Arts & Events: July 2009 Archives

Mannequin Men write the soundtrack for a generation of broken teeth. A generation marked by twelve dudes squatting in a house, making bathtubs and closets into bedrooms, sitting on the front stoop sucking on 40s, dying their pets and giving them mohawks, and dancing to reggae and old soul until the sun rises over their breakfast plates at Denny's.

If Jacques Brel’s name rings a bell, chances are good that you’re thinking of the musical revue Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris - which will NOT be performed at Theater On The Lake this weekend. What WILL be performed is a remount of Theo Ubique Theatre Company’s critically-acclaimed production of Jacques Brel’s Lonesome Losers of the Night.

We'll have our picks for the upcoming Pitchfork Music Fest next week, but WBEZ and their Council of Hipsters has already started breaking down the schedule.

The National Endowment for the Arts announced the 631 recipients of $29,775,000 in direct grants as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Twenty-four Illinois organizations will receive a total of $1,025,000, with all but $100,000 being given to twenty-one Chicago- and Evanston-based groups.

The Fiery Furnaces may now hail from Brooklyn but they were born in Oak Park, sprouting from the fertile crowns of brother and sister team Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger. They've made their name creating markedly disjointed music, only recently cutting the artifice with steadier and more traditional drumming alongside the occasional glam chord. Their last album, Widow City, found the band finally channeling their weirdness through undeniable pop structures pocked with indelible melodies. To be honest, it was the first Fiery Furnaces album we honestly liked from start to finish.

Okay, probably not. But still - animatronic versions of America's presidents have always freaked us out in a way that Disney's Haunted Mansion could never manage to accomplish. DisneyWorld recently updated their Hall of Presidents and created an Obamabot to fill that 44th chair on the stage, and took us behind the scenes via YouTube to show us exactly what goes on behind that magical curtain.

The Old Town School of Folk Music presents its twelfth annual installment of the Chicago Folk and Roots Festival this weekend in Lincoln Square. The Festival, spread across Welles Park, brings a steady stream of activities to a usually friendly, laid-back crowd: performances by Old Town staff, open jam sessions by the gazebo, dance lessons with live music, and a tent for kids, although we should point out that that's an area with entertainment for children, not a place to store them.

We raved about The Heavy last time they landed in Chicago, and our prediction was spot-on. Here's what we said.

              

The Taste has come and gone (and, once more, left a wake of controversy over violence at the event) but we're going to bid adieu to this year's fest with a gallery of some of the better, happier moments caught on camera.

One of our very favorite pop culturists, for more than a decade Nathan Rabin has been head writer for The Onion A.V. Club. He's equally at home writing about Epic Movie or western swing, and you don't want to be on the receiving end of his wicked sarcasm when it's time to mete out a takedown.

While it reveals nothing new about the man behind the music, the New York Times has a good profile of Jeff Tweedy in today's edition.

It's Fourth of July weekend but maybe you're not into the patriotic stuff. Sure, you love stuff exploding so the fireworks are cool, but maybe you don't dig all the John Philip Sousa that goes along with it. Or kids in big Uncle Sam hats waving tiny American flags. The sound of Lee Greenwood makes you sick. That's cool. We're not here to judge you. What we're here to do is to point you to the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare for this year's G-Fest.

Rachael Yamagata and Bumpus are playing a show next week at Logan Square Auditorium to raise money for Ryszard Basiura, the father of a friend close to both acts who has been incredibly ill and faces mounting hospital bills. Darren Spitzer of The Changes (ex- of The Changes? Are they even still "officially" together any more?) will be donating his DJ skills between and after the bands as well.

The Horse's Ha, centered around The Zincs Jim Elkington and Freakwater/Eleventh Dream Day's Janet Beveridge Bean, is one of those quiet affairs steeped in an intimate countrified folksiness. That's how we would describe it to an outsider at least. To everyone else familiar with either's work we'd say it sounds exactly like what one would expect were The Zincs' and Freakwater's songs to get together and make babies. Exactly like that. Their debut Of The Cathmawr Yards is filled with all kinds of fragile little gems just begging for your attention.

In which we take a quick look at a few recent musical releases.

Once upon a time there was an outlaw named John Dillinger. While the country was in the depths of the Great Depression, he robbed a lot of banks. In fact he robbed so many that the FBI made him Public Enemy No. 1. One by one all his cronies were killed, and his moll Billie Frechette was captured and put in jail. On a hot summer evening Dillinger made the mistake of going to the air-conditioned Biograph Theater to see Manhattan Melodrama, starring Clark Gable and Myrna Loy. As he left the show he was gunned down in an alley and died.

The Grant Park Orchestra has performed for the City's Independence Eve celebration every year since the Petrillo Music Shell opened in 1978, a tradition that is changing this Friday when the 85th Army Band takes over the pre-fireworks concert. The GPO will instead perform a daytime concert on July 4 in the Pritzker Pavilion, an event the Grant Park Music Festival and Millennium Park are characterizing as a new tradition, indicating that this change is a permanent one.

Charles Hamilton's cancellation at the upcoming Pitchfork Festival has fans disgruntled and calling foul on the now almost nonexistent hip-hop offerings. Even Lollapalooza, a festival that just last year toted the likes of Lupe and Kanye feels sparse on the hip-hop booking this summer. Last weekend, for the fourth consecutive year, Rock The Bells took over First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre in Tinley Park. For those willing to make the trek, a day full of both up-and-coming talent and The Greats delivered.

From tumbling clowns to flying middle-aged men, the two shows playing at the Steppenwolf couldn’t be more different. One’s a comedic, musical improvisational concoction; the other is a deftly didactic story. Here’s our reviews of both shows.

Every man, woman and child in the Chicago-area will probably either go see Public Enemies (and watch for our review tomorrow) or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen at the movies this weekend, but there are a ton of cinematic alternatives available. Because, you know, there's more to America than murderous gangsters and robots. Such as: