Print Issue of September 7, 2017 (Volume 46, Number 48)

C H I C A G O ’ S F R E E W E E K LY | K I C K I N G A S S S I N C E 1 9 7 1 | S E P T E M B E R 7, 2 0 1 7

Rahm and Rauner reignite their bromance. 8

The brightest lights at the

World Music Festival Running for 17 days at venues all over Chicago, this free fest is a constellation of international stars— including Afrobeat scion Seun Kuti, rambunctious Cape Verdean accordionist Bitori, and AfroVenezuelan flame keeper Betsayda Machado.

By PETER MARGASAK 19

The Belmont Rocks was a gay paradise. 16

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FEATURES

IN THIS ISSUE

4 Agenda Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival, a showcase of women sign painters, director Steve James on The Interview Show, the film Polina, and more goings-on about town

CITY LIFE

LGBTQ

A gay paradise on the Rocks

The Belmont Rocks was one of Chicago’s most significant public LGBTQ destinations from the 1970s through the ’90s.

Now author Owen Keehnen is assembling an oral history, soliciting stories and photographs from the former denizens of the darly departed lakeside cruising spot.

BY JASON A. HEIDEMANN 16

7 Street View This Chicagoan’s sartorial strategy? “To always feel like I’m a video game character.”

8 Joravsky | Politics The mayor and the governor make up long enough to hand out tax breaks to donors.

9 Transportation Slow Roll calls on the crash-elimination movement to confront systemic racism.

ARTS & CULTURE

DISTRIBUTION CONCERNS distributionissues@chicagoreader.com

10 Comedy George Wendt expects more jeers than Cheers during his roast at Second City.

11 Theater In Shakeshafte, a young William Shakespeare channels the voices in his head into sonnets and soliloquies.

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COPYRIGHT © 2017 CHICAGO READER. PERIODICAL POSTAGE PAID AT CHICAGO, IL.

ON THE COVER: PHOTO OF SEUN KUTI

BY ROMAIN RIGAL.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

24 In Rotation Current musical obsessions include Phil Collins-era Genesis, The Defiant Ones, and more.

26 Shows of note Carl Craig, Blanck Mass, Widowspeak, and more of the week’s best

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13 Theater Strawdog Theatre’s Barbecue scores an 11on the Honey Boo Boo scale.

14 Visual Art The Big Boys’ Tim Kerr paints his heroes for “Your Name Here.”

15 Movies Get ready for Nocturama, a French thriller about a coordinated terror attack on Paris.

MUSIC & NIGHTLIFE

The brightest lights at the World Music Festival

Running for 17 days at venues all over Chicago, this free fest is a constellation of international stars—including Afrobeat scion Seun Kuti, rambunctious Cape Verdean accordionist Bitori, and Afro-Venezuelan flame keeper Betsayda Machado.

BY PETER MARGASAK 19

12 Theater Our Chicago Fringe Festival review roundup includes Dandy Darkly’s Myth Mouth!, Underneath the Lintel, and plenty more.

31 Restaurant review: City Mouse The restaurant anchoring the Ace Hotel is like a satellite for Giant’s Logan Square mothership.

33 Makers Elmwood Park gelato master Angelo Lollino on competing in “the lion’s den,” aka Italy.

CLASSIFIEDS

34 Jobs 34 Apartments & Spaces 35 Marketplace 36 Straight Dope Why does gasoline shoot up in price quickly but trickle down slowly?

37 Savage Love “My girlfriend drunkenly confessed to me that she used to pee on her ex. I’m not sure what to do with this info.”

38 Early Warnings Todd Rundgren, Violent Femmes, Migos, Noname, and more shows you should know about in the weeks to come 38 Gossip Wolf Young Chicago Authors showcases Latinx poets and musicians, and more music news.

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 3

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b ALL AGES

F not unlike our own, this rendition, with already familiar Orwellian overtones and references ripped from the headlines, has loud, brash fun. Nick Freed directed.

—MAX MALLER Through 9/30: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Berger Park Cultural Center, 6205 N. Sheridan, theplagiarists.org, $20, $15 students and seniors.

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Honeymoon in Vegas ò LIZ LAUREN

THEATER More at chicagoreader.com/theater Bonnie and Clyde Kokandy Productions does all it can with Frank Wildhorn, Don Black, and Ivan Menchell’s 2011 Broadway flop (it only ran for four weeks), here in a Chicago premiere.

The performances crackle (in particular Desiree Gonzalez and Max DeTogne as the titular star-crossed outlaws), the score soars under John Cockerill’s musical direction, and the pace moves at a fine clip under director Spencer Neiman. Sadly, however, Wildhorn and company have put some formidable roadblocks in the way of success: some of the ballads slow things to a crawl, and Menchell’s book feels unfocused and fragmented at times. Most damning of all, the show can’t decide whether it’s an eager-to-please entertainment or a pointed commentary on hypocrisy and cruelty in Depression-era America.

It tries to do both and fails to do either consistently or well. —JACK HELBIG Through 10/15: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Sat 9/30, 10/7, and 10/14, 3 PM, Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, 773-9758150, theaterwit.org, $38, $33 students and seniors.

Cicada Summer When you’re 13 R and you learn that cicadas can crawl under your skin, in between your

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shoulder blades, and lay eggs that take years to hatch, the obvious next question, per the adolescent dream logic of this lovely piece from playwright and Rough House Theatre artistic director Claire Saxe, is whether a bug that drinks your blood (and “DNA”) for that long, will, when it hatches, look anything like you. May (Jessie Ellingsen), who wears red plastic barrettes and is constantly in a tween huff, along with her neglected boy-buddy, Benjamin (Peter G. Andersen), are two halves of Saxe’s attempt to embody how it feels to experience the natural world the way kids do. But the show’s real star is May’s monster mentor—an exquisite, scene-stealing reed-and-wire-frame puppet of a talking cicada nymph, designed by Emily Breyer. —MAX MALLER Through 9/30: Thu-Sat 8 PM,

Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 773769-3832, roughhousetheater.com, $20 ($15 industry).

Honeymoon in Vegas See, Jack’s R dying mother made him promise never to marry, but that was before he

met perfect Betsy. They’ve been going together for five years now and he’d love to wed her, really he would, but he’s stymied by the threat of his mother’s curse. Finally, he figures, oh, what the hell. They go to Vegas for a quick ceremony, only Jack gets into a poker game with Tommy Korman, a very bad and handsome man who covets Betsy. Jack loses lots of money to Tommy and, well, you’ve got to suspend all your available stockpiles of disbelief to accept what goes on in this musical comedy by Andrew Bergman and Jason Robert Brown, based on Bergman’s 1992 movie.

Also any feminist scruples you may cherish. But if you do, you can spend 150 minutes having a great time with Gary Griffin’s crack cast, a score that wittily parodies Vegas-style ring-a-ding-ding, and Denis Jones’s smoothly athletic choreography. Michael Mahler and Samantha Pauly are good as Jack and Betsy, but Sean Allan Krill and Steven Strafford are consummate as Korman and his oily flunky, Johnny Sandwich (anglicized, he explains, from “Focaccia”). —TONY ADLER Through 10/15: Wed 1 and 8 PM, Thu-Fri 8 PM, Sat 4:30 and 8 PM, Sun 1 and 5 PM, Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, 10 Marriott, Lincolnshire, 847-6340200, marriotttheatre.com, $50-$60.

Ubu II: Electric Boog-Ubu or Free Ubu Ubu Roi has become shorthand for an oaf who burps and farts his way into the highest office in the land, blending transparent lies with the most cynically invigorating of half-truths, only to reveal his total incompetence the moment he has his hands on some power. How this notion could appeal so much to playwrights and audiences right now is beyond me. Alfred Jarry wrote two more Ubu plays after the famous one, Ubu Roi; this production from the Plagiarists freely adapts the third, which finds Ma and Pa Ubu in a new mode as, fed up with ruling Poland, they decide to try their hands at being servants. Once it plops them down into a political arena

Harvest Chicago Contemporary Dance Festival Dancers from all over the country (and in some cases, the globe) convene in Chicago for this festival running the gamut of contemporary performance styles.

Through 9/16: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, 1016 N. Dearborn, 312-337-6543, ruthpage.org, $25, $18 students, seniors, and military.

The Heist Dancers Kiana Cook, Chelz Jordan, and Maya Odim translate the idea of a thief into movement. The aesthetics seal the theme: they dress in all black, with bandannas across their faces to conceal their identities. Fri 9/9, 7 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, 773-772-3616, elasticrevolution.com.

COMEDY At Last the 1948 Show Camilla R Cleese, John Cleese’s daughter, presents the sketch show her dad wrote

with Graham Chapman, Tim BrookeTaylor, and Marty Feldman 50 years ago.

It aired on the BBC only a few times before being pulled for cheaper TV, so this live show is the first chance in half a century to see what those four comedy legends were up to before hitting it big.

Through 9/15: Fri 7:30, 9:30, and 10:30 PM, iO Theater, the Mission Theater, 1501 N. Kingsbury, ioimprov.com/chicago, $14.

I Can’t Believe They Wendt R There: The Roast of George Wendt You know him as “Norm!”—

everyone’s favorite barfly on Cheers.

But tonight he’ll receive jeers from Chicago-rooted comedy luminaries like

Bob Odenkirk, Keegan-Michael Key, and Betty Thomas, all in the name of charity.

Jason Sudeikis, Wendt’s nephew, acts as roast master. For our full interview with Wendt, see page 10. Sat 9/9, 6:30 PM, Second City, 1616 N. Wells, 312-3373992, secondcity.com, starting at $500 donation.

Sad Clown Mental illness is cerR tainly something many folks have to deal with on a daily basis, but Sad

Clown offers them a comedic respite.

Essayists speak to their particular conditions, and their stories serve as inspiration for improv, proving that things are cliche because they are true: laughter is the best medicine. Through Fri 9/22, 8 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, 773-697-9693, theannoyance.com, $10.

LIT & LECTURES Absinthe & Zygote At this iteration of the experimental poetry series, improvised music plays over verse, lending different interpretations to the words.

Featuring poets Sarah Gridley and Alessandra Lynch. Fri 9/8, 7 PM, the Chicago Publishers Resource Center, 858 N. Ashland, chiprc.org.

The Interview Show The unflapR pable Mark Bazer’s talk show airs on WTTW, and this month he’ll be

taping a live show to air later. His guests are author John Green (The Fault in Our Stars), documentarian Steve James (Hoop Dreams et al), and musician Jon Langford (the Mekons, the Waco Brothers, etc etc). Fri 9/8, 6:30-8 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433, hideoutchicago.com, $15.

Carrie McGath Artists Hans Bellmer and Unica Zürn’s affair ended abruptly when Zürn committed suicide by jumping out of Bellmer’s Paris apartment. Dollface: Poems-Songs, the new collection by Carrie McGath, has a surrealist style not far from the surrealist paintings the two artists created together. McGath reads from her book and answers questions. Thu 9/7, 7 PM, Quimby’s Bookstore, 1854 W. North, 773342-0910, quimbys.com.

Ubu II: Electric Boog-Ubu or Free Ubu ò JOE MAZZA

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Best bets, recommendations, and notable arts and culture events for the week of September 7

There and Black Mary Brogger designed the Haymarket Memorial sculpture and many more in Bronzeville.

Her style utilizes high-class objects like solid gold and lowbrow, so to speak, things along the lines of carpeting. This exhibition collects all her work in one place. Opening reception Sat 9/9, 1-5 PM. Through 10/9. Sat noon-5 PM and by appointment. UNUM, 3039 W. Carroll, 312-909-5902, barbarakoenen.com.

MOVIES More at chicagoreader.com/movies NEW REVIEWS

R

Some of the pieces on display at the Pre-Vinylette Society: An International Showcase of Women Sign Painters Zachary Schomburg Schomburg has spent most of his time in the R poetry world, but tonight he debuts

a new novel, Mammother, alongside a performance by Joan of Arc’s Melina Ausikaitis. Mammother takes place in Pie Time, a spot where people are mysteriously dying with giant holes in their chests. Sun 9/10, 6 PM, Rainbo Club, 1150 N. Damen, 773-489-5999.

VISUAL ARTS Brushes With Cancer Over the last six months, more than 100 artists have channeled their cancer diagnoses into multimedia pieces of art, on display here. Sat 9/9, 6 PM, Revel Fulton Market, 1215 W. Fulton, 773-486-9010, revelspace.com.

Cassie Marie Edwards: Figurine One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

This phrase inspires Edwards’s paintings of thrift-store items like a porcelain deer figurine. Upon first glance, well, it looks like a porcelain deer figurine. But the detailing, and playfulness with light, highlights why this object might have sentimental value to its original owner. Opening reception Fri 9/8, 5-8 PM. Through 10/21. Tue-Fri noon-4 PM. Aron Packer Projects, 213 W. Institute.

Fantastic Facade The past and its relation to our current worldview is explored in this exhibition featuring three differing artists. Katie Bell sifts through forgotten debris and material to create sculptural paintings, Hannah Carr transforms tangible items to represent the current digital age, and Jenn Smith utilizes evangelical motifs to provide

airy commentary. Through 9/10. Sun 1-4 PM and by appointment. LVL3 Gallery, 1542 N. Milwaukee, third floor, lvl3media. com/gallery.

The Animation Show of Shows Curated by Ron Diamond, the annual Animation Show of Shows anthology collects short works from around the world; this year’s entries range from narrative to abstraction but all demonstrate the highest dedication to craft. Much on this program is captivating, but I’ll limit myself to the gems most easily described: Mirror is an animated version of a New Yorker cover by Chris Ware, incorporating audio from This American Life in which a woman recalls an artless remark she once made that might have wounded her teenage daughter’s feelings. The hero of Seoro Oh’s hilarious Afternoon

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instant. His routine family story, about a bitter young Korean man (John Cho) who arrives in town to care for his comatose father, unfolds in a series of grandly composed frames that range from fanatically symmetrical interior shots to boldly geometric exterior shots showcasing the local gems. The father is a revered architecture professor, and the resentful son strikes up a cigarette-smoking friendship with a warm young woman (Haley Lu Richardson) who gives architecture tours, so she can show him all the best buildings while he opens up about his icy dad and she ponders whether to desert her newly clean-and-sober mom and pursue a college scholarship out east. Theirs is a story of two lives intersecting—presumably at a 90-degree angle. With Parker Posey. —J.R. JONES 100 min. Kogonada attends the 7 PM screening on Friday. Fri 9/8, 2, 4:15, 7, and 9:30 PM; Sat 9/9-Sun 9/10, 11:40 AM and 2, 4:15, 7, ad 9:30 PM; and Mon 9/11-Thu 9/14, 2, 4:15, 7, and 9:30 PM. Music Box The Oath After directing the Hollywood action films 2 Guns and Everest, Baltasar Kormákur returns to his native Iceland for this unpleasant thriller about a heart

Greetings From Logan Square Postcards didn’t become accessible until after 1903, when Kodak introduced a camera capable of taking bite-size images. Comfort Station displays postcards from then until the end of the 20th century, all created with the Logan Square neighborhood in mind. Opening reception Sun 9/3, 10:30 AM-1 PM. Wed 8-9:30 PM, Thu 7-9 PM, Sun noon-3 PM, Comfort Station, 2579 N. Milwaukee, comfortstationlogansquare.org.

Supernova Through abstract paintings, Enrico Magnani depicts what a star might look like after a supernova. Its nuclear energy is obviously a whole lot more than we could duplicate with weapons, but it’s off-putting nonetheless to see what that kind of power is capable of. Opening reception Thu 9/7, 7 PM. Through 10/6. Mon-Fri 9 AM-1 PM, 2-5 PM, Italian Cultural Institute, 500 N. Michigan, #1450, 312-822-9545, iicchicago.esteri.it.

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BUCKINGHAM FOUNTAIN

FRIDAY - SEPTEMBER 8

5:00 - 10:00 pm

SATURDAY - SEPTEMBER 9 3:00 - 8:00 pm NOTE: Sampling ends 1/2 hour prior to closing.

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Purchase Online or by Phone 888.695.0888* *Additional fee applies for phone orders

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$75 in advance and at the gate The Cadillac Connoisseurs Club is a new hospitality space that will further elevate the event and attendee experience. Please visit our website to learn more.

Pre-Vinylette Society: An InterR national Showcase of Women Sign Painters With more than 60 artists

from nine countries, this exhibition is a comprehensive lowdown on female sign painters—and the first to showcase only women. Featuring a variety of text-based signs on wood, vinyl, glass, and other nontraditional surfaces, plus a chance to interact with the artists themselves. Opening reception Fri 9/8, 6-10 PM. Through 9/28 by appointment.

Chicago Art Department, 1932 S. Halsted, #100, 312-226-8601, chicagoartdepartment.org.

P R E S E N T E D

The Untamed Class can’t stay awake in algebra, and his head turns into an assortment of weights—a bowling ball, a hammerhead, a safe—as he tries not to nod off; before long he drifts off into a nightmare, rendered in colored outlines on a black background. And Marc Héricher’s Corpus follows the progress of a macabre Rube Goldberg contraption, its zany convolutions given a fierce specificity by the hyperrealist digital animation.

—J.R. JONES 106 min. Fri 9/8, 8:15 PM, and Sun 9/10, 5:15 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Columbus Columbus, Indiana, is known for its modernist architecture, and Kogonada, who directed this indie drama, won’t let you forget it for an

surgeon taking revenge on his teenage daughter’s abusive drug-dealer boyfriend. As in many other Scandinavian thrillers, the style is cold and austere, the content ugly and misanthropic.

