, development, modification, and implementation of computer applications using existing and emerging technology platforms.

Requires a bach. + 3 yrs. of exp.

Must pass company’s assessment. See full req’s & apply online: https://www.capitalonecareers.co m/ Req # R43429.

PUBLIC

RELATIONS

SPE-

CIALIST for Gibbs & Soell, Inc. dba G&S Business Communications in Chicago, IL coordinate media & public relations for client accts; secure media placements; monitor media outlets; dvlp communications & PR content; coordinate social media content Bachelor’s in Communications or PR + 3 mos exp in job off’d req’dRespond GB/G&S PO Bx 4241 NYC 10163 SOFTWARE EXPEDIA, INC. has openings for Software Development Managers (Job ID#: 728.5030) in

Chicago, Illinois: Analyze business needs to develop strategies designed to optimize system value & leverage development/ support capabilities.

To apply, send resume to: Expedia Recruiting, 333 108th Avenue NE, Bellevue, WA 98004.

Must reference Job ID#.

TOW TRUCK DRIVER wanted.

Full time. Experience necessary and must know how to operate a stick shift and get around. Clean driving record is a must. Good pay, benefits and bonuses. Call Sheri @ 847864-2828

REAL ESTATE RENTALS

STUDIO $500-$599 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

STUDIO $600-$699 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 $700-$899 HYDE PARK Large Studio $795.

Newly decorated, carpeted, appliances, all utilities included, Elevator, laundry facilities, Free credit check, no application fee 773-493-2401 or 312-802-7301

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 2746 E 81ST ST, studio apt, tenant pays electric only, no pets. $475/mo plus 1 mo sec Avail Now! 773-264-3419 CROSSROADS HOTEL SRO SINGLE RMS Private bath, PHONE,

CABLE & MAIDS. 1 Block to Orange Line 5300 S. Pulaski 773-581-1188

Ashland Hotel nice clean rms.

24 hr desk/maid/TV/laundry/air.

Low rates daily/weekly/monthly.

South Side. Call 773-376-5200

1 BR UNDER $700 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

7022 S. SHORE DRIVE Impecca-

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

MIDWAY AREA/63RD KEDZIE Deluxe Studio 1 & 2 BRs. All

modern oak floors, appliances, Security system, on site maint. clean & quiet, Nr. transp. From $445. 773582-1985 (espanol)

1 BR $900-$1099

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; 7520 S. COLES - 1 BR $520, 2 BR $645, Includes appliances & AC, Near transp., No utilities included (708) 424-4216 Kalabich Mgmt

2321-23 OAK PARK Ave. - 1 Bed- $975.00 available immediately.

Tenant pays utilities -. Hrwd. flrs.

Stainless steal appliances, granite countertop, jacuzzy bathroom.

Laundry Facilities Close to transportation and Shopping. For info. call Long-Kogen, Inc. 773 -764-6500.

N RIVERSIDE: 1BR new tile, energy efficient windows, lndry facilitities, a/c, incls heat - natural gas, $955/mo Luis 708-366-5602 lv msg

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT Karibuni Apartments, located at 8200 S. Ellis, Chicago, Illinois, is opening its Waiting List for individuals in need of affordable Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Rental Apartments. Rent calculations are based upon your annual income and income limitations apply in order to qualify for residency. All requests for pre-applications must be completed in person only and will be accepted at: Karibuni Apartments 8200 S. Ellis Chicago, Illinois 60619 10:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. Thursday, March 29, 2018

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT Leland Apartments, located at 1207 W. Leland Ave., Chicago, Illinois, is opening its Waiting List for individuals in need of affordable Single NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios Room Occupancy (SRO) and starting at $580. No sec dep, move LARGE ONE BEDROOM near Loyola Park, 1341 W. Estes. Hard- Studio apartments. Income in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot limitations apply in order to wood floors. Cats OK. $975/month. water. 1155 W. 83rd St., Heat included. Available 5/1. 773-761- qualify for residency. All re773-619-0204 quests for pre-applications 4318. must be completed in person NEWLY REMOD 1BR & Studios only and will be accepted at: 1BR nr Elston & Milwaukee, starting at $580. No sec dep, move Leland Apartments Newly Remod, all new appls, in fee or app fee. Free heat/hot 1207 W. Leland all hdwd flrs. $900/mo heat water. 1155 W. 83rd St., Chicago, Illinois 60640 incl.

773-619-0204 9:00 A.M. to 2:30 P.M. Call 847-370-9777 Mon., March 26 and April 9, CLEAN ROOM W/FRIDGE & 2018 micro, Near Oak Park, Food -4BR OTHER Less, Walmart, Walgreens, Buses PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT & Metra, Laundry. $115/wk & up.

