Friday 21 You’re likely to hear some “Dump Dan” grumbling at the Gray Panthers’ eighth annual garage sale today. The seniors are mad at Congressman Rostenkowski, whose Ways and Means Committee put together the Catastrophic Illness Act, the controversial Medicare bill that makes seniors responsible for the financing of their catastrophic care. Last year the Panthers’ books, kitchen utensils, dishes, electrical appliances, and other household items brought in more than $ 1,000....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Why was it necessary to point out that Diana Spinrad, the director of the play A Girl’s Guide to Chaos, is Reader’s own [Reader’s Guide to Theater, April 28; reviewed November 25]? Not that I don’t look forward to being informed about a director, yet, the fact alone that Ms. Spinrad is one of Reader’s own, does not necessarily mean that she has enough savvy with regard to plays....
This is one of the year’s more intriguing bookings: Sunnyland Slim’s traditional Delta piano, by turns easyrolling and propulsive, juxtaposed against Dr. John’s churning New Orleans R & B and voodoo-tinged funk. Each man, in his own way, is a living repository of history: Sunnyland came of age in the prewar Delta, playing lumber camps, jukes, silent movie theaters, and parties until he hit Chicago in the 1940s and became a mainstay on the city’s burgeoning blues scene....
He’d be eaten alive. If the Maytag repairman finally got some business–actually went out on house calls, say, in Chicago–he’d be eaten alive. “And she’s like, ‘Oh, come in. Oh, the dog likes you! You can have him.’ “‘Uh, I’m here to fix your dryer?’ “‘OK, that’ll be $42,’ I say. “And she’s talking to me. ‘You’re very nice, you’re very patient. Thank you. Thank you for coming.’ She finishes writing out the check, and she’s like, ‘Is this OK?...
LEND ME A TENOR “Something you have to understand about Italians,” says hot-blooded Angie Graziano to lukewarm Terry O’Keefe in Tom Dulack’s play Breaking Legs. “It’s always very dramatic.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Max (note the Germanic monicker), the hero of Lend Me a Tenor, is a shy, insecure assistant to the director of a provincial opera company in 1930s Cleveland. The company hopes to attract publicity and funds by importing a legendary tenor, internationally known as Il Stupendo, to star in its new production....
BLUES IN THE NIGHT It’s the sketchiest of stories, established with the barest minimum of dialogue: in 1930s Chicago, four lonely people in a seedy hotel pass a steamy night by singing the blues. As conceived by Sheldon Epps, Blues in the Night doesn’t really explain how these people got there or where they’re going. It doesn’t have to–it doesn’t even matter what their names are. The point is, these people are blue....
LOBO A GO-GO Written by Jeff Richmond (with additional book and lyrics by John Cameron), Lobo a Go-Go draws on the 1941 Lon Chaney classic The Wolf Man in much the same way The Rocky Horrow Show does on the classic 1931 Frankenstein. The story, told through an extended flashback by an aging lounge singer named Johnny Silver, recounts the events at Woodrow Wilson High School’s 1959 Harvest Moon Semiformal. On this autumn night, all is not well: because Dean and Jamie, the Harvest Moon king and queen, have had a lovers’ spat and broken up, both are vulnerable to seduction by the dropouts from across the tracks, Karl and Mimi....
Since his classic recordings with pianist Memphis Slim in the 1950s, Matt Murphy’s work has been a standard against which blues guitarists are judged. He developed his style in the burgeoning postwar Memphis blues scene, where jazz and R&B overtones were added to the sounds of traditional bluesmen like Howlin’ Wolf and Rice Miller. Murphy learned his lessons well; his technical dexterity is unsurpassed, and he’s capable of augmenting his slickness with the raucous, heavily amplified roadhouse aggression that distinguished postwar Memphis blues from the mellow, nightclubby styles being honed in California during the same period by such Texas emigres as T-Bone Walker and Lloyd Glenn....
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Mothers and Daughters, directed by the women of the Piven family, showcases writing by Amy Tan, Toni Morrison, Cynthia Ozick, Lorrie Moore, and Liliana Hecker. Joyce and Shira Piven have used an innovative style of “story theater” to keep every word faithful to the authors and yet still produce some powerful drama. They’ve treated the text in an almost musical style–letting the characters perform in loose choruses, and emphasizing certain refrains–while blocking with an elaborate, almost danceable choreography....
Ann Beattie’s introduction to this year’s Best American Short Stories is a piece of writing to puzzle over–to browse through uncomprehendingly on first reading, to reread with growing bafflement after finishing the collection, and finally to scratch one’s head over in utter confusion several days later. A longtime practitioner of the passive, elliptical style that seems to be becoming ever more popular among contemporary American short story writers, Beattie has truly topped herself in this introduction, which attempts to say everything and finally ends up saying nothing much at all about that most elegant and succinct of literary forms, the short story....