Kormákur, who also plays the surgeon, takes a fetishistic approach to the doctor’s torture methods, presenting them in meticulous detail and encouraging delight at their effectiveness. He aims for a sense of moral ambiguity by suggesting the surgeon’s revenge is crueler than anything the boyfriend might have done, but the one-dimensional characters defeat any attempt at tonal complexity. This is basically a tony variation on Death Wish, with handsome cinematography and production design to distract from the simpleminded µ

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THEN THEY CAME FOR ME. INCARCERATION OF JAPANESE AMERICANS DURING WWII AND THE DEMISE OF CIVIL LIBERTIES

AGENDA validating single parenthood, but everyone else should be delighted.

The richly and finely delineated characters include a cluster of European villains, an American hero and blue fairy, and a couple of father figures whose nationalities seem mid-Atlantic. The moral lessons include a literalization of metaphors about lying and other forms of misbehaving, and the grasp of a little boy’s emotions and behavior often borders on the uncanny. A razor-sharp restoration, with some stereo enhancement and vividly restored colors, appeared in 1992.

—JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 88 min.

35mm. Tue 9/12, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center

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Then They Came for Me examines a difficult and painful episode in the history of the United States when our government forcibly removed and incarcerated thousands of American citizens simply for being born Japanese American. Through an exploration of art, artifacts, and programming, Then They Came for Me invites comparisons between this dark chapter in America’s past and current political events.

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Walker Like Alex Cox’s preR vious films (Repo Man, Sid & Nancy), this delirious 1987 fantasy

Polina B sadism. In Icelandic with subtitles. —BEN SACHS 104 min. Fri 9/8, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 9/9, 8 PM; Sun 9/10, 3 PM; Mon 9/11, 8 PM; Tues 9/12, 6 PM; Wed 9/13, 8 PM; and Thu 9/14, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Polina A Russian ballerina R in training rebels by running off to France with her boyfriend

and trying on different forms of modern dance in this documentary-style drama about learning to move to one’s own beat. The title character (real-life dancer Anastasia Shevtsova) has the talent required, but the rigorous art form constricts her inner wildness. She struggles at her new modern dance school in Europe as well, clashing with a flinty instructor (Juliette Binoche) and with her boyfriend as her dance partner. Based on a graphic novel, the film is a fine example of visual storytelling: codirectors Valérie Müller and the French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj frequently opt for long, evocative dance sequences over dialogue to illustrate the protagonist’s circuitous journey. In Russian and French with subtitles. —LEAH PICKETT 108 min. Fri 9/8, 2 and 6 PM; Sat 9/9, 7:45 PM; Sun 9/10, 3 PM; Mon 9/11, 6 PM; Tue 9/12, 8 PM; Wed 9/13, 6 PM; and Thu 9/14, 8 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center The Untamed Musky with R sex, this Mexican horror movie begins like a telenovela

but deepens into an allegory about the warping power of lust. A young wife and mother (Ruth Ramos) discovers that her macho husband (Jesús Meza) has been having an affair with her gay brother (Eden Villavicencio); incensed, she allows her good friend (Simone Bucio) to lead her deep into the woods, to a place where something very strange

is happening. Amat Escalante, directing a script he cowrote with Gibrán Portela, works wonders with a modest budget; his film may lack the subtlety of Val Lewton’s famously allusive RKO chillers, but there’s the same sense that the shadowy rooms braved by the characters are no less than the human psyche itself. In Spanish with subtitles. —J.R. JONES 100 min. Fri 9/8, 8 PM; Sat 9/9, 5:15 PM; Sun 9/10, 5 PM; Mon 9/11, 8:15 PM; Wed 9/13, 8:15 PM; and Thu 9/14, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center REVIVALS Killer of Sheep The first R feature (1977) of the highly talented black filmmaker Charles

Burnett, who set most of his early films in Watts (including My Brother’s Wedding and To Sleep With Anger); this one deals episodically with the life of a slaughterhouse worker. Shot on a year’s worth of weekends for under $10,000, this remarkable work is conceivably the single best feature about ghetto life. It was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry as one of the key works in American cinema—ironic and belated recognition of a film that, for years, had virtually no distribution. It shouldn’t be missed. With Henry Gayle Sanders. —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 87 min. Sat 9/9, 3 PM, and Wed 9/13, 6 PM. Gene Siskel Film Center Pinocchio Along with R Dumbo, which immediately followed it, this 1940 classic, the second of the Disney animated features, is probably the best in terms of visual detail and overall imagination as well as narrative sweep. Like Dumbo and Bambi, it might have given cultural conservatives reason for concern by

about William Walker, the American who ruled Nicaragua from 1855 to 1857, is all over the place and excessive, but as a radical statement about the U.S.’s involvement in that country it packs a very welcome wallop. The witty screenplay is by novelist Rudy Wurlitzer (Nog, Slow Fade), whose previous screenwriting forays included Two-Lane Blacktop and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; Ed Harris plays the crazed Walker, Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God) is his deaf-mute fiancee, and Peter Boyle is Cornelius Vanderbilt. Deliberate and surreal anachronisms plant the action in a historical version of the present, and David Bridges’s cinematography, combined with a liberal use of slow motion, creates a lyrical depiction of carnage and devastation. Significantly, most of the film was shot in Nicaragua, with the cooperation and advice (but without the veto power) of the Sandinista government, and Edward R. Pressman—whose previous credits include Badlands and True Stories—was executive producer. One can certainly quarrel with some aspects of the film’s treatment of history, but with political cowardice in commercial filmmaking so prevalent, one can only admire this movie’s gusto in calling a spade a spade, and the exhilaration of its anger and wit.

—JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 94 min.

35mm. Cox attends the screening.

Fri 9/8, 7:15 PM. Music Box

What Price Glory? Directed by Raoul Walsh and adapted from a popular play by Laurence Stallings and Maxwell Anderson, this energetic silent comedy-drama (1926) focuses on the rivalry between two U.S. officers serving in France (Victor McLaglen, Edmund Lowe).

A lot better than John Ford’s 1952 remake, the movie shows Walsh at his spunkiest. With Dolores Del Rio, William V. Mong, and Phyllis Haver.

—JONATHAN ROSENBAUM 116 min.

35mm. Dennis Scott provides live organ accompaniment. Sat 9/9, 11:30 AM. Music Box v

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CITY LIFE YOUR DOLLARS ARE

HARD AT WORK

Street View

Eclectic feel

SURE THINGS

ò ISA GIALLORENZO

“THE HARDER THE DAY is going to be, the harder I go on making the outfit spectacular,” says María Fernanda Hernández Tort, who was on the way to a video game store, where she planned to drop off a resumé. “I don’t have a lot of basics in my wardrobe, so professional moments always scare me a little.

I toned down my makeup and colors a bit so that I wouldn’t come off as too intense.” One of her two majors at the School of the Art Institute is fibers and material studies, which has moved her to consider pattern, color, and texture paramount in her style: “A lot of items I choose for the design, weave, or knit of the textile,” she says. That academic sensibility is counterbalanced, she says, by a more childlike sartorial goal: “To always feel like I’m a video game character.” —ISA GIALLORENZO See more Chicago street style on Giallorenzo’s blog chicagolooks. blogspot.com.

THURSDAY 7

FRIDAY 8

SATURDAY 9

i An Evening Wi th Ge orge Takei Civil rights activist and Star Trek alum George Takei discusses his experiences in a Japanese incarceration camp. In conjunction with the Alphawood Gallery’s “Then They Came for Me” exhibition, currently running. 7 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, $15

1 Pew Pew Pew The work of painter Scott Listfield shows astronauts viewing pop culture icons, like one depicting a spaceman staring longingly at a question mark block from a Super Mario Bros. level.

It’s space meets plumbers and abandoned McDonalds. Opening reception: 7-10 PM, Rotofugi Gallery, 2780 N. Lincoln. F

M Ma x Amini Iranian comic Amini makes light of his Middle Eastern heritage with jokes about the people living in war-torn countries who just want to live their lives and laugh.

Tonight’s the only chance to check out this rising star. 8 PM, Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, athenaeumtheatre. com, $42.50-$67

SUNDAY 10

MONDAY 11

TUESDAY 12

WEDNESDAY 13

( Sunday Fu nday Fo otba ll Lu au Improvisers provide color commentary over Sunday football games, akin to the way Mystery Science Theater talks over horrible movies. It’s not the best place to be if you want to pay attention to the game itself, but it’s a whole lotta fun. 3 PM, Emporium Arcade Bar, 2363 N. Milwaukee, emporiumchicago.com. F

Ruth Bader Gi nsburg Thank you for coming here as a beacon of sanity in the land currently ruled by Voldemort. The most supreme of Supreme Court justices chats with fellow federal judge Ann Claire Williams about, well, everything our cosmopolitan, progressive city needs to hear to sleep at night.

7 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress, $35.

F Hava na Case St udy Terence Gower studies the U.S. embassy in Cuba and channels its eerie vibe into a variety of sculptures. It sounds like the feeling you’d have eating at an Americathemed restaurant in a European country. Opening reception: 6-9 PM, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, University of Chicago, 5701 S. Woodlawn. F

ø Th e Customer Is Al ways Right Working in customer service requires bravery and a metaphorical bulletproof vest. Demands from irate and crazy customers are intense, but make for hilarious material after the fact. Employees share horror stories at this comedy show. 8 PM, Annoyance Theatre, 851 W. Belmont, theannoyance.com, $8.

Ñ

Keep up to date on the go at chicagoreader. com/agenda.

Even a small donation can make a big difference

HurricaneHarveyAid.org

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 7

Read Ben Joravsky’s columns throughout the week at chicagoreader.com.

CITY LIFE POLITICS

Rahm and Rauner: BFFs again The mayor and the governor make up long enough to hand out tax breaks to donors.

W

ith Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Bruce Rauner hugging it out like a couple of long-lost frat brothers at an August 31 school-funding-bill ceremony, I suppose we can officially declare their little feud over.

I was among the last of the holdouts skeptical that their quarreling was pure political theater, even with all the nasty things they were saying about each other over the past few months. But then two weeks ago, Rauner threatened to pull the plug on Rahm’s beloved tax increment financing program, in a lastditch effort to blackmail statehouse Democrats into torpedoing their school funding bill. Damn, I thought, Rauner’s going after the golden goose—maybe this fight is for real.

Back at the lovefest that was the bill-signing ceremony at Ebinger Elementary in Edgebrook, on the city’s far northwest side, Rahm and Rauner were filled with good cheer as they congratulated one another and extolled the virtues of compromise.

“We finally got it done,” Rauner said. As if he had anything to do with it.

The legislation includes a generous tax credit for gazillionaires who donate money to private and parochial schools. A tax handout for wealthy campaign donors? Man, all is well in the Rahm-Rauner universe! I’m surprised those two didn’t break out one of the expensive bottles of wine they used to share back in their good ol’ bromantic days, when they partied together at Rauner’s Montana ranch.

It’s certainly no mystery why Rahm’s smiling. The school funding deal sends an estimated $320 million in state aid to the Chicago Public Schools, which are busted, in part thanks to Rahm’s financial mismanagement.

What I can’t understand is Rauner’s enthu-

8 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

siasm. His sudden turnaround on this issue in the last few days has been nothing short of political schizophrenia.

Consider what Rauner put us through over the summer. The funding the state will distribute to schools thanks to the measure the governor so happily signed on August 31 was part of a budget deal he fought every step of the way. House speaker Michael Madigan managed to convince four Republicans to join the Democrats to override Rauner’s veto of that budget, which included an income tax hike. After the override had passed, Rauner, a bad sport to the end, went to Hegewisch, on the city’s far southeast side, to blast Madigan, claiming “the tax hike is like a two-by-four smacked across the forehead.” In July, he vetoed the school funding distribution bill on the grounds that it was a “Chicago bailout.”

In the end, Chicago got everything it wanted out of the funding bill—and Rauner still signed it. Sure, the bill did include that wretched tax credit for donations to parochial and private schools. But that was largely Madigan’s favor to Archbishop Blase Cupich, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

As far as Rauner’s so-called concerns about bailing out Chicago, the bill was utter capitulation on the part of the governor. If I were one of his true believers, I’d be voting third party in next year’s gubernatorial election.

Hell, if Rauner was just going to roll over and put his little paws in the air, he should’ve done it last year, when CPS was seeking help with its pension obligations. Instead Rauner’s intransigence cost Chicago taxpayers millions of dollars because without state aid, CPS had to borrow money to pay its bills. That means less money for the classroom and more interest for bankers. (Speaking of taking care of the donors.)

j RACHAL DUGGAN

By BEN JORAVSKY

Basically Rauner was happily celebrating in Edgebrook a bill he had bitterly denounced in Hegewisch. Maybe he thinks people at one end of Chicago can’t hear what he’s saying at the other end.

I don’t mean to say Chicago taxpayers get a great deal out of the new law. On the contrary, we’re going to be hit with more than $100 million in property tax hikes to pay the teachers’ pension bills we’ve been ignoring since the days of Mayor Richard M. Daley.

And we still have the TIFs. As one of the more persistent opponents of this sham, I have a simple request to make of Rauner: Please, governor—don’t mention TIFs anymore.

Rauner highlighted the city’s TIF abuses only to fire up opposition to funding public education. In doing so, he set back the blow-upthe-TIFs cause for years. His allies at the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative think tank, issued a dreadful “anti-TIF” cartoon showing a black kid begging a rich white guy for school aid. (Only a bunch of Republicans could make the crusade against TIFs appear racist.)

So it’s like Chicago’s schoolchildren were about to get punished twice by the scheme: once when the TIFs by design divert hundreds of millions from their schools, and again with Rauner’s so-called solution, which involved essentially deducting the amount of money

Chicago diverts to the TIF program from the school aid it receives from the state.

In retrospect, it’s hard to believe Rauner was serious in his threat to make this change to the school aid formula. For one thing, Rauner’s chief floor leader in the general assembly, state rep Jim Durkin, is a lawyer specializing in TIF deals. In addition, many other Republicansled towns in the state have their own version of the TIF scam. I can only imagine that many small-town mayors were letting Rauner know to keep his mitts off their TIFs. Obviously, Rauner’s starting to realize the 2018 gubernatorial election is getting closer.

And the Democratic front-runner is a billionaire named J.B. Pritzker, who can match him dollar for dollar in campaign expenditures.

After two years of rabid, right-wing, let’sbankrupt-the-schools behavior, the governor’s inching closer to the center. He signed the school funding bill and other legislation, like the automatic voter registration bill and the Trust Act, which basically turns Illinois into a sanctuary state.

Why any voters would fall for Rauner’s lateterm conversion, I do not know. But then I still can’t believe they fell for his act in the first place. v

v @joravben

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Slow Roll Chicago cofounders Jamal Julien and Oboi Reed ò AL PODGORSKI

CITY LIFE

TRANSPORTATION

Zeroing in on Vision Zero Slow Roll Chicago calls on the crash-elimination movement to confront systemic racism.

By JOHN GREENFIELD

B

efore Slow Roll Chicago cofounder Oboi Reed could get back to work advocating for transportation equity in black and Latino communities, he first had to overcome the medical condition that Sir Winston Churchill reportedly called his “black dog”—clinical depression.

In early 2016, about a year and a half after he helped launch the bike group, which promotes cycling in the south and west sides as a strategy to improve health and economic outcomes and reduce violence, he experienced a crippling depressive episode that put him out of commission for the next year and a half.

“My brother is a brilliant, ambitious, and passionate visionary and gives more of himself than he can sometimes sustain,” says Reed’s older sibling Khari Reed, a health-care administrator. He says that a couple of months ago it became clear the depression was lifting when Oboi finally got back on his bike again and rode some ten miles from the South Loop to Oak Park.

Remarkably, just days after Oboi Reed made his first public appearance again with Slow Roll on a July 29 tour of the Beverly neighborhood, he sprang back into action with a new campaign that could have implications for the nationwide Vision Zero movement to eliminate crash fatalities. Reed and other advocates of color are arguing that American efforts to adopt the zero-tolerance approach, which began in Sweden in 1997, have been flawed because they haven’t focused on the relationship between structural racism and higher traffic violence rates in black, Latino, and low- to middle-income neighborhoods.

They also say that transportation professionals and safety proponents have failed to engage in a respectful and meaningful way

with the communities most impacted by Vision Zero plans, particularly when it comes to the question of using increased policing as a crash reduction strategy.

Back in June the Chicago Department of Transportation released the long-awaited Vision Zero Action Plan, a blueprint for eliminating serious and fatal crashes by 2026, created with input from a dozen city agencies as well as many community organizations and local leaders, but no public hearings. The document identifies the city’s high-crash corridors and high-crash areas—almost all of the latter are predominantly black and Latino communities on the south and west sides—and lays out strategies to address traffic violence using engineering, education, and enforcement.

The effort launched this summer with a pilot outreach program in Austin, North Lawndale, and Garfield Park.

On August 7 the Active Transportation Alliance sent out an invitation to a Vision Zero Chicago summit that would double as a fund-raiser for the group’s advocacy efforts.

In an August 16 Slow Roll blog post, Reed argued that the $50 entry fee, weekday-morning event time, and downtown location practically ensured that few west-siders would attend, and noted that there were no people of color on the announced speaker lineup. He called on Active Trans to cancel the summit and create a new event with full input from residents in the Vision Zero plan’s focus neighborhoods.

