Journalist, Author & Syndicated Columnist
Divided into two sets, spanning more than 26 songs and running three hours long, Poi Dog Pondering’s spectacular concert Friday night at the Vic was the creative realization of ambitious leader-singer Frank Orrall. In the second of four sold-out shows – three evenings at the Vic followed by a gig Sunday at Lounge Ax – Poi Dog Pondering put on an event that transcended the boundaries of a typical rock ‘n’ roll concert.
Candy-coated. Saccharine. Gaggingly syrupy. Celine Dion’s heard it all from critics who hate her music. “I’m used to getting some critics who like me and some who can’t stand me,” says the French-Canadian singer, who was sweet enough to call us from Quebec. “Thank goodness there are more people out there who like syrup.” Since 1990, when Dion released her first English-language album, “Unison,” Dion has won a loyal following of fans who fell in love with her smooth vocal delivery on such songs as “Where Does My Heart Beat Now?” After her duet with Peabo Bryson on the Grammy Award-winning “Beauty and the Beast” a couple of years ago, she became a bona fide star.
The best thing about going to Duran Duran’s concert Sunday night at McGaw Hall was catching its opening act, James. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It’s a bad, bad idea for headliners to hire opening acts that are more interesting than they are. Don’t get me wrong. I like Duran Duran. And for a couple of years in the ’80s, I truly loved them. Until they stopped growing.
With “Kabuki Medea,” Wisdom Bridge Theatre uses traditional Japanese Kabuki-style theater to tackle Euripides’ Greek classic “Medea.” The result is a splendidly clever tale that is familiar, enacted in a way that is not. Almost 400 years old, Kabuki theater is based on highly stylized and exaggerated moves. In Shozo Sato’s production, which opened Monday night, the actors speak English, but with exaggerated Asian inflections. The rich costumes and demure movements are decidedly Japanese, but the thoughts behind them are Western. The Greek locales in Euripides’ play are substituted by medieval Japanese islands. This adaptation keeps the Western names that Euripides gave his heroes. By the end of the first act, the audience doesn’t find it at all surprising that a Japanese nobleman would be named Jason.
“All Kinds of Love” isn’t the “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” that’s for sure. When Carl Reiner created the classic ’60s TV series, his married couple – Rob and Laura Petrie – weren’t allowed to sleep together in the same bed, much less dally with next-door neighbor Milly.
Here he comes, here comes Speed Racer. The cartoon hero’s heading for the finish line again, only this time around, Chicago’s Alpha Team is driving him past the checkered flag.
A man has sex with a hamburger. A drug addict accidentally snorts a line of cremated body. A woman makes love to office equipment. A man gets nuked in a microwave. Welcome to “Cannibal Cheerleaders on Crack,” where blood flies and vomit flows – theater’s own little freak show. Regardless of taste, Chicagoans are eating “Cannibals” up. The grossly wacky socio-political comedy celebrates its second anniversary Sunday at the Torso Theatre. (It debuted Nov. 14, 1990.) The plot is less important than the farcical mayhem.
The Last of the Mohicans is as much a love story as it is a tale of how the West was won — by some people, that is, the poor Mohicans not being among them. Set in 1757, during the American colonial wars between the English and French settlers of North America, the movie stars Daniel Day-Lewis as Hawkeye, a frontiersman who agrees to escort Clara (Madeleine Stowe) and her sister to the fort where their British-officer father awaits them.
A huge stars-and-stripes banner emblazoned with the Arabic numeral “1” and “Material Issue” served as a not-so-subtle backdrop for the Chicago trio when it kicked off a national tour over the weekend with concerts at the Oak Theatre.
The British rock group James understands that simplicity can be an elegantly powerful tool in concert. On its first tour of the United States, the seven-man band played an exquisitely stripped-down show in Chicago, proving that while the hype machine may be turned on full gear, the group is more than capable of living up to any hyperbole thrust upon it.
There is such strength and purity to Luka Bloom’s music that a band could only diminish the conviction of his songs. Standing alone on a barren stage at the Park West Friday night with just his electro-acoustic guitar for accompaniment, Bloom gave a sly but powerful performance that ended all too soon.
It’s Christmas Eve and Trudy Davis is alone. Not a big surprise, considering she’s a xenophobic bulimic who views food as “unmasticated vomit,” duct tapes her microwave shut and stocks her fridge only with Evian water. Trudy is a woman who needs a little fun in her life, and when she puts Elvis Presley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight?” on her stereo, the King’s apparition answers her self-pitying call.
There is a heartache in Matthew Sweet’s voice that pegs him as a romantic who knows both the euphoria of being in love and the pain of breaking up. On his first Chicago gig as a headliner, Sweet performed a tantalizing midnight show Saturday at the Cabaret Metro where he and his tight backup band channeled his wisely ambiguous lyrics with playful abandon, letting the audience know that though he may have been beaten up emotionally, he’s not a whiner.
It is a rare band that can make the kind of musical impact the British band James did Friday night at the Cabaret Metro. Starting off a little shaky, the seven-man group eased its way into a spectacular 90-minute concert that made it clear why the buzz is so strong about this unpretentious band. The buzz has been a long time in the making, at least over here.
If they had to, the musicians in Teenage Fanclub could cloak many weaknesses with their sweet melodies and delicious harmonies. But when the vocals are as perfect as they were at the band’s Chicago debut Friday night at the Cabaret Metro, it really doesn’t matter how profound or inane the lyrics are. At their sold-out show, the group dished up the same savory vocals that are featured on its current LP “Bandwagonesque,” but with the added bonus of cranked-up instrumentation.
The only thing coy about Joan Jett Saturday night at the Cabaret Metro was the peekaboo lace catsuit she wore. With a guitar slung low on her hips and a sly sneer spread over her lips, Jett out-machoed the male guitarists she grew up emulating and took her fans through a gritty, 85-minute rock ‘n’ roll odyssey, where sweat and vitality were as essential to the show as a solid riff.
When an actor plays his role so well that his buddy’s mom refuses to speak to him, he knows he has done his job. “After the screening of `Juice,’ my mother couldn’t even look at Tupac (Shakur, who plays Bishop), much less speak to him,” said Khalil Kain, whose character, Raheem, has a tragic falling out with his friend Bishop. “Even though that’s an irrational feeling, I certainly understand it. Certain scenes between Bishop and Raheem were intense even for me, and I knew how everything was going to turn out.”
The banner behind the drum kit read “Be Silent. Consume. Die.” When Ned’s Atomic Dustbin made a return engagment Tuesday night at a sold-out show at the Cabaret Metro, the five young Brits took a similarly simple, minimalistic approach to their music, assaulting the audience with a barrage of sounds that joyously paid homage to punk, thrash and pop.
It has been a long time since David Bowie has felt this good about himself. The former David Robert Jones, Ziggy Stardust and Thin White Duke has carved out a new musical niche without creating a new persona to play it out. Bowie is in Liverpool, England, on this day, congenially promoting his group, Tin Machine. He’s newly engaged to the model Iman, and sips on a cup of hot tea, his substance of choice these days. Mentally scanning his flamboyant 25-year career, he comes to the conclusion that his life, as that of most musicians, would make a boring film.
In Hollywood, where every other person claims to be an actor, singer, model or screenwriter, actor Woody Harrelson doesn’t raise too many eyebrows when he jams with his group Manly Moondog and the Three Kool Kats. But when the “Cheers” star takes his 10-piece band out on the road, he attracts a crowd that’s made up of music lovers as well as a strong contingent of curiosity seekers who want to know if “the boy can really sing.”