Category: Music & Nightlife

I’ve known Chicago rapper Davis for a few years. I first encountered him as part of local underground hip-hop collective Why Footclan, which also runs a label for its small but mighty collection of MCs. Davis, aka Davis the Dorchester Bully (among other pseudonyms), collaborates with fellow Why? rapper Joshua Virtue in the duo Udababy, […]

Charles Stepney shaped some of the most memorable pop music of the 20th century, including records by Ramsey Lewis, Minnie Riperton, the Dells, Terry Callier, the Emotions, and Earth, Wind & Fire. But when he died in 1976 at age 45, the composer, producer, and arranger had yet to release anything under his own name—he […]

Sidekicks (4424 W. Montrose) is an understatedly chill karaoke joint. Flashy people sing at Alice’s or Cafe Mustache, but if you’re looking for a good, weird time singing to a mix of people that might include Bass Pro card carriers as well as homos you haven’t met at every other gay spot, Sidekicks is the […]

The International Museum of Surgical Science (1524 N. DuSable Lake Shore Drive) bills itself as “North America’s Only Museum Devoted to Surgery,” but that’s only part of the picture. It’s housed in a Gilded Age lakefront mansion based on a chateau once occupied by Marie Antoinette and built in 1917 for socialite Eleanor Robinson Countiss, […]

Early in the pandemic, Zoë Miller and brothers Cameron and Matthew Chapleau launched Beloved to release music on vinyl. The demand for the format was pushing manufacturers past their limits, though, resulting in prolonged pressing delays. Beloved’s first of two releases so far—a reissue of the 2011 EP Demonstration by Urbana indie-rock band Easter—wouldn’t come […]

If you care about music, you’ve surely encountered the particular frustration of finding a band you know you should like. You listen to their albums, and you can tell they’re good, but the sparks don’t fly. That was my relationship to Chicago five-piece Dos Santos—until I finally saw them live at last year’s Midsommarfest.  Dos […]

If you were to walk into Cafe Mustache during Skoli Moly Donut Shop, you’d have no clue you were on the Logan Square strip of Milwaukee Avenue on the northwest side. That’s because DJ Skoli, government name Ryan Roberts, curates variegated, seamless lineups of up to ten singers, rappers, and DJs from across the city […]

In September, Chicago rocker Annie Fish dropped Weird Like Me, an album full of rippers that would’ve clinched 16-month leases on WXRT’s airwaves during the 90s alternative boom. She also created a parallel universe where the album was an improbable cult hit: her Bandcamp page includes a link to a fictional oral history that spends […]

After watching Matt Reeves’s The Batman, I felt compelled to re-create the movie’s nightclub scene for myself: I wanted to find someplace slinky, saturated in red light and bass. My friends and I headed down to River North, and after paying a cover charge of $50 per person, we landed in a subterranean nightclub that […]

Chicago trio Facs arose almost seven years ago out of the hiatus-turned-breakup of Disappears. Bassist and singer Brian Case, guitarist Jonathan van Herik, and drummer Noah Leger stretched the icy, brittle sounds of classic postpunk over gangly new skeletons to create their minimalist dirges. Van Herik left in late 2017, after the recording of Facs’ […]

I can’t remember where exactly I was introduced to nightlife icon Lynzo the Heartthrob, because they frequent so many places where it might’ve happened. Raised in Hyde Park, Lynzo is a self-taught and constantly booked drag artist, burlesque performer, and exotic dancer; an event curator; a queer and trans plus-size stylist; an activist for sex […]