Thick, scuzzy beats and dancers dressed as giant vaginas lured Saturday-afternoon festivalgoers to Riot Fest’s Riot Stage, where electro-punk artist Peaches commanded the growing crowd. In the space of her first three songs—”Rub,” “Vaginoplasty,” and “Sick in the Head,” all from the 2015 album Rub—she’d already gone through her first costume change and plunged into the audience. She shed an oversize furry costume, half Muppet and half abominable snowman, to reveal an anatomically detailed bodysuit the color of her skin, and she climbed over the security barrier to walk atop her fans, standing on their hands while letting out a ferocious, primal scream....

Baltimore pedal-steel guitarist Susan Alcorn occupies a world unto herself in numerous ways that make the sounds she creates unlike anything else out there. Thanks to her parents, she was surrounded by music during her childhood in Florida, and she eventually took up the guitar. During a stint in Chicago in the mid-70s she became transfixed by the pedal steel after hearing it in a local country band. She picked up one herself, and after relocating to Houston, Texas, in 1981 she began playing it in a number of country bands....

The Pitchfork Music Festival reliably books a variety of veteran artists, and its 2017 lineup is no exception, with the likes of A Tribe Called Quest, the Thurston Moore Group, Madlib, Dirty Projectors, Hamilton Leithauser, LCD Soundsystem, PJ Harvey, and Ride. This isn’t necessarily a sign that Pitchfork is pandering to nostalgia—many of this year’s established acts continue to evolve, despite the clear fan favorites in their back catalog. In some cases, this evolution wasn’t exactly a choice: Amber Coffman’s departure from the Dirty Projectors forced the band to reconfigure its vocal approach on 2017’s self-titled album....

RYAN LOWRY Lil Kemo 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.

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

Jules Feiffer’s impact on American comic strips is comparable to Lenny Bruce’s impact on stand-up comedy or Philip Roth’s impact on the American novel. Feiffer used the form to communicate the anger, resentment, and assimilationist experience of first- and second-generation American Jews, exploring these subjects with acidic wit and a brilliant sense of detail. He’s no less a satirist than Bruce or Roth—his commentary on American life and politics is as stinging as his observations of Jewish family life....

AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi Former congressman Mel Reynolds appears at the magistrate’s court in Harare, Zimbabwe, on Wednesday. The not-so-shocking, perhaps-even-amusing news that hapless former congressman Mel Reynolds has been arrested in Zimbabwe for alleged possession of pornography got big play in Wednesday’s Sun-Times (here and here and here) and more modest treatment in the Tribune, but both papers relied heavily on reporting in Zimbabwe’s Herald, a state-controlled daily. Reporters Without Borders goes farther....

For as long as Tony Fitzpatrick can remember, he’s been preoccupied with birds. He blames his grandmother (a loyal staffer in Cook County assessor P.J. Cullerton’s notoriously corrupt office in the 60s), who made a habit of feeding feathered flocks. “Shut up and listen,” she’d tell young Tony. “For a piece of bread you can hear God sing.” The artist’s earliest drawings were of naked women and birds; sometimes he’d cap nude torsos with avian heads....

For the last few days, I’ve been trying to think up a worthwhile way for Chicago to commemorate the life and legacy of Pat Hill, the great citizen activist, who died of cancer on September 3. She was 66—way too young. Born and raised on the south side, Hill graduated from Harlan High. She was a high school track star, coming close to qualifying for the 1968 Olympics in the long jump....

One of the most common questions a rape victim hears aside from “What were you wearing?” and “Were you drinking?” and “Why didn’t you fight back?” is “Did you report it to the police?” Despite studies that show that police officers are just as likely as anyone to accept rape myths along the lines that men can’t be raped, that women should be able to fight off rapists if they really want to, and that women are likely to make false rape accusations because they like the attention; and despite statistics that show that only 2 to 3 percent of rapists are ever convicted and jailed; and despite flaws in standard investigative procedures and reports of hundreds of untested rape kits; and despite reports of rapes perpetrated by cops, there still seems to be a perception, maybe perpetuated by Law and Order: SVU, that reporting a rape to the police is the first step in getting justice....