Mae Suites Apartments – 148 PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT 773-637-5957 N. Mayfield, Chicago, Illinois, Los Vecinos Apartments, lois opening its Waiting List for CHICAGO NEAR 80TH & Ingle- cated at 4250 W. North Aveindividuals in need of affordnue, Chicago, Illinois, is side. Newly rehab, 1 BR, large LR, able Studio apartments. Inopening its federally subsinew kit, carpeted. $600. no sec, come limitations apply in ordized Section8 Waiting List heat included. 708-921-9506 der to qualify for residency. for individuals in need of afAll requests for prefordable Single Room Occu7425 S. COLES - 1 BR $620, 2 applications must be compancy (SRO) Rental ApartBR $735, Includes Free heat & applipleted in person only and will ances & cooking gas. (708) 424-4216 ments. Rent calculations are be accepted at: based upon your annual inKalabich Mgmt Mae Suites Apartments come and income limitations 148 S. Mayfield apply in order to qualify for 6930 S. SOUTH SHORE DRIVE Chicago, Illinois 60644 residency. All requests for Studios & 1BR, INCL. Heat, Elec, Cking 10:00 AM – 2:00 PM pre-applications must be gas & PARKING, $585-$925, Country March 29th and April 5th, completed in person only Club Apts 773-752-2200 2018 and will be accepted at: Los Vecinos Apartments Chicago - Hyde PARK PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT 4250 W. North Avenue 5401 S. Ellis.

San Miguel Apartments, loChicago, Illinois 60639 1BR. $625/mo. cated at 907 W. Argyle, Chi10:00 AM – 2:00 PM. Call 773-955-5106 cago, Illinois, is opening its March 26th and April 4th, Waiting List for individuals in 2018 CHATHAM - 7105 S. Champlain, need of affordable Studio, 1 1BR. $640/mo. Sec 8 OK. bedroom and 2 bedroom PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT Heat & appl. Call Office: 773-966apartments. Income limitaHollywood House Apart5275 or Steve: 773-936-4749 tions apply in order to qualiments, located at 5700 N. fy for residency. All requests Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IlliCHATHAM 8642 SOUTH for pre-applications must be nois; a senior living communMaryland 1BR, modern with completed in person only ity, is opening its Waiting appliances, off street parking. and will be accepted at: List for individuals in need of $600/mo + sec. 773-618-2231 San Miguel Apartments affordable Studio and 907 W. Argyle St. 1Bedroom apartments. InChicago, Illinois 60640 Newly updated, clean furnished come limitations apply in orrooms in Joliet, near buses & Metra, 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM der to qualify for residency. elevator. Utilities included, $91/wk.

April 2nd and 3rd, 2018 All requests for pre$395/mo. 815-722-1212 applications must be comAPTS. FOR RENT pleted in person only and will NICE ROOM w/stove, fridge & PARK MGMT be accepted at: bath Near Aldi, Walgreens, Beach, & INV. Ltd. Hollywood House ApartRed Line & Buses. Elevator & LaunHot Summer Is Here ments dry. $133/wk & up. 773-275-4442 Cool Off In The Pool 5700 N. Sheridan Rd OUR UNITS INCLUDE Chicago, Illinois 60660 BIG ROOM with stove, fridge, bath & HEAT, HW & CG 9:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M. nice wood floors. Near Red Line & Plenty of parking April 3RD and 10TH, 2018 Buses. Elevator & Laundry, Shopping.

1Bdr From $795.00 $121/wk + up. 773-561-4970 2Bdr From $925.00 SUBURBS, RENT TO OW N! 3 Bdr/2 Full Bath Buy with No closing costs and get From $1200 Irving/Kimball 2BR new tile, laun- help with your credit. Call 708dry facilities, energy efficient win- 868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com **1-(773)-476-6000** dows, central heat/ac, $999/mo Call Luis 708-366-5602, lv msg

1

NO SEC DEP

7801 S. Bishop. 2BR. $605/mo.

HEAT INCL 773-955-5106

GENERAL

GENERAL

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT Parkway Apartments, located at 712 W. Diversey, Chicago, Illinois, is opening its Waiting List for individuals in need of affordable Studio and 1 Bedroom apartments.

Income limitations apply in order to qualify for residency. All requests for preapplications must be completed in person only and will be accepted at: 712 W. Diversey Parkway Chicago, Illinois 60614 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM April 2nd and 3rd, 2018 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 ∫

CHICAGO, NEWLY DECORATED 2BR Apartment, hardwood floors, blinds, $650/mo.

Call 773-617-2909 BRONZEVILLE SEC 8 OK! 4950 S. Prairie. Remod 1BR. $700+.

Heat, cooking gas & appls inc, lndry on site. Z. 773.406.4841 700 BLK OF E. 92ND PL. 1st flr,

2 sm BR. LR. DR, Kit, appls, semi furn, heat & utils not incl. No Pets. $650/mo +sec. 773-874-2103

2 BR $900-$1099 1233 S. AVERS., newly constructed bldng, 2BR, handicap accessible, SS appls., tenant pays utils. $1050/mo.