In response to the concerns of Reed and other leaders, Active Trans director Ron Burke announced that the summit had been postponed and apologized for “mistakes in how the event was rolled out.”

Following the small victory, Reed published “A Matter of Life and Death: Vision

Zero in Chicago,” a detailed manifesto on the problems with the city’s plan. It was written in collaboration with Rutgers University researcher and adjunct professor Charles T. Brown, who studies transportation equity issues, and Ronnie Matthew Harris, leader of the south-side transportation advocacy group Go Bronzeville. The document demands greater ownership of the Vision Zero planning process by people from African-American, Latino, and low- to moderate-income communities, the areas that are typically most impacted by crashes. It also argues that in light of the Chicago Police Department’s record of civil rights violations, including high-profile police misconduct cases such as the Laquan McDonald shooting, increased traffic enforcement in the focus neighborhoods has the potential to do more harm than good.

After thanking Active Trans for postponing the event, the authors call for the organization to undergo a “transformative restructuring” with a new focus on racial justice. They also announced plans for a research project led

by Brown, using data analysis and surveys “to better understand the root cause of transportation-related inequities and injustices” in underserved Chicago neighborhoods.

In response to Slow Roll’s statement, CDOT spokesman Mike Claffey says that the department welcomes feedback on the Vision Zero process and looks forward to working with the group and other stakeholders. “The release of Chicago’s Vision Zero Action Plan in June was not the end of the process but the beginning of an effort to start developing the policies and strategies for reaching zero.”

Four board members from Active Trans released a statement on August 29 arguing that equity and racial inclusion are central to the

group’s mission. They pointed to statements in the organization’s current strategic plan.

“We believe that mobility equity is fundamental to human and civil rights,” it states. “We are committed to reversing . . . disparities by making equity a foundational principle of our work.” They added that they brought up these tenets because of the concerns recently raised

by Reed and others. “We value these principles but recognize that we can always do better.”

On August 31, Reed led an online discussion on various social media platforms, with participation by transportation advocates and activist leaders from across the country, including staff from the Vision Zero Network, the organization spearheading the national movement, and New York City’s Transportation Alternatives.

During his presentation, Reed outlined recent events in Chicago and acknowledged the statement from the Active Trans board. “It’s fine,” he said. “But there’s something wrong with that organization that allowed that summit to go forward in the first place. There’s a blind spot, there’s implicit bias, there’s structural racism.”

In addition to calling for Active Trans to do additional soul-searching and restructuring, Reed argued that additional traffic enforcement in communities of color should be taken off the table as a Vision Zero strategy until the CPD makes significant headway in eradicating police misconduct. “We don’t want increased police interaction in our neighborhoods, not until racism [on the force] is dismantled,” he said. “You want to do traffic enforcement? Go do it in Lincoln Park, go do it in Lakeview.”

Reed argued that the city was wrong to publish its Vision Zero plan without first vetting it through a public input process. CDOT is hosting three Vision Zero open houses on the west side at the end of September, and Reed said Slow Roll plans to spread the word to local residents to help ensure a robust turnout.

Reed’s overarching message, which could have a ripple effect in other cities, is that residents of the black, brown, and low- to middle-income communities most ravaged by traffic violence need to be the designers and owners, rather than simply the customers and consumers, of the Vision Zero product. “That’s not the position we’re going to be in,” he says.

“Not in Chicago, not on my watch.” v

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

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 9

ARTS & CULTURE COMEDY

Jeers for Norm from Cheers

By STEVE HEISLER

G

eorge Wendt has become accustomed to being greeted with good-natured shouts of “Norm!”—a reference, of course, to his beloved Cheers character. But lately the 68-year-old Chicago native has been bracing himself for a coming onslaught of insults.

On September 9, a cabal of friends and collaborators will lovingly razz the veteran actor at his comedic alma mater, Second City. I Can’t Believe They Wendt There: The Roast of George Wendt will feature Bob Odenkirk, Keegan-Michael Key, Julia Sweeney, David Koechner, Betty Thomas, Jeff Tweedy, among others, as well as roast master Jason Sudeikis, who happens to be Wendt’s nephew. The cheapest tickets start at $500 (yikerz!), but 80 percent of that money goes directly to two charities: Gilda’s Club Chicago and the Second City Alumni Fund.

They say we roast the ones we love, and that’s certainly true in the case of Wendt. But speaking over the phone in advance of the event, he sounded like he might take things a bit personally.

Experience an incredibly diverse range of programming all season long. From modern art to live events, there’s never been more to enjoy at Navy Pier.

For more information, visit navypier.com

What do you expect people to roast you about?

Being lazy, being generally sort of a ne’er-do-well.

I’m sure they’ll bring up some crap I don’t remember. I know that I do suck at improv, though.

types and other assorted artists and eggheads, intellectuals, and sophisticates. They were one step ahead. You can’t be pedantic like I’m being in this [interview].

My understanding is that you desperately wanted to perform at Second City when you were younger.

Honestly, I couldn’t think of anything else I knew I wouldn’t hate. I got hired on to the [Second City] touring companies, and [at the end of shows] we would take suggestions, hang them on a corkboard, and stare at them. I felt like such a dullard.

[My mind] was a complete blank. Other cast members, particularly Nancy Kelly, would come up with ideas and grab me. Once I was onstage with something somebody else had laid out, I was kind of OK. So it’s not so much the improv that bugs me, it’s the idea part. At the risk of sounding New Agey, if you’re thinking, you’re dead.

Television is very different today than it was during your Cheers run. The prestige shows attract film directors and movie stars. What are your thoughts on returning to TV? I know it’s cliche to say, but it’s a great time for TV. Movies—honestly, jeez Louise! How come everybody flies? Somebody gets in a fight and they’re doing somersaults. I guess I’m an old fogey, but movies are weird. Good movies aren’t generally playing in the malls. TV, on the other hand, is superrich, detailed, dramatic, character stuff. People won’t sit still in theaters these days.

I’ve encountered Second City alums who travel to the coasts, and their experience at the theater is ultimately meaningless when it comes to casting. People say, “What have you done?” and if you point out Second City, they say, “Yeah, but what else?” What was your experience like after you branched out?

Back in the 80s, there weren’t a thousand people with a Second City background. There were only a few dozen. So it was a calling card.

How does your time in Chicago permeate the work you’ve done since leaving?

This may sound pompous, but one thing I took was respect for the audience. Our original audiences at Second City were all University of Chicago

10 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

I’d imagine you could get on TV again. You’re George fuckin’ Wendt.

I don’t think so. Yes, I totally want to, but I can’t catch a break. I sound like the guy who hit the lottery once but wishes he could hit the lottery again. I’m not gonna get a whole lot of sympathy.

I did do a fancy HBO pilot with the whole Girls team, and it didn’t go. I’d love to do a really cool show, and barring that, I’d do a crap TV show because, um, I’ve blown all my money.

You’ve done a lot of theater in recent years. It’s said film is a directors’ medium, TV is a writers’ medium, and the stage is an actors’ medium.

What is your experience like on the stage versus on a sitcom?

I remember seeing John Malkovich talking to David Letterman [on The Late Show]. Letterman said, “I understand you prefer theater to feature

George Wendt

films,” and [Malkovich] goes, “I don’t particularly like my performance to be framed, focused. It’s not something I particularly need help with.” In theater, you’re still saying the playwright’s words, and the director obviously has huge input. Once they fuck off, you and your fellow players and the audience give it a good run. Theater is by far the most fun. The multicamera sitcom, which has sadly gone away I guess, was a nice blend, because we had a live audience.

How do you feel about multicamera sitcoms generally?

They feel a bit proscenium. When I first got Cheers, I remember Del Close said, “It’s just a form, remember that. It can be done well or it can be done poorly, like a sonnet. You can write a shitty sonnet or a great sonnet.” [On Cheers] I was so green, I didn’t even know where the cameras were pointing. I was just playing to the audience.

We all did.

Is the tradition of roasts meaningful to you?

I haven’t paid much attention to the Comedy Central ones over the past decade or so, and I vaguely remember the Dean Martin ones. So many of the comics were ballbusters and insult comics, and that doesn’t seem to be much of a style now. I dunno. I’m not terribly comfortable with the concept of this roast.

Why’s that?

Just lack of self-esteem. I’m flattered they went to me. I’m a bit of a pussy as a public figure. I tend to not shoot my mouth off. I spend a lot of time reading stuff my more courageous friends will write. I don’t go straight balls-out and make statements on Facebook or Twitter. I don’t need the grief, honestly. I’m too self-centered, too focused on trying to keep my little world together. It’s equal parts cowardice and laziness. v R I CAN’T BELIEVE THEY WENDT THERE: THE ROAST OF GEORGE WENDT Sat 9/9, 7 PM, Second City, 1616 N. Wells, 312-337-3992, secondcity.com, $500-$3,000.

v @steveheisler

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Rowan Williams ò DAN KITWOOD

THEATER

Shakeshafte before Shakespeare

By MICHAEL LENEHAN

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ancashire, England, c. 1580: Two men sip wine in a stone-walled room whose dark and dampness are relieved only by a weak wood fire.

One man, the elder, is a priest, a believer—in God, in the church, in a “harmony” worth pursuing. The younger man is an artist, or will be. He can’t hear the harmony; his head roils with a multitude of voices and characters clamoring to be heard and understood. For him, pursuing a harmony would mean shutting out some of those voices, which he cannot bring himself to do.

The priest is Edmund Campion, a Jesuit, who is traveling in England under an assumed name. His mission there, to minister to Roman Catholics forced underground during the reign of Elizabeth I, will soon earn him a grisly execution in the manner of the time: he and two coconspirators will be (according to the sentence read to them) “hanged and let down alive, and your privy parts cut off, and your entrails taken out and burnt in your sight; then your heads to be cut off and your bodies divided into four parts, to be disposed of at Her Majesty’s pleasure.”

The young artist will enjoy a happier fate.

One day he will succeed in giving voice to

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those characters in his head and become the best-known writer of the English language.

At least that’s the way it’s been imagined by priest-turned-playwright Rowan Williams, the retired archbishop of Canterbury, whose play Shakeshafte comes to Chicago next week.

Williams, who told me he’s been fascinated by Shakespeare since reading Macbeth at the age of ten, imagined the poet in conversation with a man like himself—a man of the church—and “he came alive for me in that.”

Shakeshafte is a brief but deep play of ideas, a what-if based on a tantalizing historical tidbit. Campion was indeed in Lancashire around 1580, holed up for a time in a Catholic safe house owned by one Alexander Hoghton. Also in the house around that time was a young man employed as a music teacher and a maker of household entertainments. His name was William Shakeshafte. Hoghton included him in his will, which came to light in the 1800s, and since then Shakespeare sleuths have speculated that this Shakeshafte was their man.

Very little is known about the playwright’s life, but his father is believed by some to have been Catholic, and there’s a local tradition in Lancashire that young Will once worked for a Catholic family there. John Aubrey reports in the Brief Lives that young Shakespeare was at one time a “schoolmaster in the country.”

Some scholars think this theory is bunkum.

But Williams finds it plausible enough to serve as the premise of a “fantasia” in which he imagines what the future saint and the future playwright—the older man not yet sentenced but resigned to his martyrdom, the younger full of ideas and ambition— might have had to say to each other.

The artist: Once you choose which voices to listen to, once you choose which clothes to wear, which beliefs to put on in the morning, how can you say that one of them is truth?

The priest: You don’t choose like that . . . you surrender to the harmony that you hear . . .

Artist: And what if you just can’t help hearing more all the time? If what’s asking you to surrender is just . . . well, bigger than what you and the others say, bigger than the harmony you can imagine?

The first American performance of Shakeshafte will be directed by Peter Garino, artistic director of the Shakespeare Project of Chicago, which gives free staged readings

READER RECOMMENDED

b ALL AGES

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of Shakespeare and other classical works on a circuit of venues: the Newberry and five municipal libraries in the suburbs. The company’s profile is low because their shows never get reviewed—their runs are only five days long—but they often perform to full houses and they’ve been around for 22 years. They read “on book”—that is, script in hand—with minimal costumes and music, but the actors are mostly Equity pros. They’re paid, they rehearse, and their performances are energetic and convincing. So much of Shakespeare is in the language, acting is really all it takes.

Shakeshafte will be a new challenge for the group—it’s a historical play but quite modern in its attitude and language. Williams, who in addition to being a bishop and a member of Parliament is an accomplished author and poet, wrote it during his stormy tenure as archbishop of Canterbury. He served in that role from 2002 to 2012, while the Anglican church was beset by such divisive issues as female bishops, gay marriage, and sharia law.

Since retiring from church life he has been the master of Magdalene College at Cambridge.

He has long been aware of and interested in the tension between the artistic and priestly ways of seeing the world, and he found a way to dramatize that tension in the scholarly speculation about the “hidden years” of Shakespeare’s youth. “I found it fascinating trying to imagine a young Shakespeare kind of breaking through a certain kind of old Catholicism,” Williams says, “respecting it and loving it and yet not being able quite to work with it.” As for the priest, “There’s something in Edmund which deep down acknowledges the limitations of the religious mind-set. He’s not meant to be just a conventionally pious figure. He sort of knows you can’t turn the clock back. But he wants to know if Will has any better ideas.”

Williams’s play includes sexual rivalry, gossiping servants, filial betrayal, and more, but at its core it’s a contest between religion and art. The playwright doesn’t pick a winner, but he insists it’s important to understand the differences and to give the artist his ground.

“As a priest I believe that in the longest of long runs, they converge,” Williams says.

“But meanwhile, there’s a bit of rub, a bit of tension, and I just want to give that room.” v R SHAKESHAFTE Fri 9/15, 7 PM, Niles-Maine District Library, 6960 W. Oakton St., Niles (reservations required); Sat 9/16, 10 AM, Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton, shakespeareprojectchicago. org. F

Centennial Celebration Upcoming Events Chicago World Music Festival - Women of the World September 10 3 p.m., Polk Bros Park Performance Lawns Lake Shore Vibe: The Architecture of Streeterville September 12 - January 7 Tiny Tavern, East Wall Here Hear Chicago: Up Right Chicago September 13 8 p.m., Aon Grand Ballroom Here Hear Chicago: HEARD September 16 1 p.m., Polk Bros Park 2:30 p.m., Soundsuits, Wave Wall on South Dock 3:30 p.m., Polk Bros Park Here Hear On Screen September 16 5 p.m., Polk Bros Park

v @MichaelLenehan3 SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 11

Underneath the Lintel

ARTS & CULTURE THEATER

Fringe is back in Jefferson Park

By READER STAFF

E

vil women, mind pickers, Fred Hampton, one spectacularly overdue library book, and, of course, the usual sex and death: the Chicago Fringe Festival is back for its eighth go-round, filling nine Jefferson Park venues with “the untried and the weird.”

Below are short reviews of 12 shows that run into the festival’s second weekend. It’s all over September 10. —TONY ADLER

ò COURTESY FRINGE FESTIVAL

DANDY DARKLY’S MYTH MOUTH! Imagine an even queenier, more hyperactive Rip Taylor with a penchant for sequins, wordplay, and revisionist queer history, and you’ll have a sense of Brooklyn’s Dandy Darkly’s overwhelming hour of outlandish mythmaking. His images are meticulously hallucinogenic, but challenging acoustics and a rattling delivery make him difficult to follow. (Thu 9/7-Fri 9/8, 8:30 PM) —JUSTIN HAYFORD

from several people (including herself) with achromatopsia, a visual impairment that inhibits color perception and diminishes visual acuity. The anecdotes vary from predictable to illuminating (imagine flirting without visual cues), but the tales of triumph against tall odds are inspirational. (Sat 9/9, 4 PM; Sun 9/10, 2:30 PM) (JH) THE ONE WITHOUT WORDS The duet is a commonplace and a zone of infinite exploration, a microcosm of human relations, of which love is only one possibility—here explored by actors untrained in the finer expression of the sinew. Mugging and kissing tell the tiresome story of a trite couple. It’s tragic.

(Sun 9/10, 8:30 PM) (IH)

EVIL WOMEN Four of history’s most villainous real-life mobsters, queens, and serial killers entertain and torment each other for eternity in this all-female redux of No Exit by #Divahs. The metaphysical threads get tangled up, but there’s some thoughtful absurdity here. (Fri 9/18, 10 PM; Sat 9/9, 7 PM; Sun 9/10, 5:30 PM) —DAN JAKES EXCEPTIONS TO REALITY Truth be told, I have no way of fact-checking William Pack’s assertion that most magicians start the craft as a child because of “problems at home,” but it sounds . . . questionable. I hope. Between dad jokes, Pack adeptly performs mind reading and slight sleight-of-hand card

and coin tricks, and his gentle demeanor serves as a nice foil for his more squirm-inducing illusions. (Sat 9/9, 10 PM; Sun 9/10, 8:30 PM) (DJ)

JEFF FORT AND FRED HAMPTON: A

R REVOLUTIONARY LOVE STORY A timely

and intriguing exploration of the relationship between the leaders of the Blackstone Rangers gang and the Chicago branch of the Black Panther Party, this play captures the spirit of what these two ambitious young men aspired to and the ways they were undermined by both internal and external forces. Whatever their individual flaws, their dream of bettering the plight of African-Americans in this country remains urgent, noble, yet unfulfilled. Steven Long wrote and directed.

