Dr. Russ Reed, now in his 60s, was the eighth generation of doctors in his family. “My father was the kind of physician who believed that doctors should try each drug before giving any to a patient,” he said. The senior Reed was also the kind of doctor who took three Nembutals–heavy sedatives–to get to sleep at night. “At that time no one thought of that as addiction,” said the son....

I’M WHAT YOU NEED Little Johnny Christian Bassist Willie Kent is a Chicago veteran. He worked locally in the early 60s with big names like Little Walter, and he’s led various aggregations of his own over the years. Recent overseas tours and festival performances have extended his reputation. I’m What You Need is his first American album under his own name. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Things kick off in fine fashion....

Returning, after two years’ hiatus, under the auspices of producer Doug Bragan’s Douglas Theater Corp., this third not-so-annual event features 16 non-Equity companies in as many one-act plays, organized in programs of four (during previews, programs of two). The selections range from experimental drama to camp melodrama to medieval farce to musical comedy to good ol’ American naturalism. “One might select one of the four packages because of a particular play included in it,” says a press release....

First-rate agitprop about the ruthlessness with which South African apartheid is maintained, directed by Euzhan Palcy (Sugar Cane Alley), and adapted from Andre Brink’s novel by Palcy and Colin Welland. More powerful than either Cry Freedom or A World Apart, particularly in its depiction of violence, this film is like those predecessors in concentrating on the situation of white rebels in South Africa, but its depiction of black oppression goes substantially further....

A TUDGE ROMANCE Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Here the tudge is Gaetano Mortilucci; and the opposite who attracts him is Andrea Griffiths. Alas, they come from different worlds. She’s a Boston lawyer specializing in trademark infringements who longs, not surprisingly, for an “authentic” life; he’s a housepainter who hates lawyers, snobs, and stupid dates. Andrea is different, but unfortunately she’s also a very loud Yankees fan, and Gaetano is a North Ender who’s true-blue to the Red Sox....

BETTER DAYS Metraform Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Richard Dresser’s Better Days describes an end of the world that will be familiar to anyone who remembers the pessimistic predictions of eight to ten years ago: what postindustrial America will look like after all the factories have closed and all the permanently laid-off, ever downwardly mobile members of the no-longer-working class have lost faith in the system....

The 25th Chicago International Film Festival celebrates its longevity by offering more films this year than ever before. Not counting several special programs, about 130 films are being offered–and once again, quantity rather than quality is the festival’s principal calling card. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Thanks to this year’s large amount of retrospective items, and (one suspects) the critical input of Kutza’s assistant John Porter, who made some of the selections, the number of good films at the festival does seem higher than usual....

The incinerators are coming, and the first city incinerator built in Illinois since 1970 will soon be going up in southwest suburban Crestwood. It will burn 450 tons of trash per day and will generate electricity, according to Solid Waste Management Newsletter (December 1987). SWMN’s January issue adds the story of how Philadelphia recently tried to send dioxin-contaminated incinerator ash to Panama for building a roadbed. No dice, said the Central Americans, even before our EPA revealed that the ash contained 5 to 25 times the “acceptable” levels of dioxin....

The music of singer-harpist Delbert McClinton roars out from that soulful place where blues, R & B, roots rock, and country and western meet. Gigging on Fort Worth’s black blues circuit, McClinton early on developed an intuitive feel for blues and R & B expression. He later adapted this to a personal style fusing black pop influences with the hard-partying energies of the mid-70s “southern rock” revival. McClinton turned his back on recording in the early 80s, but he continued his grueling 200-gig-a-year pace playing club dates around the country, furthering his reputation as one of the hottest good-time rockers around....

THE NASTY GIRL We’re told at the outset of Michael Verhoeven’s The Nasty Girl that Anja Rosmus inspired this film. What we aren’t told is who Rosmus is or how closely this film is based on what happened to her in the 1980s. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Rosmus let the contest deadline pass, married one of her former schoolteachers, and had a couple of children....

