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THE LOOP GROUP Boulez’s interest in the Loop Group is a sign of its growing importance, for he is arguably our greatest living figure in music. Once a radical, outspoken enfant terrible who advocated that concert halls and opera houses be burned to the ground because they were dead monuments to an irrelevant past, Boulez is now known as one of the world’s greatest interpreters of that past. The leading serialist–or twelve-tone composer–of his generation, who once said that serialism would become “the only musical direction of the future,” Boulez later abandoned and today dismisses the entire movement as “a moment in music....

Last time the Godfather of Soul was in town, he displayed his professionalism and dedication by working 90 minutes nonstop for a sparse crowd scattered around Soldier Field. Brown paces himself these days; he dances in spurts, then stands back and lets his supporting cast–a surreal bevy of high-stepping showgirls and his usual tightly wound band–keep the energy rising. He emphasizes melody more than he did during his revolutionary late-60s-early-70s period, when he laid the foundation for hard funk, house, hip hop, and rap by transforming his entire band into a rhythm instrument....

Medical Muddle Don’t blame the University of Chicago, responded Whitington, director of pediatric transplant services at the University of Chicago Medical Center. We intended to keep the lid on until we’d finished the operation, and then issue a press release. But the Smith family saw fit to stir up publicity back home in San Antonio and the wires picked up the story. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » We did give two journalists permission to be present at the operation, the doctor added....

THE AUTHOR’S VOICE In Richard Greenberg’s play The Author’s Voice, there is a duende-in- training. Or maybe he’s an urban Rumpelstiltskin. Or a second-year recruit in Beelzebub’s street gang. Or the ugly duckling that laid the golden eggs. Or maybe he’s what all writers see when they look in the mirror. In any case, a gargoylish imp named Gene lives in a closet off the cubicle belonging to Todd, a handsome and charming young writer whose editor is determined to turn his first novel into a best-seller and, en route, corner him in the hay....

“We had to look nice,” says Terry Donahue of her days as a catcher in the All American Girls Baseball League. “We had to have our makeup on, our lipstick on, and we could not have short hair. We had to have long hair. Mr. Wrigley was very strict about that. Someone was always yelling at me, ‘Terry get on some lipstick!’” She sits back and laughs a laugh that seems too big to have come from her slim frame....

It seems to me that “shameful” and “shameless” basically mean the same thing, yet one is “full” and the other is “less.” How is this possible? –Katherine C., Van Nuys, California Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » You are usually so hip I checked your naive repetition of the excuses for bomb testing five times before I was sure it was not satire [July 3]....

Why does newspaper tear straight in one direction and crooked in the perpendicular direction? –Kevin Bower, Tyler, Texas Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Newsprint is made by pouring wood pulp onto a moving wire-mesh conveyer belt. The wood fibers line themselves up parallel to the belt’s direction of travel, giving the paper a grain akin to tree grain. After drying and pressing, the paper is wound onto rolls....

“Out of the classrooms, into the streets! We want peace in the Middle East!” “Must you swear?” says one kid. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I smirk. Fucking is obscene, but war isn’t? Yet they have a point. You can’t persuade by offending. Unfortunately, there’s no time to evaluate different protest groups. I don’t approve of disturbing classes, but here I am, swept up with the crowd....

“Shots fired–hostage situation,” says Larry Schreiner, mimicking the flat police-radio voice that lured him to this very corner last fall. “I pull up and park right here,” he remembers. We are sitting in Schreiner’s Mercedes at the northwest corner of Webster and Hoyne. Schreiner is spinning his tale in his favorite spot in the world: behind the wheel on a Chicago side street. Schreiner may have trouble with syntax, his pronouns often don’t have antecedents, and he’ll invent any word he needs, but he’s probably Chicago’s most prolific communicator....

LIZARD MUSIC Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The man’s name was Anderson Punch–at least that was what he was called when he arrived in Chicago from Louisiana in 1911. His friends, especially on his home turf on the south side, called him Casey Jones, after the folk song he often sang; when he died in 1974 at the age of 104, that was the name the obituaries used....

