Illinois news

• Life beyond the headlines in Englewood

  17-08-2017 23:16 via Chicago Reader
  Statistics on crime and unemployment in the south-side neighborhood don't begin to present the whole picture.[Image-1] Tonika Johnson's celebratory images of her native Englewood provide a perspective on one of Chicago's most troubled neighborhoods that's rarely seen—one of lives lived with beauty and joy.…
  
  Read more

• The darkly comic crime drama Good Time is an empty provocation

  17-08-2017 22:00 via Chicago Reader
  Upon exiting a press screening of Good Time, which opens in Chicago tomorrow, I was ready to recommend the film. The movie had shaken me, commanding my attention with a brilliant interplay of camerawork, editing, music, and performance.…
  
  Read more

• Vintage and DIY outfits this musician can perform and sleep in

  17-08-2017 21:30 via Chicago Reader
  Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.Inspired by Nudie suits—rhinestone-covered suits made by late designer Nudie Cohn—and the rock scene he grew up in, musician Ryan Koenig's style is a fusion of country-western and punk. He was photographed last month at Wicker Park Fest before playing with headliner Pokey LaFarge, who was featured in one of the first of these columns.…
  
  Read more

• Local noise-pop group Melkbelly release a video for the brand-new single ‘Middle Of’

  17-08-2017 20:51 via Chicago Reader
  Ah, the joys of the practice space. A safe haven to experiment with your creative energy.…
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• A Review of Vice News Tonight’s “Charlottesville”

  17-08-2017 14:59 via The Chicago Defender
  On Monday Vice News released special episode of Vice News Tonight called Charlottesville: Race and Terror. This news special highlights the recent racial events in Charlottesville, VA in what is really best described as 22 minutes of documented terrorism and horror. With countless law enforcement officers unpunished for taking a black life, racial protest, and Donald Trump as our President we should have saw this coming. America’s racist roots have managed to revive its forest of white sup
  
  Read more

• Rauner: Trump’s Charlottesville comments “damage America,’ and other Chicago news

  17-08-2017 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  Welcome to the Reader's morning briefing for Thursday, August 17, 2017.…
  
  Read more

• With help from longtime collaborator Gillian Welch, David Rawlings and his rustic Americana regain their footing

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Best known for his work with Gillian Welch, David Rawlings seemed intent on using his second album, 2015’s Nashville Obsolete, to differentiate himself from his partner and her sharp updates of American rural traditions. He ended up sounding lost and turbid, extending simple folk-rock themes into endless drones.…
  
  Read more

• Underground music shop Bric-a-Brac Records organizes another daylong festival of subversive rock

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  In a little more than four years, Bric-a-Brac Records, which occupies a cozy storefront on the border between Logan Square and Avondale, has become a crucial part of the local creative community. Owners Nick Mayor and Jen Lemasters have accomplished this in part by hosting a bevy of all-ages shows featuring vital underground rock, punk, garage, and hip-hop acts from across the country and abroad.…
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• Spirit isn’t a classic Depeche Mode album, but it’ll do

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Released this past March, Spirit was heralded by AllMusic as Depeche Mode’s finest album since 2005’s Playing the Angel. A textbook case of damning with faint praise, but maybe the best we can hope for from Depeche Mode is a pretty good LP, not an actually great one, every decade or so.…
  
  Read more

• Sisters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer bring an imperfect country intimacy to the new Not Dark Yet

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  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”).…
  
  Read more

• On their first record in nearly 20 years, local punks 88 Fingers Louie sound better than ever

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  It’s been 19 years since local melodic hardcore outfit 88 Fingers Louie released a proper full-length, and on the brand-new Thank You for Being a Friend (Bird Attack), the reunited band haven’t skipped a beat. Throughout the 90s, 88 Fingers Louie made beyond-catchy, turbo-speed, uplifting punk that was without a doubt better than (but unfortunately not as popular as) that of their skate-punk peers.…
  
  Read more

• On Henry Church, rapper Joseph Chilliams refracts the west side through the lens of pop culture