Section 8 ok. 773-895-2541

QUIET BLOCK IN south side spa-

cious 2 or 3 bedrm 1st floor. $1000 including heat. section8 ready. new floor call 312-771-3236 CHICAGO, 7944 S. Clyde. 1st floor, 2BR, 1BA, all hardwood floors, newly remodeled kitchen, $1 000/mo. Call 773-614-9876

CALUMET CITY 2-3BR, 2 car gar, fully rehab w/ gorgeous finishes & hdwd flrs. Beautiful bkyd.

Sec 8 ok. $900-$1150. 510-735-7171

2 BR $1100-$1299

6748 CRANDON & 7727 COLFAX MOST BEAUTIFUL APARTMENTS! 1 & 2BR, $625 & UP. OFF STREET PARKING. 773-947-8572 / 312-6134424 HUGE CHATHAM 900 SF, 1BR, 1BA, newly remod,

spac, dining and LR, quiet blk & bldg, nr trans & shops. Won’t Last.

Section 8 Welc. Call 312-519-9771

CHICAGO - BEVERLY, large studio, 1 & 2BR Apts. Carpet, A/ C, laundry, near transportation, $680-$1020/mo. Call 773-2334939 CHICAGO, RENT TO OWN! Buy with no closing costs and get help with your credit. Call 708868-2422 or visit www.nhba.com

2 BR UNDER $900 2BR $895 ALL UTILITIES INCLUDED

Newly decorated, carpeted, stove, refrigerator, dining room. Elevator & laundry facilities. FREE credit check, no application fee.

1-773-919-7102 or 312-802-730 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 773-287-9999; W-side locations Tom 630-776-5556 SECTION 8 WELCOME Newly Decorated.

74TH/East End 2BR. Hdwd flrs, Heat Incl. $775.

773-874-9637 or 773-493-5359

GENERAL

2402 NEW ENGLAND - 2 bed, 1 bath $1,175 p/m. Heated. Available now. New Flooring, granite counter top, mirror closet doors, modern bath, laundry facilities, near trans. & shopping. For info. call LongKogen, Inc. 773-764-6500 X 0.

ROGERS PARK, 1547 W. Birch-

wood (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. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 718 W 81st St, 5BR, 2BA house, appls incl., $1300/mo. 708-288-4510

GENERAL

1 BR $700-$799 BLUE ISLAND - Large 1BR, fireplace, liv rm, carpet, new decor, appls ,din. rm, nr metra & pace, ten. heated, $725mo+ sec, Vic 125th & Western 773-238-7203

1 BR $800-$899 HUMBOLDT PARK. 1 & 2 BEDROOM apartments for rent. Newly remodeled. Next door to food store. $880/mo plus security deposit. Includes gas. Near shopping area. Tim, 773-592-2989.

UPTOWN,

813 WEST MONTROSE (at Clarendon Ave.) Small 1 bedroom carpeted apartment 2 blocks from lake. $875.00 Heat Included. Call EJM at 773-935-4425 CHATHAM 80TH /VERNON. Lrg 1 & 2BR, appls, heat incl, secure bldg, LR, DR. nr shops & red line. $800-$900/mo. 773-846-4077

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, Wednesday & Thursday

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

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SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 710 W 81st Place, 3BR house, appls include. $1200/mo. 708-288-4510

SOUTH SIDE. Newly Remod 3BR

SECTION 8 WELCOME. NO SECURITY DEPOSIT. 6717 S. Rhodes, 5BR, 2BA house, appls included. $1300/ mo. 708-288-4510

SECTION 8 WELCOME. No Security Deposit. 7721 S Peoria, 3BR apt, appls incl. $1050/mo.

708-288-4510

2 BR $1500 AND

3 BR OR MORE $1200-$1499

OVER

EAST LOGAN: 2BR + den/1BA. Remodeled 2nd floor unit; new kitchen w/SS appliances, updated bath, new hardwood floors, freshly painted. laundry in building, EZ parking, CAC, separate utilities. No smoking. No pets. $1500/mo + $1500 security deposit. Available May 1. Call 773-879-2430

LOGAN SQUARE GRAYSTONE #2 1917 N Kedzie. 2 bedroom + Den. C.A, no dogs. Upscale Kitchen, great closets. 1,750 mo. cell 312 343 0804, 773 227 5549

units, w/ security cameras, maint on site, sec 8 ok. $900$1300/mo. no dep. 773-544-5377.

5900 W & 300 N. 1/2 block from G reenline & Oak Park. Renovated

3BR, sanded floors, heat incl. $1200/mo + sec deposit. Call 773626-8993 or 773-653-6538 AVAILABLE NOW! 11728 S. Harvard, well maintainted 3BR, 1BA, basement, fenced in backyard, $1 225/mo. 630-240-1684

3 BR OR MORE $1500-$1799

2 BR OTHER

GARY NSA ACCEPTING applications for SECTION 8 STUDIO UNITS ONLY. Apply Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10am to 2pm ONLY at 1735 W 5th Ave. Applications are to be filled out on site. Adult applicants must provide a current picture ID and SS card.

