Larry Busacca/Getty Images Joni Mitchell suffers from Morgellons—or does she? Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • About Morgellons, the most widespread disease that doesn’t exist? —Aimee Levitt • That Pluto still isn’t a planet? —Drew Hunt
John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2004 play is timely now, in the wake of last month’s long-overdue Vatican summit to address what the current pope called the “scourge of sexual abuse perpetrated by men of the church to the detriment of minors.” Set at a Bronx church school in 1964, the story dramatizes a test of wills between a young priest, Father Flynn, and a starchy older nun, Sister Aloysius, who suspects Flynn of having “interfered with” a 12-year-old male pupil....
In the tradition of heavy-music genre splicers such as Mr. Bungle, Secret Chiefs 3, and Estradasphere, French act Igorrr hybridizes industrial death metal, breakcore, chiptune, and other genres using a dizzying array of seemingly unrelated styles and instruments. Songwriter, DJ, and guitarist Gautier Serre weaves Baroque music, Balkan folk, Eastern motifs, operatic vocals, and death growls into a fabric made from sludgy midtempo riffs, breakneck drum fills, and all manner of digital manipulation....
‘Tis the season to temporarily turn away from the horror show in Washington, D.C. With Halloween just around the corner, we’ve shaken the cobwebs off of a few seasonally appropriate favorites from the Reader archives for your reading pleasure. Reader social media editor Ryan Smith was spooked by the sights and sounds of southern Illinois’s Shawnee National Forest and the surrounding area during a road trip earlier this year. The piece includes a creepy cabin, a haunted hotel, a dank cave with a murderous history—as well as dying rural towns....
I’m not going out on a limb saying that most CTA subway stations are nothing to write home about. They’re relatively cramped tunnels whose cream-colored walls are often streaked with grime and worn, brown platforms are caked with dirt. Corners reek of garbage or worse. Dirt and grime is all over the place at the Washington station, which with 3.8 million rides in 2016 was the busiest stop on the line other than O’Hare Airport....
Luke Sangerman, who performs and records as Luke Titus, is 24 years old but has the skill set and intuition of a seasoned veteran. He’s had a long music career for someone his age: He joined the Blue Man Group as a stage-band drummer at age 15, becoming the youngest American ever hired by the international performance-art ensemble. And for a decade now he’s been a key player in the young Chicago scene where pop, hip-hop, and rock overlap....
Chicagoan Manasseh Champion first picked up the trumpet at age seven. Now 22, he’s teaching young people how to play brass instruments at the West Point School of Music in South Shore. Over the past few years, Champion has focused his extracurricular energy on hip-hop, releasing a slew of stylistically varied singles under the name Doso. Last year’s [Extended] (A Rugged Interest) veers between trap-inflected tracks that highlight Champion’s agility at rattling off aggressive bars and melodic pop tunes that show off his sultry singing....
In October one of Gossip Wolf’s favorite local rappers, the Boy Illinois, dropped Windy, a triumphant EP featuring a great slate of Chicago guest MCs, among them YP, Rico Recklezz, and Pivot Gang members Saba and Frsh Waters. Windy is the Boy Illinois’s first release since signing a distribution deal with Priority Records through his label, Born Leaders, in May 2017. Those of you keen to see these feel-good tracks performed live are in luck: the fine folks at music site Illanoize are throwing the Boy Illinois’s first big show of the year on Tuesday, February 6....
Shopping at local businesses is a no-brainer. According to a study conducted by Dan Houston and Matt Cunningham of Civic Economics, “locally owned businesses generate 70 percent more local economic impact per square foot than chain stores.” The problem is that buying locally produced goods can be more expensive, but Dearborn Denim & Apparel founder Rob McMillan has a solution: cutting out the middleman and shipping to the consumer straight from his factory, located in an old industrial laundry in Garfield Park....
Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, February 10, 2016. Which Illinois counties are losing population? Illinois residents have been fleeing the state—we’re even in danger of losing a congressional seat because of declining population. Winnebago County (best known for Rockford) has lost the most people. Counties with state universities (Champaign, McLean, and Sangamon) are an exception to the trend, with growing populations. [Chicago magazine]
Almost three decades ago, Darrell “Artistic” Roberts decided he needed to document the history of Chicago hip-hop. He’d started breakdancing in 1982, and soon took up hip-hop’s other foundational elements: MCing, DJing, and graffiti writing. His love of graffiti blossomed in the mid- to late 80s, and at a citywide writers’ meeting in 1987, he met his future collaborator in this ambitious project, a graffiti artist named Fere (pronounced “fear”). By 1992, they’d both been involved in the local scene for about a decade, which made them veterans in a still-emerging movement....
Seeking: men Occupation: director of alumni engagement for a law school What do you do when you’re not working? Her friend says: “She was included in a story on Buzzfeed entitled “11 Inspiring Stories of People Who Left Normal Life and Embarked on an Adventure.” ” Traveling, running, writing, watching sports, checking out hole-in-the-wall ethnic restaurants, trying to learn French. Smoker? No. Pets? Two cats. Dietary restrictions? I have celiac disease, so I can’t eat anything with gluten....
Earlier this year, Gossip Wolf broke the news that after Disappears went on hiatus last fall, three members had formed dark art-rock juggernaut Facs. Ever since, this wolf has been catching their shows and copping the free demos they’ve intermittently posted to Bandcamp, which sound like a spacious, hypnotic mix of Lungfish and Flowers of Romance-era PiL. It’s definitely a combo meal that any weird postpunk can dig—so of course Bill and Lisa Roe of Trouble in Mind Records have already signed Facs....
The beauty of musical collaboration is that you can never totally anticipate what will happen, even when the people coming together have established aesthetics of their own. Some groups devise a concept and never stray from it, while others incorporate unexpected twists and turns—and Boston postmetal project Wear Your Wounds (started by Converge front man Jacob Bannon) has spawned a whole new band. As the story goes, Bannon and Wear Your Wounds guitarists Sean Martin (formerly of Hatebreed) and Mike McKenzie (the Red Chord) would start rehearsals with gnarly death-metal riffs that didn’t fit the group’s melodic, mournful template....
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Some prominent members of the GOP have yet to figure this place out. Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That the Title IX violation charges against Laura Kipnis have been dropped? —Aimee Levitt • That Illinois may be bringing happy hour back? —Brianna Wellen
Drew Angerer/Getty Images Mitch McConnell, lover of hemp growers everywhere Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • How Mitch McConnell became a leading advocate for hemp growers? —Mick Dumke • That Harpo Studios is shutting down in December? —Drew Hunt
The final installment in the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy proves that the series’ BDSM-flavored sex scenes have always been the icing on the cake, a fluffy confection of wish fulfillment. In Fifty Shades Freed the wealth and lifestyle porn are more aggressive than the sex—which, by this point, newlyweds Ana Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) mostly giggle through, along with the viewer. Far more titillating are the loving camera sweeps over palatial residences, designer threads, and souped-up cars; two of the sex scenes double as product placements (for Audi and Ben & Jerry’s)....
Welcome to the Reader‘s news briefing for Wednesday, February 14, 2018. Happy Valentine’s Day! John Hancock Center loses its name, will now be known as 875 N. Michigan John Hancock Financial is removing its name from the John Hancock Center, nearly five decades after the insurance company built the 100-story skyscraper, according to the Tribune. Until the building secures a new naming rights deal, the building will just be known as 875 N....
It’s been almost eight years since we’ve heard new music from local weirdos Paper Mice, but their brand-new 1-800-MONDAYS (Three One G) was worth the wait—it’s easily their best record yet. This time around, the trio blur the line between pop and herky-jerky math rock more thoroughly than ever before, stepping up the polyrhythms and bizarre time signatures that provide the foundation for their catchiest and most sophisticated melody making to date....
QYou often mention asexual people. I believe I may be one. I’m a 51-year-old woman. I’ve been separated from my opposite-sex partner for nearly nine years. I’ve been approached by a variety of men, each one interested in becoming “more than friends.” I haunt Craigslist’s “platonic m4w” section, but each time I reach out to someone, he turns out to want a FWB or NSA relationship. It’s frustrating! That part of my life—the sex part—is really and truly over!...