(Thu 9/7, 8:30 PM; Sat 9/9, 2:30 PM; Sun 9/10, 5:30 PM) —DMITRY SAMAROV

MAN Steve Berglund wrote and performed this unfocused misfire of a meditation on the meaning of manhood, which apparently consists of whining about things you can’t or won’t do. There are attempts at jocularity and off-color humor along the way here, culminating with Berglund’s equating his coexistence with a misbehaving dog to the story line of 12 Years a Slave. Avoid at all costs. (Thu 9/7, 7 PM; Sat 9/9, 4 PM) (DS) MARK TOLAND: MIND READER Mark Toland is not Houdini or Svengali, not Jeanne Dixon or Edgar Cayce, not Miss Cleo or Nostradamus. There’s no smoke, mirrors, or astral projection, only pen, paper, and participants eager—or at least willing—to have their minds picked through for trivia. He has no flash and no agenda. He’s just a guy from Kansas who’s got your number. (Sat 9/9, 8:3o PM; Sun 9/10, 4 PM) —IRENE HSIAO NARRATIVES OF ACHROMATOPSIA Chicago director Iris Sowlat stitches together firsthand accounts

12 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

PRAKRITI: A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT Ishti team Kinnari Vora and Preeti Veerlapati combine several traditions of Indian classical dance in their exploration of the tension between opposing beliefs and the rediscovery of balance. Conceptually a work in progress, Prakriti (Sanskrit for “primal matter”) showcases the expression of faces, hands, and voices to hint at the value of ritual in the practice of daily life. (Sat 9/9, 5:30 PM) (IH)

UNDERNEATH THE LINTEL Pat O’Brien

R (best known as Mr. Dewey on Saved by the

Bell) gives an astounding performance as a librarian who embarks on an existential quest after a book shows up 123 years overdue. Inspired by the multiple meanings of the myth of the Wandering Jew, this solo play by Glen Berger is a deeply resonant meditation on choice and consequence. (Thu 9/7Fri 9/8, 7 PM) (DS) WHEN THAT SONG IS ABOUT YOU Chicago musical theater actor Julie Soroko has a rather dutiful tale to tell: undergraduate insecurity, self-defeating relationships, postcollege aimlessness, eventual self-acceptance, all scored to on-the-nose pop songs.

Soroko’s a likable performer with a strong voice, but she too often milks the moments of her own life, making autobiography feel oddly impersonal. (Fri 9/8, 7 PM) (JH)

WORK TO BE DONE With a healthy dose of self-abasement, solo artist Andy Monson dips in and out of an off-kilter, unfinished manuscript between phone calls with unamused industry colleagues.

Keyboard underscoring by Emilie Modaff keeps the audience on its toes. (Sat 9/9, 8:30 PM) (DJ)

CHICAGO FRINGE FESTIVAL Through 9/10: times vary, locations vary; see website, chicagofringe. org, $10 per show plus $5 admission button; ticket packages $36-$175 plus $5 button.

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ARTS & CULTURE THEATER

‘Watching white people do shit’ and beyond

By TONY ADLER

Abigail Pierce, Barbara Figgins, Anita Deely, John Henry Roberts, and Kristin Collins ò TK CREDIT

I

n comments to be found in the program for Strawdog Theatre’s production of his 2015 satire Barbecue, Robert O’Hara identifies a TV genre he calls “watching white people do shit.” “There are all these reality shows: watch the white guy build a house, watch the white guy fix the car, watch the white guy go around the world and eat,” he says. “Or the show where you watch the white girl who is 16 and pregnant. I know 16-year-old black people who are pregnant. I don’t know why they don’t have a television show.”

Hard to see why anyone would want racial parity at the pregnant-teen-as-entertainment level—but the point is that the WWPDS phenomenon moved O’Hara to write this sly, iconoclastic play full of cool twists (some of which I’m about to discuss, so be warned).

The brilliant first act opens on four grown siblings—Marie, Adlean, Lillie Anne, and James T—meeting at a picnic table in a public park, waiting for a fifth: Barbara, nicknamed “Zippity Boom” because of what happens when she gets high. They’ve gathered at Lillie Anne’s behest to run an intervention on Zippity Boom.

She’s out of control.

Of course, none of the interveners are actually in control. O’Hara paints them as the purest white trailer trash—elevens on a tenpoint Honey Boo Boo scale. Marie shows up (to an intervention!) with Jack Daniels in the large plastic bottle. Adlean has brought her grandkids, whom she leaves in the car and disciplines by screaming (“BOOTY, IF YOU DON’T STOP BOPPIN YO’ HEAD UP IN AND OUT OF

MY GATDAMN SUNROOF I’M GONNA COME OVER THERE AND SLAP THE FUCK OUT OF YOU WITH A HAMMER TILL YOUR THROAT CLAP!” Google “throat clap” for the full effect.)

Lillie Anne can lord it over the others because she’s the one with a GED. The stage goes black before long, and when the lights come back up, the characters are black too. Same park. Same names, clothes, and relationships. Same diction and dependencies. Different race. The white cast/black cast alternations continue throughout act one, at the end of which we begin to see why. Act two isn’t nearly as wild, but it makes things a whole lot clearer. In the end, Barbecue is less about WWPDS per se than about the manipulation of race in American entertainment, which is to say American culture—a nasty, hilarious case study.

Director Damon Kiely and his double-five-member cast are more than up to it all. Celeste M. Cooper and Anita Deely supply the lowest of the low humor as the Maries— though only Cooper gets the splendid passage about how “Middle Easterners” put cancer in corn cans. Barbara Figgins and Deanna Reed-Foster both make canny, formidable Lillie Annes. Ginneh Thomas and Abby Pierce are cynically compatible pieces of work as the Zippity Booms. v R BARBECUE Through 9/30: Fri 8 PM, Sat 3:30 and 8 PM, Sun 3:30 PM, 1700 Theatre, 1700 N. Halsted, 312-335-1650, strawdog. org, $45.

v @taadler

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 13

ARTS & CULTURE VISUAL ART

Face to face

By DMITRY SAMAROV

Y

Never miss a show again.

EARLY WARNINGS chicagoreader.com/early

14 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

ou won’t find very much visible wall space at Miishkooki gallery in Skokie this month. Artist Tim Kerr has used nearly every inch available in the venue to hang his colorful acrylic portraits—tributes to his heroes, which include figures as varied as bluesman Mance Lipscomb, photographer Walker Evans, and activist Fred Hampton—for his solo show “Your Name Here.”

Kerr is probably best known as the guitarist for 1980s Texas punk band the Big Boys, though he’s been in many other groups and has produced numerous records for others.

Still, painting and photography are important aspects of his artistic practice. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, where he studied under noted photographer Garry Winogrand (who’s one of the people featured on Miishkooki’s walls), and had his first art show at about the same time the Big Boys were getting going in the early 80s. He’s frequently said that he doesn’t separate his music from his visual art—it’s all self-expression to him.

Kerr’s subjects fall into roughly four groups: civil rights figures and social or political activists; jazz, folk, country, and blues musicians; photographers; and visionary, often self-taught visual artists. His paintings are rendered in bright, flat, loosely applied acrylic colors; features such as eyes and ears are drawn over the paint with markers. The portraits are done on a variety of surfaces, such as pieces of paper, cardboard, old pulldown school maps, and skateboards. Most of the works have the subject’s name and a bit of information written on them; without this text it can be hard to tell whom Kerr is depicting.

Judging by the quick and informal way he renders his subjects, verisimilitude isn’t Kerr’s aim. From across the room the pieces look like flat, multicolored abstractions. It’s these colors—often combined in unusual and surprising ways—that invite visitors to look at the paintings up close, where they can read the text on each work. There’s a quote from Albert Ayler on his portrait (“Coltrane was the father / Pharoah was the son / I was the holy

Tim Kerr ò COURTESY MIISHKOOKI

ghost”) and one from Dick Gregory on his own painting (“I never learned hate at home. I had to go to school for that”). Some include the subject’s biography, and many of the works feature mantras or slogans like truth, seek what they sought, and tradition pass it on. These people are Kerr’s heroes, and their lives are meant to inspire us as well.

Kerr has included many Chicagoans, among them Ernie Banks, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Dawoud Bey, and Vivian Maier. Several years ago, Kerr’s interest in Maier prompted him to contact John Maloof, Miishkooki’s proprietor and one of the principal creative forces behind the documentary Finding Vivian Maier. The exhibit also includes a “Friends Wall” toward the back of the gallery, with work by local artists including Jon Langford, Greg Shirilla, and Panhandle Slim, who contributes a portrait of Wesley Willis.

By signing his pieces Your Name Here, paying tribute to others, and bringing different artists into his show, Kerr does all he can to express his vision of inclusive artistry.

Miishkooki is a nonprofit where artists keep

all proceeds and also handle all sales. When I visited the gallery, a couple came in to look around: the man said he felt bad he couldn’t recognize most of Kerr’s subjects; the woman asked specifically to be shown “the one of Chance the Rapper.” After making a call she told Maloof she’d take it—she was going to give it as a bar mitzvah present. Maloof told the woman Kerr’s wife would be mailing her an invoice. A look at the price list reveals that none of the pieces cost more than a few hundred dollars. The whole interaction seemed in perfect alignment with Kerr’s DIY, all-embracing spirit—even the most frugal collector can purchase one of his artworks.

Taken as a whole, the portraits in “Your Name Here” form a kind of secular shrine. To even a casual passerby, a quick peek into Miishkooki might make you feel like “you go out and the pictures are staring at you.” Photographer Lee Friedlander said that; you can find the quote on his portrait. v R “TIM KERR: YOUR NAME HERE” Through 9/23: Mon-Fri by appointment, Miishkooki Art Space, 4517 Oakton St., Skokie, 773-688-6038, miishkooki.com. F

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tiful Sarah (Laure Valentinelli) knit their fingers together and gaze soulfully into each other’s eyes. A flashback shows them in bed together earlier, and another shows the group gathering to plot and party, but otherwise the momentum builds steadily.

Despite all this, Bonello doesn’t really detonate his movie until the second half, when the attack has been carried out and the surviving terrorists sneak into a chic, high-rise department store to spend the night. This is blatantly ridiculous—if they had any sense they would scatter—but it pushes Nocturama even further from the grim headlines of the day into a sort of socialist fable. Overcome by egalitarianism, David invites a couple of homeless people into the store to share in its riches, which adds an element of chaos as the night wears on. The conspirators, who’ve been defined in the first stretch mainly through their silent actions, begin to emerge as people, especially when they fall in love with the merchandise; one young man, overcome with lust, strips the swimsuit off a gleaming white mannequin and molests it. Blasting tunes all night, they turn the store into their own little dreamland, but wait until they see the bill. v NOCTURAMA ssss Directed by Bertrand Bonello. 130 min.

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By J.R. JONES octurama, Bertrand Bonello’s arty French thriller about a coordinated terror attack in Paris, wrapped production just before ISIL staged its horrifying November 2015 assault on multiple targets in the city, claiming 130 lives. The ISIL attacks—four bombings and four deadly shooting sprees, including the massacre of 89 people at a rock concert—make the movie seem tame by comparison. In Nocturama ten young radicals execute a wave of assassinations and bombings, but there are no mass civilian casualties.

And in contrast to the Islamist attack that played out in real life, the one in Nocturama is weirdly depoliticized. One perpetrator brings vague jihadist leanings to the plot, but some of the conspirators, and all of the masterminds, are white and apparently well educated. They make sarcastic left-wing comments, but nothing you wouldn’t hear at a bar.

Whether the real-life tragedy renders Nocturama tasteless is something I’ll leave to the victims’ families, but if you can ignore this aspect, you’re in for the most suspenseful film to hit town all year. Bonello (Saint Laurent, House of Pleasures) spends the first half of the movie smoothly interweaving the trajectories of his many characters as they move into position for the assault. Nobody says anything, but the atmosphere is charged with tension. In the subway, tall, handsome David (Finnegan Oldfield) and cruelly beau-

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SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 15

Chicago photographer Doug Ischar documented the Belmont Rocks scene of the mid-1980s in a series called “Marginal Waters.”

(Marginal Waters #10, 1985)

A gay paradise on the Rocks O The Belmont Rocks was one of Chicago’s most significant public LGBTQ destinations from the 1970s through the ’90s. Now author Owen Keehnen is assembling an oral history, soliciting stories and photographs from the former denizens of the dearly departed lakeside cruising spot.

By JASON A. HEIDEMANN PHOTOS BY DOUG ISCHAR

16 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

wen Keehnen remembers the Belmont Rocks like he was there yesterday. On summer afternoons in the mid-1980s, he would stroll up the lakefront from Diversey Harbor. As he approached Belmont Avenue, he’d see a large grassy expanse punctuated on one side by a series of tiered limestone blocks that separated the city from Lake Michigan. Sprawled out along the grass and rocks, men cruised and canoodled. Some were clad in Speedos.

Others wore loincloths. A few discreetly sunbathed in the nude. The warm air crackled with erotic energy.

Like so many LGBTQ Chicagoans of a certain age, Keehnen came to “the Rocks” to enjoy a relatively newfound taste of queer liberation. At the time, the Boystown bar

scene was just emerging, with taprooms such as the Closet and Little Jim’s and a shiny new video bar called Sidetrack. But those were domains of the night, when it was safer for homosexuals to surface. The Belmont Rocks was the rare spot where the queer community could mix and mingle in broad daylight all summer long as traffic whizzed past on Lake Shore Drive. It was nothing short of gay paradise.

The Rocks began attracting sunbathers (and late-night sex seekers) as early as the 70s. In the mid-80s the AIDS crisis took its toll on many of its most devoted denizens, and by the early 90s a new generation of gay men and women, lured north by the gentrification of Andersonville and the gay beach volleyball scene, carved out a happy niche along

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Marginal Waters #1, 1985 Marginal Waters #11, 1985

Marginal Waters #8, 1985

crescent-shaped Kathy Osterman Beach (aka Hollywood Beach) in Edgewater. Then, in 2003, as part of the Belmont-Diversey Revetment Project, crews replaced the Belmont Rocks’ limestone with concrete. The restoration marked the end of an era of queer Chicago history.

“The Rocks were a kind of a political statement, that we had a right to be ourselves and to be out in the fresh air,” says Keehnen, a bookseller at Unabridged Books in Lakeview and the author of several gay novels as well as biographies of Chicago leather community icon Chuck Renslow and Baton Lounge owner Jim Flint. Keehnen’s latest project is an oral history of the Belmont Rocks, which he’s currently compiling in hopes of finding a publisher. “There isn’t a lot documented about the Rocks and what they mean to people,” the 57-year-old says.

“It’s a fragile history.”

Ask most LGBTQ Chicagoans under the age of 45 about the Belmont Rocks and they’re likely to return a blank stare. As millennials and Gen-Xers enjoy greater equality and rights than the generations before them, it’s easy to take for granted how bold the nascent community was to socialize together in such a public space. “I think the importance can’t be stressed enough about how just going there and hanging out together outdoors with your friends [or] just alone and wanting to cruise outdoors in a public place, how empowering and political that was,” Keehnen says.

The importance of the Rocks to Chicago’s LGBTQ community hit Keehnen like a ton of limestone bricks in June.

En route by bicycle to his shift at Unabridged, Keehnen took a detour down memory lane, out to Belmont Harbor.

What he saw saddened him.

“It was really sterilized, sanitized, stripped of all the art and life and energy of the place,” he says. “It was literally like . . . nothing was going on there. They did all this beautification of the lakefront and it had the exact opposite effect, because what they took away when they bulldozed the Rocks is what made them so magical. Seeing that gone just punched me in the gut.”

To rectify what he saw as a historical transgression, Keehnen started a Facebook page called “A Place for Us: LGBTQ Life at the Belmont Rocks,” on which he’s made an open call for written memories of the Rocks and photographs taken at the site; he’s accepting submissions through October 1.

Keehnen’s research and the community’s response has thus far revealed a lively portrait of the Rocks that, in addition to sunbathing and cruising, includes barbecues, civil unions, Pride celebrations, memorials, political rallies (drag performer Joan Jett Blakk filmed a portion of her 1992 presidential campaign video at the Rocks), queer artistry (the Rocks were covered with drawings, carvings, and graffiti), relationships formed and relationships ended, and much more. That this patchwork of LGBTQ stories could’ve easily ended up in history’s dustbin only strengthens Keehnen’s resolve.

“It’s heartbreaking in a lot of ways because people will send a picture of, like, five [friends] doing something wacky and I’ll say, ‘Is it OK if this eventually gets J

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 17

Marginal Waters #15, 1985

Marginal Waters #6, 1985

Marginal Waters #4, 1985

continued from 17 used in the book? Do you have to clear it with anyone?’ and there are a lot of times where people will come back and say, ‘It’s fine with me. Everybody else in the picture is dead.’ That happens a lot.”

Keehnen isn’t the Belmont Rocks’ only documentarian. Around the same time as he was discovering its wonders, so too was a Columbia College photography student named Doug Ischar. Surprised by the openness of the Rocks in comparison to gay meccas in places like New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles (where at the time, gay beaches were well off the beaten path), Ischar became a daily fixture and persuaded many in the marginalized community to let him photograph them at play.

18 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

“I was determined to photograph gay men and I was very interested in photographing them in social situations,” says Ischar, 68, now an associate professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “It was the perfect situation for a devoted, committed young photographer who wanted to picture gay men socially as opposed to studio nudes.”

Shot over the course of two Chicago summers in the mid-80s, the images in Ischar’s “Marginal Waters” series hold up a mirror to a community whose swimwear choices have changed very little in three decades, although the feathered haircuts are long gone. The images are also haunting in their unflinching depiction of same-sex relationships among a cheerful community about to be devastated by AIDS.

