In March, days before the launch of a tour planned to support his band’s 12th album, Romance (Joyful Noise), Oneida drummer Jon Colpitts—better known by his stage name, Kid Millions—was hospitalized following a serious car accident in Los Angeles. The tour was canceled, and though his Oneida bandmates announced that he was expected to make full recovery, I didn’t think the group would be back in action this summer. In recent years, Kid Millions has ascended as a new-music dynamo, but he’s remained staunchly devoted to Oneida since it formed in 1997....

Douglas Park was practically a swamp on day two of Riot Fest. The price to see Iggy Pop, System of a Down, Bootsy Collins, Billy Idol, and Gwar? A ruined pair of shoes. Photographer Bobby Talamine made his own sacrifice, trudging through to capture shots of Saturday’s crowd. 

Quicksand seemed destined to stay posthardcore’s version of a brilliant cult TV show that regrettably lasted only a season or two. Before disbanding in 1995, the New York-based four-piece released an EP and two near perfect but underappreciated albums, Slip (1993) and Manic Compression (1995). Following the breakup, the band’s four members (front man Walter Schreifels, drummer Alan Cage, bassist Sergio Vega, and guitarist Tom Capone) dispersed among a host of other projects like Rival Schools and Handsome, while elements of Quicksand’s brand of tightly constructed muscular and melodic rock—a sort of thinking man’s hardcore—lived on in their more commercially successful successors ranging from Tool to Deftones (whom Vega joined in 2008)....

Robots have been threatening to take over the world—which is to say that people have felt threatened by the possibility of a robot takeover—since at least 1921, when Czech playwright Karel Čapek coined the term “robot” for his play R.U.R. In Čapek’s scenario, manufactured workers rise up in successful revolt against their creator/masters, killing off pretty much the entire human species. The one incontrovertible innovation is Walter, Marjorie’s robotic companion. He doesn’t look like a robot....

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

It’s basically impossible to imagine The Daily Show without Jon Stewart, which is probably part of the reason people have reacted so poorly to Trevor Noah becoming his successor. OK, that and the fact that he’s practically an unknown. And then there were his tweets—unfunny at best, offensive at worst—that were used as evidence of Noah being unqualified for the job. No one can fill Stewart’s shoes—and from the sound of it, Noah isn’t interested in trying....

Quirky Americana band the Mavericks ended a nine-year hiatus in 2012 by picking up exactly where they left off, embracing a sprawling admixture of styles with more energy and ambition than ever before. Unfortunately their 2013 comeback album, In Time, was a bloated affair, written as though they were desperate to make up for lost time. But now, having recently formed their own Mono Mundo label to release the new Brand New Day, the Mavericks seem to have settled into their strengths....

ZZ Ward has dedicated her career to merging blues with contemporary pop R&B, achieving fair aesthetic results and mixed commercial success. Her single “The Deep,” off her sophomore album The Storm (out at the end of June on Hollywood), is a fine example of that approach. A meaty riff with chopped-up blues-slide notes dripping around the edges and an honest-to-god classic-rock guitar solo are arranged around a solid radio-ready beat. It’s tough and sexy—and not too far removed from Beyoncé’s similar mashup of rock, roots, and pop on Lemonade....

Japanese cult filmmaker Sion Sono (Suicide Club, Love Exposure) once cited as his primary influences John Cassavetes, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and 80s splatter movies, and many of his films play like a fusion of those three elements. Like Cassavetes, Sono elicits bold, expressive performances from his actors to depict characters at emotional extremes; he also favors jittery, handheld-camera work that gives his films a sense of wild spontaneity. Like Fassbinder, Sono is a social critic whose characters tend to be outcasts and people desperate for love, and a remarkably prolific artist whose quickly and cheaply made movies (about 20 in the last decade) exude a rousing punk bravado....

Jacinto Ariza Artopia 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.

One of the first musical subcultures I got excited about as a kid was LA’s early- to mid-80s Paisley Underground scene, one of the first neo-psychedelic movements in the U.S.—I was thrilled by the music but uninterested in the chemical mind alteration it often seemed to imply or encourage. So while I was happy to buy a paisley shirt at a vintage store, when I went to a concert by the Three O’Clock and somebody handed me a small paper cup with a sugar cube in it, I got nervous....

Sometimes a record label finds a sweet spot, locking in on an aesthetic that keeps you enthralled. That’s exactly what Bill and Lisa Roe of Trouble in Mind Records have been doing for me with one irresistibly hooky rock band after another. Not every act has staying power, and some are unapologetically mining aesthetics developed decades ago, but nearly every Trouble in Mind release over the past couple years has sounded great to me....

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

Alaska Thunderfuck knows the power of a catchphrase. She answers the phone with a nasal, drawn-out “hieeee,” her hashtag-ready greeting from the fifth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Since finishing as runner-up in 2013, Alaska (real name Justin Andrew Honard) has become glamazon royalty, touring with RuPaul’s Battle of the Seasons, showing up on other queens’ singles, and working as a spokesmodel for American Apparel. Courtesy the artist Alaska Thunderfuck...

Chicago Hot Dog Fest A celebration of the Chicago dog and Vienna Beef featuring bites from local vendors along with a performance by Robert Cornelius & Friends paying tribute to Prince. 8/11-8/13: Fri-Sat 11 AM-9 PM, Sun 11 AM-8 PM, Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark, 312-642-4600, chicagohotdogfest.com, $5 suggested donation. Wizard World Comic Con Nerd out to the max with four days of science fiction, fantasy, film, horror, anime, manga, cosplay, comic books, card games, and celebrity appearances....

“I like this one because it was funny and used a word balloon as part of the story. Taking the narrative and really incorporating one of the devices of comics was a nice touch.”—Eric Kirsammer, our Comics Issue curator, on why he chose Halton’s comic (CLICK ON AN IMAGE TO READ A COMIC)

Before Slow Roll Chicago cofounder Oboi Reed could get back to work advocating for transportation equity in black and Latino communities, he first had to overcome the medical condition that Sir Winston Churchill reportedly called his “black dog”—clinical depression. In early 2016, about a year and a half after he helped launch the bike group, which promotes cycling in the south and west sides as a strategy to improve health and economic outcomes and reduce violence, he experienced a crippling depressive episode that put him out of commission for the next year and a half....

Al Podgorski / Sun-Times Media To topple Mayor Rahm Emanuel, his challengers need to keep him under 50 percent in the first round of voting. Now that Alderman Bob Fioretti has announced he’s running for mayor, it’s a good time to remind you—once again—that we have a runoff system for electing mayors in Chicago. I understand why so many Chicagoans are confused. No, the lesson most people learned was to make sure that, from that point forward, no one race would ever risk splitting its racial base by going into an election with more candidates than the other race....

The opening image of Anguish Since invoking Spanish genre entertainment in my review of Non-Stop, I’ve been thinking a lot about Bigas Luna (Jamon, Jamon), the Spanish writer-director who passed away last year at the age of 67. Luna excelled at the flamboyant stylization that I associate with a particular strain of Spanish filmmaking, coupling deliberately outlandish plots with deliberately show-offy camerawork. “Luna’s point,” Fred Camper wrote of his 1998 film Chambermaid on the Titanic (released in the U....