Music from Purim to the Ides of Marchon March 7, 2020 at 5:48 pm

Acoustic Music in Chicago

Music from Purim to the Ides of March

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Music from Purim to the Ides of Marchon March 7, 2020 at 5:48 pm Read More »

Jackie Taylor’s Legend The Musical: A Civil Rights Movement, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrowon March 7, 2020 at 6:35 pm

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Jackie Taylor’s Legend The Musical: A Civil Rights Movement, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Jackie Taylor’s Legend The Musical: A Civil Rights Movement, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrowon March 7, 2020 at 6:35 pm Read More »

Chicago Bears: Predicting every important quarterback decisionon March 7, 2020 at 12:00 pm

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Chicago Bears (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)

This offseason, we will see the most quarterback movement in recent memory. Where do the Chicago Bears come into play?

Two years ago, general manager Ryan Pace made one of the biggest draft mistakes in Chicago Bears history — and that’s saying something. The Bears have had some awful picks in their long history, but Mitchell Trubisky was an all-time blunder.

Many of you Bears fans reading have already screamed at me through your screen, and that’s O.K. But, the reality is, Trubisky won’t lead this team to a Super Bowl, no matter how stacked the roster is around him.

With that in mind, let’s get ready for one of the craziest NFL offseasons we have ever seen. This year, quarterbacks are about to move around more than we’ve seen in quite some time. There are upwards of a dozen notable quarterbacks who could be changing locations over the next few weeks.

That’s unheard of. Buckle up.

Pace assuredly has his work cut out for him this year. The Bears are a team which should have Super Bowl aspirations, even though they severely underachieved last year. The pieces are there. Chicago can be ready — if they had the right quarterback.

All of the quarterbacks getting ready to move around will definitely affect the Bears in one way or another. Just one slight change in the dominoes, and Chicago’s next quarterback could be a completely different guy.

So, who goes where? Which quarterbacks get traded? Where do the free agents land? In the following paragraphs, I give it my best attempt to predict which names fall where. Let’s get to it.

Next: QB Trade Targets

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Chicago Blackhawks: About as bad of a loss as you can haveon March 7, 2020 at 1:00 pm

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – JANUARY 05: Corey Crawford #50 of the Chicago Blackhawks minds the net against the Detroit Red Wings at the United Center on January 05, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

The Chicago Blackhawks had a horrible loss to the Detroit Red Wings that might leave a mark when you look back at this season.

The Chicago Blackhawks had some circumstances that made last night a little bit more difficult than other nights. A travel issue caused them to get into Detroit later than expected. Then, it came out that Adam Boqvist would miss the game after leaving warmups early. It was a wrist injury that caused him to miss the game. All of this is less than ideal, but there are no excuses in the NHL.

It is even worse when you evaluate their opponent. The Detroit Red Wings were 15-48-5 with 35 standings points going into the game. They had a -119 goal differential going into the game and are being viewed as one of the worst teams in NHL history. It had been over two weeks since the last time the Red Wings won a game. The Blackhawks losing to them 2-1 is devastating, regardless of the unforeseen circumstances.

The Blackhawks had a chance to keep pace in terms of points below the playoff line. When this season is over, if they only miss the playoffs by a few points, this is going to be one of those games that you look back on as a missed opportunity. They have to win games against teams they are much better than in order to be a playoff team this year.

Another thing to look at was the special teams. That has been one of the stories all season long. Detroit was 1 for 2 on the power play while the Hawks went 0 for 3. The Red Wings have the second-worst penalty kill in the league and the Hawks couldn’t cash in on a single one. Going into next season, that has to be one of the biggest issues that are addressed.

The Blackhawks are going from the worst team in the league . to the second-best based on standings points. It is a tough turnaround but the defending Stanley Cup Champion St. Louis Blues will be at the United Center to take on the Blackhawks. They are capable of beating the Blues but they are going to need to create a lot more energy than they did against the Red Wings. The Blues do everything right when they are on their game so they are going to need to be much better.

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Cubs’ Kris Bryant prefers baby talk over baseball as he returns home for weekendon March 7, 2020 at 6:40 am

LAS VEGAS — Kris Bryant’s dad, Mike, wasn’t only a professional baseball player who taught his sons how to hit. He also played guitar for a band he and his friends started, called Looking Back, which was good enough to get paid gigs around town.