“Some of the Rocks photos show extreme intimacy,” Ischar says. “That was very important for me. I was always extremely bent on picturing public intimacy, kissing, making out—just the kind of mildly erotic behavior that could only come with a certain degree of liberation.”

Ischar now lives in Edgewater in a high-rise condo directly overlooking Hollywood Beach. The socializing he sees there today is “much less mixed, culturally and racially” as compared to the heyday of the Belmont Rocks, he says. “It’s much more, to my mind, straight out of the clubs. It’s not the same kind of place.”

While Keehnen is proud the queer community upgraded from a collection of jagged rocks to a beautiful stretch of sand, he’s quick to point out the generational shift.

“Hollywood Beach is the sequel, but I also don’t think it’s the same thing,” he says. “The Rocks were about asserting our identity and our right to be here. Hollywood Beach takes it for granted. I think it’s kind of closer to assimilation than the Rocks were.”

Keehnen intends the Belmont Rocks oral history to serve as a kind of intergenerational scrapbook, one that functions as a history lesson for LGBTQ millennials as well as a memento for gay seniors. “None of us who experienced the Rocks are getting younger,” Keehnen says.

“History gets harder and harder to chronicle as you lose your primary sources.” v

v @jheidemann

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Betsayda Machado ò VLADIMIR MARCANO

The brightest lights at the World Music Festival Running for 17 days at venues all over Chicago, this free fest is a constellation of international stars—including Afrobeat scion Seun Kuti, rambunctious Cape Verdean accordionist Bitori, and Afro-Venezuelan flame keeper Betsayda Machado.

By PETER MARGASAK

I

n its 19th year, Chicago’s World Music Festival is as sprawling as ever—it lasts 17 days, from Friday, September 8, till Sunday, September 24—but because it’s abandoned booking concerts on Mondays and Tuesdays, overall it feels more modest. The WMF has long been less grueling than a typical music festival, both because it spreads out its lineup across so many days and because most of its shows are in cozy venues where you don’t have to compete for elbow room with tens of thousands of people. But the pace of this year’s fest has slackened perhaps too much—there’s

WORLD MUSIC FESTIVAL CHICAGO

Full schedule at worldmusicfestivalchicago.com.

Fri 9/8 through Sun 9/24, multiple locations, age restrictions vary, all shows free something to be said for momentum and excitement, and it’s tougher to maintain either with so many days off. Also stealing oxygen from the WMF are the excellent international

musicians playing in Chicago during its run but outside its purview: great flamenco guitarist Vicente Amigo performs at City Winery on September 17 and 18, for instance, and Senegalese trio Bideew Bou Bess (proteges of Youssou N’Dour) have a show at the Old Town School on September 15.

I have a bigger complaint too, but it’s less about the festival’s organizers and more about the general state of the marketplace for international music. The booking and promotion of this kind of music, especially at big events, has become increasingly institutionalized— and the drive toward cost efficiency by those institutions has fueled a proliferation of panstylistic performers whose sound rarely suggests anything more specific than “world music.” It’s much easier to bring in U.S. groups that ply a commercialized hybrid of musical traditions than it is to organize a tour for a foreign ensemble that’s actually advancing one of the traditions in question—in the latter case, you’re likely to need expensive visas, transla-

tors, and booking agents. Unfortunately, you get what you pay for, and this year’s World Music Festival includes a bunch of groups that are proficient technically but short on personality, innovation, and grit.

That said, there’s enough quality on the lineup for me to unreservedly recommend the nine acts that follow. Once again the fest has booked a bounty of terrific music from Africa, and it accounts for five of my selections—six if you count Nicole Mitchell’s collaboration with Malian kora player Ballaké Sissoko. And I’d be remiss not to mention the annual Ragamala concert at the Chicago Cultural Center, a feast of Indian classical music that provides audiences with the opportunity to hear ragas performed at the traditional hours for which they were composed—it begins the evening of Friday, September 8, and runs through the late morning of Saturday, September 9.

World Music Festival shows take place at venues all over the city, and for several years now they’ve all been free to attend.

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 19

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SEP 17

NEW

CLARK & THE COMMUNITY

MNDSGN

NOV 10

NEW

MAX GOMEZ

NOV 10

NEW

[WAKE UP NOW TOUR]

NICK MULVEY

NOV 11

NEW

RED BULL SOUND SELECT PRESENTS: 30 DAYS IN CHICAGO FEATURING

SABRINA CLAUDIO

NOV 12

NEW

chicago

PERT NEAR SANDSTONE

DEC 01

PARENT + BUNNY

MAX SUBAR + HALF GRINGA

MADELINE KENNEY

wed 9/27

JOHN KADLECIK

with...

(furthur, dso, phil & friends)

Jay Lane (Furthur, Rat Dog, Primus)

sat sept 23

Joe Gallant (Illuminati) Benjie Porecki (Keller's Grateful Gospel)

for complete listings, tickets, and social updates... martyrslive.com facebook.com/martyrslive @martyrslive 20 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

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Salif Keita ò COURTESY OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO

Bharath Symphony

current focus is the raucous folk music of the Romani people—specifically the repertoire of outsize Serbian singer Saban Bajramovic, who died in poverty in 2008 despite a long career as one of the greatest Romani vocalists ever recorded. On last year’s self-released Lema Lema: Eva Salina Sings Saban Bajramovic, she gave his songs a variety of punchy, entertaining settings, with overheated horns and jacked-up rhythms that all but drown out the pathos in the original material. Not a bad move—Bajramovic was larger than life, but also such a tragic figure that his music needs a little help to feel fun again.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 3 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Michigan and Randolph, all-ages Indian classical violinist L. Subramaniam is an old hand at crossover projects: he’s reached beyond traditional sounds to score film soundtracks and collaborate with a wide range of stars, including jazz artists Herbie Hancock and Larry Coryell, Western virtuosos Yehudi Menuhin and Jean-Pierre Rampal, and George Harrison of the Beatles. But with his Bharath Symphony, which he premieres this weekend, he’s taken on a monumental task: to celebrate the 70th anniversary of India’s independence from British rule, this three-hour composition attempts nothing less than a summation of the four major eras of India’s illustrious history, from prehistory to the present day. There’s reason to be skeptical about such an undertaking, but Subramaniam has assembled an eight-piece ensemble that features some of the greatest instrumentalists in Indian classical music, among them percussionists Tanmoy Bose and Mahesh Krishnamurthy, slide-guitar great Debashish Bhattacharya, and three of his own talented children: Ambi (violin), Kavita Krishnamurti (vocals), and Bindu (vocals).

They’re joined by the Elhmurst Philharmonic Orchestra and the Elmhurst Community Choir.

In November, Subramaniam will travel to the UK to mount the work with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican Center.

L. Subramaniam ò COURTESY OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO

Betsayda Machado y la Parranda El Clavo

Salif Keita SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 9 Grand Tapestry opens. 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee, 21+ Salif Keita is arguably the greatest Malian singer of the past half century, and like most African stars, he’s sought a global audience by experimenting with various flavors of Western pop (not always to salutary effect). On his most recent album, Talé (Universal), Keita submits the music of his Mandinka ancestors to the ministrations of producer Philippe Cohen Solal, best known as cofounder of Parisian electro-tango outfit Gotan Project. Solal enlisted a slew of guest singers—British MC Roots Manuva, American jazz bassist Esperanza Spalding, a cappella icon Bobby McFerrin— and added a variety of electronic beats and effects, among them fat dubstep stutters (“C’est Bon, C’est Bon”), anthemic four-on-the-floor kick drums (“Natty”), and ambient washes that alternately ramp up and throttle back (“Après Demain”). It’s a testament to the power of Keita’s soaring, protean voice that it’s unhindered by such unrewarding genre exercises.

The album does better when its fusions seem to be hunting for serendipitous connections: “Samfi,” for instance, collides Gnawan grooves with a prominent organ sample from the B-52s’ “Planet Claire,” and “Tassi” mixes Sade-style soul with percolating Afro-Cuban rhythms.

The core band on Talé includes Mamane Diabaté on balafon and Aboussi Cissoko on n’goni, and Keita never conceals the West African heritage of his imperturbably soulful singing. His voice is the only essential part of his music, and when freed from guest singers and the trappings of a high-end Paris studio, it’s capable of carrying a concert like this all by itself.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 The Luciano Antonio Quartet opens.

3 PM, Pritzker Pavilion, Millennium Park, Michigan and Randolph, all-ages

Eva Salina ò COURTESY OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO

Eva Salina WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 Alfonso Ponticelli & Swing Gitan headline. 7:30 PM, Green Mill, 4802 N. Broadway, 21+ THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 Tcheka headlines. 7 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 21+ Singer Eva Salina has traveled a long way from her native Santa Cruz, California, though the distance has been at least as much cultural as geographic. As a child she fell in love with a tape of Yiddish songs, and her parents gamely sought out a teacher to help her learn to sing them. When they came up empty, they hired a Balkan instructor instead, inadvertently setting their daughter on the circuitous path she’s followed since. Now a New Yorker, Salina has carried her interest in Eastern European music into all sorts of projects—including the Jalopy Chorus, which also traffics in Irish folk and bluegrass. She works in a cosmopolitan mix of styles, but her

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 La Tribu de Abrante headlines; Mdou Moctar (see below) and Betsayda Machado y la Parranda El Clavo open.

2 PM, Humboldt Park Boathouse, 1301 N. Sacramento, all-ages

Full-throated Venezuelan singer Betsayda Machado grew up in El Clavo, a village in the Barlovento region of the country’s Caribbean coast—an area rich in the cultures of the African diaspora. She’s a descendant of the escaped slaves who formed hidden communities called cumbes in the wilderness (in the process laying the groundwork for the development of the region), and her band, La Parranda El Clavo, maintains a clearly audible link to Africa. Many Venezuelans with roots in the J

Betsayda Machado y la Parranda El Clavo ò COURTESY OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 21

Mdou Moctar ò CHRISTOPHER KIRKLEY

continued from 21

the cumbes have moved to the cities, Machado among them; in the country’s capital, Caracas, she’s found great success singing in relatively contemporary modes and sharing stages with the likes of salsa great Oscar D’Leon. But she’s never turned her back on the traditional sounds of her childhood.

Machado’s new album, Loé Loá: Rural Recordings Under the Mango Tree (Odelia), presents those sounds in their uncut form: her soulful, titanic voice triggers passionate call-and-response chants atop a torrent of polyrhythmic percussion, including drums, scrapers, and castanets. Until recently La Parranda El Clavo has been a labor of love, but after a music-biz professional caught one of the band’s local shows and signed on as its manager, Machado and company started to consider the possibility of taking the show on the road. Though the group’s fortunes have changed, its music hasn’t—and as a result, these performances offer Chicagoans a rare chance to hear an almost completely unmediated product of Afro-Venezuelan culture.

register here till maybe 15 years ago. In fact that bluesy sound, where flanged, arpeggiated guitars simmer and snake over clopping calabash grooves, has existed in West Africa for decades, and Mdou Moctar (born Mahamadou Souleymane) grew up with it in the Nigerien town of Tchintabaraden. Moctar represents a generation that has embraced new technology to spread its music, recording low-fi tracks and circulating them as MP3 files on the memory cards of cell phones. His work

Mdou Moctar

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16 Ode opens. 10 PM, Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln, 21+

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 La Tribu de Abrante headlines; Mdou Moctar and Betsayda Machado y la Parranda El Clavo (see above) open.

2 PM, Humboldt Park Boathouse, 1301 N. Sacramento, all-ages

The Saharan guitar music first popularized by Tuareg band Tinariwen (and further spread by like-minded artists such as Etran Finatawa, Toumast, Group Doueh, and Bambino) might seem like a recent development to Americans, but that’s only because it didn’t

22 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

Trio Da Kali ò YOURI LENQUETTE

first reached a global audience on the influential 2011 compilation Music From Saharan Cellphones, which features material he’d made for the album Anar a few years earlier: it combines his guitar with primitive drum machines, piercing synthesizers, and acrobatic vocals rendered nearly robotic by torqued pitch-correction software.

Judging from Moctar’s austere new album, Sousoume Tamachek (Sahel Sounds), he arrived at that early sound either as an expedient or an experiment—in any case, it’s clearly not his ideal. On Sousoume Tamachek he revisits some of his oldest tunes, but the recording feels like the polar opposite of the scrappy electronic production he used back then: he plays and sings everything, overdubbing clean layers of guitar, percussion, and chanted vocals. The music isn’t flashy, but even when he’s deployed similar instrumentation in the past, it hasn’t hit this hard—his clenched vocals and driving, minimal guitars ring out with a new clarity. In addition to Moctar’s performances, at 6 PM on Friday, September 15, at the Storefront Theater

(66 E. Randolph), Sahel Sounds owner Christopher Kirkley will screen a low-budget film he made in Niger. Rain the Color Blue With a Little Red in It, a loose remake of Prince’s Purple Rain starring Moctar, is allegedly the first-ever Tuareg-language movie.

Trio Da Kali WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 Hong Sung Hyun’s Chobeolbi opens.

6 PM, Preston Bradley Hall, Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington, allages THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 21 Rami Gabriel opens. 7:30 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 21+ The three Malian musicians in Trio Da Kali— balafon player Fodé Lassana Diabaté, singer Hawa Kassé Mady Diabaté, and bass n’goni player Mamadou Kouyaté—all have excellent resumés, having collaborated on their own with the likes of Toumani Diabaté, Bassekou Kouyaté, Salif Keita (see above), Tiken Jah Fakoly, and Malian-Cuban fusion project AfroCubism. But they hadn’t worked as a group till British producer and West African music expert Lucy Duran brought them together five years ago for a project presented by the Aga Khan Music Initiative. She had a hunch they’d have great chemistry, and they proved her right on a beautifully sparse 2015 trio recording for World Circuit.

Trio Da Kali make their U.S. debut in support of a brand-new album that’s the product of yet another collaboration, this time with venerable Bay Area string ensemble Kronos Quartet. When Trio Da Kali & Kronos Quartet (World Circuit) works well, the strings support the sashaying balafon and bass n’goni and powerful singing—shading harmonies, girding rhythms, adding subtle countermelodies. Unfortunately, Kronos sometimes gets too heavy-handed, disrupting the trio’s flow by adding fussy, flashy lines that in a folkloric group might’ve been played on kora—on “Ladilikan” I half expected the quartet to launch into Santana’s “Black Magic Woman.” That sort of thing doesn’t happen often, though, and Kronos make up for their missteps with some great ideas: violinist David Harrington proposed covering the gospel song “God Shall Wipe All Tears Away,” made famous by Mahalia Jackson, and the arrangement creates a fascinating collision of traditions. For these shows, Trio Da Kali perform on their own.

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Seun Kuti ò ROMAIN RIGAL

Bitori

Fatima Kouyaté) and by four members of Mitchell’s long-running Black Earth Ensemble: guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Joshua Abrams, vocalist Mankwe Ndosi, and percussionist Jovia Armstrong.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 22 Beats y Bateria open. 7 PM, the Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park, all-ages SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 (see below) headline; Bitori and Africa Hi-Fi open.

8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee, 21+ Cesaria Evora, Cape Verde’s “Barefoot Diva,” put the West African islands’ music on the map more than two decades ago with her gorgeously sorrowful take on morna, a tender song form that grafts the saudade of Portuguese fado to the seductive rhythms of Brazil. In the years since, other artists from Cape Verde— among them vocalist Lura and singer-guitarist Tcheka, who returns to Chicago for this year’s festival—have helped popularize less familiar sounds from the islands, but America has yet to hear anyone quite like Bitori, aka Victor Tavares. This wild accordionist and singer delivers a go-for-broke take on funaná, Cape Verde’s most upbeat style; its rapid-fire shuffling rhythms feel a little like zydeco, with scraped percussion providing the same sort of buoyant drive as a zydeco washboard. Last year Analog Africa reissued Bitori’s 1997 debut album, Bitori Nha Bibinha (made when he was 59), under the title Legend of Funaná: The Forbidden Music of the Cape Verde Islands—the recording’s first international release.

By the late 90s, Bitori had been playing funaná for decades—ever since saving up enough money as a teenager to buy his first accordion in 1956. For much of his early career he had to be careful about where and when he performed, because Cape Verde’s Portuguese colonial rulers associated funaná with working-class uprisings and punished musicians with jail or torture. Not until the islands achieved independence in 1975 did the music enjoy broad popularity, and even then it was rarely recorded—at least until Bitori opened the floodgates with his debut, now considered

Bitori ò JOAO BARBOSA

Seun Kuti & Egypt 80 SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 Bitori (see above) and Africa Hi-Fi open.

8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 2047 N. Milwaukee, 21+

the best album the genre has ever produced.

By touring with young singer Chando Graciosa, Bitori spread the music to Europe in the 90s, and to support the Analog Africa reissue he returned to the continent as a bona fide world-music star. His Chicago performances are part of his first U.S. tour.

Nicole Mitchell & Ballaké Sissoko: Bamako*Chicago Sound System SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 Part of the Hyde Park Jazz Festival.

