Courtesy Chicago Slam Works Brian Babylon Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

On the forthcoming The Crossing (due September 14 on Yep Roc), veteran Austin rocker Alejandro Escovedo refracts his life as a second-generation Mexican-American in a concept album about two immigrants from Mexico and Italy who meet while working in a Texas restaurant, focusing on the shared and disparate personal experiences that brought them to the same spot. Album single “Sonica USA” steps away from that narrative, instead reflecting on the sense of power Escovdeo felt in the 70s watching Mexican-American punk band the Zeros (which was cofounded and fronted by his brother, Javier), and the pride he takes now in offering his immigrant peers a model of what it can look like to follow your own path....

With 14 books, a handful of plays, and even a comic strip on the beings and doings of the magical land of Oz, you would think L. Frank Baum, its self-styled Royal Historian, had adequately expounded upon the adventures of the quirky folk of a more colorful universe. However, our hunger for a more fabulous reality being insatiable, many others have taken up the task since Baum’s death 99 years ago, producing dozens more books, and, of course, Wicked and The Wiz....

This weekend there are boozy events on the north and south sides, and a little bit of everything else in between. Here’s some of what we recommend: 5/19-5/21: The Eifman Ballet of Saint Petersburg comes to the Auditorium Theatre (50 E. Congress) to perform Red Giselle, Boris Eifman’s ballet about famous 19th-century Russian ballerina Olga Spessivtseva. Fri-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 2 PM 5/20-7/1: Dannielle Tegeder explores the systems that surround us with “Turbulent Constellations,” an installation at Carrie Secrist Gallery (835 W....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

For me, the highlights of the recent budget hearings—including the raucous one at the South Shore Cultural Center—were watching Mayor Rahm and his aides struggle to blame Mayor Daley for everything that’s wrong without mentioning his name. There’s Mayor Emanuel, who broke into Chicago politics as a Daley fund-raiser back in the 80s. Also on the South Shore stage was Avis LaVelle, the hearing’s moderator. No budget hearing is complete without one or two speakers bashing the parking meter deal....

Katie Graves The Nexus Project: Benjamin Holliday Wardell and Michel Rodriguez Cintra Male duo the Nexus Project is back with their first collaboration since an inaugural program last November. Staged in the gallery at the Chicago Artists Coalition as part of the “Moving Canvas” series, Michel Rodriguez Cintra and Benjamin Holliday Wardell’s new dance takes its cue from the playful group exhibit that surrounds them, but where “Quasi-Choreography” features visual art transformed by the intervention of other artists, the Nexus Project draws on the audience....

The craft beer boom of the past several years has gifted Chicago with much more than some really fine suds. A dizzying number of new breweries have become the creative homes of brewers who’re taking a kind of auteurist approach to making inspired, sometimes unconventional beers using recipes that seem limited only by their creators’ imaginations. Nearly two dozen of those breweries in and around the city offer regular tours, giving the public the chance to drink in the distinctive culture around each brewery—and an excuse to drink lots of freshly made beer....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, June 28, 2017. Elon Musk pitches high-speed train from downtown to O’Hare Entrepreneur Elon Musk and his Boring Co. are interested in building a 125-mph train between downtown and O’Hare International Airport and have pitched the idea to Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The founder of Tesla and SpaceX met in California with deputy mayor Steve Koch, who said he was “intrigued” with the idea....

The power of Joshua Abrams’s Natural Information Society is in large measure derived from a singular sense of purpose: to lock in on a single chord and with subtle, kaleidoscopic modality cast a spell at the nexus of a hypnotic groove. That intent is carried forth on the Chicago band’s fourth and best album, Simultonality (Eremite), but this time they’ve pulled back from a general focus on North and East African traditional music to further refine their attack with generous dollops of Krautrock and classical minimalism....

Courtesy Library of Congress Throwing a switch; Proviso Yard; 1943 One of the standout images in “Railroaders: Jack Delano’s Homefront Photography” is of a lone, faceless rail man—back to the camera, his all-denim outfit stamped with grime—as he leans over to throw a switch at Chicago’s vast Proviso Yard, a couple dozen sets of vacant tracks stretching into the background. Then shot epitomizes the magnitude of Chicago’s railway system in the mid-20th century, when its reputation as a crucial hub for the railroading industry was undeniable....

AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh You don’t see this Bears fan panicking, do you? Calm down, Chicago. I myself will wait another game before gouging my eyes out. Sure, with two tough road games coming up and then the Packers, the Bears might slide quickly from this opening setback into oblivion. But it’s a little premature to throw in the towel with fifteen-sixteenths of the regular season to go.

This won’t happen. But two iconic buildings are on the market in Chicago, and the owners should consider trading with each other. But the mighty Tribune argued from on high. Try to sail past the security guards to the elevator bank, in order to give the editorial board upstairs an earful of your own conscience, and you’d be collared and tossed out.

Like a lot of folks at the Pitchfork Music Festival, Gossip Wolf checked out bands, made new friends, chilled with old friends (and fake friends!), and kept an eye out for famous faces around Union Park. On Friday the Haim sisters grooved to Iceage alongside the Blue Stage, and on Saturday actress Marina Squerciati—aka the plucky Officer Burgess on NBC’s Chicago P.D.—made the scene with a group of pals. This wolf almost tripped over Nick Viall from ABC’s The Bachelorette, a show no self-­respecting canid would watch (or at least admit to watching)....

The Salem witch trials will fascinate Americans for as long as those events roil our own capacity for lunacy. In a recent Bleader post, the Reader‘s Aimee Levitt discusses the Salem trials with Stacy Schiff, author of the new book The Witches: Salem, 1692, and she tells us that Schiff believes “the legacy of Salem . . . has echoed throughout American history.” I wrote a lot of columns back in the early 90s about parents who came to believe their children had fallen into the clutches of satanists....

Joan of Arc founder and vocalist Tim Kinsella and electronic musician Jenny Polus—also known as Jenny Pulse, and previously as Spa Moans—both finished their own album-release and touring cycles a few weeks ago. But instead of relaxing over the holiday season, they’re firing up a brand-new duo project called Good Fuck that combines postindustrial club beats and oddball lyrics—their sound has Gossip Wolf imagining Chris & Cosey hosting a karaoke party in the back of a totally depressing grocery store....

JO MCCAUGHEY Haden Triplets Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda.

On the new Not Dark Yet (Silver Cross/Thirty Tigers), their first collaborative album, sisters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer don’t harmonize in the manner of other famous country siblings, such as the Delmore or Louvin Brothers. Though the two of them grew up singing together, their approach is intuitive, so at certain moments emotion supplants technique (including on an intimately ragged cover of Nirvana’s “Lithium”). Produced by Teddy Thompson, Not Dark Yet was recorded in Los Angeles with a top-notch cast of players, and though it feels loose, it’s not a tossed-off effort....

Masterful composer, conductor, and thinker Pierre Boulez died in January 2016 at the age of 91 after decades of revolutionizing classical music and propelling it to radical new extremes. As a conductor he had a long, fruitful relationship with Chicago, beginning with a two-week subscription series leading the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1969, during which his piece Livre Pour Cordes received its U.S. premiere. Nineteen years passed before he conducted the CSO again, but beginning in 1993 Boulez began making annual visits that continued until 2010, displaying his sophisticated aesthetic with programs that balanced new work with 19th- and 20th-century staples....