“His buddies still come to Vegas once or twice a year and, in our [batting] cage, just blast the music,” Kris said.

Mike doesn’t have the same long rock-star hair that he used to. But the old man can still play a little.

“Don’t tell him I said it,” Kris said, “but he’s pretty good.”

Maybe that’s where the Cubs’ All-Star third baseman got the idea for the plans he keeps telling his wife, Jess, he has for their son, who’s due in a few weeks.

“I’ve always told her my kid’s not going to play baseball; he’s going to be a rock star,” Bryant said.

Regardless, it has been clear since spring training started that the biggest thing on Bryant’s mind these days is family, no matter how many trade rumors, grievances or annoying Cubs-at-crossroads questions he gets from the media.

Which makes this weekend’s annual trip home to Las Vegas with the Cubs his most anticipated of the six he has taken with them.

“Oh, yeah. I don’t even care about the baseball games,” he said. “I’m excited to go check out what his chubby cheeks look like.”

When the Cubs finish their two-game series against the Reds on Sunday, Bryant will stay home for an ultrasound appointment Tuesday before rejoining the team.

“I think this is really what I’ve been put on this earth to do, is to be a dad,” Bryant told the Marquee Sports Network during a recent game broadcast.

“He’s excited. Shoot, I’m excited for him,” teammate and pal Anthony Rizzo said.

Bryant has said that baby plans and appointments helped distract him in an offseason filled with trade talks. His status as a Cub seems settled for now, and if the 2016 National League MVP is spending any time wondering what might happen at the trade deadline if the team gets off to a rough start, you wouldn’t know it.

His thoughts are on April 7, the tentative birth day, and sometimes even on how to keep him from taking baseball seriously, like his pop.

No baseball for Kris Bryant’s kid?

“It’s kind of hard to chase what your dad has done,” he said. “We won the World Series after 108 years, and [I] won MVP in the same year. He’ll always have to look at that. At the same time, I know there’s going to be people around me, my family, who would love to see him out there on the tee-ball field running the bases backward, like I did my first game.”

Huh?

“My first game, my first hit, I hit the ball and ran to third,” he said. “There’s going to be plenty of that. It’s more of I just want to put him in the best position to succeed.”

If for no other reason than Grandpa Mike is a baseball instructor with a batting school, the little guy is almost certain to play.

“I know it’s going to happen,” Kris said. “It’s just more of a protective thing. Because I know how hard I am on myself and how I’m my own worst critic. It’s like, ‘Nobody should have to go through that.’ But he probably will.

“I’ll teach him how to be less of a critic.”

And let him play golf. Piano. Guitar. Anything and everything to allow him to find his own passion and identity.

No Kris Jr. tag, either.

“The only thing I want in him is to have my initials,” Kris said. “So he’s going to be a ‘KB.’ That’s all I can really say right now.”

“I thought he told me his name was ‘Tony,’ ” Rizzo said. “No?”

Rizzo has a dog named Kevin.

“Not Kevin,” Bryant said. “We’ll stick with Kevin as a dog — no offense to any Kevins out there.”

Meanwhile, about that rock-star plan. Imagine Mike and little KB starting their own band someday.

“No,” Kris said flatly, before smiling. “Stop giving ideas.”

They could call it Looking Ahead.

“Ha … Looking Ahead …”

Cubs’ Kris Bryant prefers baby talk over baseball as he returns home for weekendon March 7, 2020 at 6:40 am Read More »