3 and 5:45 PM, Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago, all-ages Malian kora virtuoso Ballaké Sissoko roots his playing in traditional Mande modes—his 2013 solo album At Peace (Six Degrees) is a beautiful case in point—but he’s also distinguished himself by bridging cultural divides through thoughtful collaboration. He’s worked with American bluesman Taj Mahal, Chinese pipa master Liu Fang, French cellist Vincent Segal, Italian contemporary classical pianist Ludovico Einaudi, and Moroccan oud player Driss El Maloumi. That roll call is evidence of his

curiosity and versatility—he can draw upon improvisational creativity to make new situations work. This new project promises to be as exciting and rewarding as any he’s undertaken, because he’s joining forces with one of the most dynamic composers, improvisers, and bandleaders in the world: former Chicagoan Nicole Mitchell.

This coproduction of the World Music Festival and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival was born three years ago, when Mitchell and Sissoko performed together in Paris. Today they’ll present the world premiere of a new batch of music, to be rehearsed in Chicago during a residency preceding the concert. In Bamako*Chicago Sound System, the principals are joined by two Malian musicians (balafon player Fassery Diabaté on balafon and singer

Last September, Nigerian Afrobeat scion Seun Kuti and his band Egypt 80 dropped the first release of their new deal with Sony Masterworks, a three-track EP called Struggle Sounds. Its 25 minutes cleave tightly to the classic agitprop-funk formula pioneered by Seun’s legendary father, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and coproducer Robert Glasper was smart enough not to fuck with success. Considering the shortsighted, selfish decisions happening in voting booths and statehouses around the globe—do I even need to mention Trump?— the EP’s blast of righteousness is plenty welcome. Kuti probably didn’t write his lyrics with the U.S. in mind, but on the seething “Gimme My Vote Back (C.P.C.D.)”—the parenthetical stands for “Corporate Public Control Department”—he sure seems to be talking about what the supporters of our allegedly populist alleged president are likely to get for their trouble: “You promise jobs / And you close the factory / But there’s always work in the penitentiary.” When it comes to politics, listening to music is no substitute for direct action, but songs this combustible—and a front man this electric—can definitely help motivate people to fight back against their oppressors. v

v @pmarg

Nicole Mitchell

Ballaké Sissoko

ò KRISTI SUTTON ELAIS

ò GILBERT GALÈRON

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 23

bottom lounge ON SALE NOW

MUSIC IN ROTATION

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

Genesis in 1976, with a bearded Phil Collins, not long after the departure of Peter Gabriel ò SUN-TIMES PRINT COLLECTION

UPCOMING SHOWS SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

09.08 YHETI

DMVU / TOADFACE SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

09.09 PIGEONS PLAYING PING PONG FLAMINGOSIS

09.13 JAKE MILLER THE STOLEN

RIOT FEST LATE NIGHT

09.15 CAP’N JAZZ RAPPERCHICKS

The Participatory Music Coalition at the Promontory for its multidisciplinary series the Corner ò JULIA DRATEL

09.18 COAST MODERN SALT CATHEDRAL

09.19 ASGEIR TUSKS

09.22 GABRIELLE APLIN KEELAN DONOVAN

09.26 THE EARLY NOVEMBER & THE MOVIELIFE HEART ATTACK MAN

101WKQX QUEUED UP ARTIST SHOWCASE

10.04 WELSHLY ARMS WARBLY JETS

ALT NATION PRESENTS

10.05 ATLAS GENIUS

FLOR / HALF THE ANIMAL

10.10 TRUCKFIGHTERS NIGHT ONE - AUTUMN OF THE SERAPHS 10TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR

10.11 PINBACK

DRAGON DROP

NIGHT TWO

10.12 PINBACK PAPER MICE

REACT PRESENTS

10.14 TERRAVITA RIOT / CHIME

JAM PRESENTS

10.19 LIL PEEP 10.20 MY LIFE WITH THE THRILL KILL KULT DJ BUD SWEET

SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

10.27 THE MAIN SQUEEZE SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

10.28 CRANKDAT REACT PRESENTS

11.02 A TRIBE CALLED RED 11.04 THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA VEIL OF MAYA / THOUSAND BELOW

11.08 GIRAFFAGE

SWEATER BEATS / WINGTIP

SILVER WRAPPER PRESENTS

11.15 SLOW MAGIC REACT PRESENTS

11.16 BLEEP BLOOP

UM.. / SUMTHIN’ SUMTHIN’

11.17 SHE WANTS REVENGE COSMONAUTS

www.bottomlounge.com 1375 w lake st 312.666.6775

24 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

The cover of Sibylle Baier’s Colour Green

LUCA CIMARUSTI

JASON BALLA Guitarist and vocalist for Ne-Hi, Dehd, and Earring

SULLIVAN DAVIS

The Defiant Ones This four-part HBO documentary, originally broadcast in July, traces the paths of music moguls Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine from their humble beginnings to their high-powered music-business partnership— one of the most lucrative in the history of money. Essential viewing not only for musicians and music lovers, but also for anyone interested in American culture of any kind.

Tim Presley, The Wink (Drag City, 2016) The latest record by California singer-songwriter Tim Presley, better known as White Fence, is adventurously dry. Broken guitar lines seem to vanish and reappear, stumbling over arrhythmic drum patterns, but he pulls it all off with dizzying grace. It seems entirely new, yet simultaneously familiar, I think in part because of Presley’s vocals: they’re sometimes absurd, sometimes sincere, and sometimes both. It seems like he’s singing around the subject, painting a perfect silhouette of loss and return.

Arto Lindsay, Cuidado Madame (Northern Spy, 2017) This record has been my anthem for the season. At this point Arto Lindsay feels to me like as big a romantic as Jonathan Richman, even though his music is still informed by the skronky, aggressive undertones of his old band DNA. It has such an off-kilter energy and pop familiarity that I wanted to go back to it over and over again. Good-bye summer 2017— at least I’ll have this to remember you by.

Reader music listings coordinator

Remo Felt Tone drumheads I’m a sucker for all sorts of fancy new drum gadgets. A Remo Felt Tone kick-drum resonator head has a free-floating felt strip attached to the edges of its inside surface (rather than glued down along its length, the way most manufacturers do it), and it makes for a focused, boomy, Bonham-style tone. The one I’ve got on my drum sounds amazing and looks real sharp.

Phil Collins-era Genesis At some point in the past year, I underwent a mysterious transformation: I’ve become less interested in the whimsical, theatrical, Mellotron-fuled prog of Peter Gabriel-era Genesis and way more moved by the dark synth-pop of the Phil Collins days. The band’s 1980 album Duke is like a crushing midlife crisis set to music, something that speaks to me as I get further into my 30s.

Crack Cloud, Anchoring Point (self-released, 2017) Do yourself a favor and watch this band’s music videos! Crack Cloud covers a lot of ground on Anchoring Point: chaotic, moody, cerebral, disciplined, comic (maybe humor is making its way back into music in 2017?). The chorus of “Philosopher’s Calling” is incredibly sing-alongable and a challenge to master.

“Swish Swash” is a perfect song, with a droney outro that fills me with pure joy and optimism.

Listening to Crack Cloud inspires me to do better and push further.

Sibylle Baier, Colour Green (Orange Twin, 2006) After a couple months on the road this year, I’ve been lucky to have some quiet mornings to myself. This quiet, intimate album, recorded in the early 70s but not released till 2006, is my favorite for drinking coffee, watering the plants, and staring out the living room window.

Talent buyer for the Hideout

Glyders, Lend a Hand (Enchanted Capsule, 2017) What seems to be everyone’s favorite Chicago psych band recently put out this cassette, and though it hardly has the bottled energy of their live shows, it’s great. The tape burns in a completely different way—more like Neil Young & Crazy Horse—and guitarist Josh Condon sings some real heartbreakers, including “Sweet Anymore.” You can still find some heavier psych jams at the end of the tape (though “heavier” is a relative term), but you can’t find the tape itself. It’s sold out. Josh and Eliza, if you have any extras, could you slip me one?

The Corner series at the Promontory When I have a chance to get away from the Hideout on a Monday, this is where I try to go. Sasha Tycko and Sam Brown curate the Corner, a nearly two-year-old multidisciplinary performance night where you can see killer acts such as Mother Nature and Akenya trying things out. The best thing about it, though, is that you’re sharing a room with a thriving progressive community that only Hyde Park in this moment could produce.

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You can go back to school, too!

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Landscape oasis • L

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ts rea t y ar in

New adult group classes are now open! Browse our class schedules online at oldtownschool.org

Saturday, September 9

oca lm us

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on er v O

Belmont & Broadway L A K E V I E W E A S T. C O M

• tivities Street per f o r me rs

ndred-fifty artist e hu s

y ac m il Fa

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Learn to play with us this fall!

MAIN STAGE

GARDEN STAGE

11:15a .... The New Zeitgeist

11:00a .... Kevin Andrew Prchal

12:30p .... Akasha

12:00p .... The Evening Attraction

2:00p ...... Dave Specter Blues Band

1:15p ...... Ovef Ow

3:30p ...... Lowdown Brass Band

2:30p ...... Stampy

5:00p ...... The North 41

4:00p ...... The Hacky Turtles

6:30p ...... Ivorys

5:30p ...... Arbor Creek

8:00p ...... South of 80

Sunday, September 10 MAIN STAGE

GARDEN STAGE

11:30a .... Future Stuff

11:00a .... Steve Hashimoto & Pat Fleming

1:00p ..... Bailey Dee

12:15p .... Chicken Fat Klezmer Orchestra

2:30p ...... Ellen Miller

1:30p ...... Minor Moon

4:00p ...... Rod Tuffcurls and

3:00p ...... Railway Gamblers

the Bench Press

Anastasia Alexandrin

Presenting Sponsor

Co-Sponsors

4:30p ...... Coyote Riot

Participating Sponsors

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EARLY WARNINGS

chicagoreader.com/early

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 25

MUSIC

Recommended and notable shows and critics’ insights for the week of September 7 b

FRIDAY8 PICK OF THE WEEK

Detroit techno veteran Carl Craig goes symphonic on Versus

ò PIERRE-EMMANUEL RASTOIN

CARL CRAIG, FASO

Sat 9/9 10 PM, Smartbar, 3730 N. Clark, $20, $15 in advance, $5 before midnight with student ID. 21+

LIKE MANY SUBVERSIVE sounds before it, techno exerts an influence on music at large but feels a world apart. To newcomers, its immense history can appear subterranean and impenetrable, its legends unknown outside the club scene that birthed them. Detroit DJ and producer Carl Craig, a second-generation techno veteran who began releasing music in the early 90s, is one of the rare heroes worshipped both within his community and outside it. Craig takes his role as genre ambassador seriously, and he’s brought techno to more conventional, quote-unquote respected spaces. His May release Versus (Infiné/Planet E) grew out of a collaboration with Parisian orchestra Les Siècles and classical pianist Francesco Tristano. Though most of the songs are symphonic reinterpretations of Craig’s hits, the album is as much about exploring musical hybridization as it is about celebrating his oeuvre—its bold partnership transcends the novelty of its premise. And as much as the update of Craig’s gurgling 2004 single “Sandstorms,” for instance, sounds like an attempt to make a dance track using the bombastic horns from Inception, these twists make it possible to hear Craig’s work anew. Techno doesn’t need to be cosigned by highfalutin institutions to validate its importance, but Versus is the kind of work that demands a nod even from folks who might not have deigned to acknowledge the genre before. That’s a win for everyone.

—LEOR GALIL

26 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

Avishai Cohen Quartet 8 and 9:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $22, $20 in advance. 18+ A stark tenderness marks the opening moments of Cross My Palm With Silver (ECM), the ravishing new album by Israeli trumpeter Avishai Cohen.

Over gauzy piano chords played by longtime collaborator Yonathan Avishai, Cohen unfurls lines of exquisite beauty—but there’s no missing the sorrow, and perhaps the feeling of helplessness, that creep in once bassist Barak Mori and drummer Nasheet Waits start playing. The tune is called “Will I Die, Miss? Will I Die?,” words uttered by a frightened Syrian boy in a viral video filmed in the aftermath of a chemical weapons attack last year. Cohen wrote this album in response to current events; the second piece, “Theme for Jimmy Greene,” was composed for a jazz saxophonist whose daughter was killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting. The music is solemn, not angry, as if extending a healing hand to the suffering. Cohen’s work has never been more beautiful, reflecting the dark, burnished sound of the second Miles Davis quintet. Pianist Avishai spreads out notes with the austere splendor of Paul Bley, and the rhythm section contributes by subtraction, omitting any extraneous sound or accent. That leaves Cohen’s rich tone and sparkling lyricism to occupy center stage. Cohen’s Chicago performance last year, when he played music he wrote after his father’s death, made clear that concentrated restraint can hit at least as hard as unrestrained fury, and his gorgeous new album underlines the point.

For these performances the trumpeter is accompanied by Mori, pianist Gadi Lehavi, and fantastic drummer Marcus Gilmore, know for his work in Vijay Iyer’s trio. —PETER MARGASAK

ALL AGES

F

rats,” though, he added, “because they are intelligent creatures.” —LEOR GALIL

Carl Craig Faso opens. 10 PM, Smartbar, 3730 N. Clark, $20, $15 in advance, $5 before midnight with student ID. 21+

SUNDAY10 Freakons See also Tuesday. 8 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, sold out. 21+ Four years ago, alt-country legends Freakwater crossed streams with postpunk pomo-folk group the Mekons and gave rise to a hybrid beast: the Freakons, a project that’s brought out some of the best in both bands at its rare live performances.

Now the group is back, and with a particular purpose. Concurrently with these two sold-out shows, the Freakons are recording an album of traditional songs about an industry that links the English Midlands, the Welsh valleys, and the “dark and bloody ground” of Appalachia: coal mining. Haunting tunes in that vein came from both sides of the pond, and the Freakons take them on in the high-lonesome, rabble-rousing tradition of late West Virginian labor singer Hazel Dickens. Proceeds from the album, when it’s finished, will benefit Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, a grassroots organization that promotes voting rights and opposes mountaintopremoval mining. —MONICA KENDRICK

SATURDAY9 Blanck Mass Egyptrixx and Matt Jencik open.

9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $12. 21+ In March, electronic experimentalist Benjamin John Power responded to the ongoing crack-up of society with the feral, postindustrial World Eater (Sacred Bones), his third solo album as Blanck Mass. Best known as half of British group Fuck Buttons, Power understands how to craft profane, volatile instrumentation that evokes supernatural bliss, which he pulls off on World Eater even as he infects the album with overwhelming dread. Power has said that what he’s trying to do here is examine humanity’s “inner beast,” its fetish for violence. That’s obvious in, say, the incomprehensible screams on “Rhesus Negative,” but because Power’s pileup of driving percussion often seems to build toward an unseen light—to my ears, anyway—it suggests that not all hope is lost. Still, even one of the brightestsounding tracks here—a glistening song called “The Rat”—doesn’t feel particularly hopeful, probably due to its inspiration. As Power told the Quietus, the song references a “certain global figure” far worse than vermin. The comparison may be “offensive to

Avishai Cohen ò ROBERTO CIFARELLI / ECM RECORDS

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Sausage, beer, psychedelia, and a planet’s worth of music

Sharif Sehnaoui ò SUSANNA BOLLE

Sharif Sehnaoui See also Monday. 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $10 suggested donation. 21+ Lebanese guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui is a softspoken man who’s spent most of his adult life making fiercely experimental music under difficult conditions. He emerged as part of the group of Beirut improvisers who since 2000 have organized the annual Irtijal Festival, and he’s a cofounder of Al Maslakh, a Lebanese label that functions as a kind of analogue to the festival. Sehnaoui’s own music is as quiet as his demeanor, but it’s plenty adventurous. He frequently uses the guitar as an abstract sound generator, rubbing, scraping, and beating its strings with bows, wooden dowels, or other objects. Meet the Dragon (Uznam), a recent duo album with Polish percussionist Adam Golebiewski, is a veritable feast of friction, comprising a single 46-minute piece digging deep into strident, microscopic resonance. On Seif & Sound (Cassette Bleues), made to accompany a dance performance, Sehnaoui treats his guitar like a drum, creating a shifting array of rapid-fire patterns. In recent years, he’s explored a different side of his playing in powerful art-rock band Karkhana, which now includes Chicago’s Michael Zerang on drums. The group’s seething new album, For Seun Matta (Holidays), gallops across pan-Arabic and Turkish melodies with wonderfully unkempt guitar and wild overblown horns.

In his first visit to Chicago in a decade, Sehnaoui will play tonight in a trio with Zerang and keyboardist Jim Baker; on Monday at Experimental Sound Studio, he plays electric guitar solo and in a duo with Zerang, then acoustic guitar solo.

—PETER MARGASAK

Volahn Inquisition headlines; Uada, Volahn, Hellfire Deathcult, and Blood of the Wolf open.

7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 2105 S. State, $20, $17 in advance. 17+ The uneasy ties between black metal and white supremacy are long-standing, tangled, and rarely addressed publicly; even less often are musicians forced to reckon with their own racist histories. But in 2015, rumors of Inquisition’s Nazi affiliations reached such a pitch that front man Dagon had to field questions about them in an interview with Decibel. Dagon said he wasn’t a Nazi, waved away questions about Inquisition’s relationships with infamously racist metal labels such as No Colours, and hedged about his own Hitler-sampling noise project, 88MM—the name of which is itself an allusion to World War II-era German artillery (and possibly to the neo-Nazi code “88,” another invocation of the leader of the Third Reich). It’s an interview filled with red flags—if Inquisition don’t traffic in racist beliefs, they seem incredibly protective of those who do. (The band have been tight-lipped about their politics since.)