3 BR OR MORE 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: 773-287-9999; W-side locations: Tom 630-776-5556

Austin Area, 2, 3 & 4BR apts avail close to trans, updated kit & BA, w/d hookup, no pets, $875-$1550+ util. & sec. 708265-3611 SAUK VILLAGE - Cute, 3BR, 2BA, extra BR in bsmt, stove & fridge incl. $1350/mo. 1.5 month’s sec dep. Sect 8 pref. 708-307-5003

BLUE ISLAND, Beautiful townhome, 2BR, 2.5BA, hdwd floors, appls, garage, overlooking golfcourse. Section 8 ok. Call 773344-4050

Austin Area, 5BR, 2BA, newly remod. BA & kitchen, hdwd flrs, resp for lawn maint. No pets $1650+ utils & sec. 708-265-3611

PARK FOREST NEWLY

8037 S. HOUSTON, 4BR, hrdwd flrs, lndry. 2nd flr, Sec. 8 ok. 3 or 2 BR Voucher ok. Call 847-312-5643.

decorated, 1BR, 1BA, Bsmt, All appls, private parking, sec 8 OK. $725/mo.

773-344-8801

GENERAL

CHATHAM 88TH/DAUPHIN. Bright, spacious 2BR. Great trans, laundry on site, security camera. 312-341-1950

WEST PULLMAN AREA 122nd/ Michigan, 1BR, 2.5 room apt. $550/mo + 1.5 mo sec. Heat and appls Included. 773-660-0515 NEAR BEVERLY Huge 2BR on 1st floor. Sect 8 welcome. Call 312.806.1080.

3 BR OR MORE UNDER $1200 NEWLY

REMODELED

3BR,

1BA, hardwood flooring apt. for rent.

6643 S. Drexel, $1000/mo. CHA welcome 1, 2 or 3BR voucher. 773-8588787

CHICAGO, 4200 BLOCK G R E N S H A W , studio bsmt Apt, newly decorated, utils incl., $725/mo + $725 sec dep. Call 773-785-5174

JEFFERSON PARK APT. lo-

3 BR OR MORE $1800-$2499

OLYMPIA FIELDS Newly remodeled 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath house, full basement. Beautiful area. 708-935-7557.

flr, Cent A/C, hdwd flrs. W/D, stove & fridge incl. $1075/mo.

No Move-in Fee. 708-692-9177

ADULT SERVICES

roommates I AM LOOKING FOR A ROOM FOR RENT NW Side Chicago.

Willing to pay up $450/mo, Exchange for Care Taking, House Cleaning or Babysitting. 773-4867355 SOUTH SHORE, Senior Discount. Male preferred.

Furnished rooms, shared kitchen & bath, $440/mo. & up. Utilities included. 773-710-5431 AUSTIN & MARQUETTE PARK AREAS, furnished rooms with use of hsehld. $115 per week, 1 week security. Bkgrnd check req’d. 773378-7763 CHICAGO 55TH & Halsted, male pref. Room for rent, share furnished apt, free utils, $ 440/mo.

No security. 773-614-8252

SOUTHSIDE - 55TH & Ashland,

GOODS

FOR DIABETICS AND pre-dia-

dining room, spacious living room, 1.5 baths, many closets, near transportation, $1500 includes heat. Available May 1. Marty 773-784-0763.

1500 Block of S Kostner , 2nd fl, 3BR, close to pink CTA line. newly renov, new carpet & C-fan $1050. Sec 8 OK 312-818-0236

7824 S. CHAMPLAIN. 3BR, 1st

units fully heated and humidity controlled with ac available. North: Knox Avenue.

773-685-6868.

South: Pershing Avenue. 773-523-6868.

MARKETPLACE

cated nearJefferson Park Metra and Blue Line stations and I -90 exp and O’Hare. 3 br, 1 1/2 baths, hard wood floors, stainless steel appliances.

Shared laundry and easy street parking. No pets, no smoking.Utilities by renter. Background check required.

Available May 1. Rent $1500 BUDLONG WOODS, 5500N/ 2600W. Three bedrooms, full

CHICAGO, 106TH & STATE, recently rehabbed, 3BR, $70 0/mo., heat included. Proof of income & references required. 773-291-0815

Newly renovated 3BR, 1BA. $1197/mo. Section 8 Welcome.

Ask for Ronnie. 773-544-2114

SELF-STORAGE CENTERS. T W O locations to serve you. All

Clean Rooms, use of kitchen and bath. Available Now. Call 773-434-4046

LARGE 3 BEDROOM apartment near Wrigley Field. 3820 N. Fremont.

Two bathrooms. Hardwood Floors.

Cats OK. $2175/month. Special!