Blood Orange brings his intimate R&B pop indoorson March 6, 2020 at 9:22 pm

Dev Hynes, who makes pop and R&B as Blood Orange, has a gift for synthesis that’s made him a favorite collaborator of many cross-genre stars in the past decade, including Mac Miller, Solange, and FKA Twigs. The London-born, New York-based auteur has visited Chicago multiple times in recent years, notably appearing at the Pitchfork festival in 2018 and opening for Florence & the Machine at Northerly Island the following summer, but while Hynes and his ensemble sound great in sunlit venues, a theater might suit the intimacy of his music better. Blood Orange unites decades of Black pop styles with airy vocals and lyrics about longing and identity, with both the house-adjacent dance beat of “Baby Florence (Figure)” and the dark, Three 6 Mafia-indebted thump of “Gold Teeth.” If the most recent Blood Orange release, 2019’s Angel’s Pulse (Domino), feels slight compared to its predecessors, it’s by design: Hynes described it as a “mixtape” composed as an epilogue to 2018’s lushly arranged Negro Swan, named one of the best albums of that year by Pitchfork, Spin, Complex, and others. The songs on Angel’s Pulse sometimes stop abruptly or build around a single instrumental loop–they’re closer to sketches, unlike previous fully realized opuses, but the image is still clear and ready to be colored in by the live band. On “Dark & Handsome” Hynes sings over warm keys and snapping drums: “Nothing lasts forever and I told you / Everything you need to know that’s not true.” Even when he’s trying to end a relationship, Hynes can’t hide his yearning for more connection. It’s music for dancing in the dark, in a loved one’s bedroom, or in the timeless space of a century-old theater. v

Blood Orange brings his intimate R&B pop indoorson March 6, 2020 at 9:22 pm Read More »

Chicago’s Plague of Carcosa make dense, cosmic-horror doomon March 6, 2020 at 9:28 pm

Carcosa is a mysterious fictional city first named by author Ambrose Bierce in 1886 and later alluded to in Robert W. Chambers’s influential and evocative King in Yellow stories. As the ancient and possibly cursed capital of an alien place that’s impossible to pinpoint on earthly maps, it’s been incorporated into the works of H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, and other writers of weird fiction–the name even appeared in season one of True Detective. This cosmic-horror tradition is a rich vein to mine, and Chicago band Plague of Carcosa cling to it loyally. Currently an instrumental duo of drummer Alexander Adams and guitarist and bassist Eric Zann (a pseudonym from a Lovecraft story), the band debuted in 2016 with The Color Out of Space, two long tracks of harrowingly dense drone-doom plus (because why not?) a gnarly “bonus track” that disembowels “The Rains of Castamere” from Game of Thrones. They followed it up later that year with Ritual I, consisting of one live-recorded track nearly an hour long, and then with two singles, 2017’s “Hastur” and 2018’s “Rats in the Walls.” Plague of Carcosa’s latest release, Ocean Is More Ancient Than the Mountains (Sludgelord), is divided into two long cuts, “The Crawling Chaos” and “Madness at Sea,” that recall the overboiling heaviness of Sunn O))), Khanate, and Chicago’s Bongripper (whose guitarist Dennis Pleckham mastered the two latest Plague outings). It has to be acknowledged that Lovecraft’s racism was a horror in its own right, but thankfully Plague of Carcosa don’t share his views on that front. In October the band were added to an up-and-coming website of “Hatred-Free Music Lists” called FashFree–and they posted to Facebook that they’re pleased to be included. v

Chicago’s Plague of Carcosa make dense, cosmic-horror doomon March 6, 2020 at 9:28 pm Read More »

Workaholic superstar DJ Steve Aoki exudes optimism at every turnon March 6, 2020 at 9:43 pm

Is there any pop star with a career like Steve Aoki’s? How many other sons of business magnates got into hardcore in the 90s, wrote for radical punk zine Heartattack, led a screamo band that released a split with Japanese posthardcore legends Envy, and ran a DIY space that hosted the likes of Jimmy Eat World, Planes Mistaken for Stars, and Atom & His Package? How many launched a punk label in the 2000s that went on to release music by some of indie rock’s finest (the Dim Mak catalog includes Bloc Party and the Gossip) while carving out a niche as one of the most beloved DJs in the Los Angeles nightlife scene? How many crowd surfed on inflatable rafts during DJ sets and threw sheet cakes at eager fans–and still managed to transcend electroclash to become one of the dominant faces of EDM? How many then outlived EDM’s bust to become one of the ten wealthiest DJs in the world, or in 2019 collaborated with the Backstreet Boys and released a dance cover of the Dave Matthews Band? None but Steve Aoki. The arc of his life story so far (he’s 42) makes his September memoir, Blue: The Color of Noise (St. Martin’s Press), an enthralling read, despite his unimaginative prose and odd writing tics. He infuses his book with the same unrelenting optimism that comes through in his every sparkling synth note and quavering bass drop. In his recordings, Aoki massages mainstream electronic music for sensitive pop ears, which often means his presence fades into the background when he teams up with better-known personalities. On that Backstreet Boys collaboration, “Let It Be Me” (which should also appear on Aoki’s forthcoming album, Neon Future IV), he seems as superfluous as DJ Khaled. v