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  In a recent interview with Chicago culture and news site These Days, rapper and Pivot Gang cofounder Joseph Chilliams discussed an epiphany he’d had about making music while watching a Louis C.K. special: “I realized that as long as it’s entertaining, it can be about absolutely anything.” Fortunately, he also understands the value of grounding his entertaining self-expression with sincerity and personality. His forthcoming debut, Henry Church—a rough Spanish-to-Engl
  
  Read more

• Advertisement

• On Find Me Finding You, Laetitia Sadier transcends clunky Marxist lyrics with her lovely vocals

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Laetitia Sadier has been pairing honeyed, seductive melodies with lyrics that read like strident Marxist tracts since her days in Stereolab. On her new solo album, Find Me Finding You (Drag City), the tactic still works for me, more or less—I qualify that judgment because I often don’t bother paying attention to what she’s singing about, preferring to bask in the beauty of her rarefied hybrid of Brazilian pop and French chanson.…
  
  Read more

• Jazz bassist Eric Revis made his name with Branford Marsalis, but he’s always been a fervent explorer

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Because competition for gigs in New York is so tight, jazz musicians often need to carve out a very specific niche—to become the best at mainstream postbop or neo-swing or whatever. Under those circumstances, musicians who refuse to box themselves in are special by default—and bassist Eric Revis is a unique case by any measure.…
  
  Read more

• Gospel of the Serpent III is a ritualistic metal blowout not to be missssssed

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Chicago’s Murder City Promotions and Temple of the Old Serpent have scored some massive metal energy for their Gospel of the Serpent III, a ritualistic multiband blowout. (Gospel of the Serpent II will take place August 25 in Hamtramck, Michigan, and next year’s fest has already been booked for July 2018, per the Facebook page.)…
  
  Read more

• At 77 years old, soul-blues veteran Latimore is still his sultry self

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  On Benny Latimore’s latest album, A Taste of Me: Great American Songs (Essential Media), the soul-blues veteran wraps his smoldering baritone around standards from the Great American Songbook (“Smile,” “The Very Thought of You”) as well as contemporary classics (“What a Difference a Day Makes,” “At Last,” “You Are So Beautiful”). He adds reworkings of his own “Dig a Little Deeper” and “Let’s Straighten It O
  
  Read more

• Actress and Elysia Crampton both paint outside the lines of electronic dance music

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  British producer Darren Cunningham, who’s been making music as Actress since 2004, has built a career flouting dance-music conventions. Though he’s used the language of dubstep, ambient music, and Detroit techno over the years, Cunningham has sculpted a highly personal sound that often conveys a fragile, almost handmade quality, whether he’s creating gritty noise or hypnotizing abstraction.…
  
  Read more

• 2 Chainz gets contemplative on Pretty Girls Like Trap Music

  17-08-2017 11:00 via Chicago Reader
  Atlanta rapper Tauheed Epps, better known as 2 Chainz, has built a career out of recording self-­aggrandizing verses even more outsize than his six-foot, five-inch frame. He litters June’s Pretty Girls Like Trap Music (Def Jam) with rich raps; on the lilting “Rolls Royce Bitch,” Epps explains that his life of luxury is at a different level than most of us can can grasp by telling us about his car’s unusual features (“My doors go that way”).…
  
  Read more

• Reclaiming the Oreo, the Twinkie, and other iconic American desserts with BraveTart

  17-08-2017 01:19 via Chicago Reader
  There's a moment in every American life when you decide, for nostalgia's sake, to revisit some of the processed food you loved as a kid. And then you realize after the first couple of bites that it's . . .…
  
  Read more

• Are there gay men who occasionally crave pussy?

  17-08-2017 01:10 via Chicago Reader
  Uncle Dan considers this and other burning questions from his grab bag.Q: I've been wondering: Since there are lesbians out there who occasionally crave cock, does the reverse also happen? Are there gay men who occassionally crave pussy?…
  
  Read more

• Alexi Front’s Scorched Tundra metal festival covers even more ground in its second Chicago year

  17-08-2017 00:14 via Chicago Reader
  Most people don't necessarily think "Chicago" as soon as you mention "Gothenburg, Sweden." Alexi Front does, though.…
  
  Read more

• Sessions Lauds Miami and Rebukes Chicago in Escalating Fight With Sanctuary Cities

  17-08-2017 00:12 via Illinois
  The attorney general praised Miami-Dade County for falling into line but said Chicago’s leaders made sanctuary cities a political issue.
  
