This is better than U2’s new album. The backlash around U2’s 13th album continues in the week since Apple slipped Songs of Innocence into roughly 500 million iTunes’ users libraries free of charge. New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones said the band shouldn’t “shove your music into people’s homes”; the Washington Post‘s Chris Richards called it “rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail”; Odd Future leader Tyler, the Creator said finding the album on his iPhone was, “Like waking up with pimples or herpes....

Best of Enemies is a movie about television—specifically, the short debates between liberal novelist Gore Vidal and conservative magazine editor William F. Buckley that were broadcast live on ABC during nightly news coverage of the Republican and Democratic presidential conventions in 1968. Vidal and Buckley loathed and disrespected each other, and each took it as his moral responsibility to drive the other from the public square. Their endless onscreen needling, still preserved on videotape, climaxed during the chaos of the Chicago Democratic convention when Vidal called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi” and Buckley replied, “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in your goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered....

Lately ShowYouSuck, the Cool Kids, and Mick Jenkins’s DJ, Green Sllime, have been dipping their toes into TV—and the medium has also inspired Chicago hip-hop group ThemPeople. The collective’s fingerprints are all over the work of several buzzing local rappers, including that of the scene’s undisputed prince. So when Chance the Rapper won three Grammys on Sunday—which provoked Chicagoans to start poring over their digital archives so they could brag about their connections to him—I looked back on the feature I wrote right before he dropped Acid Rap and remembered ThemPeople’s contributions to his career....

About a year ago, former President Barack Obama included “Butterfly Effect” by Travis Scott on a list of his favorite songs of 2017. It’s crazy to think back to a time when we had a president who—along with not being the worst person to walk the earth—had really good taste in music and culture. It’s also amazing to consider how much time and work was put into Scott’s third official studio album, August’s Astroworld....

The sixth annual Chicago Independent Movies & Music Festival kicks off next Thursday, and it’s got a killer live music lineup. There are plenty of shows that have piqued my interest, including local sound artist J.R. Robinson (aka Wrekmeister Harmonies) doing a live score for a 1922 European silent horror film called Haxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages; Tim Kinsella, Marvin Tate, and Leroy Bach performing tracks from an excellent 2013 LP that bears their name, with Willis Earl Beal opening for them; and on Fri 5/2 at the Double Door local hip-hop label Closed Sessions is hosting a showcase headlined by independent LA duo Blu & Exile, and colorful local MCs Alex Wiley and ShowYouSuck are opening it....

About two dozen people gathered in a community arts space in West Town on Saturday morning for a workshop titled “Alternatives to Calling Police During Mental Health Crises.” The training was hosted by Make Yourself Useful—a group “committed to actively fortifying POC-led racial justice movements”—and led by abolitionist organizers from disability rights group Nothing About Us Without Us and the People’s Response Team. Armed with statistics about the deadliness of police encounters for people with mental illness and developmental disabilities, and a familiarity with the depth—or lack thereof—of police Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) training, the organizers introduced attendees to a variety of strategies for helping people experiencing a crisis to cope with it without dialing 911....

Home is where the art is for Keith Sadler—the folk and outsider art collector has been curating flea-market finds for more than 20 years. Today his collections fill his Uptown one-bedroom, making his home a peculiar work of art itself. Since retiring, Sadler has cut back on collecting. “If I am buying anything anymore, it’s usually photo related,” he says. “Photos take up such little space compared to a horse made from an old oil drum....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, March 8, 2017. Chicago Jewish Day School evacuated due to bomb threat The Chicago Jewish Day School in Edgewater was evacuated Tuesday morning after a bomb threat was called in. Police and bomb-sniffing dogs searched the school and nothing was found. The school was one of the at least 12 Jewish days schools and community centers to receive a bomb threat Tuesday....

Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. Third Coast Percussion brings their newest project Resounding Earth to Chicago for its citywide premiere. They’ll also perform John Cage’s Third Construction and Guo Wenjing’s Parade.Following the concert, Third Coast will hold a discussion with composer Augusta Read Thomas.

Spike Lee never had a chance. That’s been clear since April, when the bile burst forth in response to the title of his new movie: Chi-Raq. A portmanteau of “Chicago” and “Iraq,” the term unfavorably compares shooting deaths in this city with those of Americans serving in Iraq. It originated with drill, a menacing, nihilistic, and violent hip-hop sound that rocketed from Chicago’s south side to rap’s hilltop a few years ago....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, March 2, 2017. Alderman Sophia King keeps her seat in special election Alderman Sophia King easily won the Fourth Ward special election Tuesday with 64 percent of the vote, allowing her to keep her seat and avoid a runoff election. King was appointed to the seat by Mayor Rahm Emanuel after former alderman Will Burns resigned, and faced four challengers in the special election, during which she was endorsed by her longtime friend, former president Barack Obama....

The music portion of South by Southwest is kicking into high gear and by now you’ve probably seen more than enough Twitter hashtags and Instagram shots of Austin to realize the festival is happening. Though SXSW’s industry influence has waned its name is inescapable, and if you keep tabs on new music there’s a good chance you notice the fest’s name worming its way into conversations as early as January, if not before....

Purity, Jonathan Franzen’s long-awaited new novel, is an unwieldy mess, with only a handful of gems buried beneath layers of the dullest and drabbest material imaginable. Here, Franzen pulls a surprise. Instead of taking us to Bolivia, we go back in time to the “Republic of Bad Taste,” otherwise known as East Germany during the 1980s, the last decade of the communist regime. This proves an inspired choice; we meet a young Wolf, “whose embarrassment it was to be the megalomaniacal antithesis of a dictatorship too ridiculous to be worthy of megalomania....

Steve Kagan Lollapalooza 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.

Alex John Beck Vampire Weekend 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.

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Thursday, August 24, 2017. Jesse White endorses J.B. Pritzker for governor Illinois secretary of state Jesse White has endorsed J.B. Pritzker for governor. The billionaire businessman, one of several Democrats running in the 2018 gubernatorial race, is the first to be endorsed by a statewide elected official. [Tribune]

Michael Gebert Pasta, because you’ve never seen a picture of it before. Roxy’s American Grill, a staple of the River North restaurant scene since 2012, will close this Saturday and reconcept in the next few weeks as L’Assurdità, an Italian restaurant. Owners Gus Andropolous and Stanley Kim said that business had been declining for some months. Customers increasingly entered the restaurant “only to be baffled by offerings such as steak and lobster....

While the machinations of the Illinois government can make even the most hardened political observers tear their hair out, Chicago has always thrived in spite of the failures of those at the top—corrupt governments come and go, but there will always be new citizens ready to remake their environment. That truth is the beating heart of No Small Plans, a graphic novel published by the Chicago Architecture Foundation that shows teenagers living through the city’s shortcomings as they contemplate Chicago’s possibilities....

Produced by the city Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, this free program celebrating the city’s creativity is Chicago’s version of the Kennedy Center Awards. Like last year’s rousing inaugural event, it will honor five stalwarts of the local arts scene, selected by DCASE and members of the mayor’s Cultural Advisory Council. The 2015 honorees are author Sandra Cisneros, children’s music icon Ella Jenkins, architect Stanley Tigerman, longtime WXRT program director Norm Winer, and the Joffrey Ballet, which has been a Chicago company for the last 20 of its 60 years....

ARTIST: Johnny Sampson SHOWS: Benjamin Gibbard and Julien Baker at Thalia Hall on Thu 1/19 and Fri 1/20 MORE INFO: johnnysampson.com