Sign a lease starting by April 1, get May rent free! Available 4/1. 773761-4318.

55TH & S. PERRY.

non-residential 2 MONTHS FREE RENT! 5437 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL 60625.

1600 S.F. Please call 312-927-1522, 7 rooms previously an optical.

Prime spot for doctors office, chiropractor, dentist or optical.

Across from 20th Chicago Police Department.

3 BR OR MORE $2500 AND OVER MONEE 1.5 ACRE,1 level,

3000SF, 4BR, 3BA, full bsmt, 3 car attached garage, fireplace. $2500/mo + sec. 708-243-7628

ADULT SERVICES

WELCOME HOME!!! 1,2 and 4

bedroom units available in the new city area starting at $650 per month!

Apply today! (773) 559-9700 phoenixproperty5250@gmail.com NEW KITCHENS & NEW BATHROOMS. 69th & Dante, 3BR. 71st & Bennett, 2, 3 & 4BR. We have others! Section 8 Welcome.

708-5031366

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

FOR SALE WEST CHESTERFIELD Neighborhood: 5BR, 2.5BA brick house for sale, rear sunporch, $125,000.

Call 630-715-6373

ADULT SERVICES

betics, try to lower your blood sugar naturally just by drinking cups of tea from one tea of Special Wonder Tea daily. Most people lower their blood sugar by about 15% in a few weeks or months. Pricing, 1 box of 30 tea bags, $ 5.99, 2 boxes -for$ 11.50 ( Save $ 0.50 ), 4 boxes for $ 22 ( Save $ 2 ), 8 boxes for $ 45 ( save $ 3, 12 boxes for $ 68 ( Save $ 4 ). Add $ 1 shipping for orders of 1 to 2 box orders only. Zero shipping for other orders. Send Check or MO to AR Company, P.O. Box 1724, Arlington Hts., IL 60005. Credit Card orders go to a-r-co-ltd-shopify.com

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

{ { R U YO AD E R HE

REACH OVER 1 MILLION PEOPLE MONTHLY IN PRINT & DIGITAL.

HEALTH & WELLNESS FULL BODY MASSAGE. hotel, house calls welcome $90

special. Russian, Polish, Ukrainain girls. Northbrook and Schaumburg locations. 10% discount for new customers. Please call 773-407-7025

ADULT SERVICES

CONTACT US TODAY! | 312-222-6920

pleaserecycle this paper MARCH 22, 2018 | CHICAGO READER 35

REAL PEOPLE REAL DESIRE REAL FUN.

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1 MILLION

PEOPLE MONTHLY IN PRINT & DIGITAL.

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STRAIGHT DOPE

By Cecil Adams Q : Football players’ concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy have been in the news a lot. Do woodpeckers, banging their beaks against trees, sustain such brain trauma? How about bighorn sheep? —NANCY

SLUG SIGNORINO

{ { YO U R AD HERE

More Local Numbers: 1-800-926-6000

CONTACT US TODAY!

SMOKEYBEAR.COM

36 CHICAGO READER - MARCH 22, 2018

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Only YOU Can Prevent Wildfires.

312-222-6920

NATIONAL A SS

Ahora español Livelinks.com 18+

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U N D E D 192

0

A : It’s true there’s a serious need to address

CTE, a punishing degenerative brain disease that looks to be endemic among former pro football players, and may be a cause for worry in soccer and hockey as well. So naturally one might wonder about species that engage in regular headbanging and seem no worse for wear. Woodpeckers show a number of anatomical adaptations that help distribute the energy of repeated high-intensity impact.

But from a sports-medicine perspective their big innovation may turn out to involve their extralong tongues.

As you’re aware, Nancy, the woodpecker makes its living by pounding its chisellike beak into trees (20 times a second, maybe 12,000 reps a day), then extracting whatever chow is thus exposed. This is where the extralong tongue comes in, variously adapted depending on the species to probe deep crevices in the wood and haul up bugs, grubs, sap, etc.

Now, if you’re a bird with a tongue several times the length of your bill, where’s it supposed to go when you’re not using it? All vertebrates have an arrangement of bone and cartilage below the upper jaw to support the tongue, called the hyoid apparatus.

With woodpeckers, a notably elaborate hyoid setup lets the tongue retract behind and up over the top of the skull, in some species all the way to the bird’s nostrils. At rest, a woodpecker’s tongue is basically wrapped around its cranium.

And seemingly this protects its brain as it hammers away. The hyoid apparatus allows the whole thing to act as a kind of combination shock absorber and seat belt. But— and perhaps crucially—the muscle called the omohyoid also gently constricts the jugular vein while the woodpecker is feeding. This reduces outflow of blood from the brain, causing the blood vessels surrounding it to expand and create what sports-medicine researcher Gregory Myer calls the “bubble-wrap effect.” Bighorn sheep, known for their head butting, may achieve the same result via hollow cores in their horns that are connected to their respiratory tracts.