  Read more

• Duck and Cover Classroom, Top-Notch Tuesdays, and six more new stage shows

  17-08-2017 00:03 via Chicago Reader
  A locked-room experience from Escape Artistry and a foolproof improv show are among this week's best bets.Duck and Cover Classroom I can’t vouch for Escape Artistry’s trumpeted dedication to “equality, environment, and education,” but I can attest to the aesthetic and cryptological rigor of this tantalizing, exasperating, and ingenious escape-room game. After a cheeky introductory video instructing us newly deputized agents in the nuances of time travel (here walking down
  
  Read more

• Meet The 7-Year-Old Behind Inspirational ‘Princess For A Day’ Parties

  16-08-2017 22:19 via The Chicago Defender
  The bright smiles and elevated self-esteem of young girls living in difficult circumstances are priceless. Jordan West, a 7-year-old girl with a big heart and a vision, is the driving force behind inspirational princess events.
  For her latest “Princess for a Day” party, Jordan raised funds, organized and hosted the event at Walt Disney World in Orlando on Aug. 4 for 14 girls, many of them in foster care, ABC News reports.
   
  We are talking to Jordan West – a local girl who
  
  Read more

• Austin church, community leaders react to Sunday morning murders

  16-08-2017 21:57 via Austin Weekly News
  Two men were killed while walking into Friendship Baptist Church on Sunday  Read More...
  
  Read more

• CHIRP sees the transmitter at the end of the tunnel

  16-08-2017 20:30 via Chicago Reader
  Ten years after the Chicago Independent Radio Project recruited its first volunteers, it’s finally hitting the airwaves. On August 8, 2007, the Chicago Independent Radio Project—affectionately known as CHIRP—held its first public meeting, hoping to recruit people to its project of establishing an independent low-power radio station in the city.…
  
  Read more

• ‘Hate Has Always Existed In America:’ LeBron James Blasts Trump For Charlottesville Remarks

  16-08-2017 17:41 via The Chicago Defender
  NBA superstar LeBron James blasted Donald Trump for his remarks Tuesday about racial terror attacks in Charlottesville, Virginia.
  James tweeted “Hate has always existed in America. Yes we know that but Donald Trump just made it fashionable again! Statues has nothing to do with us now!”
  Hate has always existed in America. Yes we know that but Donald Trump just made it fashionable again! Statues has nothing to do with us now!
  — LeBron James (@KingJames) August 15, 2017Considered
  
  Read more

• In the MIXX: Natalie Cole’s Son Found Dead, Global Mixx and West Side Music Fest Kicks Off

  16-08-2017 14:58 via The Chicago Defender
  Robert Yancy, son of Natalie Cole, died of a heart attack at 39. (ERIK FREELAND/CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES)
  On Tuesday evening, we received the sad news of Natalie Cole’s son, Robert Yancy passing at the age of 39. His body was found in his San Fernando Valley, California apartment. Undisputed reports of Yancy’s untimely death indicate lead the legendary R&B singer’s son having a heart attack. An autopsy is still pending. His father, a member of the 1970’s group, The Ind
  
  Read more

• Skee-Balling at Slippery Slope on the gig poster of the week

  16-08-2017 14:00 via Chicago Reader
  ARTIST: Ryan Duggan
  SHOW: Slippery Slope's three-year anniversary party on Sun 8/27
  MORE INFO: ryanduggan.com
  
  Read more

• Chicago must apply for a DOJ grant that includes new sanctuary city restrictions, and other news

  16-08-2017 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  Welcome to the Reader's morning briefing for Wednesday, August 16, 2017.…
  