So it may seem incongruous that they’re touring with Volahn, a group that once ended an interview with AXS by proclaiming, “PRAISE TO ALL NATIVE TRIBES OF OUR CONTINENT! BROWN PRIDE!” Transplanted to the U.S. from Guatemala, Volahn are now the consistent highlight of the Black Twilight Circle—southern California’s answer to France’s black-metal collective Les Legions Noire. Nothing’s simple in black metal. Nothing’s simple in Volahn’s music, either; their most recent release reflects the influence of Italian composer Ennio Morricone and the contemplative aspects of Norwegian second-wave black metal, cre- J

Instigation Festival This is the Chicago half of a two-city, multivenue collision of improvised music and dance (the other half is in New Orleans). The music includes the Charles Rumback Trio, Damon Locks, and the new Ken Vandermark project Marker. 9/7-9/10, various venues, instigationfestival.com, $15-$20 per day, $10-$15 in advance, $30 festival pass Kaleidoscope Eye This modern psychedelic-music festival features sets by the likes of the Luck of Eden Hall, Soft Candy, Magic Castles, and Brujas de Sol, all bathed in trippy light shows. 9/8-9/9, LiveWire Lounge, 3394 N. Milwaukee, kaleidoscopepsychedelic.com, $15 per day, $25 two-day pass, 21+ World Music Festival Chicago The World Music Festival celebrates music from around the globe with 17 days of free concerts around the city. See our feature coverage on page 19. 9/8-9/24, various venues, free Wurst Music & Beer Fest With a focus on rock bands, beer, and giant sausages, this fest is about as “midwestern white dude” as it gets. The Anniversary, Murder by Death, and Diarrhea Planet headline.

9/8-9/10, Randolph and Ogden, wurstmusicandbeerfest.com, $10 per day, $25 three-day pass Chicago Bourbon & Barbecue Fest At this new festival, you can sample whiskey and smoked meats to the soundtrack of the Waco Brothers, the Hoyle Brothers, and a bunch of cover bands. 9/9-9/10, Roscoe and Damen, chicagobourbon.org, $5 suggested donation, all-ages

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SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 27

MUSIC Rafael Toral ò VERA MARMELO

continued from 27

ating an arresting step forward in the band’s Mesoamerican-inspired sound. Volahn rarely tour, making this midwestern appearance an exciting aberration—and with any luck an indication of future activity. —ED BLAIR

MONDAY11 Sharif Sehnaoui See Sunday. This concert is part of ESS’s Option series. Sehnaoui will play electric guitar solo and in a duo with percussionist Michael Zerang, then acoustic guitar solo. 7 PM, Experimental Sound Studio, 5925 N. Ravenswood, $10, $8 for members and students. b Tinkerbelles Foul Tip and Space Blood open.

9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, 21+. F Adam Mohundro and Christian Dawson launched Tinkerbelles in 2013 following the breakup of their previous group, Gypsyblood, which specialized in nervy indie rock that could fill up your chest like a hot-air balloon. Tinkerbelles’ ambition is similar, and they achieve it with the bare necessities— Mohundro plays bass, Dawson sits behind the kit, both sing, and they string together gigantic, catchy songs with what feels like minimal effort. On their debut full-length, Confetti at the Bottom (released by local collective Teepeespeek), Tinkerbelles use copious reverb to create space in their compact melodies, allowing songs to land with tectonic force while hewing to simple, succinct templates.

They carve out a place where grunge, doo-wop,

28 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

power pop, and postpunk can commingle, blending those sounds so easily that it’s a wonder more people aren’t trying it. The jangle-bop of “To Jack and June (On Your Wedding Day)” surges forward with youthful glee, while “Cannibal Tokyo Rainbow” strips away shoegaze’s wall of sound without destroying its larger-than-life power, revealing a sugary-sweet melodic core. —LEOR GALIL

TUESDAY12 Freakons See Sunday. 8 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, $20. 21+

WEDNESDAY13 Cooper-Moore 8:30 PM, Constellation, 3111 N. Western, $20, $15 in advance. 18+ New York pianist Cooper-Moore brings a characteristic mix of elegance and fury to his parts on Meditation/Resurrection (Aum Fidelity), a new double album by bassist William Parker. But as explosive as his performance gets, with percussive runs that summon the spirit of fellow travelers such as Cecil Taylor and Don Pullen, CooperMoore is clearly working as a member of a group, pulling together with alto saxophonist Rob Brown and drummer Hamid Drake to bring Parker’s bluesy, stormy compositions to life. Cooper-Moore tends to wield his prodigious piano talents in ensembles, doing work that recently earned him a lifetime achievement award at New York’s Vision

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Festival. But there are other sides to his art. He builds instruments, mostly from discarded materials, that have clear historical precedents—his diddley-bo, for instance, was inspired by a singlestring zither from the rural south that influenced the development of the blues. His ashimba is an 11-note xylophone-like device, his twanger is a fretless two-string lute, and his horizontal hoe-handle harp is exactly what it sounds like. Cooper-Moore’s 2008 release The Cedar Box Recordings balances sonic experimentation (the ominous rubbery rumble of the twanger on “That’s Right,” for instance) with acknowledgements of music’s social or ritual function—he includes a mouth-bow rendition of “Sweet Hour of Prayer,” a song he learned at church in rural Virginia as a child. It’s anyone’s guess what he’ll do at any given concert, especially when there’s a piano in the house—and the promise of surprise is what makes his shows so enticing.

—PETER MARGASAK

Rafael Toral with Jim Baker and Steve Hunt Opening the concert are a trio of Dave Rempis, Tashi Dorji, and Tyler Damon and a duo of Katinka Kleijn and Bill MacKay. 9 PM, Elastic, 3429 W. Diversey, $10 suggested donation. b In Star Trek, space is the final frontier, but for Rafael Toral it’s just another step in an ongoing creative odyssey. The Portuguese electronic musician’s work has gone through several phases. Between 1994 and 2004 he released a series of records that dealt with continuous sounds, often generated using electric guitars and outboard effects. In 2006 he introduced the Space Program, in which he improvised with jazz-rooted rigor against a backdrop of silence, using electronic instruments that he either made himself or converted from commercial products such as toy amplifiers; with the modified instruments, Toral manipulated sine waves and feedback via physical gestures. Earlier this year Toral released Space Solo 2 (Staubgold) and declared the program over, but it seems he’s still building on its findings.

He continues to call his solo concerts Space Stud-

MUSIC

ies, and he’s keeping up the associations he forged over the past decade with American improvisers, including Chicagoans Jim Baker and Steve Hunt.

Since their first encounter in 2011, the trio have created a thrillingly combustive improvisational language that contrasts the voltage-derived consonance of Baker’s synthesizer and Toral’s assorted devices with the restless acoustic clamor of Baker’s piano and Hunt’s drum kit. This is the first concert of Toral’s U.S. tour, and he’ll appear twice more in the area this month—on September 16 with reedist Mars Williams and drummer Tim Daisy at Northbrook Public Library, and on September 25 solo at Experimental Sound Studio. —BILL MEYER

Widowspeak Clearance and Luke Henry & Hunnybear open. 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $15. 21+ Widowspeak’s Molly Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas decamped from Brooklyn to the Catskills to make their 2015 album All Yours, which marked a shift in the duo’s sound. While Hamilton’s beautifully narcotic singing continued to reflect the influence of Mazzy Star’s Hope Sandoval, the poppy, crystalclear arrangements changed the complexion of the music in a big way—and with satisfying results. Turns out the change was temporary, though. After touring for the record, Hamilton returned to Tacoma, Washington, where she grew up; she was apparently in a state of flux, anxious about going home and what the future held. So maybe it’s not surprising that the songs she wrote there for the band’s new album, Expect the Best (Captured Tracks), reclaim an older, more familiar sound. Hamilton is inward and subdued in her honeyed singing, but the music contains an element of heightened aggression, as thickly textured guitars redolent of My Bloody Valentine seethe around her expressions of ennui. The melodies are lovely, and the tension between Hamilton’s luxuriant delivery and the guitar churn is impressive, but after the more sophisticated promise of All Yours, the new album feels like a bit of a letdown. —PETER MARGASAK v

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FOOD & DRINK

CITY MOUSE | $$ R 311 N. Morgan 312-764-1908 citymousechicago.com

“Strawberry milkshake cake” ò ANJALI PINTO

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RESTAURANT REVIEW

Giant conquers the Fulton Market District at City Mouse The restaurant anchoring the Ace Hotel is like a satellite for Jason Vincent and Ben Lustbader’s Logan Square mothership.

By MIKE SULA

y first week in Chicago, in February 1995, I was driving around exploring the city when I turned my girlfriend’s juddery little red Hyundai down Fulton Market between two delivery trucks backed up against opposite-facing loading docks. I was slowly squeezing my way through when around the corner whipped a forklift piloted by a wildeyed berserker with Lemmy-length hair and a bloodied white work coat who stopped on only the briefest beat before hitting the gas, well aware that I was already putting the car in reverse and getting the fuck out of his way.

Fast forward to 2017: “Man babies.”

That’s what my tablemate—who works in the neighborhood in customer service— lovingly called the buttoned-up tech bros who pay her tips. We’d been sitting next to a group of characters fitting the description at City Mouse, the restaurant in the Ace Hotel around the corner from Fulton on Morgan Street, across from Google HQ. She was describing the very precise and fussy way this type of fellow wants his drinks prepared.

These days the man babies far outnumber the forklift drivers in the Fulton Market District, and that’s why now you have an Ace Hotel instead of a cheese factory, which was what filled the building’s footprint 22 years ago.

City Mouse serves as the anchor for the hotel, and given the principal chefs involved, it was being thought of as a restaurant with extraordinary promise long before it opened its doors. Here you have the team behind the relatively tiny Giant—Jason Vincent and Ben Lustbader—along with chef de cuisine Patrick Sheerin, late of Trenchermen, opening what could almost be described as a satellite operation, serving the same sort of explosively flavored vegetable compositions; luscious, head-slappingly good pastas; and wacky sweet playthings that they made their name on in Logan Square. It’s not for nothing that Giant, on any given night, is home to some of the most hard-to-get tables in town.

For now, tables at City Mouse are pretty easy to come by, partly because the dining room is so expansive. Counterintuitively, it’s also dark and claustrophobic because its glass window walls, which evoke some of Chicago’s best-known Miesian architecture, are hung with long white curtains that act like shrouds over the room.

On the breezy summer nights I visited, the wide availability in the dining room probably also had something to do with the crowd’s preferring the lengthy outdoor patio surrounding a massive fire pit large enough to accommodate human sacrifice.

The menu kicks off with an echo of Giant’s acclaimed uni shooter, this one a single-bite take on Garrett Popcorn’s signature mix called the Country Mouse. An aged cheddar cheese ball topped with spicy corn puree, a caramel tuile, and black caviar, it’s a virtual necessity at the start of any meal here. What follows is a gradual succession of increasingly larger and heavier dishes—vegetables, pasta, and a few meatier things—culminating in a burger and a filet mignon that are probably the least interesting things on the page.

Vincent describes the creation of the kaleidoscopically f lavored arrangements of fruit and vegetables that this group is known for as a struggle to achieve balance between acidity and alkalinity. “And then, honestly, we just put a bunch of shit on top of it that’s complementary,” he says. As at Giant, those dishes are the most startling things on City Mouse’s menu. A salad of white peaches, pecorino, and nutty farro is so simultaneously sweet and savory it’ll flood your brain with endorphins and wings will burst from your back. Chunks of lightly cooked zucchini tossed with chewy, dense cylindrical rice dumplings and sweet Fresno chiles are an absorbing contrast in textures.

A thicket of Chinese broccoli, imbued with an intensely concentrated charred tomato sauce, is grilled and dressed with aioli and a 20-spice curry oil atop an understory of creamy hummus. In a dramatic cultural mashup, tahini-cooked eggplant sits alongside large sweet dates and cucumber-tomato salad on a large rectangular flatbread you’re meant to tear apart and use to eat this seemingly incongruous but ultimately delicious composition, served with a dish of sheep’s milk feta.

When things take a turn toward the meaty, vegetables still have a prime role to play. Hunks of artichoke, battered in Italian bread crumbs and deep-fried, are smothered in meaty pork sugo with drizzles of Taleggio sauce. Skewers of sweet scallop abide with cool cucumbers and crunchy J rice-paper crackers.

SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 31

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32 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

continued from 31 You can submit to a kind of delirium when confronted with the pastas. Fat, springy rigatoni dance in a light and acidic Bolognese sauce. Soft layers of lasagna shelter minced-mushroom duxelles over a sauce of roasted onions. Tensile spaghetti noodles tangle among feta, Calabrian chiles, and fat chunks of bacon under a snowcap of bread crumbs, the poor man’s Parmesan.

By contrast, straight entrees seem more subdued. Apart from the burger and the steak, a smoked chicken breast drizzled with aioli sits aside a pile of cashew rice, while a salty snapper fillet shares the plate with zucchini, bacon, and sour cream.

Pastry chef Angela Diaz, another Trenchermen vet, turns the lights back on in the fun house with a handful of riffs on lowbrow classics: a dense sesame-chocolate ice cream sandwich with white chocolate ganache and sesame seed nougat is served with a hot cup of sesame-honey chocolate for dipping. Coils of crispy apple funnel cake are tossed in sweet cheddar powder, roped with corn-caramel sauce, corn nuts, and candied apple-cheddar corn, and topped with sweetcorn ice cream, hijacking the meaning of

the word “corny.” A “strawberry milkshake cake” features lush, dairy-soaked tres leches cake finished with strawberry frosting and rolled in white-chocolate-strawberry crunch, honey-vinegar-pickled strawberries, and a straw of dehydrated meringue.

The wine list is tight and affordable, with only three bottles breaching $100. Caitlin Laman, late of Mezcaleria las Flores, weighs in with a list of intriguing cocktails. Among them are the Gap Tooth Fizz, a frothy eggwhite-capped gin-and-mezcal refresher, and the Middle West, with Old Tom Gin and herbaceous vermouth offering cover for Malort’s bitter kiss.

Twenty-two years ago, when I was a man baby tentatively creeping around the neighborhood, it was unthinkable that a hipster hotel could exist among the whole hog carcasses and dudes who worked with their hands. And yet here we are. Similarly, the food of Vincent, Lustbader, and their cohort of chefs would have been a wondrous dream. Of all the changes this neighborhood has gone through, this is surely one for the better. v

v @MikeSula

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MASSA CAFE ITALIANO

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

7434 W. North, Elmwood Park 708-583-1111 massacafe.com

Angelo Lollino and son Giuseppe with Cocco Sogno gelato

MAKERS

The scoop on a Chicago gelato master

and create more stuff. I was always creating new flavors.” In the mid-90s Lollino opened a Schiller Park cafe and gelateria called Fratelli with his brother, and a few years later, he and his wife opened Massa Cafe Italiano in Elmwood Park. The latter is still going strong, serving panini and other classic Italian dishes in addition to house-made gelato.

Lollino is also behind the Vero Coffee & Gelato locations inside each Mariano’s store.

“About ten years ago, Bob Mariano reached out and told me he was planning to expand back into the Chicago market,” Lollino says.

“My first impression was, Wow, there’s no room for another grocer here. But I believed in him, I liked his vision. We started with two [stores], we got up to 42 locations yesterday.”

All of those locations are currently serving Chicago Pothole, and will have Cocco Sogno in the next few months. For those who can’t wait, though, Massa Cafe already has both for sale. v

v @juliathiel

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to balance a flavor out without using a lot of cream is not easy,” Lollino says. “But amazingly enough, with the oils and the fats from the coconut puree, the consistency is dynamite.”

Lollino’s first instinct, he says, was to go even simpler and more traditional: hazelnut or pistachio. “It’s intimidating [choosing a flavor] because going into Italy, you’re going into the lion’s den, where gelato is king.” The 45-year-old is hardly new to gelato-making, however: both his parents are from Italy, and his father taught him the craft when Lollino was growing up in the suburbs of Chicago.

“My father was a master coffee roaster, one of the first to introduce espresso coffee in this country. He had a wholesale coffee company and cafe [where] we made our own gelato,” Lollino says. When he was ten years old, his dad brought a gelato master from Italy to work for them for a couple years. “While he worked for us, he lived with us,” Lollino says. “He was really, really good, really passionate. He inspired me to do some of the stuff we do today.”

By the time Lollino turned 16, making the gelato for the shop had become his job. “Everyone really liked my gelato. It always lit me up, made me happy. You get that validation from your parents and customers, it makes you feel good. It makes you want to do better

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By JULIA THIEL t the Gelato World Tour Grand Finale next week in Rimini, Italy, 36 gelato masters from around the globe will face off, entering flavors such as Gorgonzola-pear, apple sorbetto with caramelized speck, and smoked chocolate with bourbon. Among them will be Cocco Sogno, a coconut gelato with dark chocolate and almond brittle from Angelo Lollino of Elmwood Park and his team, Ali Caine Hung and Lollino’s son, Giuseppe. Last year the trio took first place in North America and second in the Americas at the regional semifinal competition, held in Millennium Park, with a Rocky Road variation called Chicago Pothole that included chocolate sauce, chocolate chunks, caramelized pecans, and meringue in a chocolate base.

“A lot of competitors are using their same flavor [from the semifinals] to compete in the final,” Lollino says. “But while Chicago Pothole works here, we didn’t feel it would work in a European country.” The reason, he says, is that Europeans tend to appreciate simpler flavors.