For just a second, set aside the task of deciding whether Stephin Merritt is being sincere or ironic. His preoccupation on most Magnetic Fields songs is anxiety: negotiating the desire to live in public with the crippling fear of it. The new Magnetic Fields album, 50 Song Memoir (Nonesuch), is a triumph on this front—these 50 songs, each assigned to a year of his life, are Merritt’s customary bite-size popcraft pastiches, but he sings more or less directly about himself for once....

The Pitchfork Music Festival turns ten this year—or 11 if you count the Pitchfork-curated Intonation Music Festival in 2005. Intonation brought 27 acts to Union Park for two days, and a weekend pass cost $22; a three-day pass to this year’s festival, which includes 45 acts, cost $150, though it did include a year’s subscription to the website’s new print quarterly, The Pitchfork Review. (Full disclosure: I’m one of several Reader writers who’ve contributed to the Review....

The sort of habitual restaurant-going folk who rarely venture out of the comfortable eating enclaves of River North or Randolph Street—those who wouldn’t dream of visiting dirty old Uptown for a steaming bowl of pho, a pile of spicy minchet abish on injera, or a whiskey at the Green Mill—have faced a lot of challenges lately, with celebrated fine-dining restaurants like Goosefoot, El Ideas, and Elizabeth opening in unfashionable neighborhoods at an alarming rate....

If you’re headed to Lollapalooza, you’ve committed to a weekend’s worth of braving quarter-mile bathroom lines and dodging sweaty adolescents who look like they were bussed through time from a high school in 1992. If you’re older than 21, you’re gonna need a drink. And something to eat too since you’re a responsible(ish) grownup (unlike some people). Whether you’re looking to pregame or postgame, Grant Park is situated near plenty of watering holes and places to grab a bite....

Lydia Gorham For the past two years, Reader staffers have created itineraries of what we planned on doing for a particular day of the Pitchfork Music Festival. Since there is so much to do at the annual Union Park shindig, itineraries have proven useful for festivalgoers to navigate the Converse-treaded terrain. Because we wanted to read what other people’s itineraries would look like, we invited readers to submit their own and gave our favorite submitters free three-day passes to the fest (and published their itineraries online and in print)....

As the duty of journalism is to service the people’s so-called right to know, a good way to embarrass a newspaper is to point out something it didn’t get around to telling them. Let’s say a daily paper writes a lot of stories about a hot local debate but doesn’t make it clear the coverage is being paid for by rich men deeply involved in the debate and all on the same side....

This past weekend, Emporium Logan Square was turned into an ephemeral Filipino neighborhood that featured Filipino-American chefs, artists, dancers, activists, and performers. “It’s that need of having a community space and coming together to really appreciate and highlight all these people that are hidden in different kitchens and difference scenes,” Roxas says. “It feels like our community here is struggling with that.” Kultura Festival 2018 The event’s success has inspired Roxas to try to branch out to other cities next year....

There are plenty of MCs who can put together a solid case for why they believe they’re the next big thing and why the masses should flock to them—hell, there are some who can fill an entire mixtape about their preordained rise to fame—but there aren’t many who can inspire the kind of fierce devotion in their fans local rapper-producer Tremaine “Tree” Johnson does. I remember conversations about Tree the way you’re supposed to remember song lyrics, and that’s partially because I’m so enamored with his unique, strange, and soulful sound, which he calls soul trap....

Since belatedly discovering Here Is Barbara Lynn, the sole Atlantic album by the titular Texas soul singer, half-a-dozen years ago, I’ve often wondered why she never became a major star (Light in the Attic Records is reissuing that album next month). She was not only a remarkable vocalist with a plush, throaty, and powerful instrument, but one hell of a songwriter and a terrific guitarist (the latter two skills were generally suppressed in female artists during the early 60s, when she first emerged)....