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Popular books about punk history tend to focus on the best-known bands from scenes in metropolitan centers, including London, New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. But punk also proliferated thanks to outcasts living in towns their big-city peers couldn’t find on a map—they too might hear something about themselves reflected in a strange, confrontational sound. The companion compilation to Punks in Peoria, released by Chicago archival label Alona’s Dream Across the river and ten miles south of Peoria, the hometown of Bill Love and Jay Goldberg was an unlikely hotbed of musical activity....

Few contemporary musicians can simultaneously disturb me and get me dancing quite like Jack Brockman. The Chicagoan fronts industrial trio Civic Center, whose recent vinyl debut for American Dreams (June’s The Ground Below) tamps down its members’ more aggressively deranged inclinations but still manages to sound pretty surreal. He also makes solo EBM tracks as Understudy, and much of his catalog sounds like he recorded it at the bottom of a deep stone well that hasn’t seen sunlight in centuries....

Waltzer founder Sophie Sputnik spent half the 2010s fronting Fort Lauderdale blues-punk duo Killmama from behind a drum kit—she anchored the band’s sparse arrangements in time while lighting them up with her fire-breathing vocals. After Sputnik moved to Chicago a few years ago, she got down to work on Waltzer, a solo project that fuses her grungy garage attitude with her love of neosoul. Late last month, she emerged with Waltzer’s debut album, Time Traveler (Side Hustle), which bundles together 50s doo-wop melodies, weathered blues riffs, and surging rock climaxes in red-hot, rambunctious songs that feel up-to-the-minute but unmoored in time—they’re a great complement to the ghostly neo-pop that former Chicagoan Meghan Remy makes as U....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, March 22, 2016. CPD chief finalist criticized Rahm Emanuel in CNN article Cedric Alexander, one of three finalists to become Chicago Police Department superintendent, criticized Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s and Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez’s controversial decision to fight the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video in an article written for CNN in February. Alexander echoed the sentiments of many other Emanuel and Alvarez critics: “When the news is bad, our leaders have a duty to deliver it....

Fibromyalgia is one of the most prevalent chronic pain conditions in the world. According to the CDC, fibromyalgia affects four million adults in the United States, about two percent of the population. Living with fibromyalgia can be frustrating and have an effect on your overall quality of life. The most common symptoms we see in the patients we treat include prolonged chronic pain, extreme fatigue, difficulty sleeping, and problems with cognition and memory (often referred to as “fibro fog”)....

I’m a conservative,” Frank Zappa told Washington Times columnist John Lofton when they debated each other on the CNN program Crossfire in 1986. “You might not like that, but I am.” Lofton didn’t like it, and some of Zappa’s fans may not have either. But Zappa would surely have told them—as he told Lofton on that same broadcast—to kiss his ass. Eat That Question—Frank Zappa in His Own Words includes some performance clips, but German filmmaker Thorsten Schütte concentrates on a cornucopia of Zappa interview footage he’s collected over the years, and his documentary paints a vivid and often surprising portrait of the iconoclastic rocker and classical composer....

On November 25, less than 24 hours after the Chicago Police Department belatedly released a dashcam recording of officer Jason Van Dyke shooting and killing Laquan McDonald, local rapper Ty Money dropped “United Center,” whose video consists exclusively of edited footage from that recording. The song’s instrumental track accompanies its solemn piano melody with sizzling guitars and muffled, ominous bass that booms like an underground explosives test, and in his lyrics Money mulls over the systemic injustices that afflict Chicago’s black community and make the city’s racial divide feel like the Grand Canyon....

Almost as if preordained, the first installment of my property tax bill arrived a few days before Mayor Lightfoot announced her TIF reform plan. For the record, my annual tax bill is approaching $13,000. If the upward trend continues, I’ll be priced out of my house just like people in Woodlawn, Humboldt Park, Wicker Park, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, etc. There’s transparency—they’re part of a shadow budget, shrouded in secrecy. The city’s supposed to apply a rigorous “but for” test to any application, as in, but for this TIF handout the project wouldn’t happen....

