FEBRUARY 2021 Newcity 1
JANUARY 7 – AUGUST 15, 2021 7 DE ENERO – 15 DE AGOSTO, 2021 ONSITE & VIRTUAL EXHIBITION EXPOSICIÓN FÍSICA Y VIRTUAL JOSÉ LERMA Pendant Portrait of Antonio de Ulloa y de la Torre-Guiral (1670), 2020 Acrylic, construction grade silicone, burlap, on standard door Courtesy of the artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago
MARCH 2021 CONTENTS ARTS & CULTURE MARCH 2021 Newcity THE GOOD FIGHT Art HAKI R. MADHUBUTI Artist collectives grapple WAS with environmental crises 2............................ 6 “TAUGHT BY WOMEN” Design 6 Kollektif brings together independent designers from across the world................ 30 CHICAGO SOCIAL 3 2Mood: Stools................................................... SAM CUSHIN Dining & Drinking AND HIS Joe Flamm brings Croatian cuisine INFLUENCER DREAMS back with Rose Mary ................................... 3 4 10 Film THE TOWER IS “The Last Shift”’s life 3 6after Sundance ............................................... CRUMBLING Lit WHY THE DECLINE AND FALL OF Rebecca Morgan Frank and her “Oh You Robot Saints!” 3.................. 9 THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE M AT T E R S Music MEDIA DIETS Sunshine Boys celebrate WHAT’S ON YOUR PLATE? a new album—one year on........................... 41 15 Stage Devising a show about Chicago life in lockdown.............................. 4 3 Reviews Yes, the culture is carrying on… ................. 4 5 3
I'VE BEEN THINKIN A LOT AB OUT NEWCIT Y IN THE D I ITAL R E ALM L ATE LY. Specifically, I've begun writing our main email newsletter and, as part of that, launched a corresponding “Today in the Culture” feature that aggregates the arts news relevant to Chicago. We've increased its fre- quency from once a week to three times a week, on our way to a daily weekday feature expected in March, maybe by the time you read this. (Sign up at Newcity.com if you're interested.) In addition, our film ed- itor Ray Pride has launched a weekly online col- umn, “Talking Screens,\" that takes an informed look at all the ways we're now engaging with cin- ematic storytelling, whether film, television or EDITOR'S streaming, and suggests the very best things to watch. You can read it at NewcityFilm.com. LETTER The interplay between print and digital publish- ing is one of the satisfying travails of this profes- sion. Print publishing allows us to constantly strive to amaze you with variations of proven narrative forms and visual traditions in a realm with a 358-year history and hundreds of exem- plars to humble and inspire us. Digital publishing, an invention less than a lifetime old, demands constant invention and experimentation. The March issue of Newcity is usually our Design 50 issue, but with the pandemic putting so much cultural activity on hold, we've depart- ed from our normal Leaders of Chicago Culture schedule and developed new features with a plan to bring it all back again next year. Meanwhile, we continue to contemplate our world in the context of our thirty-fifth anniversary with my story on the evolution of local media over that time, but also in our interview with Haki R. Madhubuti, a Chicago cultural trea- sure who Newcity first featured on our cover back in the ear- ly nineties. Newcity MARCH 2021 I hope you'll read this issue and if you're not yet a print sub- scriber, find the inspiration to do so. (Visit NewcityShop.com.) As my article on Chicago media might suggest, our future depends on it. And with your commitment to us, we'll commit to working every day to make this the finest magazine that Chicago has ever read. Maybe we'll even amaze you. — BRIAN HIEGGELKE 4
CONTRIBUTORS ON THE COVER DONALD G. EVANS Cover Design and Illustration Dan Streeting (Writer, “The Good Fight”) is the founding executive director of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. He is the author of a novel and short story collection, and editor of an Vol. 36, No. 1412 anthology. His personal blog often explores Chicago literature, including a recent post about the Chicago writers of the WPA. He will be leading a seminar on the PUBLISHERS subject at the Newberry Library beginning Tuesday, February . Brian & Jan Hieggelke Associate Publisher Mike Hartnett BRIAN J. HIEGGELKE EDITORIAL Editor Brian Hieggelke (Writer, “The Tower is Crumbling”) is Newcity’s co-founder. Managing Editor Jan Hieggelke Art Editor Kerry Cardoza RICHARD PALLARDY Design Editor Vasia Rigou Dining and Drinking Editor (Writer, “Chicago Social”) is a freelance writer based in Chicago. He writes about David Hammond animals, plants and humans for a variety of publications including Earth Island Film Editor Ray Pride Journal, The Biologist, Hidden Compass, Vice and ODDA Magazine. Before striking Lit Editor Tara Betts out on his own, he worked for Encyclopedia Britannica as a research editor. Music Editor Robert Rodi Stage Editor Sharon Hoyer DAN STREETING ART & DESIGN Art Director Dan Streeting (Art Director, Newcity, cover) is the founder of Streeting Design, a graphic design Senior Designers and illustration studio that focuses on publications and print projects. In previous Fletcher Martin, Billy Werch careers, Dan taught experimental typography, ran a storefront gallery, and played in Designer Stephanie Plenner a synth band in southern Michigan. He holds an MFA in D Design from Cranbrook MARKETING Academy of Art, and he lives in Berwyn with his wife Jessica and son Liam. Marketing Manager Todd Hieggelke OPERATIONS newcity JUNE 2019 General Manager Jan Hieggelke Distribution Nick Bachmann, 33 VISIONS FOR THE NEXT CITY WHO REALLY BOOKS IN CHICAGO Adam Desantis, Preston Klik + EVE EWING Retail price $10 per issue. In certain locations, feb cover+FOB.indd 1 1/20/19 4:50 PM one copy is available on a complimentary basis. Subscriptions and additional copies of current DTHIBSEECNCOEIVTATYETHRHE and back issues available at Newcityshop.com. SURFACE Copyright 2021, New City Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. NEWCITY WHAT’S GOING ON ARTISTS, POETS AND WRITERS RESPOND TO MAY 2020 Newcity assumes no responsibility to return RACIAL INJUSTICE AND POLICE BRUTALITY unsolicited editorial or graphic material. All JULY 2020 MARCH 2021 Newcity rights in letters and unsolicited editorial or graphic material will be treated as uncondition- WHAT’S ally assigned for publication and copyright GOING purposes and subject to comment editorially. ON Nothing may be reprinted in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher. December 2018 Newcity is published by Newcity Communications, Inc. 47 West Polk, Suite 100-223, Chicago, IL 60605 Visit NewcityNetwork.com for advertising and editorial information. Subscribe at Newcityshop.com TORONZO CANNON Subscribe at Newcity.com/subscribe 5
GoTheod Fight Newcity MARCH 2021 AN INTERVIEW SOME CALL HIM agreed to help every time—EVERY—time WITH PROFESSOR, I’ve asked: as a presenter at our first induction ceremony, a panelist at the As- HAKI R. MADHUBUTI as befits a man who held distinguished sociated Writers Program conference academic posts at Columbia College of in Chicago, a star attraction at a recep- ON Chicago, Cornell University, University tion following our Gwendolyn Brooks’ “TAUGHT BY WOMEN” of Illinois at Chicago, Howard University, Bronzeville literary tour, a reader at an Morgan State University and the Univer- Armistice Day event, a presenter at the by Donald G. Evans sity of Iowa. Madhubuti served longest Fuller Award celebrating Angela Jackson at Chicago State University, where he and on and on. At seventy-nine years old, Haki R. founded the Gwendolyn Brooks Center Madhubuti appears almost spry. for Black Literature and Creative Writing; Given how much in demand Haki con- He’s still lean—no doubt a credit founded the Gwendolyn Brooks Writers’ tinues to be, I doubt there are any free to his near-sacred curation of the Conference; cofounded the Internation- spaces on his calendar. Yet, he continues types of food and drink he puts in al Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of to publish at a rapid rate. His latest book, his body, as well as a vigorous walk- African Descent; and founded and di- “Taught By Women: Poems as Resistance ing routine. His face, while showing rected the first MFA program at a Black Language, New and Selected,” is his the most obvious signs of age, gives university. He stepped down from his last thirty-seventh, which doesn’t include the no indication of fatigue or surrender. position, as DePaul University’s Ida hundred-plus anthologies and journals He still looks hip, with his cultivated B. Wells-Barnett Professor more than in which his poetry and essays have ap- facial hair and stylish cap. He’s ani- five years ago, a retirement that includes peared over the last two decades alone. mated. Passionate. Ready, you get almost no time off from his responsibili- His book, “Black Men: Obsolete, Single, the sense, to fight. He used to be ties as a writer, publisher of Third World Dangerous? The African American Fam- Don L. Lee, of course, but that’s a Press (founded 1967), cofounder of the ily in Transition,” has more than one mil- half-century ago, when his ascent as Institute of Positive Education and its lion copies in print. a poet and activist and educator was New Concept School (1969), and co- noticed and chronicled by the likes founder of Betty Shabazz International “Taught By Women” pays homage to of Ebony magazine. Charter Schools and Barbara A. Size- an array of women who have influenced more Academy. him and contributed to his five-decade career of publishing Black writers and I’ve heard him called Baba Haki, an contributing to a strong Black literary honorific that acknowledges his status tradition. We met over Zoom to discuss as an elder and a wise man, bowing to this latest title. The interview has been his role in shaping his community. I’ve edited for clarity. always known him as Haki. We met more than a decade ago, when I asked him to Your career started with the serve on the Chicago Literary Hall of 1966 publication of the verse Fame’s inaugural selection committee. collection, “Think Black.” The He agreed. Right away, he took it upon earliest of the poems in “Taught himself to advise, using phrases like by Women” were written a quarter “You’re gonna have to,” “The money has century after your career launched to come from somewhere,” “One thing and the more recent a full four you must do,” and “That’s absolutely decades later. Does this collection necessary.” I needed and welcomed his embody a perspective different advice, and was grateful that his support than that of your younger self? extended beyond agreeing to the one big favor I had asked of him. Haki naturally, I learned from the streets. I always say, without hesitation, performed the role of “I grew up around pimps and hos slam- stakeholder. In the years since, Haki has ming Cadillac doors.” My life has always been work, from the West Side of Chica- 6
Haki R. Madhubuti Photo: Joe Mazza, Brave Lux
Newcity MARCH 2021 go as a pre-teen and teenager looking for display the names of almost 200 you rank its importance above nearly metal in the alleys—just going through al- women, many whom appear in the all else. What do these poems, as a leys with a cart—to shining shoes, to setting coming poems and dedications. whole, mean to tell us about the role pins in bowling alleys when they did that, to There are powerful poems about your art plays in forging and maintaining anything I could find. I never had it easy. mother, Helen Maxine Graves Lee; meaningful existences for us individu- And so, learning to work early on in life to your cultural mother, Gwendolyn ally and for our larger communities? pay rent, pay gas and lights, and so forth, Brooks; and your wife, Safisha. The was normal. I never, at one level, in my ear- arrangement of the poems takes on an Art is central to everything we do. It is critical. ly days, could understand how people can almost memoirish aspect. How do you When you come to Third World Press, you have all these problems when they have a move from these personal experiences see art. When you come to my home, you regular paycheck and got a nice home; I to more global ideas about women? see art. What I will say to young people, and could not understand that, but obviously I I say this all the time, is that I can walk into do now. My [poetry] emphasizes work, but When I first met Gwendolyn Brooks, she your home and tell exactly where you are also the life of regular people. Everything was in a church on the South Side of Chi- culturally and politically. The first thing I no- I’ve written in the past, and present, deals cago, in Woodlawn, teaching Blackstone tice is, is it clean? Then I’m going to your with all these elements, from culture to pol- Rangers to write poetry, working with the bookshelf, if you got a bookshelf. I’m looking itics to science and technology, it all winds great entertainer, cultural activist and on your wall to see if your walls got images up in a poem somehow. pre-rapper, Oscar Brown Jr. I gave her a and pictures of your family and Black visual copy of “Think Black,” and “Think Black,” artwork. And then I’m looking at your record You start off the fifth stanza of the first cover, it’s all white with Africa in the collection, your streaming music. What are “Liberation Narratives” with the line, middle. This is 1967, you know. And she took you listening to? And then I go to your late- “if poetry is to have meaning/it must it and put it on her heart. And she said, night viewing. What are you seeing on DVD? mean something.” Your poetry, “Thank you, young man, I’m gonna read this.” What are you streaming? The children’s specifically the poems in this new And we parted. Within two weeks, she