“Having chocolate on top of chocolate and pecans and more sugar” felt a little too decadent. Instead, they went austere—relatively, anyway—with a vegan base that uses coconut puree in place of milk and cream (gelato traditionally doesn’t contain egg yolks). “To be able

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chicagoreader.com/early 36 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

STRAIGHT DOPE

By Cecil Adams q : Why are increases in gas prices often so abrupt and large, while decreases are small and incremental? Where I live, we’ve had two six- to ten-cent increases in the last two weeks, all happening on one day. But earlier this summer, I’d note one- to twocent drops once every day or three at just about every local station. And why, during these increases, are the stations often in lockstep, yet when they’re falling they get pretty far out of whack with each other?

—JOHN DIFOOL, VIA THE STRAIGHT DOPE MESSAGE BOARD

A : Here’s a question where the most obvious

answer, and the most cynical, is pretty much the correct one. Say you’re a gas station operator, John. If you’re seeing crude oil costs rise, you’ll want to promptly adjust the prices you charge at the pump to make sure your margin is secure. Seeing crude fall? Hey, no need to be hasty; if your prices take a little while to float back down, well, that’s money in your pocket.

There’s actually an econ term for this—“rockets and feathers,” describing prices that shoot up rapidly but decline slowly—and a pretty robust body of economics thought surrounding it. The issue we’re looking at is what’s known as pass-through, which refers to how so-called upstream costs, in this case the price of crude, affect downstream prices at gas stations. Crude oil prices and refining costs tend to account for about 70 percent of what drivers wind up paying. So you’d expect there to be some proportionality to the oil-gas price relationship, and there generally is—crude rises, prices at the pump adjust upward; crude falls, pump prices decrease. When the numbers don’t track as closely, that’s called asymmetric pass-through.

(We stipulate that there’s some debate over whether price asymmetry in the gasoline market is really a big deal. The phenomenon you observe, John, obviously exists.)

As I say, the easiest explanation is basically correct, but this being a complex market, there are other factors in play. The lag in price reduction may reflect gas station operators’ need to sell out of the more expensive stuff they’ve already bought before restocking with cheaper gas, only then passing along the lower price to consumers. Sellers aren’t acting in a vacuum, either; they do this because buyers will accept it. When gas prices head up, drivers will reliably seek out the cheapest gas around. When prices fall again, though, they do less comparison shopping, which keeps pressure off station operators to rush their pricing back down. As one expert put it to the

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Los Angeles Times, “If every consumer kept searching for the best price, this asymmetry would likely pretty much go away.”

It also depends on the station, which gets us to the second part of your question. The owner of the only gas station at a highway exit has less incentive to hurry up and lower her prices than the three competing stations at another exit 50 miles up the road, who are all trying to pull in the same customers.

A 2008 study of gas prices in southern California found that having a rival nearby did in fact restrain stations’ tendency toward rockets-and-feathers behavior. Consider, too, the type of station. Is it also a convenience store?

Those tend to make most of their money on nongas items, meaning they can afford to be among the first to reduce prices when wholesale costs drop—they’ve got a cushion.

These are short-term fluctuations, of course, and there’s plenty more ink to be spilled about prices over a longer term—say, seasonally. Prices rise in the summer, for instance, not just because road-trippers produce more demand but because we’re pumping a different product: the Environmental Protection Agency mandates what’s called summer blend gas, a pricier variety formulated to reduce evaporation into the ozone during warmer months.

There’s geography too: stations closer to refineries benefit from lower distribution costs, and thus can charge less; and of course taxes vary by state, which is why gas is a good deal cheaper in South Carolina, for instance, than in North Carolina.

The larger context here, though, is that current gas prices are historically low—for a number of reasons, including an increasing gulf between supply and demand, which has been dropping as fuel efficiency improves and electric cars gain ground. Remember the hubbub over peak oil? Supply anxiety seems almost retro at the moment; these days there may be more concern about peak oil demand—if you’re an oil company, that is. The rest of us should probably just enjoy it while it lasts. v Send questions to Cecil via straightdope.com or write him c/o Chicago Reader, 350 N. Orleans, Chicago 60654.

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SAVAGE LOVE

By Dan Savage

Do my roommates need to know about my fetishist/slave?

The house will be sparkly clean! Plus: past pissing, precocious kinkiness Q : I’m a lady considering

taking on a foot fetishist as a slave. He would do chores around my house and give foot rubs and pedicures in exchange for getting to worship and jack off to my model-perfect feet when I’ve decided he’s earned it.

Am I morally obligated to tell my roommates? Though they’re not what you’d call conservative, I’m not sure they’d understand this kind of arrangement, and technically the guy would be in their common space too. I would fully vet him with references and meet him in a neutral location at least once. I would have my slave come over when no one is around, and then my roommates could come home to a sparkly clean common area! No harm, no foul, right? Or am I crossing a line? —MAN INTO CLEANING A SHARED APARTMENT

A : A friend in Berlin has a similar arrangement. This guy comes over to clean his apartment once a week and—if my friend thinks he’s done a good enough job—my friend rewards him with a knee to the balls. It’s a good deal for both parties: My vanilla friend gets a sparkly clean apartment (which he loves but doesn’t want to do himself), this guy gets his balls busted on a regular basis (which he loves but can’t do himself). But my friend lives alone, MICASA. Does that make a difference?

If you were having sex with a boyfriend in the common areas of your apartment when your roommates weren’t home—let’s say he wanted to fuck you on the kitchen floor—you wouldn’t be morally obligated to text your roommates and ask their permission. But we’re talking about a fetishist who wants to be your slave—does that

make a difference? It might to people who regard kinksters as dangerous sex maniacs, MICASA, but a kinky guy isn’t any more or less dangerous than a vanilla guy. And a kinky guy you’ve gone to the trouble to vet presents less of a threat to you and your roommates than some presumed-to-be-vanilla rando one of you brought home from a bar at 2 AM. Strip away the sensational elements and what are we left with? A friends-with-benefits arrangement. And while the sex you’re having may not be conventional, the sex you have in your apartment— including the sex you might have in the common areas when no one is at home—is ultimately none of your roommates’ business.

That said, MICASA, unless or until all your roommates know what’s up, I don’t think you should ever allow this guy to be alone in your apartment.

Q : My girlfriend drunkenly

confessed to me that she used to pee on her ex. I’m not sure what to do with this info. —DUDE’S RELATIONSHIP IN PERIL

A : Did she ask you to do

something with this info?

Your GF got a little kinky with an ex, most likely at the ex’s request, and so what? If piss isn’t something you’re into, DRIP, don’t obsess on the distressing-to-you details and focus instead on the big picture: You’ve got an adventurous GF. Congrats.

Q : My seven-year-old son

started getting really into gauze, splints, and bandages when he was three, and by the time he was four, it became clearly sexualized.

He gets a boner when he plays “broken bone” or just looks at bandages, and he’s

expressed how much he loves to touch his penis when he does this. My husband and I (both happily vanilla) have been accepting and casual about this. We’ve provided him with a stash of “supplies,” taught him the concept of privacy and alone time, and frequently remind him to never wrap bandages around his head or neck.

Still, is it normal to be so kinky at such a young age?

I want my son to grow up with a healthy and positive sexuality. But are we doing him a favor or a disservice by supplying him with materials, freedom, and privacy to engage in a kink so young?

—BOY ALWAYS NEEDING “DOCTORING” AND GETTING EDGIER

A : Your son’s behavior isn’t

that abnormal, BANDAGE. It’s standard for kids, even very young kids, to touch their genitals, and lord knows they obsess about the strangest shit. Right now your son is obsessed with bandages and splints and gauze, and his interests aren’t purely intellectual. None of this means your son is going to be kinky when he grows up, BANDAGE—not that there’s anything wrong with being kinky when you grow up. It’s too early to tell.

In the meantime, you don’t wanna slap a “so kinky” label on a seven-year-old. But apart from that, you’re doing everything right: you aren’t shaming your son, you aren’t making “supplies” more alluring by denying him access to them, and you’re teaching him important lessons about privacy and “alone time.” v Send letters to mail@ savagelove.net. Download the Savage Lovecast every Tuesday at savagelovecast. com. v @fakedansavage

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Migos ò DIWANG VALDEZ

NEW Alice Glass, Nolife 11/17, 9 PM, Subterranean, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Kris Allen 12/18, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/7, noon b Aminé, Pell 11/18, 9 PM, Metro, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ A$AP Mob 10/11, 7:30 PM, UIC Pavilion Joseph Banks 11/22, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Bell Witch, Primitive Man 10/27, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Bewitcher 10/26, 9 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ 6lack, Tobi Lou 11/11, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Goran Bregovic & His Wedding and Funeral Orchestra 11/23, 7 PM, Portage Theater Daniel Caesar 11/20, 9 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Call Me Karizma 11/15, 6:30 PM, Wire, Berwyn Sabrina Claudio, Kiya Lacey 11/12, 9 PM, Subterranean, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Kweku Collins 11/25, 9 PM, SPACE, Evanston, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago b Davey Dynamite & the Salt Creek Duo 10/13, 7 PM, Cobra Lounge Drag the River 10/25, 9 PM, Quenchers Saloon

The Freshmen with Young Thug, Cardi B, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, and more 9/29, 8 PM, UIC Pavilion Future Punx, Golden Pelicans 9/25, 9 PM, Empty Bottle F Ggoolldd 12/16, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, on sale Fri 9/8, 10 AM Max Gomez 11/10, 10 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 9/8, 10 AM, 18+ I the Mighty 11/12, 7 PM, Subterranean b Ibeyi 11/10, 9 PM, Metro, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Jungle 11/27, 9 PM, Metro, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Eryn Allen Kane 11/24, 9 PM, Fourth Presbyterian Church, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago Kehlani, Kodie Shane 11/3, 9 PM, Subterranean, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Khalid 11/29, 9 PM, Aragon Ballroom, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Lizzo, Bia 11/19, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Manilla Road 10/1, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Mayday 11/27, 8 PM, Auditorium Theatre, on sale Fri 9/8, 10 AM b Curtis McMurtry 10/13, 8:30 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 9/8, 11 AM Migos, Lil Yachty 11/30, 9 PM, Subterranean, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Mitski 11/7, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+

38 CHICAGO READER - SEPTEMBER 7, 2017

Mndsgn 11/10, 7 PM, Schubas, on sale Fri 9/8, 10 AM, 18+ Mura Masa, Tennyson 11/16, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Ne Obliviscaris, Allegaeon 11/16, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Noname 11/21, 9 PM, Concord Music Hall, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Xavier Omar 11/28, 9 PM, 1st Ward, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Origin 10/22, 8 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ Parquet Courts, Meat Wave 11/15, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago Aco Pejovic 12/2, 7 PM, Portage Theater Simon Phillips 12/8-9, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Andrew Ripp 12/22, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall, on sale Fri 9/8, 10 AM b Ritual Howls 11/19, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Todd Rundgren 12/16-17, 8 PM, Park West, on sale Fri 9/8, 10 AM, 18+ Secret Sisters 12/4, 8 PM, City Winery, on sale Thu 9/7, noon b Smino 11/26, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Jorja Smith, Dizzy Fae 11/14, 9 PM, Subterranean, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Snow tha Product 10/19, 7 PM, Metro b Smooth Hound Smith 10/11, 8 PM, FitzGerald’s, Berwyn, on sale Fri 9/8, 11 AM

b Lindsey Stirling 12/6, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre, on sale Fri 9/8, 10 AM b Syd, Charlotte Day Wilson 11/8, 9 PM, Metro, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Terror 10/8, 7:30 PM, Cobra Lounge, 17+ A Tribe Called Red 11/2, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, on sale Fri 9/8, 10 AM Kali Uchis 11/9, 9 PM, Thalia Hall, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ Violent Femmes 10/28, 8 PM, the Vic, on sale Fri 9/8, 11 AM, 18+ Whitney, Ne-Hi 11/2, 9 PM, Metro, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+ The World/Inferno Friendship Society 10/14, 3 PM, Cobra Lounge b Young Thug 11/1, 9 PM, Metro, part of Red Bull Sound Select Presents: 30 Days in Chicago, 18+

UPDATED Nick Murphy 9/29, 8 PM, the Vic, moved from Riviera Theatre, 18+

UPCOMING Herb Alpert & Lani Hall 11/6-7, 8 PM, City Winery b Alvvays 11/3, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Avett Brothers 11/9-11, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre Bad Suns 10/20, 7:30 PM, Metro b Beach Fossils, Snail Mail 10/17, 8 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Bleachers, Bishop Briggs 11/11, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Cattle Decapitation, Revocation 10/27, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Chameleons Vox 9/14, 8:30 PM, 1st Ward, 18+ Johnny Clegg 10/29, 7 PM, Park West b Crystal Castles 11/10, 8 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ Dark Star Orchestra 10/13, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Descendents 10/7, 7:30 PM, Riviera Theatre b Dream Theater 11/3, 8 PM, Chicago Theatre El Ten Eleven 9/21, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Explosions in the Sky 10/3, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Flamin’ Groovies 10/19, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Frankie Cosmos 9/30, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b Future Islands 10/4, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Liam Gallagher 11/21, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+

ALL AGES

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EARLY WARNINGS

CHICAGO SHOWS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT IN THE WEEKS TO COME

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A Giant Dog 9/17, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Goblin 10/25, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Halsey, Partynextdoor, Charli XCX 11/19, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont In This Moment, Of Mice & Men 9/25-26, 4 PM, House of Blues b Jackopierce 11/19, 7 PM, City Winery b Judge 11/5, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Killers 1/16, 7:30 PM, United Center King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard 9/24-25, 8 PM, Lincoln Hall L.A. Witch 11/12, 8:30 PM, Beat Kitchen, 17+ Lil Peep 10/19, 7:30 PM, Bottom Lounge b Lorde 3/27, 7 PM, Allstate Arena, Rosemont Yngwie Malmsteen 11/3, 7 PM, Portage Theater Marilyn Manson 10/10, 8 PM, Riviera Theatre, 18+ Metz 9/25, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Randy Newman 10/18-19, 8 PM, City Winery b Omni 11/5, 9 PM, Empty Bottle Orwells 9/14, 8 PM, House of Vans, 17+ F A Perfect Circle 11/24, 8 PM, UIC Pavilion Katy Perry 10/24-25, 7 PM, United Center Quicksand 9/27, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Rainer Maria 9/14, 9 PM, Lincoln Hall Sacred Reich 9/20, 7 PM, Reggie’s Rock Club, 17+ Saint Pe, Crocodiles 10/12, 9 PM, Hideout Secret Chiefs 3 9/26, 9 PM, Beat Kitchen Sheer Mag, Flesh World 9/15, 9:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ Slowdive 11/5, 8 PM, the Vic, 18+ Sza 12/20, 6 PM, Concord Music Hall b Tobacco 9/14, 10 PM, Smart Bar Touche Amore 10/7, 8 PM, Subterranean, 17+ Shania Twain 5/19, 7:30 PM, United Center UFO, Saxon 10/8, 6:30 PM, Concord Music Hall, 17+ War on Drugs 10/19, 8 PM, Aragon Ballroom, 18+ Weepies 10/12, 8 PM, SPACE, Evanston b White Buffalo 12/2, 9 PM, Bottom Lounge, 17+ Zola Jesus, John Wiese 10/8, 8:30 PM, Thalia Hall, 17+ v

GOSSIP WOLF A furry ear to the ground of the local music scene GOSSIP WOLF WISHES a happy second anniversary to the women of Party Noire, whose monthly daytime bash at the Promontory was voted the Reader’s Best Dance Party last year. Organizers Nick Alder, Lauren Ash, and Rae Chardonnay have also produced a short film and hosted other events, among them parties in New York and a Jamila Woods record release at Double Door. On Saturday, September 9, they celebrate two years of Party Noire with an evening at the Promontory whose slate of killer DJs includes Chardonnay, Lisa Decibel, and Twelve45.

Multimedia outlet and Pilsen art gallery AMFM is a crucial voice in Chicago’s creative community, and it was voted Best New Gallery in the Reader’s 2017 Best of Chicago issue. This summer, AMFM’s music programming has included contributing to the lineup for the Silver Room Block Party and bringing its jazz series to venues such as Subterranean, Blanc Gallery, and Schubas. On Friday, September 8, AMFM partners with the Park District’s Night Out in the Parks to present the series in Dvorak Park. The lineup includes rapper Elton Aura, jazz singer Lili K., R&B-leaning vocalist Drea the Vibe Dealer, progressive rockers the Avantist, and DJ Bonita Appleblunt. The free show also features live art, and runs from 5 to 9 PM. On Thursday, September 7, Young Chicago Authors heads to Rootwork Gallery in Pilsen to present LatinXchicago, a free showcase of local Latinx poets and musicians. The lineup includes two Gossip Wolf faves—singer Kaina and rapper Navarro—plus Vicky Peralta, Ken Muñoz, Jose Olivarez, Ari Franco, and DJ sets by Kane One. The event starts at 7 PM. On Sunday, September 10, at LiveWire Lounge, Chicago death-doom crew Cokegoat play their last local show of 2017— but they aren’t breaking up. Guitarist Jeff Wojtysiak says they’re hitting the studio later this year to record a collaborative 12-inch with fellow creepy-crawlers Barren Heir! —J.R. NELSON AND LEOR GALIL Got a tip? Tweet @Gossip_Wolf or e-mail gossipwolf@chicagoreader.com.

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SEPTEMBER 7, 2017 - CHICAGO READER 39

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