Workaholic superstar DJ Steve Aoki exudes optimism at every turnon March 6, 2020 at 9:43 pm Read More »

Local bluesman Toronzo Cannon is one of Chicago’s finest string-bending storytellerson March 6, 2020 at 9:48 pm

Toronzo Cannon’s 2016 breakout debut album for Alligator is titled The Chicago Way, but it doesn’t include a song of the same name. Since that release, the homegrown bluesman has become so enamored with the phrase that he wrote a song around it in time for his next album, The Preacher, the Politician or the Pimp (2019). “The Chicago Way” is a fast-paced boogie in the John Lee Hooker tradition, but it only hints at the depths of Cannon’s vast repertoire. He’s a highly emotive singer and a fantastic guitarist, but what makes him stand out in the contemporary blues scene is his talent for songwriting. Though he dishes out plenty of hot licks, he never rushes through the story that he’s telling in order to get to the guitar solo. Much of Cannon’s music stays within the realm of blues rock, but he varies his grooves and approaches. He drives the cryptic “First 24” with a slide guitar; the soul feel of “The Silence of My Friends” complements its social commentary about people who look the other way in the face of discrimination or injustice; “Insurance” is a nice little acoustic shuffle, helped along by Billy Branch’s harmonica; and the title track recalls Curtis Mayfield’s 1970s epics. Cannon packs so much substance into every song that it’s not hard to hear why he’s doing so well in the blues-rock scene. v

Local bluesman Toronzo Cannon is one of Chicago’s finest string-bending storytellerson March 6, 2020 at 9:48 pm Read More »

Sanction master ear-shattering metalcore on their debut full-length Broken in Refractionon March 6, 2020 at 10:24 pm

In physics, the term “refraction” refers to the deflection of a wave, such as light or sound, as it passes through a medium. It’s a phenomenon Sanction aim to replicate with their ear-shattering metalcore. In 2017, these Long Island natives–vocalist David Blom, guitarists Mike Marino and Andrew “Lumpy” Wojcik, bassist Ryan Stephenson, and drummer Dillon “Lil D” Perino–released an EP called The Infringement of God’s Plan, a boisterous amalgamation of breakdowns that speak of apocalyptic disorder titled. In an interview with Exclaim!, Marino, who writes the bulk of the band’s material, said he typically starts out with a song name and lets his creativity flow from there, and that he designed The Infringement around five “fractions” or connected fragments. The following year Sanction signed with Pure Noise, becoming part of its roster of up-and-coming hardcore bands (including Knocked Loose and Sanction’s current tour companions, SeeYouSpaceCowboy); the label reissued the EP and then released their debut full-length, 2019’s Broken in Refraction. The album builds on the concepts of disintegration they explored on The Infringement, even borrowing the EP’s title for a line in “The Final Fraction” (“The infringement of god’s plan,” Blom screams, “Staring back through broken glass”). Throughout the EP, Sanction paint vivid pictures of atrophy, disease, and mental illness. In “Answers From a Syringe,” which Marino told Revolver last fall had been inspired by the heroin epidemic sweeping the band’s hometown, an addiction becomes increasingly debilitating, even as a single dose offers temporary respite from life’s problems. Blom matches the rage and terror provoked by such a sharp decline with cracks in his voice as he screams over staccato guitar squeals that mimic the thumping rhythm of a heartbeat. The world that Sanction have built with Broken in Refraction is in chaos, and it gives you the feeling that their heavy, send-you-to-the-hospital violence isn’t just a sound–it’s a warning. v

Sanction master ear-shattering metalcore on their debut full-length Broken in Refractionon March 6, 2020 at 10:24 pm Read More »

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