had room: what’s on their walls? These are the collection, are never frivolous, always moved the workshop to her home at 7428 key things that define you. intent on piercing important, often South Evans Avenue. And we started meet- difficult, issues—issues confronted in ing at her home. But my point is that she Art plays a significant role, much more society, at home, in various communi- recognized the unfinished Don Lee, to be- than anything else. I write about not only ties, and importantly of character and come Haki Madhubuti. literary influences, but music influences, how it relates to the way one sees and also visual art influences, and try to do it in interacts with the world. How does My life has always been involved in not a poetic prose manner, you know. poetry in general and your poetry in only writing, but also in social justice and particular work to get at meaning? building independent Black institutions, in There are references to hundreds and trying to be of service to the people I love. hundreds of important Black people. All my poetry for the most part is serious. All my life, I, my wife—you know, we’ve been Black thinkers. Black artists. Black One of the criticisms of me, early on, was together fifty years, fifty years. Children do- educators. Black activists. Many of that I never smile. I never drank, I never ing well and so forth. But we built these in- these people appear over and over, in smoked. To be honest, I never had a child- stitutional structures because that’s my ser- different ways, in different poems. Let’s hood. I grew up dirt poor—any time one vice, that’s our service. And so, what you take just one poem, “He Never Saw the wears used underwear, they’re poor. My get with “Taught by Women,” it’s almost like Bullets Coming.” In that poem, there mother was in the sex trade. My father was that history at one level, okay. Because all are references to W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida not there. Christmases and holidays, they these women, I’ve had some contact with. B. Wells, Elijah Muhammad and Bobby weren’t Christmases and holidays to me. And, they’ve impressed me. That’s why their names are on the book. “Taught by Women” We’re born to who we are. I chose to work is a culmination of my saying to all these around my own people. I’m not writing any- women, even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, thank thing that I’m not serious about, in terms of you, that you did not do this for me, you did having an impact on the readers. Very few this for us, you did it for the nation. I was love poems, quote-unquote. Most of my able to concentrate in a very serious and work is cultural, it’s political; I don’t write deep manner on women. Even if you look confessional poetry, but I do write political at the cover and inside covers, I can name poetry. Because I believe in this country. Al- each one of [those women] and tell you right. And I think that one’s belief in one’s without looking how they influenced my life. nation also comes with the ability to want to It’s about women. It’s evolutionary, revolu- criticize that which is not right, just, correct tionary, a Black man writing about women. and good. In the context of history. And in I’m as honest as possible. the context of having some integrity around how we work and function in the country. In “Art: A Comment,” you begin, “the How can I make this human? That’s what I’m summer & winter beauty/of a people’s trying to think, all the time. culture rides/heroically in their arts.” So many of these poems (there is a “Taught By Women,” the title, whole section on “Language Keepers” foreshadows a deep and abiding and “Language Creators”) articulate appreciation and respect for women— an urgent and necessary relationship the front and back covers, in fact, between art and life, so much so that 8
Hutton. That is a poem you wrote Any people will control their own cultural organic farmers and compost and green tea MARCH 2021 Newcity recognizing the fiftieth anniversary imperatives about the healthy replication of and workers who use their hands to build of the assassination of Fred Hampton. themselves and their people. My basic un- and repair stuff, North and South poles, It occurred to me that in order for derstanding, and I believe this, is that peo- teachers, people of faith, engineers, wheat- readers to fully participate in the ple were born to who we are, who we want grass, carrot juice, oatmeal, seven-grain poem, they must know or educate to be, and who we will be, okay? I chose bread. Okay. If the world loses you, I’m themselves on all the references. to work among my own people. You don’t talking about the people, and water. Yes, What is your expectation for or see me out there talking about coalition this precious you and the daily tastes of life, it challenge to the reader? and coalition that. I will work with white finally means that we lost butterflies yes- people and people outside of my culture terday and failed our children. [My mother] was not an educated woman. that I feel are doing good work, and are se- Even though she had demanded that I go rious. All this other stuff is fluff to me, as far We built these institutional structures. to the Detroit Public Library and check out as I’m concerned. We’re the only ones coming out of the Black “Black Boy.” And I refused because I hated Arts Movement that still have these schools. myself. I hated my circumstances. I hated I’m not talking about your cars and your We service over 500 children a day, an Af- my life. I hated my color. I hated everything. house and your suits and, you know, all this rican-centered education. I’ve never taken And she demanded that I go check out other stuff, but what you believe. There’s a salary from our schools, never taken a sal- Richard Wright. I went to the library, found a profound difference between freedom ary from Third World Press; my wife and I, the book on the shelf myself. I’m beginning and liberation. You can earn your liberation; we were able to take care of ourselves rath- to read it, and for the first time in my life, I you got to fight somebody, you know, ver- er than drawing from the institutions. And was reading literature that was not an insult bally, politically, physically or whatever the we still do that. That’s our commitment. Yes, to my person. I just turned fourteen years case may be. I love children. And so, what we have is cul- old. And it changed my life. I read “Black tural families, where these cultural families Boy” in less than twenty-four hours, went If you don’t know who you are, anybody are looking after all these babies and our back to the library and checked out every- can name you. That’s it. And if you do not children. I see all children as my children, thing Richard Wright had published. And know who you are, you’re gonna take al- doesn’t matter what color. one of the key books, very few people know most anything somebody gives to you. And about, “White Man, Listen!,” it’s a book of the point is, how do you begin to determine What continues to energize these over- essays. And in that book, there was a very the cost of liberation? So, one, if I own my- worked bones are children of all cultures, important essay called, “The Literature of self and understand culturally who I am. who, for the most part, have not been cap- the Negro.” And he listed all these writers, And that means identity. That means, my tured by the many demons, daggers and these Black writers. That’s when I came in purpose in life. And that means how am I multiple predators that populate this Earth. contact with Gwendolyn Brooks, Claude going to achieve that purpose in life? And The absolute necessity in me to listen to McKay, Langston Hughes… You know what in doing that, I, along with other people, young people, their laughter, tears, loud si- I’m saying? Here I am, being smacked in will be about doing what any whole people lences and demanding questions that are the face. “Wake up, Negro, because there’s do, raising healthy children and building critical to my wellness. another world out here, which you know healthy institutional structures for those nothing about.” And so, that’s the starting children to mature in. And those institution- Finally, I know you’re not done— point. I’m in my library now at home; I got, al structures will be there for other people there will be many books to come. what?, about 50,000 volumes down here. to see. Third World Press, it actually exists. Yet, I sense this book is more We built our home around the library. I Barbara Ann Sizemore [Academy], the important, more urgent, in part didn’t respect until I started reading. So I’m Betty Shabazz [International Charter] because it reads like a capstone always going to give homage to those School, they actually exist. Black people to an incredible life and career. who’ve helped me realize that Black is hu- actually built that. And these were built not Is this book different than the ones man and humanizing always requires on grants, not on foundation money, but that preceded it? homework and deep study to do justice to on sweat and tears from Black people in who we really are. Chicago, Illinois, around the country and in- I’m trying to bring some damn order to some ternationally. of this work. There’s a lot of it. I’m thinking The subtext in almost all of these about this all the time. All the time. All the poems is Black empowerment. Children and the people entrusted time. People say, “This was like the second White people control the narrative, with their development receive book of your autobiography.” In a sense, it make the laws, dispense their own a great deal of attention in this encapsulates a life. The very first poem form of justice. The reality of slavery collection. How does your love of Gwendolyn Brooks published on me is in impacts nearly every aspect of children and lifelong commitment “In the Mecca.” And the last line of that contemporary society. In “Grandfa- to the young infiltrate this collect? poem reads, “new music, screaming in the thers: They Speak Through Me,” you sun.” And that’s my working title for the sec- write, “as a man, i chose poetry, love It was very conscious, because one of [my] ond part of my memoir, primarily because and extended family./ i selected black major influences was Barbara Sizemore. she’s a part of it. In the first part, I had not independence, institution building met her yet. and the cherry eyes of children as my If the world loses elephants, dolphins, mission.” Talk a little about the ways, polar bears, and so forth… I’m a vegan. I’ve What I wanted to try to do with this book through your poetry, you express the been a vegan for forty years, you know. I is let people know where I am today and idea of self-determination in the face don’t eat no meat, don’t drink no milk and that I’m still in for the good fight. Always do of so much social injustice. cheese and all this other stuff. I don’t push that which is good, just and right, with a that on anybody, but the poems say that. I sense of humility and integrity. That’s it, prize life itself. Okay? Giraffes and salmon Don, know what I’m saying? I’m on it, man, and coral reefs and insects and worms and and I’m going to be on it. 9
SAM CUSHING K ANYE WEST. JENNIFER HUDSON. JOHN CUSACK. BARACK OBAMA. TAKES THE WINDY CITY INTO THE Chicago has generated its share of people who emerge as national fig- ures. Our city, however, is weak on the social media scene. Local boy INFLUENCER REALM Sam Cushing is changing all that. A native of the Chicago region and by Richard Pallardy sometime city resident, he has amassed a major following on YouTube and Instagram. With a blend of content ranging from LGBT topics to 10 fitness to mental health to a burgeoning music career, Cushing has put the city on the map in the social space. Starting out on Instagram when he was living in South America a scant three years ago, Cushing has expanded his range to YouTube with videos that discuss his experienc- es and offer advice on everything from exercise routines to travel. Cush- ing is at the vanguard of a new brand of influencer: socially aware but relatable and sweet. No sanctimony or lecturing. Yes, he does brand partnerships, but in a conscious and thoughtful way. He discusses his struggles as a gay man who deals with anxiety, but keeps things enter- taining and light. And he’s left the door open for other topics. His reach is such that the tourism board saw fit to name him as an ambassador to the city last year. Cushing may have gone international but he re- tains his affection for and fascination with Chicago. Newcity MARCH 2021 Where did you grow up? ble degree in business—supply chain What was your family situation? management and marketing—I started my career as a consultant, full-time at I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, PricewaterhouseCoopers. twenty-five minutes west of the city, with one older brother in a broken family. I was there for two years. The first My parents divorced when I was in fifth year, I was in Manhattan. And then the grade. So I was splitting my time, running second year I was living in Chicago, around the Chicago area staying with which was just the best experience ever. both sets of parents. Both of my parents I was living with my best friend. We are remarried. I went to Hinsdale Central were right there on the Lake, right on and was senior class president. And then Lake Shore Drive. It wasn’t the nicest I went to University of Illinois. So I spent place in the world. But it was such a a majority of my life in and around Chi- beautiful location. To wake up every sin- cago. Then after I graduated with a dou- gle day and see Lake Michigan. It was just stunning.