  Read more

• Logan Lucky is an Ocean’s Eleven for the red states

  16-08-2017 07:30 via Chicago Reader
  Channing Tatum and Adam Driver star as West Virginia brothers in need of a big score in Steven Soderbergh’s latest.It's really easy to make a movie that five people understand," director Steven Soderbergh recently told the New York Times. "It's really hard to make something that a lot of people understand, and yet is not obvious, still has subtlety and ambiguity, and leaves you with something to do as a viewer."…
  
  Read more

• At Shane Campbell, another great Japanese art exhibit to see this summer

  16-08-2017 07:00 via Chicago Reader
  Painter Yui Yaegashi is the subject of a solo show, and she also curates a charming supplement.Between "Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg" at the Museum of Contemporary Art and "Then They Came for Me" at Alphawood Gallery, local residents can encounter a major contemporary Japanese artist and learn about some of the history of Japanese life in America. Yet over at Shane Campbell Gallery in the South Loop there's a show with a Japanese painter as its focus that has received less atte
  
  Read more

• Shimer College is gone, but the school lives on

  16-08-2017 05:30 via Chicago Reader
  The Great Books institution makes a move to North Central College.In 1988, Reader staff writer Harold Henderson wrote a memorable 7,300-word cover story on tiny, financially strapped Shimer College. It was a happy thing just to know that a place as unlikely as Shimer—which, eschewing textbooks and lectures, assigned only primary texts, taught through discussion, and admitted promising students without ACT scores or high school degrees—could exist.…
  
  Read more

• The stories of six famous women, as told through their diets

  16-08-2017 04:00 via Chicago Reader
  In What She Ate, culinary historian Laura Shapiro finds a novel way of writing a biography.Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's aphorism "Tell me what you eat and I shall tell you what you are" is one of the most overused cliches in food culture, appearing everywhere from the opening sequence of Iron Chef to T-shirts and coffee mugs. But to the culinary historian Laura Shapiro, learning what someone ate is just the beginning of unlocking his or her identity.…
  
  Read more

• Revocation of Grants to Help Fight Hate Under New Scrutiny After Charlottesville

  16-08-2017 00:30 via Illinois
  Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration pulled back a $400,000 grant to a Chicago-based group founded to combat right-wing white extremist groups.
  
  Read more

• Izzy Olive’s Half Gringa celebrate their intimate but hard-hitting debut album

  16-08-2017 00:10 via Chicago Reader
  Izzy Olive’s Half Gringa celebrate their debut album, Metro hosts a 25th-anniversary concert for American Ska-thic, and more. Gossip Wolf has been hip to Chicago singer-songwriter Izzy Olive for a few years now.…
  
  Read more

• UIC Graduate Debuts First Narrative Feature Film at Black Harvest Film Festival

  15-08-2017 23:18 via The Chicago Defender
  Filmmaker Nicole Franklin
  Nicole Franklin didn’t set out to be a film maker.
  Originally from St. Louis, when Franklin arrived in Chicago to attend UIC, she had two goals:  to be in Chicago, and to get a quality education in order to find an alternative profession to being a performer. Having grown up acting and dancing, she knew that she needed to supplement those creative talents in the unstable world of show business.
  While at UIC, Franklin majored in Communications and became invol
  
  Read more

• Jamila Woods includes Chicago schoolkids, joyful blackness, and a backyard barbecue in her video for ‘LSD’

  15-08-2017 23:06 via Chicago Reader
  The past year has been a defining one for local poet and singer Jamila Woods.…
  
  Read more

• Hard hat, lunch pail: The myth of toughness in Chicago sports

  15-08-2017 22:33 via Chicago Reader
  How the fabled athletic monsters of Chicago’s Midway were createdIt was not by accident that F. Scott Fitzgerald's big-shouldered Tom Buchanan was "Tom Buchanan of Chicago." "Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body," wrote Fitzgerald of The Great Gatsby's leading jerkface.…
  
  Read more

• Charlottesville: Where Do We Go From Here?

