The Thons have been kicking around Chicago for a couple years, whipping up a rollicking brew of gnarly postpunk and adroit garage rock. They’ve released a few albums, but so far they’ve all been digital only: 2013’s Raw Real Rock and 2014’s Thirty Foot Snake are name-your-price downloads on Bandcamp, and this year’s Hot Fun is a measly $6. Now the Thons are finally giving all three full-lengths a physical form—specifically, cassettes!...
Frog plays don’t come along every week. Puerto Rico’s dearest native amphibian, the coqui, finally gets a taste of the theatrical acknowledgment it so richly deserves in this 90-minute celebration of the island nation’s heritage. Carlito (Manny Colon) is no ordinary coqui, though. Oh, no. Catch him doing fun things like eating cereal, dancing the cha-cha, and discussing rain-forest conservation at a level of abstraction inaccessible to children. His friends? They’re the kookiest bunch of flatly anthropomorphized tree dwellers in El Yunque....
In response to President Trump’s recent executive order on immigration Aisha Orazbayeva has canceled her upcoming tour.
Gnarfest has been running as a counter-Lollapalooza blowout for four years now, during which time it was mostly underground. In previous years the punk festival went down at various DIY spots in town, but this year it’s going above ground (for the most part) and in a big way: Gnarfest’s final event will take place tomorrow evening at the Illinois Centennial Monument in Logan Square. Local instrumental doom outfit Bongripper headline the outdoor portion of Gnarfest....
Must visit: Violet Hour Wicker Park’s hidden Violet Hour is a dark, sumptuously appointed retreat from the harsh world outside, attended by nattily dressed barkeeps who exhibit a balletic facility with jigger, shaker, and glass.—Mike Sula Photo Credit Must visit: Tac’s Lounge 5114 S. Prairie Ave., 773-536-2500 “Who you looking for?” I was asked upon stepping into this dimly lit Washington Park establishment, the first sign that it doesn’t attract too many outsiders....
Cabaret Prop’d Accompanied by a different band each week, a rotating cast of storytellers, tap dancers, burlesque feather dancers, comedians, and poets test out material and perform laid-back short-form sets in this late-night variety show. At the performance I attended, the Rocombu Jazz band, led by “growl” trumpeter Yves François, filled most of the two acts with a concert of groovy rumba songs and New Orleans-style brass numbers. Generous time slots and the emcee’s discursive crowd work make for a long haul, but there are some glimmers of traditional cabaret fun....
Last year Will Kraus, who records full-bodied, blistering shoegaze songs under his last name, talked to Pitchfork about his ambiguous lyrics. “It’s about half just kind of saying stuff into the microphone and half words,” he said. “I don’t feel like good enough of a writer right now to really have too many lyrics be front and center.” Though he hasn’t improved much on that front with his second album, March’s Path (Terrible), his glum, echoing vocals and crestfallen lyrics come through much more clearly on that record than on his charming 2016 debut, End Tomorrow....
Ragano still dislikes salmon, but that didn’t stop him from making it the centerpiece of his yuzu dish. Inspired partly by the sandwiches he ate growing up, partly by lox and bagels, he pan roasted a salmon fillet and served it with pumpernickel “soil” (toasted and ground pumpernickel bread with olive oil, salt, pepper, and caraway) and a yuzu and Greek yogurt sauce. And he didn’t forget the beets: Ragano prepared them two ways—roasted and raw....
No matter where you’re from, turning 60 feels significant, but in Japan they have a name for it. Kanreki signifies the start of a new cycle of life with your troubles and responsibilities forgotten. Celebrants often wear red—a color associated with youth—and traditionally they retire from adult household responsibility. Tatsu Aoki, who was born in Tokyo and moved to Chicago in 1977, put off his kanreki until he turned 61 this year, and he still shows no signs of slowing the pace of his busy lifestyle....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, September 20, 2017. Five Wheaton College football players charged with felonies for hazing FIve Wheaton College football players have been charged with felony counts of aggravated battery, mob action, and unlawful restraint for allegedly hazing a fellow football player in March 2016, according to CBS Chicago. “This has had a devastating effect on my life. What was done to me should never occur in connection with participation in a football program or any other activity,” the unnamed victim said in a statement....
Having failed to drive the state into bankruptcy in one fell swoop, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner came up with a new strategy: bleed it to death with a thousand nicks. On May 31, the Democrats passed a school funding bill called SB1, which would distribute the state aid schools need to open this year. Rauner opposed the bill on the grounds that it’s a Chicago bailout, even though it’s not. In fact, it would send hundreds of millions of dollars to school districts from Cairo to Zion....
Marshall Goff The Encyclopedia Show 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.
Riot Fest books more than enough reunited bands every year to earn its reputation as a nostalgia trip—and for better or worse, they’re often among the highlights of the weekend. The reunions on the 2015 lineup include beloved metal oddballs (System of a Down, Faith No More), aughties Warped Tour crowd pleasers (Alexisonfire, the Academy Is . . . ), cult favorites from the punk and emo scenes (88 Fingers Louie, Desaparecidos), and the following half dozen Reader staff picks....
Last November, Gossip Wolf hailed the talents behind improvised live game show Shame That Tune—including pianist and songwriter extraordinaire Abraham Levitan and novelist and Reader contributor Brian Costello—for reaching their 50th episode. Sadly, on Fri 8/21 this wolf’s favorite oddball entertainers will sign off with one last show, turning the tables with “shameful anecdotes from the performers themselves,” including Costello, Levitan, and cohost Jeanine O’Toole. The evening will begin with a reel of all the show’s fake commercials and end with a postshow dance party featuring DJ James Deia....
The New York Times published a story yesterday called “An Ode to Shopping Malls,” about a 40-year-old filmmaker named Dan Bell who’s documenting “the most depressed shopping malls in the mid-Atlantic region and beyond” in what he’s titled the “Dead Mall Series.” Bell’s YouTube videos, the Times‘s Steven Kurutz writes, “offer an unsettling visual document of the retail apocalypse that changing consumer habits, e-commerce and economic disparity have wrought.” “Fifteen,” which appeared in the August 1982 issue of Esquire, is quintessential Greene, the midwestern boy roving the country with a notebook in hand, willing to lend a sympathetic ear, interested in even the smallest of stories....
One day a few weeks ago, attorney and political activist Frank Avila was sifting through some papers when he discovered an old VHS cassette. “It’s amazing to think that in just five years he would be president,” says Avila, a local Democratic maverick. “Who is Barack Obama?” Avila asks at the beginning of the interview. Ironically, at that moment he was fighting like hell to get out of the toxic political swamp of Chicago and move on to Washington....
With the Christmas season upon us, Chicago Democrats will get in the spirit by dropping into the mud and doing a little wrestling, eye-gouging included. That’s twice as many as the 12,500 signatures a mayoral candidate needs to make the ballot. But the rule of thumb is a candidate needs at least three times the required number to survive a petition challenge. The new law neglected to stipulate a signature requirement....
Burn the Black Dog 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.
Journalists’ duty to inform sits uneasily with their duty to recognize now and then that the public knows all it needs to and it’s time to turn off the spigot. Journalists learn to balance these contrary responsibilities. Next Haley’s paper published—”without any sense of the impact on the family and the community,” he says—the sort of specific details of the suicide that normally come nowhere close to seeing the light of day....