You’ve talked on your channel about coming out. How was growing up as a gay kid in the Chicago area? Newcity MARCH 2021 It was a mixture. As com- through a nasty divorce and I was just com- off [and then graduated] cum laude. I was pared to a lot of my friends ing out. There was a lot that was happening very involved on campus with all sorts of and a lot of other com- all at once. But then I kind of came into my business consulting and business fraterni- ing-out stories I continue own. I have a really strong family support ty organizations. I landed a few pretty awe- to hear, I was relatively system from an LGBT standpoint, and my some internships after my sophomore and fortunate. I didn’t run into friends are always supportive. I actually junior year. So my senior year it was nice too many hiccups within started going out my senior year of high because I was just coasting. And I already my family. My mom actu- school—very, very young—to Boystown and had secured a full-time offer at PwC. ally asked me if I was gay meeting other gay guys. when I was about fifteen. Were there other moments that made I had already come out to Your early career was in the business you think it wasn’t for you? my best girlfriend that world. What led you down that path? same year. I told my dad You know, being gay, I think that played a the following year. It’s sort I was being risk-averse, honestly. I had a factor as well. That led me to know that tra- of a funny story. I told him dad who was big into business. He was VP ditional corporate America wasn’t the right in an effort to get out of a of marketing in his company. So that played bet. I followed my brain and not my heart. grounding because I’d a role. You look up to that when you’re I didn’t feel like I was living a life that was come home really late. I growing up in terms of what you want to do authentic to me. I don’t let being gay define was in my sophomore or with your life. My brother followed in those me. There were so many other parts of me junior year of high school footsteps. I just set the path of what felt like that just didn’t fit in. I didn’t fit in with the at this point. It was sum- least resistance, felt the most safe and se- culture of sitting behind the computer mertime and I really want- cure from a financial standpoint. I spent four screen for eighty hours a week without ed to go to the Pride Pa- years in high school prepping to get into talking to very many people and feeling like rade the next day. I was University of Illinois, the College of Busi- a cog in the wheel and just a number. It like, “Listen, dad, I know ness, four years in college, working my butt wasn’t for me and I felt disillusioned by all you’re mad at me, but I have something to tell you.” And he was like, “Okay, you can tell me any- thing.” And I came out to him and got out of my grounding. It was a pretty smooth coming-out story. The only real issue that I had when I was in high school. I dealt with a lot of bullying and teasing and stuff like that. Mostly spec- ulation of whether or not I was gay. There was a Facebook group that was created called “Sam Cushing = Big Fag.” Of course I panicked. That was the year I was still kind of unsure. You’re so young at that age, and you don’t really have any frame of reference. So it was tricky. Ten years ago, being gay was synonymous with being disliked. “Oh, that’s so gay.” “This is gay.” It was a negative thing. I didn’t want to be disliked. I grew up in Oak Brook. The schools were a lot small- er and filtering into Hinsdale Central, which is a really large school district, I was the new kid on the block. There were all these rumors swirling around and then that group came out. I reported it. A week later, [the guy who created the first group] uploaded another group: “Sam Cushing = Big Fag 2.” My friends and I have been able to laugh about it in a strange way. The first few years of high school were kind of rough for me. I had social anxiety. My parents were going 12
this corporate Kool-Aid that I was drinking. which is gorgeous. There’s just so much to nice for me to be able to go back and be It’s not to say that all those jobs or compa- nies are bad. They’re great places for cer- do and so much to see. Argentina is unlike able to say this is what I was doing Decem- tain people. I don’t think it was a cultural fit for me. a lot of other countries in South America in ber 21 two years ago. You’ve discussed how that was a very that it has very heavy European influence, conservative environment. Did that specifically Spanish and Italian. When did you start start to bother you at a certain point? I remember you saying you got reported From an architecture standpoint, when your YouTube channel? to HR for not wearing an undershirt. you’re walking around, you see how opulent Did you ever find out who did that? the city once was. Back in the 1930s, or for- Instagram has always been my core. My How did that conversation go? ties, it was the fourth-wealthiest nation in YouTube channel actually is fairly recent. Yeah, we did have to have a conversation. I don’t want to call it discrimination. It was the entire world because they were export- When I decided about a year ago to make odd. It did feel a bit targeted. I didn’t have an undershirt on and I guess between ing so many resources. Then through cor- the move back up to the States, I made the two of the buttons, you could see a tiny lit- tle bit of skin. I caused a ruckus and made rupt politicians, it com- some men uncomfortable and had to have a discussion. pletely tanked. You see When did you decide to go to these beautiful buildings South America? Was there a reason [that are now] just de- I didn’t fit in with for picking that destination? crepit. There are parts the culture of where there are trees I ended up in a situation where I was really growing out of the build- unhappy. I spent two years working [at ings. It’s just such an in- PriceWaterhouseCoopers] and I met some incredible people. I have the utmost admi- teresting dichotomy. sitting behind the ration for my former colleagues. It just wasn’t the right fit. So two years in, I quit. What did you computer screen I left it all behind. I booked a one-way do for work? ticket to South America, a part of the world I’d never been before. I didn’t know a I found work at a tech for eighty hours single person. start-up. I was working in a week without I tried to kind of rediscover myself and marketing sales for about gain an international perspective. I ended up staying down there a lot longer than I a year. They moved me to talking to very intended. I only meant to go down there for Medellín in Colombia, many people and about six months. I ended up staying for where I spent another two years. And while I was down there, I year. I was heading up an improved the social media following that office of seventy engi- I’ve been able to turn into a full-time career. neers. I was in the tech feeling like a cog I knew that I wanted a large city and I world and I discovered a wanted a progressive city. I had studied in Madrid back in college and I absolutely love for that culture. If I in the wheel. loved that experience. And it was eye-open- ever went back to a typi- ing for me. It was so culturally immersing. I wanted to replicate that but not in the same cal nine-to-five sort of place. So I just did a bunch of research and Argentina quickly floated to the top of my position, it would defi- list. [Being in a] Spanish-speaking city was really important to me. I wanted to become nitely be in tech just be- bilingual. I did, which is pretty cool. cause culturally it is more It’s unfortunate because their economy is in shambles. They’re not in a good spot aligned with my person- economically, but culturally it is so diverse and so interesting. The topography down ality. But simultaneous to there is just insane because you have des- ert, arid, mountainous regions to the north that, I was beginning to grow my social me- decision to do social media full-time. In do- like Jujuy and then if you go down south to Patagonia, you have the entire coastline, dia presence because I was traveling a lot. It ing so, I decided to launch my YouTube was kind of fun to see this American boy channel. So I really have only had the chan- traveling around and trying to fumble nel for about a year, which is pretty cool through his Spanish and figure it all out. considering that I’m coming close to 200,000 subscribers. I just received my What led you to documenting YouTube plaque from Google for crossing your adventures? that milestone. Everything I was doing was in Spanish. How did you decide what MARCH 2021 Newcity My relationship was in Spanish, all my kind of content you were going friends, everything was in Spanish. It was nice to connect with people back home in to post? When did you decide English. It was also for other people to be that you could monetize this inspired to live a life that feels more authen- through brand partnerships? tic to them. That’s always my message, which is to be like the you-est you that you The pandemic hit soon after [I got back] so can. But just as much as it was for other travel went out the window. There were al- people, it was also a very personal way to ways a few other themes in my content, one document and imprint this time in my life, of which is fitness. Another one was well- for me to reflect back on. I learned so much ness—health and nutrition. Music was my about myself when I was down there. It was fourth pillar. I just decided to double-down on the latter three. 13
I had a few friends who were in the con- When did you get into fitness a balance. There are certain things that, tent creation space and they really sold me and discover you could make out of respect for people in my inner circle, I wouldn’t want to necessarily reveal to on [the brand partnerships]. It’s a bit scary money in that sphere? everybody. But if it’s a story that I gen- uinely think will help other people and I because I came from such a conventional feel like the impact is there, I enjoy being background. I had my life pretty mapped My older brother got me into it. He was authentic in that way. For example, I came out with this video [where I] talk about my out for me. Going to business school, ev- your typical jock growing up, which is anxiety, which is something that I’ve strug- gled with for a long time. I used to have a erything was very step-by-step. In that the antithesis of me. We always bonded over bit of a facial tic. It was a manifestation of world, you work toward your next promo- it. I just felt so much better about myself af- my anxiety and it would ebb and flow. Even to this day, I still sometimes struggle with tion, and you work for another promotion, ter leaving the gym, not even from a super- that. I thought that in honor of Mental Health Awareness Day, what better time to and it just continues on and on. The social ficial standpoint of wanting to look good, share my story and help somebody else where you fill out your clothes who may be going through something similar? I think it’s about how I can impact nicely. It was really internal. We other people. When you always felt really good about What are some of your put something ourselves. So a lot of it for me is quintessentially wanting to share that with other out on the people. Chicago activities? How do you go about I did a partnership with Choose Chicago, deciding on your which is the official tourism agency, to promote the city. They hosted me for a little partnerships? What are you staycation. I created this video, “Top 8 Things to Do in Chicago.” A lot of the peo- Internet, you comfortable promoting? ple who follow me have probably never been to Chicago. So things like the Signa- can’t come back Typically, there’s an inbound ture Lounge up at the top of the Hancock, strategy and an outbound strat- Millennium Park, the Riverwalk. I put Sea Dog on there as well as part of your Navy from that. So you egy. There are a lot of brands Pier day. Things like heading to Uptown and really have to that will approach me. If I hav- checking out the Green Mill Cocktail Lounge commit. It’s a en’t already used the product, that has this whole mobster history, where commitment or I’m not familiar with them, I’ll there were these underground tunnels in request that they send it to me, that part of the city where Al Capone would and then for a few months, I’ll escape if the police raided the bar. try it out. There have been a lot of different brands that I turn I’m such a Chicago fanatic. I read all down. I don’t believe in it, I sorts of literature on the history of Chicago. My friends always laugh at me because I’m for life. didn’t love the product, it didn’t the king of Chicago fun facts. Anytime we’re feel worth sharing. I’ll look at walking around the city, I always know weird, quirky facts about the architecture corporate responsibility, on or the history or the food thing that Chicago was really known for. So it was fun to work who they are as a company, with that piece of content. what they stand for, who they I mean, there are seventy-seven neigh- donate to. Things like that are borhoods. Every single one has its own individual flare, which is really interesting. important beyond just the prod- I lived in eight different cities in the last uct itself. I would never work eight years, which is really cool. But I always tell people—of course, I’m biased because with a company that has histor- I grew up in this area, but—as many flaws as Chicago may have, I think that it’s the ically very anti-LGBT policies. best city and the most beautiful city and it’s Then there are other products so stunning. that I just genuinely use in my day-to-day. I’ll reach out to them, like Hey, I love your stuff. media world was very foreign to me. Espe- I’m happy to engage. It doesn’t even have cially growing up in the Midwest, entertain- to be some kind of contrived [situation]. ment, media, social media are just not as Even if there is no monetary benefit to that, prevalent as they are for some of my friends I believe in them as well. in L.A. or New York. How do you decide what For the first few months, I was earning nothing, which was totally fine, because I to share and what to reveal really enjoyed doing it. I luckily had a bit of when you talk about savings. When I moved back to the States, personal things? I moved in with my family for a little while. Newcity MARCH 2021 So that was hugely helpful. I’m very fortu- It’s a scary thing when you share something nate in that respect that I’ve finally gotten that publicly, because one thing I’ve learned to that place [where I can make a living]. this year is that our parents were right. I want to make sure that I really believe in When you put something out on the Inter- the brand and believe in the brand mission. net, you can’t come back from that. So I don’t want to become like an advertisement you really have to commit. It’s a commit- for any company that offers to pay me. ment for life. I think it’s a matter of striking 14
WHAT THE MARCH 2021 Newcity DECLINE AND FALL OF THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE AND THE SHATTERING OF LOCAL MEDIA MEANS by Brian Hieggelke 15
ISNTA19R8T6E,DTNHEEWYECAITRYW, E Newcity MARCH 2021 the almighty Tribune Company domi- FOR MORE THAN erected in 1947 but not aging as well as nated all local media from a gothic tow- HALF-A- CENTURY, the edifice that was the Tribune Tower. er, presiding over the Magnificent Mile the newspaper was not only created in like the lord of Chicago it was. this Boul Mich edifice, but printed there By the late 1980s, the media land- as well. But by 1981, these tony confines scape that would define Chicago for It had been a momentous decade for the could no longer contain the massive most of my lifetime had settled in. company, founded back in 1847, marked operation that printing the paper had by the expansion of its Tribune Broad- become, especially on Sundays when Radio had adapted to its backseat casting division into the WGN \"Super- the publication, inches-thick with ads, status to television by shifting gears, and station\" that would cross the nation, the would deliver more than a million cop- was driven by high-profile DJ personal- purchase of the Chicago Cubs in 1981 ies. And so the hulk of a factory, Free- ities like Steve Dahl and Jonathon and the company's initial public offering dom Center, designed by Skidmore, Brandmeier, who strutted as celebrities in 1983. This last event allowed the com- Owings & Merrill, opened up along the in their own right. (Dahl rose to fame in pany to more easily raise capital to ex- Chicago River, at 560 West Grand. Un- part by parodying the Tribune’s ratings pand its empire, but also meant that its like the grand Tribune Tower, this mas- powerhouse WGN and its number-one longtime family ownership under the sive brick-and-concrete building was morning DJ, Wally Phillips, as hopeless- heirs of Joseph Medill, who'd owned it all about manufacturing, wasting no re- ly out of touch, with his song, “Oh Wally” since 1855, would increasingly be dimin- sources on terra cotta or even windows. sung by “the Lady from Tinley Park.”) ished in influence. Although no one Trains could deliver newsprint directly Public radio hardly registered. Back then, thought so at the time, it would prove to into the state-of-the-art factory. WBEZ was tucked away in the upper be portentous. reaches of the old Bankers Building in “Enormous 1-ton rolls of paper are the Loop, in a ragged, shopworn space The Tribune Tower was a Chicago land- brought in by train and truck and befitting an afterthought like a radio sta- mark, erected by the newspaper's larger- stacked high in a cavernous warehouse. tion, better known for its jazz shows than-life publisher Colonel Robert Mc- The rolls feed 10 large offset web than for NPR programming, that was Cormick through the mid-1920s, the printing presses, where cylinders with founded by the public school system. final design the winner of probably the aluminum press plates and rubber most famous architecture competition blankets transfer ink to paper at If these new-generation radio DJs in history. So vast was the empire that blazing speeds. Inserting machines were now luminaries, network-affiliate he oversaw, McCormick commanded his are then used to place millions of TV news operated in their own strato- foreign correspondents to bring stones targeted advertising flyers into the sphere, one where news anchors and to Chicago from world landmarks, 149 newspaper for delivery.” weathermen were the A-listers of local in all, including the Taj Mahal, the Par- celebrity, on the launching pad for a ca- thenon and the Palace of Westminster, —Open House Chicago reer of national news stardom. (A few so that they might be included in the who cut their teeth in Chicago: Lester building's walls. When onetime Chicago newspaper- Holt, Jane Pauley, Tamron Hall, Deborah men Ben Hecht and Charles MacAr- Norville, Bill Kurtis, Don Lemon.) thur’s play, “The Front Page” premiered on Broadway in 1928, the Tribune was Meanwhile, the Chicago Reader was one of eight Chicago newspapers rep- in its second decade and had become resented in the cast of characters of re- an advertising powerhouse aligned porters. Over subsequent years, the rise with the rebirth of the city and the ex- of broadcasting and the changing de- ploding Boomer demographic. It was mographics of the American population printed on black-and-white newsprint drove all but the Chicago Tribune and that took three 56-page sections, the Chicago Sun-Times out of business. tucked and folded into one thick bundle, (The last to go, the Chicago Daily News, to contain its long-form journalism and which folded in 1978, is fondly remem- display and classified ads. (It would bered by many as the very best, includ- expand to four sections.) Even the ing its survivors.) By the late eighties, Reader’s headquarters, a vintage River the Chicago Sun-Times was residing North office building that its owners across the street from the Tribune on had astutely purchased at a time when Wabash, sprawled along the Chicago River North was still the not-so-attrac- River in a seven-story utilitarian building, tive North Loop, added to its mystique. While sales people at other media out- lets had to chase advertising dollars with wining, dining and miles of cus- tomer service on their cars, the Reader 16
was almost ambivalent about the millions MEDIA DIETS it raked in each year, requiring advertisers to queue up in lines that ran down the block We live inside the bubble of our own lives, and those of us in this on deadline day in order to place their ads business are prone to forget that not everyone devours media with the and eagerly fork over their money. appetite that we do. As an exercise, I looked at my own current media diet and confirmed what I suspected: I am consuming so much more For our part, Newcity launched in our information now than thirty-five years ago. I'm still reading most of South Loop rental apartment, followed the same things, but add on a flood of new sources courtesy of the flow quickly by a dingy not-yet-rehabbed o ice of information via the internet. space nearby, where I once vanquished a mouse with a broom, flipping it across the I reached out via Facebook and asked others to complete the same room like a hockey puck. It was next to the survey. The results follow. Though my Facebook network, comprised Metra tracks, where the sound of idling of friends, family, high school classmates and virtually anyone I've ever trains would overwhelm conversations, connected with in my role at Newcity seemed to offer the quickest way since windows were kept open in the ab- to reach a broad demographic, the sample is clearly biased in favor of sence of air conditioning. We lasted there left-of-center, college-educated folks, and skews older and whiter than a year, until our lease was up, then moved even my fellow Chicagoans. So I used personal connections to fill in into an upstairs loft right on Printers Row, some gaps, with varying results. Nevertheless, I found the results where we’d stay for the next six years. fascinating. (Brian Hieggelke) Today, more than three decades Visit Newcity.com to see Brian’s Media Diet along with many more. later, the mighty and almost-mighty from those days have fallen, with one exception. WBEZ has soared in audience, in influ- ence and in resources, acting as the launch- ing pad for seminal genre-defining podcasts “This American Life” and “Serial,” as well as the national hit quiz show, “Wait Wait... Don’t Elsa C. Email Newsletters Read: Tell Me!” And befitting its status, the station 36, Hispanic, woman The New York Times Morning- Weekend Briefing, Southern now resides in state-of-the-art broadcast fa- University Professor and Methodist University Tower Center Researcher of Higher Education (monthly), Latin American Studies cilities in the city’s marquee Navy Pier. from Fayetteville, Arkansas Association Newsletter (monthly) As Robert Feder, the dean of Chicago Daily Newspapers Read: Blogs/Websites Read: media reporters, says, “There’s no question Online—Chronicle of Higher I rely a lot on Google searches to Education, Inside HigherEd, keep abreast of what the media is about the rise of WBEZ as a premier news Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, saying regarding social and political New York Times, Chicago Tribune issues. I compare the news across organization in Chicago. The station’s rat- news outlets online. Weekly/Biweekly ings bear it out, its budget bears it out, and Newspapers/Magazines Read: Social Media Sites Visited: the growth of the newsroom bears it out. LaPrensa Libre del Noreste Facebook, Twitter de Arkansas And it all coincides with the sharply re- Other Media Sources: Local Newscasts/ duced commitment of Chicago’s commer- News Programs Watched: Facebook closed groups— all professional groups that also cial stations to covering the news.” Univision—Arkansas circulate information about resources (books, news articles, The Sun-Times never recovered from its National Newscasts Watched: research articles, professional development opportunities, short era of ownership under Rupert Mur- Univision research grant info, etc) for women of color in academia or people of doch from to —most visible was Cable Newscasts Watched: color in academia. the loss of star columnist Mike Royko, who CNN, CNN en Español, Foro TV ceremoniously refused to work for the no- Weekly News Programs Watched: torious Australian-born media mogul and CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, CNN Newsroom with Ana Cabrera took his audience and his prominent posi- Radio News Listened To: tion in the newspaper to the hated Tribune. NPR—Local and national Before long, the paper passed into the Podcasts Listened To: hands of notorious right-wing Canadian Radio Ambulante, press baron Conrad Black and his partner Latinx Intelligentsia, Chicana M(other) work David Radler, who would both end up in jail for skimming and pocketing the paper’s profits. Black, the ultimate sycophant, would eventually be pardoned by President Trump in , an occasion which prompted Feder to write in his column, “The once-profitable MARCH 2021 Newcity Sun-Times never fully recovered from the crime spree carried out by Black and Radler. Coupled with a downturn in newspaper ad- vertising, the fallout from their convictions and related scandals led to the Sun-Times filing for bankruptcy in .” 17
Monique M. After bankruptcy, the left-for-dead news- vertising Age, the Chicago operation has paper passed through a succession of civ- 23, heterosexual, white female ic-minded owners. It’s owned by such today, seemingly prospered from a decisive shift calling itself the “hardest-working paper in Graduate Student America,” which says more about its partial to digital with a rigid paywall. Even more, from Lemont, Illinois ownership by labor unions than the poten- tial appeal of its content. And its building? it’s benefited from the heritage of terrible Local Newscasts/ That prime real estate on the Chicago River News Programs Watched: was sold during the Conrad Black years to business coverage at the city’s daily news- a notorious New York real estate developer, ABC7, WBBM2, WGN and now Trump Tower is the most despised papers in a metropolis that boasts more edifice in Chicago. The newspaper occu- National Newscasts Watched: pies space in a West Loop building identi- Fortune companies than any city out- fied by most of us as the site of a prominent ABC, NBC and CNN to get updates Goodwill store. side of New York. on current events, very active during the Presidential Election. The founders of the Reader appeared to Chicago magazine has also enjoyed a I watch after the live aired TV do quite well, selling their building during shows that I typically watch. the hot River North market as well as the steady if low-profile trajectory, with a heri- paper itself at or near the peak of newspa- Weekly News per pricing, right before valuations would tage of high-quality journalism and dining Programs Watched: collapse, garnering a reported thirty-to-for- ty-million dollars for it and its sibling Wash- coverage mixed in among service features ABC7, it always comes on after ington City Paper in , to an investors my TV shows and I leave it on. group. That group was led by unsuspecting targeted at the so-called suburban-soc- I typically watch during the Ben Eason of the Atlanta Creative Loafing 10pm news before bed. founding family, who raised private equity cer-mom demographic. But it has been part money for the purchase, only to see the Podcasts Listened To: transaction take his whole enterprise into of the Chicago Tribune universe since bankruptcy the following year. The Reader, Chicks in the Office, With Whit, threatened by the well-established-and-ex- and, unfortunately, its fate is inextricably LadyGang and The Morning Toast panding London publication Time Out’s are podcasts I listen to! Mainly launch in Chicago for what would be a tangled up in the Tribune’s ongoing owner- these podcasts are about celebrity high-profile if short-lived run as a weekly updates/interviews but they also magazine, shape-shifted from its classic ship messes. focus on women empowerment and multi-section quarter-fold into a full-color so much more. I always listen to tabloid, even experimenting with glossy And what messes. Never have the mighty these before bed, during workouts, covers. Time Out Chicago passed from the and even while working on print firmament, and the Reader kept reel- fallen so far as the Tribune Company over homework for background noise! ing, first under the ownership of moneymen, then for a while within the Sun-Times stable, my adult lifetime. Gone are the Chicago Social Media Sites Visited: thanks to the outsized ambition of then- CEO Michael Ferro. Today, the biweekly is Cubs, sold o to the Ricketts family, a pack Some of the sites I use are independent again, and has given up on its Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, profit-driven heritage entirely as it makes of rich Trump backers who make the Snapchat and TikTok. I scroll the transition to nonprofit status. through a lot of social media all FDR-bashing Colonel McCormick look lib- the time. I basically do it when While the Reader was caught in its down- I’m bored, but I will say it is a great ward spiral, we weren’t doing much better eral by comparison and who played their way to connect with family/friends! at Newcity. Ownership stability saved us, as You can see what they have been up we were able to make decisive changes own footnote role in the ongoing journalism to or see their accomplishments. quickly to reduce costs and turn the busi- That is my favorite part about those ness in a di erent direction. At the end of the narrative with their role in the abrupt shut- sites, the connection aspect. nineties, we had sleek o ices designed by Dirk Denison Architects holding sixty-five or tering of micro-local news site DNAInfo. Other Media Sources: so full-time employees; in , we made the decision to go completely virtual, and have (Though they did break the Cubs World Se- TED Talks! I learn so much from operated with a much smaller sta and dra- using this platform. It has really matically reduced expenses since. ries curse, creating a conflicted sense of en- helped during my educational years and I plan to use them for the rest An apparent bastion of stability through- dearment for a Democratic city.) Gone is of my life while becoming a school out this era has been Crain Communica- counselor. These talks can update tions, publisher of Crain’s Chicago Business, WGN, its network of TV stations, its owner- you on how our society is changing which has been in the same family’s hands or where we need to improve as since its founding in . While it has no ship in the WB (which became the CW). well as educate you on topics doubt su ered mightily with its many trade that you may have not known publications, including its best-known, Ad- Gone, too, is the Los Angeles Times, which previously! If you can’t find a TED Talk on their site, YouTube is a should have been the crown jewel in the wonderful resource to find them. Tribune’s newspaper empire, the one it cov- 18 eted for so long and landed in , just in time for the entire industry to begin a tran- sition from its era of easy, steady profits into one that rewards innovation. (See, for ex- ample the New York Times, which remains under control of longtime owners the Sulz- berger family—notice a pattern?—and has quadrupled its valuation to more than billion over the same five-year period that the Tribune has been churning in place. Or even the Washington Post, which thirty-five years ago would have been considered on a par with the Tribune but has, under the ownership of Je Bezos, re-established it- self as a vital national force on a level that its onetime Chicago peer can only look up to with envy.) Also gone are Sam Zell and Michael Ferro, self-anointed would-be sav- iors who converted fortune in an unrelated industry into an entrepreneurial god com- plex. They would save newspapers through Newcity MARCH 2021 their maverick, disruptive style, a style that foreshadowed the Trump presidency. This led to purported sex acts in the executive o ices in the Zell era, and astonishing idio- cy in strategy (remember “tronc”?) blended with allegations of sexual harassment under Ferro. Just as Murdoch’s regime doomed
the Sun-Times, so too, did this later run of Jill P. Podcasts Listened To: MARCH 2021 Newcity owner bu oons destroy the Tribune. 58 None currently Nothing is more emblematic of the Tri- bune’s misfortune than its real estate. Even Retired (2015) IDOC Statesville Email Newsletters Read: though the Michigan Avenue headquarters Correctional Counselor 2 from and the printing plant in River West were Romeoville, Illinois (currently) Sometimes AARP specifically designed and built for the news- moving to Florida in August. Yayyyy! paper, the breakup of the company into Blogs/Websites Read: two pieces—the broadcast business, which Weekly/Biweekly was sold to Nexstar Media Group in , Newspapers/Magazines Read: Keto Dad and the legacy publishing business—hand- ed the real estate to broadcasting and left AARP Social Media Sites Visited: the newspaper as a mere tenant, paying rent. No one thought that would end well, and Print Magazine Subscriptions: Fakebook lol (no typo) but limited, sure enough, just three years later, the paper rarely Instagram was given its walking papers and was forced DIY Home because someone to take up residence just on the other side purchased it for me Other Media Sources: of the Chicago River at Prudential Plaza. The tower, once so synonymous with the news- Local Newscasts/ YouTube primarily, Internet paper that the newspaper company was of- News Programs Watched: ten just referred to as “The Tower,” was con- Gerald verted to luxury condominiums, with a slick Not since I've retired, my TV is off website that begs to be read in the “News the majority of the time. As a matter 59, gay white married man on the March” voice from “Citizen Kane.” of fact as I write this the TV has been off all day so far. Professor of History from Oak Park “From the renowned Hall of Inscriptions to walls lled with historic relics of National Newscasts Watched: Daily Newspapers Read: worldwide signi cance, Tribune Tower’s original design elements have been CBN very seldom Chicago Tribune, New York carefully and respectfully restored to Times (mainly to see the latest preserve its dramatic impact. In its Cable Newscasts Watched: COVID statistics) rebirth as Tribune Tower Residences, the building’s rich architectural elements Currently do not subscribe to cable, Weekly/Biweekly are re ected in masterfully articulated I'd rather paint, read, create something Newspapers/Magazines Read: new expressions—creating a seamless etc. almost anything else than sit and connection between yesterday and today.” watch TV New Yorker (it's tough to keep up), Vanity Fair, Time But at least the Tribune landed in a good Weekly News Programs Watched: place at Prudential Plaza, an address befit- Print Magazine Subscriptions: ting the still-central role it expects to play No, I stopped watching news when in the city’s business world and public con- I started working in a Maximum uhm none - it’s 2021. sciousness, right? Not for long. Under cov- Security Prison 30 years ago. Since I er of the pandemic, the publicly traded was already saturated 40 hrs a week Local Newscasts/ company with annual EBITDA cash flow of in such a \"negative\" environment News Programs Watched: nearly a hundred million dollars and more with horrendous acts and \"bad news\" than ninety million dollars in cash on its bal- consistently it was a choice I needed Chicago Tonight, particularly on ance sheet, skipped out on . million dol- to make to be able to remain \"sane\" Friday nights, we love you Paris Schutz lars in rent, according to a lawsuit brought so to speak. I needed to be able to by its landlord, which has led to moving counsel inmates without bias to do National Newscasts Watched: everyone—executives, reporters and edi- my job sufficiently. I received weather tors—into its o -the-beaten-path printing updates and other pertinent inform- CBS Sunday Morning, I just find factory, the one without windows and an ation by searching specific topics on a Jane Pauley reassuring interior vibe more like the factory in Fritz need-to-know basis. Just a choice now Lang’s “Metropolis” than the bustling city not to watch and choose to do my own Cable Newscasts Watched: newsroom of the classic Chicago newspaper research based on topics that affect or noir, “Call Northside .” At least the editors interest me from unbiased sources. Any MSNBC when I need some can easily run into the pressroom and yell, sources of negativity or \"opinionated\" indoctrination from my people “Stop the presses!” as if that was actually a derogatory news is just not an option thing. That is, until they are forced out again I choose to entertain. I look for and Radio News Listened To: when the landlords decide to develop that focus on the positive, beautiful, increasingly valuable thirty-acre tract of beneficial sources of news, art, people, NPR on the hour, Jenn White on NPR's property, a prospect under active consider- acts of kindness etc that make the 1A—there is simply no better host ation. Then they’ll need a new location for world a better place for myself, my kids printing presses as well as people. and grandchildren. And I seek God Podcasts Listened To: above all and PRAY a TON lol! \"You Must Remember This\" (I am Radio News Listened To: a film historian) Shine or Air One—not really Blogs/Websites Read: news-related but they do have some news Way too much Huffington Post Social Media Sites Visited: TikTok—stop judging me—yes I am a 59-year-old man, but the references I make in the classroom that I get from the Tok make me current or pathetic. Instagram and Facebook when I am grading and can't look at one more bad paper. 19
FILM TOP 5 for the Illinois-shot, Midwest-set film, which “some late-stage development in putting a 1 The Truffle Hunters. Opens MARCH 2021 Newcity pushed through cloud after cloud even budget together while we kept looking for the Friday, March 5. Like an aromatic above and beyond the pandemic’s rest of the money to close out the budget, painting: the umami of the pursuit of transformation of how movies were and which, was, y'know, low seven figures, let's the most rare of flavors. were not shown in theaters in 2020. How say. By the time Richard Jenkins and Ed relative is any kind of success coming out of O'Neill were attached, I think that was just 2 The United States vs. Billie that marquee festival, or for that matter, any after Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2018,” Holiday. Hulu, streaming festival that doubles as a market? which would be less than a year before February 26. Andra Day is stellar in Sundance would notify filmmakers of its Lee Daniels’ restrained telling of the Their film premiered on January 27 at The selections for the 2020 event. travails of the great singer. MARC Theater, one of Park City’s larger venues, Lipschultz recalls. “It feels like that \"Once we had the shiny names of two 3 The Father. Opens Friday, was about five years ago, so frankly it’s hard wonderful actors, we started dialing for March 12. Anthony Hopkins, to recall much about the evening except dollars. So between the time we started losing it like no other acting elder, that the audience seemed to love the movie looking for money and when we secured refuses caretakers to the dismay and the hors d’oeuvres at the after-party the entire budget, I think by March, we had of family, including daughter were delicious.” all the money to make the movie.” He also Olivia Colman. credits the State of Illinois and the film office. The movie didn’t sell during the festival, but “We worked with them for a tax credit as well, 4 Compensation. Siskel, before the vast and disruptive implications which was essential to making this movie. February 28-March 3. Zeinabu of the pandemic kicked in, it was acquired They were really wonderful and the process irene Davis’ 1999 feature charts the by Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions, was smooth and straightforward. The film is romances of two Black couples at the an arm of Sony Pictures, which slated a set in Michigan, but the fact is that Illinois end of the twentieth century, each theatrical release in September of 2020. has a comparable look. That tax credit plus comprised of a deaf woman and a Scattered theaters were open around the the great crew base in Chicago was hearing man; Davis’ innovative visual country, and the small picture opened on essential to our deciding to shoot the movie approaches “embrace the endless 871 screens, a wildly large number these here, not to mention that both Albert and I aesthetic possibilities of cinema itself.” days for a movie of this size. In the grew up here.” before-times, this would indicate extreme 5 Godzilla vs. Kong. March 31, confidence on the part of a distributor, but “The Last Shift” has familiar contours, its theaters and 31 days on HBO the fact was that expensive, star-driven or story toying with genre in its tight, nine- Max. Adam Wingard goes big and tentpole product had been withheld from ty-minute running time. “Yes, it's a movie bigger on screens large and small, release, the studios measuring the waves of that starts very much by playing with the smaller in legendary matchup with theater openings and closures. Still, even tropes that are in a very durable sub-genre a pleasingly giddy trailer. with reduced capacity in the locations of race buddy comedies, I guess you could where it played, “The Last Shift“ ended its call them. ‘Driving Miss Daisy’ fits in there, fall run with a domestic gross, according to more recently, ‘Green Book.’ ‘The Upside’ IMDB, of just over a million dollars. with Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart. That said, I don't really like those [particular] The active production process had begun movies for a lot of reasons. They're very less than two years earlier. Lipschultz credits well-intentioned, but in execution, leave a lot Stan Bisbee at Park Pictures for financing to be desired. The story of ‘The Last Shift' 37
Newcity MARCH 2021 very gradually but clearly over time, felt a lot What’s important about a comedy-drama That elemental fact constitutes a brutal more authentic and by virtue of that, also built on behavior and observation and shrug. “It's this extremely bittersweet, felt a lot more incendiary.\" stirring political undercurrents is awareness, almost tragic thing that happens to most of how it’s prepared, positioned and ultimately the films that premiere at these festivals, “Look, there are a lot of things that drew all put on sale. When movies are dropped into unless it's a gargantuan Oscars title of us to the project,” he says. “Close to the an endless scroll of video-on-demand premiering at Telluride. These films, you get top of the list was the way that Andrew choices, how do any stand apart? The in, the filmmakers and producers are so captured a slice of Midwestern Americana theatrical release of “The Last Shift” lacked thrilled to be part of the percentage of that you don't see, that you don't see done the accustomed advantages of orchestrat- submissions that were accepted at an A-list particularly well, in an authentic fashion, in ed publicity, even as tickets sold across the festival, particularly if you're a first-timer. You most cinema. Alexander Payne's work is a land, and some reviewers reportedly saw a think, this is how it starts! This is where the rare outlier in how authentic it is in place preview copy that was inadvertently paltry salary I got paid for making this film and the vernacular. What separates this film defective, missing much of its score. turns into enough money to buy a vacation is that it very much straddles two disparate home or put my kid through college. That but interwoven communities of white The creators of “The Last Shift” got to does happen! A couple of times a year. Your Midwesterners and Black Midwesterners celebrate its reception and its Sundance odds of getting in are insanely low and then and how those two communities work reviews, and in the larger scheme of things, your odds of breaking out are even lower. together and are unfortunately at odds.” with a satisfactory deal that included a When you really boil it down, I think it's four theatrical release, is a success in these percent of submissions to these festivals get “The Last Shift”’s history illuminates a factor erratic, volatile times. “It’s so hard to know,” into these top-tier festivals and then thirty overlooked in the confoundment and Lipschultz says, generalizing about how percent find a successful life after that? It's consternation of the first pandemic year: the features are received at festivals. “Festival tough to gauge: conservatively, fifty percent economy of attention. How awareness is exposure can determine the trajectory of of movies at Sundance every year lose stoked, at a festival, afterward, as a film ninety-five percent of independent films. The money for their financiers. You know the hurtles toward release and through the dirty secret of indie filmmaking is that simply money isn't why we make these movies, cascading of successive revenue streams getting into Sundance, Cannes or TIFF or but the people who put money into them across the windows in a movie’s economic Venice, or Berlin, or wherever, does not in certainly expect it back or want it back. The lifetime. Were there good reviews? any way, shape or form guarantee you any sales are really tough to predict. More often Confused reviews? Any reviews at all? If a kind of critical success or success with than not, it's an unpleasant surprise.” film plays at ShowPlace ICON unaccompa- distribution or making revenues with sales at nied by these familiar forms of cultural the box office, let alone your film making Lipschultz considers the experiences others consciousness, has it played at all? even a portion of your budget back.” had coming out of Sundance 2020. “I know people who had really well-reviewed movies 38 last year, who still do not have distribution and are trying to figure it out. That's out of Sundance; these are English-language movies, made in America. It's really tough. There's a real wake-up call that first-time or second-time producers get. Months can go by. That deal can be for no minimum guarantee whatsoever, meaning you could just be handing your movie over to a distributor, which has to recoup all their costs plus a premium and interest before money starts to come back to your financiers. Sooner or later, every producer has a movie that just utterly shits the bed as far as sales go. That happens a lot more often than anyone wants to admit. It did not happen with this movie. It took time but we ended up in a very healthy place financially with it.” “The Last Shift” is available on video-on- demand, DVD and Blu-ray.