In contact sports, extra brain cushioning is what we need. Our skull doesn’t snugly encase the brain—that would transfer too much impact shock. Instead the brain sits suspended in fluid, and violent jolts cause it to smack against the inside of the skull.

Called “brain slosh” by concussion experts, this is the phenomenon that, repeated over time, leads to CTE. That’s not something even high-quality helmets can prevent. Additional armoring protects against fracture, but does little more.

If we could bump up the blood level in athletes’ brains, though, and tighten up their cranial fit, maybe they’d get the bubble-wrap benefit too. But assuming the premise is right, how can football players get more blood into the old cranial vasculature? Moving to higher altitude might help: the oxygen-poor environment leads the body to compensate with increased blood flow to the brain, possibly making for a tighter fit in the skull. Myer found that NFL games held in stadiums at 644 feet above sea level and up showed 30 percent less “total concussion incidence.”

We can’t play all our football in Denver, though. So what then?

Maybe just stop playing football? Don’t be ridiculous!, America bellows.

OK, then it might be time to put the players in a very gentle chokehold. One device now under FDA review is called the Q-Collar: it applies a bit of woodpecker-hyoid-style pressure to the jugular vein, increasing blood volume in the brain by a single teaspoon— no more than what happens when you yawn, bloodwise, but ideally providing enough cushioning to reduce injury. The collar has shown early promise, though there are understandable concerns about any solution involving chronic vein compression, which can lead to dangerous clotting. If it pans out, though, we may have a rare case where a swollen head is an asset rather than a liability. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 30 N. Racine, suite 300, Chicago 60607.

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SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

Asexuality: it’s really a thing

But who counts as asexual?

Q : I’m a 26-year-old cis

queer woman. My best friend has identified publicly as asexual for the past two years. She constantly talks about how since she doesn’t “need” sex, this means she is asexual. She does have sex, however, and she enjoys it, which I know isn’t disqualifying. But she also actively seeks out sex partners and sex. But, again, she insists that because she doesn’t “need” sex the way she presumes the rest of us do, she is asexual. I have an issue with this. I’ve never had partnered sex and never really felt the need or desire for it. I’m plenty happy with emotional intimacy from others and masturbation for my sexual needs, and I do not particularly desire a romantic or sexual partner.

My friend gets offended if anyone questions her label, which occurs often in our friend group as people try to understand her situation. I usually defend her to others since she’s my friend, but as a person who is starting to identify more and more as asexual, I’ve grown annoyed at her use of “asexual” as her identifier, to the point that this may be starting to affect our friendship. I’ve kept silent because I don’t want to make her feel attacked— but in the privacy of my own head, I’m calling bullshit on her asexuality. I don’t particularly want to come out as asexual to her, given the circumstances. Am I just being a shitty gatekeeping asexual? Do I need to just accept that labels are only as useful as we make them and let this go? —ACTUALLY

COITUS EVADING

A : Asexuality—it’s a real

thing.

“Several population-level studies have now found that about 1 percent of individu-

als report not feeling sexual attraction to another person—ever,” psychologist Lori Brotto writes in the Globe and Mail. Brotto has extensively studied asexuality, and the data supports the conclusion that asexuality is a sexual orientation on par with heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality. “[Asexuality] is not celibacy, which is the conscious choice to not have sex even though sexual desires may endure,” Brotto writes. “Rather, for these individuals, there is no inherent wish for or desire for sex, and there never has been. They are asexuals, though many prefer to go by the endearing term ‘aces.’”

Asexuality—it’s a point on a spectrum, and it’s a spectrum unto itself.

“There is a spectrum of sexuality, with sexual and asexual as the endpoints and a gray area in between,” says the FAQ at the Asexual Visibility and Education Network website (asexuality. org). “Many people identify in this gray area under the identity of ‘gray-asexual’ or ‘gray-a.’ Examples of gray-asexuality include an individual who does not normally experience sexual attraction but does experience it sometimes; experiences sexual attraction but has a low sex drive; experiences sexual attraction and drive but not strongly enough to want to act on them; and/or can enjoy and desire sex but only under very limited and specific circumstances. Even more, many gray asexuals still identify as asexual because they may find it easier to explain, especially if the few instances in which they felt sexual attraction were brief and fleeting. Furthermore, [some] asexual people in relationships might choose or even want to have sex

with their partner as a way of showing affection, and they might even enjoy it.

Others may want to have sex in order to have children, or to satisfy a curiosity, or for other reasons.”

As for your friend, ACE, well, according to the Protocols of the Elders of Tumblr, we’re no longer allowed to express doubt about someone’s professed sexual orientation or gender identity.

A person doesn’t have to be celibate to be asexual or to identify as asexual, ACE, and until there’s an asexual accreditation agency—which there never will be and never should be—we’ll just have to take your friend’s word for it.