  15-08-2017 22:24 via The Chicago Defender
  And, here we are again. For those who have been saying for years that the terrible red record of racism in the southern United States is “in the past,” and “should no longer be brought up,” Friday night in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the violence that ensued on Saturday, was a modern-day vision of that past. 
  Source: The Washington Post / GettyFor those who have been saying that the world h
  
  Read more

• Proxi takes diners around the world in 32 dishes

  15-08-2017 22:07 via Chicago Reader
  Sepia chef Andrew Zimmerman’s long-awaited follow-up goes casual—and global.There are a lot of cities in the world where you could dedicate yourself to eating nothing but street food and eat like a king for the rest of your days: Mexico City, Bangkok, Istanbul, Singapore, Austin, Los Angeles, and on and on. Chicago isn't on that list.…
  
  Read more

• Peter Perrett of England’s the Only Ones emerges triumphantly from under the rubble of addiction

  15-08-2017 19:00 via Chicago Reader
  If American listeners know about British singer Peter Perrett, it's probably from the 1978 classic "Another Girl, Another Planet," a brilliant pop tune covered by the likes of the Replacements. In England Perrett's band the Only Ones, who originally cut the song, were would-be stars who made three albums before Perrett flamed out in the early 80s while fighting heroin addiction.…
  
  Read more

• Anthony Murphy: The New Face of Aladdin’s Genie

  15-08-2017 14:49 via The Chicago Defender
  With summer in full throttle, there is a great deal to do throughout the Chicago region. Over the last decade the number of traveling Broadway productions have increased dramatically as major theatre companies have recognized the third largest market as a thriving city of theatre goers.
  The Disney theatrical production of Aladdin has held its ground at the Cadillac Palace Theatre since April 11 of this year with an extended run until September 10, 2017.
  Since its original Broadway debut on March
  
  Read more

• Ritz played ornate, arena-ready 70s rock—but just a few years too late

  15-08-2017 14:00 via Chicago Reader
  Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who've been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Older strips are archived here.
  
  Read more

• How northwest-siders are countering their NIMBY neighbors’ backlash against affordable housing

  15-08-2017 13:30 via Chicago Reader
  Six months ago a community meeting about affordable housing in Jefferson Parkerupted in angry, racist protests. At issue was a seven-story, 100-unit building that would house low-income veterans, families, and people with disabilities going up on the corner of Northwest Highway and Milwaukee Avenue.…
  
  Read more

• Emanuel slams Trump over Charlottesville: ‘Members of the neo-Nazi and the KKK think they have a friend in the Oval Office,’ and other Chicago news

  15-08-2017 13:00 via Chicago Reader
  Welcome to the Reader's morning briefing for Tuesday, August 15, 2017.…
  
  Read more

• How four fatal truck-bike crash cases helped bring about lifesaving legislation

  15-08-2017 06:49 via Chicago Reader
  A new Chicago law requiring vehicle side guards and safety mirrors will help prevent future tragedies. A memorial all too familiar to cyclists sits at the southeast corner of Addison and Damen in Roscoe Village: a white-painted "ghost bike" covered with silk flowers and surrounded by plants and candles.…
  
  Read more

• Why aren’t women running for Illinois governor?

  15-08-2017 05:34 via Chicago Reader
  The governor’s race remains a sausage party. And as a result everyone who looks to the Democrats for leadership suffers.The other day I got a press release about Tenth Ward alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza's August 15 gubernatorial forum, which all the major Democratic candidates will attend. That's nice.…
  
  Read more

• Richard Spencer Invited To Speak At Texas A&M On 9/11

  14-08-2017 23:07 via The Chicago Defender
  Preston Wiginton, a White Lives Matter organizer, has invited White supremacist Richard Spencer to speak at Texas A&M on 9/11. If Spencer accepts the invitation, he will visit Texas A&M a second time, Dallas News reports. For his last campus visit, the university organized a unity rally that drew thousands. Spencer spoke to a group of about 400.
  Wiginton says that he was inspired by the Charlottesville rally to organize Spencer’s visit. He told the campus newspaper, The Battal
  
  Read more

• Why Is the Eclipse Longer in Some Places Than in Others?

  14-08-2017 22:54 via Illinois
  The moon will completely block the sun for two minutes and 41 seconds above one Illinois town — longer than anywhere else in the country.
  
  Read more

Follow @NewsIllinois_ on Twitter!