Rebecca Morgan Frank Lit Photo: Brian McConkey Extraordinary Machines An Interview with Rebecca Morgan Frank on “Oh You Robot Saints!” By Tara Betts Rebecca Morgan Frank is a Chicago Talk about what got you interested in bees. Humans have endeavored to create MARCH 2021 Newcity transplant, known her for her work as the subject of robots, and how that artificial life for thousands of years. one of the founders and the editor-in-chief became “Oh You Robot Saints!” at “Memorious: A Journal of New Verse and I was intrigued with how the collection Fiction.” She’s taught at several universities I came across Elly Truitt’s book “Medieval begins with poems about imagined robots and has penned three previous poetry Robots,” which introduced me to the strange and historic attempts at robots mimicking collections. In her most recent book, “Oh world of automata, the self-moving machines living things, and how it segues into later You Robot Saints!” explores the dreams and that imitate humans and animals and that poems where the human body acts like a fancies of creating robots that perform like were early incarnations of what we now call machine. Tell me how you started to make living creatures, including human beings. robots. I started writing about automaton that parallel. Frank spoke with Newcity about her book, monks and monkeys and talking heads. My and how robots tap into our deep fears, focus stretched backward to early Greek Your question immediately makes me think of mythology and perceptions of women and and Roman sources, and forward to android this line in “Jane Eyre”: “Do you think I am an the body. babies, robot Buddhist monks and robotic automaton?—a machine without feelings?” 39
LIT TOP 5 humans I have loved, but that such a litany is not uncommon, due to the prevalence of 1 CM Burroughs with violence against girls and women, the isolation Luther Hughes and Andrea and estrangement from families of many queer Applebee. Women and Children women, and the lack of prioritization of health First. The Chicago poet releases issues that solely affect women. We live in a her new collection, “Master culture that accepts that women’s lives are Suffering” and reads along with disposable: we constantly see girls and Luther Hughes and Andrea women die across all media. How many of Applebee in a virtual event. us first learn this from losing a girl we know, March 5, 7pm a girl in our town? “The Girlfriend Elegies” also connects to the elegies about another woman, 2 Michelangelo Sabatino my mother, who passed as I began this book. and Susan S. Benjamin. Interest in enduring artificial life is tied to the Chicago Public Library. The IIT reality that we cannot sustain natural life or professor and the architectural suspend grief. historian discuss their new book, “Modern in the Middle: Chicago When I got to the poem “Recognition,” Houses 1929-75,” with Neil Harris I kept thinking about how machines are of the University of Chicago and becoming more human, whether we’re art historian Terri J. Edelstein. looking at the study of haptics to simulate March 9, 6pm human touch, sex robots, or the fascina- tion we have with androids. What kind 3 Faisal Mohyuddin, of future do you think humans are building Mojdeh Stoakley, their way toward as we interact more Jameka Williams & Daniela And of course, before that, we have Descartes and more with machines? Jaime. Poetry Foundation. Two Chicago poets read with two to thank for the metaphor of living beings Most of my research for this book was recent students or collaborators as part of the Open Door as machines. Yet we live in a time in which looking backwards, rather than forwards, Reading Series. March 9, 7pm the metaphors of past thinkers and writers in part because I find the ongoing research 4 Luvvie Ajayi Jones. Women and Children First. are reshaped by the realities of twenty-first and progress with AI terrifying. So much of AwesomelyLuvvie’s best-selling creator Luvvie Ajayi Jones century technology: our bodies are both our public discourse about the future seems discusses her new book, “Professional Troublemaker: “like” machines, while sometimes being part The Fear-Fighter Manual” with machine, and we live in fear of being replaced locked up in reaction to novelty—that Brittany Packnett Cunningham. by machines. If our bodies are like machines, fascination that you mention that we all March 9, 7pm have—rather than consideration of the and can even be machines, what is it that 5 Gina Barreca and Nicole consequences of evolving AI and what it Hollander. The Book Cellar. continues to differentiate us, animate us? Editor Gina Barreca discusses means for our humanity. I find self-driving her new flash nonfiction anthology, “Fast Funny Women,” with one This book is also searing in terms of cars terrifying. What does it mean to have of its seventy-five contributors, Nicole Hollander. March 10, 7pm how the poems describe women’s “self-driving” androids and animals? Are we 40 bodies, the scrutiny around those bodies, as a society really asking these questions? and what happens when those bodies work differently than is widely expected. Please say something about the poetic Could you elaborate on that? line. How do you make decisions about arranging your lines? The concept of building a human opens the I create lines by ear: poems come to me in doors to so many questions about human part like song. The music of poetry matters to identity. As I touch on in my poem, “The me, and a big part of my poetry education Mechanical Eves,” male makers have often created women for domestic service as well as was listening. My early years as a poet were for sexual and religious purposes, perpetuating in Boston where, like in Chicago, you could go to a reading every night of the week if you the enduring virgin/whore trope. The ideals wanted. I even worked the door and lights at a of “woman” that these creations reflect, and reading series, soaking up the music beyond perpetuate, are ubiquitous and impact every area of women’s lives. The identity of roboticists, the words every Monday night. Of course, like you, I have a doctorate and have taught engineers and programmers will have an increasing impact on women’s lives in the future. poetry at the university level for many years, Ultimately, the figure of the robot is essential to so I have spent a lot of time thinking about the craft of the line. Reading is an internal both our theory and our realities as humans. listening that also trains the ear. And then The poem “The Girlfriend Elegies” stuck the ear does what it wants! with me because it is astounding how a litany of women disappear from the Are there any sci-fi or speculative Newcity MARCH 2021 works that informed this work? speaker’s life. Some of them simply disappeared. I’ve returned to the memory of another girl named Tara who was the I recommend Karel Capek’s 1920’s play same age as me, and she was murdered “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots),” which in my hometown. How did you begin to brought us our current use of the word robot: place this book among the other poems? it is the original “worker robots take over the world” narrative. And of course, there are All of the girls and women in this poem are E.T.A. Hoffman’s stories “The Sandman” dead. What drives me in this poem is not and “Automata.” Once you start looking, only the nature of the death of each of these automata pop up in a lot of unexpected places.
Music Photo: Peter Kuehl Time- Release Sunshine Boys Celebrate a New Album—One Year On By Craig Bechtel Sunshine Boys are here to bring a MARCH 2021 Newcity ray of sunshine to your ears. The trio, composed of Dag Juhlin on lead vocals and guitar, Freda Love Smith on drums and Jackie Schimmel on bass, released “Work and Love,” a stellar sophomore record in 2020 on legendary local label Pravda. This month, the album is scheduled to get its long-deferred record-release show— perhaps the first such show to also celebrate a record’s first anniversary. While Sunshine Boys is relatively new as an enterprise (their similarly excellent debut “Blue Music” was released in 2018, also via Pravda), their members have been around for much longer, not to say forever. Juhlin was running around Galesburg’s Knox College campus with his electric guitar, playing the café there on an early morning Flunk Day in the early 1990s as a member of power punks The Slugs. He was playing guitar on the night Lincoln Park’s Lounge Ax closed in January 2000, and while he’s also in Sonic45 (with baseball broadcaster Len Kasper) and “freewheeling” cover band Expo’76, his most high-profile gig has been as a member of Poi Dog Pondering. Juhlin 41
is also a radio veteran, most recently working propels a slideshow of childhood and grow- ing-up reminiscences on the kickoff cut, with Steve Dahl, and currently hosts “The Sunday Night Club” on Huntley Community “I Was Already Gone,” including numerous snapshots of summer, “Summertime Kids” Radio, WHRU-LP, 101.5 FM. reintroduces the stutter-step nostalgia of Drummer Freda Love Smith was part of a Smashing Pumpkins’ “1979” and the seeming- MUSIC TOP 5 trio that formed in 1986, Blake Babies (named ly limitless possibilities of summer, to wit, by Allen Ginsberg) featuring Juliana Hatfield “there’s nothing we can’t do.” The female 1 Beach Bunny. Blame Game. backing vocals reflect highlights from The Riding the still-surging and John Strohm. Hatfield embarked on a momentum of its 2020 full-length solo career later and Strohm and Love Smith Lemonheads’ apex, “It’s A Shame About debut, “Honeymoon,” Lili Trifilio’s Ray,” fitting, given that that band’s Evan power-pop project delivers a brash formed Antenna, and she’s subsequently and blazing new EP that confronts collaborated with Hatfield in Some Girls (with Dando was an early Blake Babies member toxic masculinity and male and his female foil on those cuts was none entitlement. Available now Heidi Gluck). Although Blake Babies broke other than Juliana Hatfield. 2 Origin of Animal. Confined up in the early 1990s, they’ve reunited off to Infinite Space. The restlessly ambitious big band’s fourth album and on (in 1999 and 2016). She’s also been was recorded by its various in the band Mysteries of Life and is the author “If you feel dizzy and down, if you’re now lost members in pandemic-dictated where you once were found” it’s just “The isolation, and the result has a of “Red Velvet Underground,” a memoir dazzling genre-hopping, exquisite- World Turning Round,” Sunshine Boys sing, corpse feel, with plenty of and cookbook published in 2015. Naturally, conceptual, tonal and textural and they celebrate “the remains of the day ideas. Available now classes she teaches now at Northwestern dissolving away,” becoming their most R.E.M.- 3 Sonus Umbra. A Sky Full in her position as a lecturer and advisor of Ghosts. The prog-rock like, on “Moonrise” which could be a lost ensemble’s latest is just looking for involve writing about food. an arena to fill; for now, your head outtake from “Murmur” or “Lifes Rich Pageant.” will have to do. But in an ongoing lockdown, this kind of expansive, Bassist Jackie Schimmel was in Brad Elvis’ “The critical lie is starting to sting,” Juhlin widescreen, high-concept, restlessly inventive music-making feels Big Hello and plays with Roberts’ band, especially liberating. Available now Justin Roberts & The Not Ready For Naptime sings on the cautionary “The Serpent In Spring,” in a more oblique commentary as 4 Cynthia Marchant. Heart Players (it’s a kid’s band). She’s also bassist Cracked Open Wide. The compared to “Schoolyard Bully,” and he folksinger-songwriter’s debut was for Tiny Bit of Giant’s Blood, a “glam-punk recorded right here in her hometown, continues that “the fall line divides the com- but everything else about it— heavy-rock product” from Tony Rogers and from its lyric grit to its rapturous mon ground, it’s just the same as the blame twang—tugs you instantly South. John Scholvin of The Good. Schimmel also Available now happens to be a Director of Conflicts, a fancy goes round and round.” He underscores the changing seasons by singing that “August is 5 Urban Idols. Revisited. title for a lawyer. The new EP by the late- freezing, December is warm, if you wanna nineties punk outfit is a set of “lost” tracks recorded in the fall of 2020, More important than Sunshine Boys’ collective speak out, you gotta fill out a form, meet the shortly before the band split up. CV is the music they make, and it’s solid, poppy new norm, where suspicion is king, the lion The tunes’ bravura energy and in winter, the serpent in spring.” The song intensity make this release far more rock that never rocks too hard or too soft. It’s than a time capsule. Available now concludes with the thought that “This is the never too alien to not be groovy and never 42 golden age of the meaningless word, and all too familiar to sound like received wisdom. the hatred gets so lovingly stirred, blurred to Sunshine Boys songs fit into three pockets: a boil, as reason takes wing, the lion in contemplations on life, advice on life and winter and the serpent in spring,” the chorus ominous warnings about life. Their songs are repeats and the rat-tat-tat rhythm stops rooted in love, but aren’t love songs, and they with a vigorous yet uneasy lurch. perform songs that should inspire change There’s talk of “winter waves” that “roll away” but aren’t protest songs. That’s not to say those themes don’t arise, but they’re framed and “dreaming of a distant daughter running into your arms on a summer day” on the in such oblique terms that they don’t stab ascending “Every Step,” and in “In Between you in the eye with the heart on the sleeve. Time” Juhlin greets someone with a “rained-on While “Blue Music” seemed to be a bunch of heart” that brings in “heavy air” with them, mostly successful attempts to find their way, about whom he says feels “like a wandering cloud in search of connection.” Just when “Work and Love” is a more confident and consistent version of Sunshine Boys, although you think Sunshine Boys had hit their quota they are without question the same band. The for songs of inspiration and motivation, they record leads off with a de rigueur song of inspi- land two more with winning aplomb. ration and motivation (to quote Michael Stipe Another unsung “song you’ll be closing with of R.E.M.) “I Was Already Gone” and follows tonight” on “Work and Love” is “Right Where with the single “Infinity Girl,” which echoes The Dukes of Stratosphear, XTC’s psychedelic You Need It,” set in the “Indian summer sun,” alter ego, whereas “Blue Music”’s “Caroline Yes” as “another highway’s flying by… giving it had channeled those U.K. post-punks’ original the old college try.” It’s clearly a song about being in a touring band, and Juhlin is arguing incarnation. “Don’t Keep It Inside” brings to mind highlight from the previous record, “Save to hang onto these memories, and as he Newcity MARCH 2021 It For A Windy Day,” another song of inspiration repeats the chorus, challenging the listener to “keep it right where you need it,” the rays and motivation, both of which espouse the theme of releasing your frustrations and worries of that “Indian summer sun” are reflected in and expressing them from internal problems to the backing vocals, baking in a Beach Boys vibe, with strings attached. external opportunities. There’s another recurrent theme on “Work Sunshine Boys’ record-release show for and Love” only hinted at on the debut, and “Work and Love” is scheduled for March 26 that’s pushing the pedals on cycles, seasonal, at Evanston SPACE, 1245 Chicago Avenue; circadian and otherwise. Juhlin’s soaring tenor it’s an all-ages show.