But just as asexuality is a thing, ACE, so too is bullshit. Denial is a thing, and sex shame is an incredibly destructive thing. It’s possible that, like the guy who has a lot of gay sex but refuses to identify as gay or bi, your friend is just a messy closet case—a closeted sexual, someone who wants sex but doesn’t want to be seen as the kind of person who wants sex since only bad people want sex. Some people twist themselves into the oddest knots so they can have what they want without having to admit they want it. But even if it sounds to you (and me) like your friend’s label is suspect, you should nevertheless hold your tongue and allow her to identify however she likes.

Ask questions, sure, but challenging her label will only damage your relationship (or further damage it) and make you feel like a closeted, gatekeeping ace. v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. m @fakedansavage

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Animal Collective, Lonnie Holley 7/27, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM b Carpenter Brut, Jean Jean 4/26, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Company of Thieves 5/11, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Shemekia Copeland 6/7, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 3/23, 11 AM Dick Dale 8/10, 7:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Demilich 5/6, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Emmure, Counterparts, King 810 5/18, 6 PM, Bottom Lounge b Bill Frisell Trio 6/8, 8 PM, Maurer Hall, Old Town School of Folk Music, on sale Fri 3/23, 8 AM b Bebel Gilberto 7/26, 7 and 9:30 PM, SPACE, Evanston, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM b Godsmack, Shinedown 7/27, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM Gov’t Mule, Avett Brothers 8/24, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Fri 3/23, noon Iguanas 6/16, 9 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 3/23, 11 AM Kansas 10/13, 7:30 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM Lollapalooza 8/2-5, Grant Park Mainland 5/11, 10:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Jesse Marchant 5/29, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle The Matches 7/14, 7 PM, Metro, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM b Edwin McCain 6/20, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 3/22, noon b

Megative 5/1, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Lucia Micarelli 10/12, 7:30 PM, Park West, 18+ Raelyn Nelson Band 6/22, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Occult Burial 5/25, 8 PM, Reggie’s Music Joint Old Crow Medicine Show 6/27-28, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM, 17+ Peach Kelli Pop 6/18, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle F Liz Phair 6/9, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM Pharmakon 5/9, 9 PM, Hideout Joe Purdy 6/8, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 3/22, noon b Quintron’s Weather Warlock 5/22, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Shabazz Palaces 5/11, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Slightly Stoopid, Stick Figure, Pepper 8/12, 6 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM Stereophonics 9/11, 7:30 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 3/23, 11 AM, 18+ Al Stewart 6/4-5, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 3/22, noon b Geoff Tate 6/10, 8 PM, House of Blues, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM, 17+ Alexis Taylor 6/14, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 3/23, 8:30 PM Ulan Bator 6/17, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Craig Wedren 7/14, 8 PM, Beat Kitchen, on sale Fri 3/23, 10 AM, 18+ Cindy Wilson 3/29, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen Zion & Lennox 4/22, 7:30 PM, Rosemont Theater, Rosemont Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson 7/15, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park, on sale Sat 3/24, 10 AM

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UPDATED Jay-Z & Beyonce 8/10-11, 7:30 PM, Soldier Field, 8/10 sold out, 8/11 added, on sale Mon 3/26, 10 AM Princess Nokia 4/29, 7 PM, Metro, rescheduled from 3/24 b

UPCOMING Alt-J 6/7, 8 PM, Huntington Bank Pavilion American Aquarium 5/28, 8 PM, City Winery b Apocalypse Hoboken 7/13-14, 7:30 PM, Chop Shop, 18+ Avenged Sevenfold, Prophets of Rage 8/11, 8 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park Beams 4/13, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Bing & Ruth 5/11, 8:30 PM, Constellation, 18+ Black Moth Super Rainbow 6/16, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Terry Bozzio 9/18, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Breeders, Melkbelly 5/8, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Julie Byrne 3/31, 8:30 PM, Bohemian National Cemetery Cactus Blossoms 4/29, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall Calexico 4/25, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Cloakroom 4/7, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Paula Cole 6/22, 8 PM, City Winery b Combichrist 5/31, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Christopher Cross 3/31-4/1, 8 PM, City Winery b Cultura Profetica 5/26, 9 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Depeche Mode 6/1, 7:30 PM, United Center

b Dr. Dog 5/5, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Echosmith 4/14, 8:30 PM, Metro b Kat Edmonson 5/15, 8 PM, City Winery b Erasure 7/28, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Escape-ism 4/22, 9 PM, Hideout Faith Healer 4/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Brian Fallon & the Howling Weather 4/19, 8 PM, House of Blues, 17+ Eleanor Friedberger 5/5, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, 18+ Frigs 4/4, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Froggy Fresh 4/28, 6:30 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club b Fruit Bats, Vetiver 4/13, 7 and 10 PM, Schubas Grendel 5/11, 8 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Albert Hammond Jr. 4/6, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Helmet, Prong 5/17, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Hoods 5/5, 6:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Hop Along 6/10, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Iamx 4/28, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Iced Earth 3/29, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Integrity 4/6, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 18+ Al Jardine 4/2, 8 PM, City Winery b Jimmy Eat World, Hotelier 5/8, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Zoe Keating 5/6, 7:30 PM, Thalia Hall b Kindred the Family Soul 12/29, 8 PM, Portage Theater King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 6/10, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b King Krule 4/27, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ La Luz, Gymshorts 5/31, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Lawrence Arms, Banner Pilot 4/12, 8 PM, Metro, 18+ Low Anthem 3/30, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Jeff Lynne’s ELO 8/15, 8 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont The Make-Up 7/6, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Melvins 7/31, 7:30 PM, Park West b Messthetics 5/5, 9 PM, Hideout Ministry, Chelsea Wolfe 4/7, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Mipso 5/19, 9:30 PM, Lincoln Hall Kevin Morby 4/28, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ No Age 5/10, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Obituary, Pallbearer, Skeletonwitch 5/13, 7 PM, Metro, 18+ Omni 5/9, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Ozzy Osbourne, Stone Sour 9/21, 7:30 PM, Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre, Tinley Park

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Alan Parsons Project 6/5, 7:30 PM, Copernicus Center b Poison, Cheap Trick 6/9, 7 PM, Hollywood Casino Ampitheatre, Tinley Park Ed Schrader’s Music Beat 4/8, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Sleep 8/1, 7 PM, Riviera Theatre b Tricky 5/6, 7 PM, Bottom Lounge Turnstile, Touche Amore, Culture Abuse 4/11, 6:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b We Are Scientists 6/22, 8:30 PM, Empty Bottle Jimmy Webb 4/13, 8 PM, City Winery b Weepies 4/14, 8 PM, Thalia Hall b Wooden Shjips 6/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Yo La Tengo 3/29-30, 8 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Yob, Bell Witch 7/8, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+

SOLD OUT Trey Anastasio Band 4/20-21, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Courtney Barnett 5/21, 8:30 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center Bon Iver 6/3, 7 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park b David Byrne 6/1-3, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre Camila Cabello 4/22, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Fever Ray 5/18, 9 PM, Metro, 18+ Gang of Youths 3/30, 8:30 PM, Subterranean, 18+ Gaslight Anthem 8/11, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Grouplove 6/1, 7:30 PM, Metro b Ides of March 5/3, 8 PM, City Winery Kooks 5/30, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Lord Huron 4/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Tom Misch 4/26, 8 PM, Metro, 17+ Mt. Joy 5/11-12, 9 PM, Hideout Rainbow Kitten Surprise 4/21, 8:30 PM, Metro b Shakey Graves 5/22, 7:30 PM, the Vic, 18+ Sum 41 5/18, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Wolf Alice 3/30, 7:30 PM, Metro b “Weird Al” Yankovic 4/6-7, 8 PM, the Vic b Yeah Yeah Yeahs 5/29, 7:30 PM, Aragon Ballroom b v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene GOSSIP WOLF HAS been anticipating the debut album from Chicago gothicindustrial monsters Hide since first covering them in 2014, and according to the duo’s vocalist, Heather Gabel, they’ve been waiting almost as long: “We recorded Castration Anxiety in two weeks and then waited two years for it to come out,” she says. “But it’s been well worth the wait, since we’ve found the perfect home with Dais Records!” On Friday, March 23, the New York label releases the deliciously brutal LP, and that night the band celebrate at the Empty Bottle with openers Forced Into Femininity and Lilac (both including folks who played with Hide’s beat maker, Seth Sher, in Coughs) and a DJ set from Hogg.

It’s a downright dancy weekend at the Co-Prosperity Sphere. On Friday, March 23, producer Noleian Reusse (perhaps best known for his Black Tekno EP) performs as Africans With Mainframes at the Chicago premiere party for the documentary This Is Bate Bola. The creator of its soundtrack, Ben LaMar Gay, shares the bill in a quartet with Brazilian singer Dill Costa, drummer Carlos Pride, and synthesizer player Alex Inglizian. The next evening, dance-music pharoah Jamal Moss (aka Hieroglyphic Being) headlines a house night as part of a series called the Jackin’ Zone, organized by Potions and Chicago Jim; Red Tailed Hawk Luna opens.

New experimental tape label Reserve Matinee (founded by Uptown pals John Daniel, Jon Macintosh, and Michael Stumpf) dropped its first releases in February, and a second batch of four arrives on Monday, April 2. Gossip Wolf is especially taken with Smoke Signals by the anonymous Exhibitionist, which Daniel says mixes “samples of old lounge/jazz vinyl records and slowed-down jazz music and bar sounds from many nights spent at the Green Mill making field recordings.”

Check out “The Big Stir” on Exhibitionist’s Soundcloud for an amazingly atmospheric taste! —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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