THE GOLDEN VOICE OF ROBERT COVINGTON This LP, though it features Covington’s propulsive percussion on all but one track, is designed to showcase his talents as a vocalist. Covington’s voice has matured remarkably over the past several years; it’s become deeper and more expressive, and he’s been steadily expanding his repertoire away from basic blues and boogie into more sophisticated contemporary forms. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Covington is showcased here in a variety of stylistic contexts, some more satisfying than others, but all pointing to a versatility and musical richness that he’s just beginning to tap....
Solomon Burke is that rare “living legend” whose talent more than justifies his myth. Everything about Burke–his flamboyant onstage manner, his overwhelming physical presence–is larger than life. Burke was crowned “King of Rock ‘n’ Soul” by Baltimore DJ Rockin’ Robin in 1964, and since then he’s seldom appeared without the trappings of royalty–crown, flowing robe, adoring entourage, and regal bearing. His talent is as outsized as everything else about him; an evening in the presence of his remarkable persona and his subtly textured voice, alternating between gospel intensity and deep, chocolate-rich vibrato, is one of the most unforgettable experiences in R & B....
The Art of Politics: How Lois Can Go Is Lois Weisberg, our commissioner of Cultural Affairs, beginning to show her true colors? People are wondering in the wake of her “creative” solution to the problem of “The Chicago Show,” an exhibit scheduled to open May 5 at the Cultural Center. All involved in what was to have been a juried exhibit agree it was set up to include and reflect the best work being done by artists from the city and vicinity....
Trib Checks Its Art Beat On September 1 entertainment editor Richard Christiansen, who’s 59, joins the company. Chicago’s most prominent arts critic, Christiansen presides over all the Tribune’s critics and entertainment writers and the Sunday Arts section. While administrating, he has continued to write: he’s still the Tribune’s principal theater critic, and he also reviews dance. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I have for quite some time been interested in having Dick Christiansen do that work for us....
Tribune Staff Rider “And they’ll get a call on Sunday, or their friend or neighbor will stop by on Sunday with a great big grin on their face and say, ‘Did you read the Trib? No? Well, I brought a copy with me in case you missed it’–and they’ll really rub it in.” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » And they are always men. The women Mateja hears from have a different agenda....
West Lafayette, Indiana: the college town that grew up around Purdue University. Come up the hill from the Wabash River into “the village,” as what passes for West Lafayette’s downtown is known, and along the left-hand side of the road you’ll see “Von’s” everywhere you look. Von’s Books, Von’s Copies, Von’s Video, Von’s Records, Von’s Cards, Von’s Posters. Across the street is Von’s Computers. This is certainly the most conspicuous, if not the most extensive, commercial empire in town....
To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » A recent issue of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s presitigious Technology Review reports on the culmination of an exhaustive study of worldwide ocean temperatures since 1850 by MIT climatologists Reginald Newell, Jane Hsiung, and Wu Zhongxiang. Its most striking conclusion: “There appears to have been little or no global warming over the past century.” In fact, the average ocean temperature in the torrid 1980s was less than 0....
The 80s was the decade of the anthem. Springsteen started it, of course, but between feel-good cheerleaders both passable (Peter Gabriel) and intolerable (Sting) and a wheelbarrow full of long-haired singers with their chins jutting out, from crazy Bono to the clowns in the Alarm, we kind of got our fill of prancing guitars and song titles like “Freedom Youth” and “Nights of Thunder.” For me it was all over late in 1987, when I saw the Alarm open for Dylan....
It’s popular among blues enthusiasts to classify early regional styles by stereotyping them. We talk of the intense, emotionally explosive Delta blues (Charlie Patton, Son House, Robert Johnson) and the melodic, tightly structured mid-Atlantic blues of Georgia and the Carolinas (Blind Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Curley Weaver and Fred McMullen). Then there are the sparse, lonesome blues of Texas, featuring sustained guitar phrases, a call-and-response interplay between voice and instrument, and the alternation of good-time ribaldry and a brooding introspection (Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin’ Hopkins)....
Curators Don Baum and Bruce Linn have put together a wide-ranging exhibit of work portraying figures whose lives–and in many cases deaths–have contributed to public awareness of social issues. Besides numerous tributes to John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Abraham Lincoln, Whose Broad Stripes and Bright Stars: Death, Reverence, and the Struggle for Equality In America includes Roberta Bell’s “Famous Black Americans” doll collection, sections of the NAMES Project quilt, WPA-era artwork, and mass-produced memorabilia....