“Villard de Honnecourt: Medieval Architect.” I sit at my dining room table surrounded by index cards, overdue library books, and yellow sheets of legal paper scrawled with false starts. A crude drawing of a lion from Villard’s 13th-century sketchbook of architectural details glares at me with a too-human smile. Although Villard claims to have sketched it from life, scholars suggest he may never have seen a real lion. I believe them....

THE VOICE: THE COLUMBIA YEARS 1943-1952 Jerry Lee Lewis Columbia C5X 40558 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The Columbia sides deliver up a crooner only beginning to discover the full depth of his already prodigious style. The hallmarks -of that style-respect for a song I ‘s melody, a sure instinct for the selection of repertoire, an unparalleled ability for phrasing, and emotional fidelity and truth — were in place early on....

When Dr. Endesha Ida Mae Holland’s powerful collection of autobiographical tales, From the Mississippi Delta, was performed last winter at Northlight, the only problem with it was its inaccessibility, being up in Evanston. Now the Northlight production of these harrowing stories of African American life in white supremacist Mississippi has been remounted at the Goodman Studio Theatre; the work has not just survived the transplant, it has improved. Director Jonathan Wilson and the cast of three actresses (Vikki J....

George Flynn Is a Punk Rocker Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Four Pieces starts quietly. A chord spills out of the piano and hangs in the air, -loose and glittering. Then the violin begins a slow, measured melody. You follow it as you might follow a sleepwalker, into a strange, nocturnal world. At one point, the two instruments spit out a barrage of noise- like an orgasmic electric guitar solo- punctuated by bursts of stunning silence....

The list of contemporary guitarists who consider themselves proteges of B.B. King seems endless, but Chicago’s L.V. Johnson augments his stylistic debts with a welcome eclecticism and a considerable amount of grit. Johnson may be better known to local listeners as soul singer Tyrone Davis’s longtime bandleader; he penned “Are You Serious,” one of Davis’s biggest hits. These days he’s combining his two primary strengths–slick, string-bending blues guitar and smoldering passion on soul ballads–and he’s finding considerable local success as a front man....

LUCY LOVES ME Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Milton Ayala is a shy stutterer with a penchant for violent fantasies, a lonely Puerto Rican transvestite and devoted fan of Lucille Ball; nightly he bathes in blood from a dead rooster, soliloquizing on how his tub offers him safety and how the blood in the water somehow cleanses him of his sins. Lucy Rodriguez is the 25-year-old, self-effacing pizza deliverer whom Milton meets by a fluke....

While Ballet Chicago putzes around spending hundreds of thousands of dollars attempting to establish itself, the Milwaukee Ballet is looking good after an ugly breakup with the Pennsylvania Ballet, ending its second post-Pennsylvania season with a balanced budget, a growing band of happy subscribers, and renewed visibility in its hometown. Milwaukee Ballet doesn’t have any special secret–just sound fiscal management, a strong artistic product, and aggressive and creative marketing. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

VASILY KAFANOV Dialogue is characteristic of the artist’s style and iconography. In the left third of the composition is a figure wearing glasses, a white mask, and a red-and-white flecked shirt. His head is crowned with a golden tower that tapers upward to a point, and he’s playing a white pipe and facing a similar-looking musician playing a pipe back to him from the right third of the canvas. In the space between them and overhead floats a golden fish bearing a more rounded tower on its back....

Lonnie Simmons, 76 and playing strong, rides high above his Yamaha organ at Biasetti’s Steak House. It’s a Thursday night at the neighborhood restaurant-bar on Irving Park Road near Ashland. The air is thick with the smell of char-grilled steaks, live cigarettes, and powerful perfume. Most of the pictures are from Lonnie’s big-band days 40 years ago, when he was a regular on the east-coast club circuit. A few snapshots are from Chicago’s elegant old Club De Lisa and from his steady solo gig at the Edgewater Hotel....

THE CEZANNE SYNDROME This is what playwright Normand Canac-Marquis, a French Canadian from Montreal, is trying to do in The Cezanne Syndrome. He presents several views of the same story, and tries to bring them together to reveal the complexity of what’s going on. Now that might be interesting to Cezanne buffs, and maybe even to other playwrights, but anyone in the market for an engaging drama had best look elsewhere....