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Much of the new energy injected into Chicago’s bustling free-jazz and improvised-music scenes over the past year or two has come from a small group of players associated with Amalgam Music, a modest local label run by drummer Bill Harris. His efforts have introduced me to the music of pianist Matt Piet and saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher, among others, and members of the circle to which they belong have made themselves ubiquitous at local spots such as Elastic, Slate Arts, and Constellation....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • About Bernie’s Yearning, the new Sanders-inspired Ben and Jerry’s ice cream flavor that requires the eater to redistribute the chocolate chips? —Aimee Levitt

Mike Stobe/Getty Images Spoiler alert: Donald Trump will not be elected president Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. • That arrests in Baltimore have fallen dramatically, prompting a debate about whether police are being more fair or failing to protect the public since the rioting? —Mick Dumke • That jellyfish have the ability to rearrange their arms? —Mick Dumke

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. The tracks “Movers and Shakers” and “Russian Dragon” from 1982’s Seek Opposites, the only Eardance release

Composer and guitarist Daniel Wyche has long been a vital figure in Chicago’s experimental music scene, most notably at Elastic Arts, where he’s curated, produced, and organized concerts since 2013. His upcoming show at the Logan Square venue, where he’ll perform alongside frequent collaborator and fellow guitarist Mark Shippy, celebrates his 40th birthday and his completion of a PhD at the University of Chicago. Wyche speaks admiringly about Shippy, an exploratory musician best known for his work with Chicago bands U....

When W. Somerset Maugham’s British war drama For Services Rendered premiered in 1932, it offered unprepared audiences a stark exploration of the enduring consequences of the First World War and a critique of a political system that offered no protection for those who fought for its honor. In its Chicago premiere, presented by the Griffin Theatre Company and directed by ensemble member Robin Witt, this message feels contemporary and urgent....

It’s their weekly lunch date. They’re sitting in the restaurant where she and her daughter always go, where she has her usual order of Caesar salad with salmon bits and a rum and Diet Coke (OK, three), and where the waitress fusses over her like a favorite customer. “Poetry is in the details,” Peggy (Meg Thalken) tells her children, Ellen (Amy Montgomery) and Warren (Bruch Thomas Reed), who has joined them this week....

In this week’s cover story, I reported about “the Chicago Housing authority’s sleeping giant”—the 47,000 households participating in the Housing Choice Voucher program (also known as Section 8)—and attempts of those residents to organize a representative group. “You had patronage precinct workers who had jobs in City Hall or the like, whose business it was to go door to door [in the projects] to register people and turn out the vote,” says Dick Simpson, a former 44th Ward alderman and elections expert who teaches political science at UIC....

The investigation by the Reader and Lucy Parsons Labs into the Chicago Police Department’s use of civil forfeiture money began with a single, tantalizing detail in a single FOIA’d document. “Because this equipment will be used for [REDACTED] investigations in to [sic] [word missing] [I] recommend that it be paid for with both 1505 and 1505ML funds in equal amounts,” he wrote. Eventually we had a list of more than 600 checks we wanted to FOIA (around 550 for 2010 through 2015)....

ARTIST: Alexa Viscius SHOW: Dehd, Deeper, and Glyders at Empty Bottle on Fri 12/15 MORE INFO: alexaviscius.com

Sat 12/28, 8 PM, Promontory, 5311 S. Lake Park Ave. West, $25-$40, 21+

Just before Christmas 2019, “Katherine,” who asked her real name not be used for fear of retaliation from her alleged abuser, walked into an informal hearing held by the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) that would decide the fate of her and her five children. She had received a notice from the agency that it planned to terminate her Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV)—assistance that the 44-year-old had depended on for the past ten years to afford her East Garfield Park apartment....

Clayton Hauck Built to Spill at the 2009 Pitchork Music Festival Like Mission of Burma’s The Sound, the Speed, the Light, the Feelies’ Here Before, and a good many records by Neil Young (who might well have invented this particular subgenre), the recently released new Built to Spill album, Untethered Moon, is the sort of guitar-driven rock record that feels like catching up with an old friend. The solos are satisfying both technically and emotionally, despite not breaking any new ground....

Is life on Earth doomed? Beginning October 19, Steppenwolf for Young Adults is presenting Animal Farm as a radio play (a first for the program) as part of the 2020/21 season, adapted by Steve Pickering for radio from Althos Low‘s original stage adaptation and directed by Lili-Anne Brown. And on October 13, Northlight Theatre is taking part in a nationwide, simultaneous broadcast of Berkeley Rep’s radio play adaptation of Sinclair Lewis’s novel It Can’t Happen Here....

The sports world’s longest winning streak shows no sign of ending anytime soon. For the 30th straight year, the 1985 Chicago Bears have won Super Bowl XX, and our town has gone a little bit crazy. The Sun-Times wrapped its Tuesday paper in a “30th Anniversary Commemorative Cover Edition” fronted by a reprint of its front page on January 27, 1986, the one with the banner headline that screamed NUMBER 1!...

Courtesy of John Yingling Speak Chinese or Die Back in the summer of 2013, tireless former Chicago scene documentarian John Yingling—currently residing in Missoula, Montana—announced that he would be taking his operation global. He’d made a name for himself around town by running the website Gonzo Chicago, in which he filmed and photographed every underground show he came across for years before relocating to Montana, where he continued doing the same thing....

Yes, Underscore Theatre’s reworked 2016 “new folk musical” about the titular violent 1886 Chicago labor protest and its hopelessly corrupt aftermath features singing and dancing anarchists (who play musical instruments to boot). But both Nick Thornton’s no-frills choreography and Robert Ollis’s straight-ahead musical direction are fittingly—if unengagingly—workmanlike. The production’s general lack of razzle-dazzle may suit the subject matter, but it makes for a rather featureless two-plus hours. Part of the problem stems from the insular material....

Anna Gelman directs the world premiere of I Am Going to Die Alone and I Am Not Afraid, an ensemble-devised play about the Holocaust that feels hauntingly contemporary. A mostly bare stage decorated with lines full of white and beige clothing hanging near the rafters—left as if forgotten by a whole neighborhood suddenly vanished—hosts a versatile group of six actors, who tell, sing, and dance tales of resistance, bravery, and survival....

Alderman Scott Waguespack (32nd) was grilling a witness about the assessed value of property sold by the city to a developer when the witness interrupted. Reifman, whose last day on the job is May 20, was patiently answering Waguespack’s questions about the Cortland/Chicago River tax increment financing (TIF) district at an April 8 meeting of the City Council’s finance committee. Months before the City Council approved both complexes, the planning department’s Reifman kept showing up in the press and at public meetings “plansplaining” the need for the combined 28 million square feet of development and $2....