On sophomore album Yes, Virginia . . . , Boston’s Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione—aka The Dresden Dolls—have sharpened their piano and drum-based Weimar-cabaret-meets-goth-rock novelty act into a brilliantly realized vision. Palmer’s arch singing comes tempered with plenty of mordant humor, and the duo’s instrumental intensity imbues the arty songs with dark beauty and walloping … Read more
A few months ago, Simon Goldberg and Dan Ettinger hopped on their bicycles in Oregon and started pedaling in the direction of Charleston, South Carolina. Along the way, they videotaped average people spinning their best yarns: funny jokes, dumb jokes, sex jokes, all kinds of jokes. They camped in strangers’ yards, approached anyone who looked even mildly entertaining, and filmed it all. It was an unreal experience: one of my favorite stories, which they told last night as guests of the theatre variety show The Callback, is how they got homesick in Montana over Rosh Hashanah and spent the evening cold calling names they thought “sounded Jewish.” They didn’t have much luck, but met a nice Catholic couple who put them up for the night…
Victoria Lautman chats with Michael Lowenthal.
Features Top Doctors by Geoffrey Johnson, with Joanna Topor MacKenzie and Dennis Rodkin In cooperation with Castle Connolly Medical Ltd., Chicago presents a list of 355 of the area’s best physicians in 56 different medical specialties. In addition, seven doctors weigh in on a wide variety of health issues, and a panel of experts explain … Read more
Sixteen-year-old actor and aspiring singer Maestro Harrell is one local to watch in 2008.
The ballad of Brazilian guitar virtuosos Sérgio and Odair Assad
It’s a gray day around here, so I’m blogging something perky: style.
First off, au revoir to Steven, the Museum of Science and Industry textile designer who was auf’d on Project Runway last night. What do you think? Was it his time to go? I’ll refrain from comment, since I haven’t been keeping up with the show. But there he was, sipping a drink a few weeks ago at a gay sports bar in Uptown. A bunch of his friends had gathered to watch the premiere; poor Steven cried out halfway through the evening that…
Bright spots on the month’s cultural radar
Several months ago, a pianist named Lisa Kaplan invited me to a house party at a gorgeous mini manse in Gold Coast. Lisa was going to be performing with a few members of her classical sextet, Eighth Blackbird; they were touring a lot at the time, and this was one of the few opportunities I had to check them out.
I dragged my friend Maria with the promise of wine and pretty music, but I really didn’t know what we were getting into. A contemporary classical sextet from Chicago? Rocking a house party on the Gold Coast? It was, admittedly, a little awkward…
What happens when politicos plan a rock concert?
It gets freaky, in a the-last-time-whoever- planned-this-last-turned-on-the-radio-in- the-1990s sort of way.
Of course, the music was not the point of the Chicago Rocks for Change concert this weekend at the Riviera. The point was raising money for Barack Obama, who came out at the end of the Wilco set, gave frontman Jeff Tweedy a big bear hug, and got the crowd hollering with a rousing speech…