Stage Denise Yvette Serna Photo: Megan Kaminsky Filling Our When Strawdog Theatre contacted Denise knew they wanted movement, they wanted MARCH 2021 Newcity Containers Yvette Serna to direct a new show during the to survey residents, and work with Karissa pandemic, the company didn’t know what [Murrell Meyers, playwright] to anchor the Denise Yvette Serna the thing would be. For Serna, this was a big piece in monologue. They asked if this was Devises a Show About selling point. The final production, “How Do something I wanted to do and I said I’d love Chicago Life In Lockdown We Navigate Space?”, streaming March 15 to make interesting movement pieces. for Strawdog Theatre through April 18, is a devised performance incorporating movement, monologue, poetry, Tell me a little about the devising By Sharon Hoyer visual art and, of course, film to interpret the process and how you navigated it stories of Chicagoans living and moving during the pandemic. through a frenetic and claustrophobic year. We spoke with Serna about the making of It was different than usual because we were “Navigate,” and the stamina asked of artists working from a script. Karissa had taken and audiences a year into the pandemic. material from the surveys and put it into a devising text. I was thinking, how do we What interested you in directing work from this framework we have, and not this show? necessarily generating everything from the moment. It took a different collaboration When Strawdog approached me in the approach since we did keep coming back summer, they didn’t know what the piece to the text. Performers had options to deliver would become, which is exciting. They text verbatim or not. 43
Yuchi Chiu in Strawdog Theatre Company’s “How Do We Navigate Space?”/Photo: Kamille Dawkins Newcity MARCH 2021 STAGE TOP 5 Inclusivity and access are integral like that. How do we change the space of the to much of your work. How did these stage to have this depth? 1 Theatre for One: Here considerations factor in to this show? We Are. Court Theatre. Eight And what about language? Do you take micro-plays about our political and It’s important to consider ways people enter any different approaches to text in a cultural moment are presented by a piece. Also thinking beyond mobility and virtual setting? one actor for one audience member hearing or visual impairments. I’ve had the at a time. Through March 14 opportunity to direct a handful of other digital The virtual setting affects rhythm of the delivery. projects and play with audience stamina, We’ve taken different approaches, letting the 2 Midwest RAD Fest. performers’ stamina, and I knew it would be tempo of the dance affect the speech and the Wellspring/Cori Terry & important to have sonic identity to the piece. tempo of speech affect the dance. We played Dancers. The Kalamazoo-based People are watching plays differently on their with loops and layering; the elements are regional alternative dance festival computers—going from tab to tab, getting up braided together. goes virtual with livestreamed to grab something from the kitchen. The style performances, dance films and and spectacle of the show needed to come What is next for you? master classes by over 200 artists. through in sonic aspects. March 5-7 I’m fortunate to have an artistic process in What themes emerged from the surveys which to grieve and understand in a different 3 How Do We Navigate and the process of interpreting them? time. I understand my stamina is different. Space? Strawdog Theatre I used to be able to work on three productions Company. Drawn from surveys of It’s been interesting to see in our different at once and my CTA time was the transition Chicagoans about their lives in 2020, lives, however they’ve changed, the different between. The focus it takes to do it all this film-theater hybrid incorporates manifestations of seeking connection and the virtually and with spreadsheets, along with movement, music and visual art. emotional things it does to us when we can’t the repeated traumas, politically, socially… March 8-28 make that connection. This has been palpable It’s difficult to persist. I’ve been working with in the art we make: feelings of isolation, The West Side Show Room in Rockford on 4 Reckless. Studebaker hibernation, being underwater. Talking about equity, diversity and inclusion workshops. I’m Theater. Ballet 5:8 tells the how our bodies take up space, how we going to focus my time on executing those story of eighth-century prophet expand and contract to fit the space. And courses well. I have multiple international Hosea and his wife Gomer to shed how we respond to things in nature. One residencies that have been deferred. Until light on modern-day sex trafficking. of the performers in our ensemble had the then I’m focusing on my anti-racism work. Livestreamed and performed live for experience of being incredibly high-risk and a limited audience. March 13 hasn’t really left her space. And that perspec- Is there anything else you’d like tive—making that potent and poetic, that her to mention? 5 Where Did We Sit on the experience in that space was a character. Bus? Victory Gardens Theater. This project was a great opportunity to bring Playwright and actor Brian Quijada’s How do you, as a theater director, together different types of artists we wouldn’t award-winning one-man show uses approach that space of a home screen? have if we had done a stage show. It’s a music, spoken word and live looping beautiful ephemeral thing happening now. to look at what it means to be a With our movement director, a lot of the Bringing Chicago actors together with noise Latino in America. Through March 7 creation we were doing was direct interpreta- musicians, with movement artists, with visual tion of words and moments in the text artists—we’ve brought together such an 44 and applying to them the Laban Method of interesting ensemble and it’s special because movement pedagogy. Choreographing for we’re not in the theater. Zoom and making our alphabet, we played in the frame and it became more about depth. “How Do We Navigate Space?” at Strawdog When people do alley theater, like a model Theatre Company, streams daily March 15-April runway, it’s a very difficult stage—it’s almost 18. $15 or pay-what-you-can. strawdog.org.
Charline von Heyl, “New Paintings” installation view. Courtesy Corbett vs. Dempsey eviews 45 MARCH 2021 Newcity
Review Art In the Middle of a Dream New Performance and Video Works Streaming Via MCA’s The Dreamscape Newcity MARCH 2021 After the early months of the pandemic by artists like Darling “Shear” Squire Most engaging were three streamed when it hurt to imagine work produced dancing across different landscapes premieres that took place during the with passion and pain hanging unseen and nighttime Chicago, where her event. In the first, Lise Haller Bag- on gallery walls or sitting in crates grace and concentrated moves make gesen’s “refuseniks at the museum,” in eerily abandoned galleries, it was a stunning silhouette against the city two dancers performed three distinct refreshing when the MCA was able to lights. Also included in the gallery pieces collaged together into one video. reopen and launch “The Long Dream.” were new works by Derrick Woods- Each of the three pieces had a signifi- Even more invigorating was the fact Morrow, Joanna Furnans and Derek cant vibe and signaled a solemn that the exhibition was made up of McPhatter, whose video demo stars beginning, a chaotic middle and an works by a large swath of Chicago Alexa Grae as Dayton MacNamara exuberant end. In each of the perfor- based-artists, many of color, differently Black holding court with a microphone mances the dancers wore Baggesen’s abled and/or LGBTQ+, whose con- Refuseniks, flowing robes made of tributions were intended to reflect and decked out in body paint and a colorful and pattern-heavy fabrics the changes and injustices the pan- veil, sometimes mouthing the words, meant to act as a safe haven from demic and the murder of George Floyd sometimes simply standing, holding the loaded politics of a situation. The revealed. The show opened in Novem- attention, to the sound and lyrics of performers manipulated them as they ber, just as the Midwest’s COVID case the track “Dare to Dream.” moved. They wrapped and draped numbers skyrocketed, and shut down them over their faces, and in the soon after. New performative and video While guests were invited to explore second piece, bound together in one works set to be released near the the video gallery on their own, Zoom garment made for two, moved against original end date of the show were breakout rooms played host to DJ each other and their connected middle sets by Sadie Woods and Ayana seam. There was a feeling of tension relegated to the virtual world and prem- Contreras who gave personal and and almost violence between the two iered on January 16 as part of the historical insight into each track played. dancers in this section—they spun museum’s program “The Dreamscape.” There were talk-back “roulette” ses- each other around, dragged each other, sions, where “Long Dream” artists like put each other into vulnerable posi- The virtual event was vast and carried Andres L. Hernandez shared plans for tions—prone on the floor, or hands up with it the sense of dream as audience creating scores for self-care, Andy in the air. That tension remained even members could be immediately Slater talked about the importance of through what could be read as more transported to one of several dynamic inclusion for artists of differently abled tender gestures—is one performer spaces. A video gallery featured work bodies, and Santiago X advocated for holding the other a signal of care or a the creation of a new, more accurate false, manipulating act of deceit and top: and inclusive collective memory. power? The dance that dominated Lise Haller Baggesen, “refuseniks at the the end is one of more freedom, the museum,” 2020. Digital video (color, sound), performers moving separately again 32 minutes, 55 seconds/Courtesy of the artist. with wide gestural motions. The above: moments of interaction between the Derek McPhatter, “Dare to Dream (Demo two dancers were more collaborative Video),” 2020. Digital video (color, sound), here, supportive, caring. They ended 5 minutes, 18 seconds/Courtesy of the artist. by holding each other on the floor. The performance was staged between the museum’s two second-floor galleries and the Commons, a space conceived of for bustling activity as a background. And even though the space was empty of guests, it was comforting to see that work was still being made. Along with the dancers, several videographers, including one who seemed almost a part of the dance, in pursuit of the performers with a handheld camera, were visible, as was the group glow in the dark flowers, 46
Charline von Heyl, Reviews “New Paintings” installation view. Courtesy Corbett vs. Dempsey who provided a soundtrack of driving So much happened over these four art events to continue to stay, at MARCH 2021 Newcity distorted guitars and ethereal female hours, and it was impossible to least in part, in a virtual realm, where voices. All wore Baggesen’s Refuseniks. experience it all, or explain everything opportunities for engagement are here with complete accuracy. As I tried boundless, and work and dialogues The premier of Selina Trepp’s “I Work to get everything down, I felt what I are more accessible. It is imperative With What I Have” also indicated the imagine a mind does in the middle of that the force of these brilliant Chicago ongoing life of art, in museums, in a dream as it tries to make sense of artists stay at the front of all our minds, studios, on stages. Trepp’s piece was all the elements thrown its way. and that large institutions in the city like a mesmerizing thirty-minute flow of the MCA continue to make space for shapes cut from various materials, Despite the sometimes overwhelming their work. But only advocating for layers of paint and mirrored boxes quality of the event, it was moving to these voices and their calls for justice, moving together and apart in surrealis- be in multiple rooms that celebrated equity and accessibility on a forward- tic happenstance. The changing the work of so many Chicago artists. facing platform of exhibitions and compositions and patterns were It was impressive too how the museum programming is not enough for the accompanied by a string-and-wind- made so much accessible in the virtual MCA to fulfill their mission. In order instrument ensemble. As part of the realm. And yet, as laudable as this to succeed, to remain relevant, it’s roulette talk that followed the premiere, endeavor may be, there’s a storm cloud imperative that they advocate on Trepp shared her desire to explore the hanging over the MCA now. As I was behalf of the voices of all. (Holly Warren) relationship between sound and the writing this piece, late as always, the visual, improv and composition, how museum announced a round of layoffs. Videos and performances are one fuels the other, and how each Add that news to the still unanswered available to view through May 2 at gives the work life. letter from frontline workers concerned vimeo.com/showcase/7682080. about questionable safety conditions In addition to these two performative to be put in place upon the museum’s Curiously Confounding premiers was the work “Como lo reopening, and a visitor can’t help but A Review of Charline von Heyl celeste sitiado (Like the heavens feel misled. The announcement is a at Corbett vs. Dempsey besieged)” by Eduardo F. Rosario, contradiction to the spirit of “The a haunting two-channel video featur- Dreamscape,” where the honoring of If the thrust of contemporary painting ing images of broken concrete with unheard voices was at the fore. It’s still has something that resembles a exposed rebar, rock nearly submerged impossible to feel entirely heartened cutting edge, then Charline von Heyl in water, a tropical landscape under by the event given the knowledge is unquestionably on the tip of the a sky about to storm, and a cell phone that another equally important group spear. For over a quarter century, the scrolling through microfilm articles of arts laborers is now without work, German-born artist has pursued an about arrests and uprisings. The and having been handed NDAs, have idiosyncratic approach to image- accompanying soundtrack with noises no voices with which to be heard. making that prioritizes difference and of what sounded like buildings crash- repetition, chromatic subtlety fused ing down, techno beats and horn At the end of each “Dreamscape” to outlandish hues and spontaneous tracks that would belong in a detective roulette session, the conversation gestures dappled with refined marks. murder mystery. All these elements moderators asked the audience Like a classic composition by jazz created an uneasy and abstract what they would take away from the legend John Coltrane, the artist’s narrative of traumatic events hollering discussion. For the event overall that paintings are liable to move in both to be exposed. I came out with a refreshed desire for directions at once. 47