Chicago rapper Chris Crack recently dropped a collaborative full-length with Vic Spencer, Who the Fuck Is Chris Spencer?, but that’s hardly all he’s been working on. Earlier this week Crack released the video for “Armani Silverware,” one of many one-off cuts that have crowded his Soundcloud account over the past year. The “Armani Silverware” clip has the same cartoonish flair Crack displayed in the two-minute video for “Duct Tape on the Machete,” from last year’s Public Domain 4 mixtape....

For a couple years now I’ve been trying to propagate “divorce rock” as a term for a very specific strain of soft, folky 70s pop that would probably fit under the larger banner of “adult contemporary” without qualifying as “yacht rock” (which is overused anyway). Divorce rock songs are not about the average puppy-love breakup; these world-weary tunes often ruminate about how time is a cruel mistress, how people change and grow apart, or how you can truly gave your all to a relationship and still see it fail....

ARTIST: James FlamesSHOW: The Head and the Heart and Phox at Aragon Ballroom on Sat 12/13MORE INFO: jamesflames.com

UPDATE Friday, March 13: this event has been canceled. Refunds available at point of purchase. The idea of a day of absence remains vibrant. Women in Mexico are currently organizing one to highlight the government’s indifference to violence against women, and it was an annual event for many years at Evergreen State College in Washington, where students of color stayed off campus to discuss issues of equity and inclusion. The tradition came to an end in 2017 when it finally succeeded in its purpose of making white people uncomfortable: the nonwhite organizers announced that to observe the day that year, whites would be excluded from campus....

Chicago has always been a good town when it comes to producing homegrown metal bands—the south side rocked heavy in the 80s with the likes of Trouble, Cianide, and Macabre—but it didn’t develop the international reputation it deserved until the 90s, when north-side postrock collaborators drew hipster attention. From there a new generation of freaks exploded forth. When Yakuza formed at the end of the decade, their grindcore base and free-jazz eruptions sounded like no one else, to the extent that some people refuse to consider them metal at all....

What do you think of when you hear the word skateboarding? He details the costs skateboarding has exacted on his marriage and his body, but also manages to tie in literature and philosophy. He cites David Foster Wallace on tennis and the hard-to-quantify-or-define concept of fun. For that is one of Beachy’s goals, to articulate and give gravity to a thing that few take seriously. His twin passions of writing and skateboarding sometimes meld, other times chafe on one another throughout....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Wednesday, December 14, 2016. Condo buildings are increasingly banning Airbnb rentals More than 900 Chicago condo buildings don’t allow residents to rent out their homes on home-sharing websites like Airbnb, according to Crain’s Chicago Business. When the city’s new home-sharing regulations go into effect December 17, the number of local listings on sites like Airbnb could dramatically decrease. There were 8,221 Chicago rentals available on Airbnb in October, which is a 56 percent increase over October 2015....

Chicago emo acts helped raise the national profile of the fourth-wave scene in the early 2010s, but most of them had gone on hiatus or broken up by the time Retirement Party dropped their debut EP, 2017’s Strictly Speaking. Retirement Party not only filled a void in the city but also manifested new energy with subtly retooled combinations of familiar emo, pop-punk, and indie-rock tropes—on their 2018 full-length debut, Somewhat Literate, their workmanlike rhythm section heats up the languid guitars till they smolder....

As I get older, I warm up more and more to laid-back Americana, delving far beyond the tunes of Gram Parsons, Gene Clark, and Townes Van Zandt that I revered as a wee lad. I’ve sought out vintage practitioners of acoustic twang such as Country Funk, Uncle Jim’s Music, and Hearts & Flowers, who are just as good but a bit more obscure—though of course, each band imploded after an album or two....

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

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. Wishful Thinkin Clothing co-owner Brooke Moss is the picture of effortless late-summer style: cutoff shorts, a roomy plaid shirt, and sporty sneakers. Her high-gloss lipstick, shiny necklaces, and sleek golden-blond pixie cut add just the right amount of glam to the laid-back look. See more street style in the Chicago Looks blog....

Comedians Billy Eichner and Julie Klausner make being a terrible person appear a lot less terrible. In their Hulu comedy Difficult People, they’re able to convince others that their questionable moral decisions are the only course of action. Obviously, pretending that you just came out is the best way to get the attention of the hottest guy in the gay bar. And when given the choice between coffee and day wine, day wine is the only way to go....