“It’s a classic example of the public will being thwarted” by intransigent business interests, says Howard Learner of Business and Professional People for the Public Interest (BPI). More likely, say others, it’s a classic example of environmentalists not being able to tell when they’ve won. In 1988 and 1989 legislators required all counties, including Cook, to start developing plans for recycling at least 15 percent of their garbage in three years and 25 percent in five years....

A FLAMENCO DANCE CONCERT In his own way, world-renowned Spanish dancer Edo was doing the same thing with this concert, in which he premiered his local pick-up company (Karen Stelling, Maria Cecilia, Maria Gitana, El Polaco, Catalina, and Maria Virginia). There were no elaborate sets designed to transport you to the sunny courtyards of Spain. There were no trailing ruffled trains (colas) on the women’s dresses. There weren’t even any castanets....

Jane Campion’s stirring follow-up to Sweetie adapts the autobiographical trilogy of New Zealand writer Janet Frame into a 163-minute feature, originally made for New Zealand TV–clearly a labor of love by a masterful talent responding to a soulmate. The poetic empathy, the beautiful, offbeat framing and unexpected transitions, and the magnificent handling of actors are all pure Campion. (Her work is especially impressive with the three who play Frame at different ages–Alexia Keogh, Karen Fergusson, and Kerry Fox–whose suggestions of fragility, painful shyness, and passionate inner life effortlessly dovetail into one another....

Ever since Andre Watts burst upon an unsuspecting music world at the age of 16 as a last-minute replacement for an ailing Glenn Gould in 1963, his name has been synonymous with pianistic virtuosity and musical integrity. The amazing thing about Watts today is that while his technique is as flawless and full of fireworks as ever, he continues to mature as an artist, penetrating the deepest inner regions of the repertoire he selects so carefully for himself....

Friday 19 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Hulkamaniacs” will gather at the Rosemont Horizon tonight when Hulk Hogan faces challenger Randy “Macho Man” Savage in the championship bout of the World Wrestling Federation Superstars of Wrestling extravaganza. The Hulkster may be the current champ, but Savage has beaten him before. The action starts at 8 at 6920 N. Mannheim in Rosemont. Tickets are $16, $12, and $9; call 559-1212....

The angst of the post-Stonewall gay male is at the core of the work by the young, provocative performance artist D. Travers Scott. Born after the first burst of gay liberation and having come of age in the AIDS era, Scott challenges old and new stereotypes of gay men. There’s nothing too sacred or too politically incorrect for this guy–not sex, not family, not even Jeffrey Dahmer. And while much of the work is funny, none of it is mean....

Soft-spoken guitarist Fenton Robinson sometimes seems to kindly for the competitive world of Chicago blues. He holds his instrument tenderly, at an angle remindful of jazz or classical guitar playing, and his leads ripple out over the top in smooth, undulating phrases. Robinson’s supple, evocative voice fills out the picture–it’s best suited to ballads, like the standard “As the Years Go Passing By” or his plaintive trademark “Somebody Loan Me a Dime....

Why should Indians have a right to land when they don’t produce anything on it? –a Brazilian quoted in Before the Bulldozer by David Price Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Price recommended that lands for a reservation be set aside for the Nambicuara before the road was built, and he also made specific recommendations–none very expensive–for medical care and schooling. The medical care was needed because the road would expose the Indians to a host of diseases from the outside world that they would have no defense against....

I saw three eastern meadowlarks last week in the restored prairie at the western end of Somme Woods. For me this is big news. I’m doing a breeding bird survey on this 150-acre piece of Cook County forest preserve, and nesting meadowlarks would just about make my spring. Together, this combination of virgin prairie, stunted restoration, and former missile site is the largest unbroken piece of open, treeless land at Somme Woods....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Robert McClory’s worshipful interview with Professor Sheehan seems to be a classic case of misplaced religious longings, a common failing among the petition-signing left. Revealed religion is obviously a tool of the ruling class, an agent of oppression, racism, insurance redlining and any number of fascist ills. The first thing to do then, should be to sign on with the atheists....