Review Von Heyl’s latest exhibition (her third A searing, lemon-yellow synthesis lie is and why, we find that a few characters know the lie and tell it at with Corbett vs. Dempsey) is a smol- of flatly depicted hands that become different times, for good and bad reasons, making family dynamics fray dering, twelve-cut cross-section of abstract marks, the painting is set or revamp. To quote the main character, “reflecting on these slights years later what makes her work curiously on top of the remnants of a fundamen- seemed small and petty. There is no fairness scale that could right the confounding and at the same time, tally different work. The pentimenti wrongs from childhood.” so eminently satisfying. materialize slowly, putting the brakes With relationships crossing racial and economic lines you might think you are on a high-key painting that otherwise reading a romance novel, wrapped in Black women’s fiction or a camouflaged It’s been suggested that von Heyl is an moves at breakneck speeds. thriller. It is none of these, but a mix of all these styles, making a satisfying read artist without a style. Indeed, a viewer for a potentially wide swath of people. enchanted by the frenetic orange-red These rapid shifts and peculiar juxtapo- strokes and Hofmann-esque gray slabs sitions are ultimately what’s best about It’s Nancy Johnson’s debut novel, in “Vel” could be forgiven for concluding von Heyl’s paintings. Their ability to but we’ve heard her voice anonymously transcend the cultural priorities of the in the past decade through her writing that the candyland color and still-life for network television, where she has imagery in “Bog-Face” belong to wholly moment (superficiality, momentary been nominated for two Emmys. (She’s pleasure and rapid consumption) while won numerous Associated Press separate artists. But the common and Society of Professional Journalists threads that weave her oeuvre together undeniably being a part of the discon- awards as well.) Born and raised on the are best considered in terms of attitude tinuous zeitgeist that’s given rise to city’s South Side, educated at North- and approach, rather than an aestheti- them, is unmatched among her peers. western University and the University “New Paintings” demands multiple of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this will cally homogenous end product. not be the only book we get from her, viewings. (Alan Pocaro) and hurray for that. (L.D. Barnes) Von Heyl’s work is frequently funny, infused with irony (absent cynicism) “New Paintings,” through and almost always surprising. There’s March 13 at Corbett vs. Dempsey, an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink 2156 West Fulton. strategy that freely mixes methods Litand mediums permeating the paintings on display. It’s an approach that can be traced back to European avant- garde artists such as Asger Jorn, Unraveling the Truth A Review of The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson The intrigue starts at the title. Lies The Kindest Lie by Nancy Johnson, are, by their nature, used to deceive, HarperCollins, 336 pages to cheat, to hoodwink. Therefore, how An Artistic Mind can a lie be the kindest thing? This is A Review of Riva Lehrer’s what forms the intriguing structure Golem Girl of the book. How can things so diametrically opposed coexist without It’s harrowing and heartbreaking, destroying the people whose lives that they touch? With mystery writer’s reading Chicago artist Riva Lehrer’s skill, Nancy Johnson’s sensitive telling memoir “Golem Girl,” when she describes the position of the medical of racial dynamics, sexual liaisons, generational differences and parenting community of her childhood at a time when bioethicist Peter Singer was styles intersperse themselves into advocating to let sufferers of spina what seems like a family saga in bifida simply “die at birth.” Lehrer, “The Kindest Lie.” born with spina bifida myelomeningo- Johnson breaks the rules for that cele (SBMM, or MM), goes on to genre of writing. This is not a telling describe the disease in detail, inter- of a rich family’s attempt at building twined against the background of a dynasty or a woefully dysfunctional her Jewish parents Carole and Jerry, family struggling to survive. This is a a war veteran wounded fighting the Black family based in a small Indiana Nazis at Cherbourg. town. It is a place where Black and From the beginning, what Lehrer white have lived side-by-side but not effortlessly and so adroitly depicts is together for generations because a a life lived in some degree of isolation factory provided jobs enough to give good lives to all. Now, with the closing from the non-disabled world that cuts a streak of void through the book, from of the factory, people have plunged her earliest days as a child at the Martin Kippenberger and Sigmar Polke. from middle-class comfort into the But in von Heyl’s hands, the results abject poverty of many Rust Belt towns. Randall J. Condon, formerly the Newcity MARCH 2021 are more playful than political. Ducks, Cincinnati School for Crippled Children, rabbits and disembodied eyes abound. In opposition to the factory burg, the story starts in Chicago, with a young, “three stories of cream-yellow stucco Technically, von Heyl thinks like a successful upper-middle-class married that combined modernist simplicity with printmaker. Despite their diversity, her couple, whose connection to the town an unhinged level of ornamentation.” most commanding compositions and A haven where they taught a standard the spaces they create are almost is the wife’s family. always realized in terms of layering. academic education to those roughly Case in point: “Don’t Think It Hasn’t Been Lovely Because It Hasn’t Been.” On the night that Barack Obama is three-hundred attendees, Lehrer found elected president, fissures in the friends, community and an acceptance marriage show that are related to the that laid the foundation for the elasticity lie. With layer after layer of what the she’d need to cope. 48
In an era when the medical community It’s important not to reduce this brilliant, Relationships are the ballast in many Reviews moving memoir of an artistic mind of these stories. The interactions was happy doling out narcotics to between mother and daughter, hus- coming to its own terms with the band and wife, husband and neighbor, women as painkillers, when prescrip- teacher and student, driver and tions are used as “crash test dummies,” medical world and its discontents but, hitchhiker tell us, in nuanced portraits, with women left to live out the effects, as with many of Lehrer’s many artworks more about the subject than those Lehrer depicts her mother’s deepening scattered as illustration throughout the people that inhabit their spheres. What struggle with addiction that adds to the book, to know that it seeks to reveal the do our decisions say about who we “monster” she refers to herself as in the are? How does our interactions with family, friends and lovers reflect upon book’s opening chapter, with her own our true personas? experience drawing back the curtain on The title, “Responsible Adults,” comes from a police officer sorting out the a future world that would come to recog- circumstances of the two children, nize its own cruel shortcomings too late. (Michael Workman) Golem Girl by Riva Lehrer, One World, 424 pages Life Is Hard A Review of Patricia McNair’s Responsible Adults stressors of an already fraying marriage. Spoiler alert: the adults in Patricia who have managed, day after day MARCH 2021 Newcity In the midst of this, in her sophomore McNair’s new short stories aren’t all after day, to survive on their own, year, at the age of fifteen, she doubles that responsible. The ironic title comes hammered with the realization that over one day in pain from a hemorrhag- from one of the eighteen excellent ultimately living is up to them, promises ing uterine cyst, and the familiar, stories in her collection. Two children, of safety or protection a fairytale told heart-wrenching machinery of systemic a brother and a sister, awake to the to ease that harsh reality. misogyny kicks in and she wakes up reality that their guardians, a mother one day to realize she’s undergone a and hapless boyfriend, are gone, and Ironically, it is the children, in many forced sterilization. their rusted-out clunker parked in the of these stories, that play a parental woods their indefinite home. The story role, often forced into positions of Lehrer enumerates the history of of this abandonment does not have a premature responsibility. In “My involuntary sterilization of disabled happy ending, but neither is it tragic, Mother’s Daughter,” the narrator, women, “the most famous example and so fittingly represents the collec- a child, serves as confidante and [being] that of Carrie Buck, plaintiff in tion’s sensibility and strength. There is adviser to a mother desperately trying the Supreme Court case Buck v. Bell. tenderness beneath so much of this to lasso a proper boyfriend. In “Sal- Carrie Elizabeth Buck was a poor girl jagged-edged world’s surface, and a vage,” the children serve as co-conspir- from Charlottesville, Virginia, who was brand of resilience that is less about ators to a soon-to-be-gone father’s raped and impregnated by a member winning gold medals and more about quirky hobby. In “What Girls Want,” of her foster family when she was remaining upright. Take the title story, the teenaged daughter teaches a seventeen. That family avoided in which the adolescent narrator says, bumbling, alcoholic father empathy. prosecution by committing Carrie Buck “It was day but there was dark out the to the Virginia State Colony for Epilep- windows, shadows and black places. The stories do not operate on a tics and the Feebleminded, at which The woman police turned up the heat. continuum. A story like “A Good she was declared incompetent to raise I felt the warm on my face, like Toby’s Reader,” while it does explore notions her baby. While in the Virginia State breath at night, only more, and it Colony, Buck was sterilized against her smelled dry and like metal, not like Toby, will, under the Racial Integrity Law of moist, animal.” McNair’s prose here, 1924, a eugenics program carried out as throughout the collection, sings by the State of Virginia.” not in a lament but more a gospel, a gospel of lives sacred no matter what. In some sense, Lehrer goes on to be the fighter her father once was here, Life is hard like that in these stories. calling out a cruel history in American It is hard in ways inherited, and hard life that resonates with and falls just in ways self-inflicted, and hard in ways short of the Aktion T4 program under merely unlucky. This adversity manifests Nazism, where long before the gas itself as a baseline rather than a chambers, artists, LGBTQ people, conclusion, as in “The Truth is Not disabled children, and others were Much Good,” when the narrator forced to undergo a program of mass matter-of-factly tells us, “We didn’t murder by involuntary euthanasia to have much. Clean underwear, tooth- rid society of those members deter- brushes. And now beer, tequila, mined mere “dead weight.” toothpaste. A plastic bag. My purse.” “Responsible Adults” is a collection in which each story builds upon the last, not in terms of plot or character but in terms of milieu. It’s a world of cigarette smoke and discarded fast-food wrappers, but also kittens and Lucky Charms, “handmade lives” that always, or almost always keep trying. 49
Review of family and caregiving, stands alone previous musical output as a member as a funny, erotic tale of release during of Boston’s post-punk outfit Carnal a stressful time. “Maria Concepción” is Garage, includes the song “State Of a magical story of a pastor and a needy Shock,” which was featured in 1992’s immigrant in which the poor ultimately science-fiction movie “The Lawn- offers as much to the rich as vice versa. mower Man.” After the door closed In “Regarding Alix,” a teacher finds the on Carnal Garage, Vaus moved to Los Angeles, worked at a film outcast more interesting and enlight- ened than the well-adjusted, and still is production company, then worked in L.A. and Boston, with film credits unable to influence her fate. including writing and directing the The characters in these uncommonly biographical documentary, “Siegfried good stories often understand their and Roy”(1999), acting in Brad reality—and their lousy odds—even Anderson ‘s “The Darien Gap”(1996), as they try to defeat it. co-writing Anderson’s “Next Stop Wonderland”(1998) and acting in panied by a brunette bathing beauty in a bikini on a beach in black and There are so many great titles in this “Temptation”(2003) with Annette O’Toole white. The other photos, paintings and artworks are on a gradient of literalness collection, such as “Things You Know and Elisabeth Moss. That film rekindled related to their track number, a few But Would Rather Not,” that the table his interest in playing music, and he highly abstract (rope is pictured while of contents is a harbinger of the quality began writing the psychedelic songs Vaus sings “a rope is tied to your Lyric of the stories to come. McNair, an asso- that appeared on his first solo record, Bride”) and a number that relates to 2010’s “The Floating Celebration,” sexuality in detailed if historical-artistic ciate professor in the English and fashion. There’s religious iconography Creative Writing Department of Colum- which was recorded in Washington at work as well, including a depiction of bia College Chicago, displays superb D.C. with musician-producer-Night Jesus’ crucifixion juxtaposed with the craftsmanship, including a finely honed World label head Philip Stevenson. closer “The Rest In Peace,” and the creation of Eve accompanying the first talent for plotting, rhythm, dialogue Vaus calls Chicago home now, and single, “I Love Her Everywhere.” and characterization, that makes Reality Anonymous, his latest vehicle, Vaus told antiMusic that the single was written for and dedicated to his these stories surge with emotion and wife, Kim, and he credits Alexx Magic resonate with each other, a thoughtful is credited as a band—with Stevenson (Alex Rowney) of Soft Candy for adding examination of lives wasted or faltering, again producing as well as providing keyboards “that really helped elevate bass and other instrumentation, Blase and capture the vibe I was going after.” but not yet done. (Donald G. Evans) The kaleidoscopic flower-power Settecase on drums and percussion homage to San Francisco psychedelia and free love in the accompanying Responsible Adults by Patricia McNair, and Vaus writing the songs, singing and music video make clear the headspace playing guitar. His occasionally off-key that Reality Anonymous are attempting Cornerstone Press, 200 pages to create on “The Ghost Host, Vol. 1,” vocals are never so off-putting that their and it’s an enjoyable trip across the extensive catalogue of cuts. McNair reads from and discusses charms are offset by the stellar lyrical In addition to Alexx Magic, the album “Responsible Adults” March 28, 6pm, material, and the rich layers of instru- features contributions from Rob Myers of Thievery Corporation, Kenthany at virtual Sunday Salon and May 12 mentation and throwback sounds Redmond, known for his Infrared Quintet and Beau Barry of his name- at a Chicago Public Library virtual transport us to a groovy sixties cellar, sake trio. Basic tracks were cut with Blase Settecase at Mystery Street event celebrating Short Story Month. with an off-kilter, pre-leather trousers Studios in sessions overseen by Joe Tessone, mixed by producer Stevenson Jim Morrison at the mic. Given that at Rat City in Chicago and mastered by Bob Olhsson in Nashville. Music Morrison died at twenty-seven and Vaus is years past that cursed age, But it’s clear that Vaus is the proverbial brainchild, writing, singing and playing it’s a compliment to hear a young guitar. And while his collaborators add a delightful depth to the sound, if the Psychedelicacy Lizard King, and not a bloated songs weren’t stellar, the exercise would fall flat. Thankfully, just as Vaus A Review of Reality Anonymous’ Komodo dragon, in his vocals. is a gifted screenwriter, he’s also writing songs that create pictures in “The Ghost Host, Vol. 1” Vaus has cited The Doors as an the mind just as eloquently. I can only hope that Volume Two of “The Ghost You unlock Volume One of “The Ghost inspiration, along with Love and The Host” will be a similarly enjoyable Music Machine, and I can hear a journey through his particular dimen- Host” with the key of imagination. sion of time and space. (Craig Bechtel) healthy dose of the mellower early Beyond it is another dimension— Pink Floyd coursing throughout a dimension of sound, a dimension these sixteen sonic slices of psyche- of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re delic superness. moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. While I’m not normally an advocate You’ve just crossed over into Reality of judging a record by its cover, it Anonymous. With apologies to Rod Serling, who died in 1975 and thus is would be a fun experiment to have someone listen to each song tabula unavailable to provide comment on this record, I like to think this psyche- rasa, accompanied by only the sixteen pictures featured on the cover art. delic exploration would fit perfectly within “The Twilight Zone.” While I can Perhaps the most literal connections Newcity MARCH 2021 are found with “Orange Explosion,” hear Serling introducing “The Ghost Host, Vol. 1,” it’s impossible to imagine which features a picture of a Donald Trump piñata juxtaposed with a it in old-school black-and-white; this music can only be imagined in brilliant, baseball bat, making its subject matter crystal-clear, and “Happy Moments,” not-so-secret colors. on which he rhymes that “water Given the cinematic ambience and spreads cerulean” and “she’s bronzed descriptive imagery on the album, it’s like cinnamon,” pondering on the no surprise that Lyn Vaus is a veteran choruses “what a long, strange trip” it’s screenwriter and occasional actor. His been (bringing up The Dead), accom- 50
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