DJ Rynk's Best Albums of 2025

The indie musicians of 2025 hear everything and will play anything. Their art helped make sense of a crazy year. Every weekend I was running through Humboldt Park to the soundtrack of another new release—prep work for my morning DJ shift and CHIRP's featured album rotation. Thank you, CHIRP Radio sustainers, for keeping me steeped in music. These albums I kept on replay.

1. Big Ugly by Fust (Dear Life): The Durham, North Carolina, country-folk band hit the road stocked with Southern Gothic ballads. Fuzz-guitar cries and fiddle flights lift the dark small-town vignettes of singer-songwriter Aaron Dowdy. Choice Cut: In the anthem "Spangled" the starry sky over Roanoke, Virginia’s razed Shenandoah Hospital site is a scene for self-medication. RIYL: Now Then by Robbie Fulks (Compass); Send a Prayer My Way by Julien Baker & Torres (Matador)



2. Boleros Psicodélicos II by Adrian Quesada (ATO): Boleros Psicodélicos Dos returns Austin, Texas guitarist Adrian Quesada (Black Pumas, Grupo Fantasma) to the thrilling days of the 1960s Mexican guitar-organ combos that backed torch singers with surf, art-rock and hippie flourishes. Quesada invites collaborators from his original lo-fi 2022 boléro project, plus Caroline Trowbridge on vibes for a fuller sound and co-producer Alex Goose to add dance-floor polish. Choice Cut: Mexican indie folk singer Ed Maverick's "Afuera" dives into a trip-hop undertow. RIYL: Lux by Rosalía (Columbia); Entre Tus Flores by Miramar (Ansonia)



3. Interior Live Oak by Cass McCombs (Domino): Singer-songwriter Cass McCombs returns to his San Fancisco Bay roots for his 11th album, a quietly impressive double LP featuring his original bandmates, guitarist Chris Cohen (Deerhoof) and drummer Jason Quever (Papercuts). They’re a reliable foil for McCombs’ wry character studies. Choice Cut: Despite its claims, “I Never Dream About Trains” lives in a Robyn Hitchcock reverie. RIYL: Noble and Godlike in Ruin by Deerhoof (Joyful Noise); Possession by Ty Segall (Drag City)



4. hooke's law by KeiyaA (XL): South Side Chicago multi-instrumentalist Chakeiya Richmond debuted as Keiya with a 2015 EP, then broke out in the Brooklyn scene as KeiyaA--featured in a 2020 solo LP and in Loraine James' electronica and Nick Hakim's psychedelica. Her concept album frames trauma in physics terms, as the propelling force of a loaded spring. KeiyaA employs tension and release as well, her dense, club-ready production moving beyond gauzy neo-soul. Choice Cut: The dark meditation "devotions" takes surprising turns in tempo. RIYL: The Prophet and The Madman, by Ami Taf Ra (Brainfeeder); Bad Dogs by 81355 (Joyful Noise)



5. Thick Rich and Delicious by Guided by Voices (GBV): The 42nd GBV studio offering is luscious, straight-to-tape guitar rock, dialed to 11. Singer-songwriter Robert Pollard of Dayton, Ohio, mostly lets the hooks do the talking in a Brooklyn studio, amps in overdrive--not that he doesn't get his lyrical licks in. Choice Cut: Pollard was a big baseball player back in Northridge High School, but makes nearby "Oxford Talawanda" his glory-days stand-in; since 2018, the Talawanda Braves call themselves the Talawanda Brave. RIYL: You're Weird Now by Guerilla Toss (Sub Pop); Oscar Bravo Juliett by wht.rbbt.obj (self-released)



6. necronym by Oux (self-released): The art rock duo of Indigo Finamore and Manae Solara Vaughn turn the screws in their album debut. The Chicago musical and life partners build a prog-funk-psych tension that echoes lyrical obsessions with things that dare not speak their name. Choice Cut: For the rocker “Two of Swords," the tarot card for indecision represents a mate’s contradictions. RIYL: Thee Black Boltz by Tunde Adebimpe (Sub Pop); Make 'Em Laugh by Benét (Bayonet)



7. Nested in Tangles by Hannah Frances (Fire Talk): Chicago folksinger-songwriter Hannah Frances takes on big feelings in an expansive prog style on her fourth studio album, recorded in southern Vermont with producer Kevin Copeland (bass, percussion, pedal steel) and Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen (percussion, piano, guitar, cello, vocals) Frances’ Chicago collaborators fill out Brooklyn trombonist Andy Clausen's intricate arrangements. Choice Cut: Rossen treats Frances’ wounds in “The Space Between," a gentle medication on forgiveness. RIYL: Humanhood by The Weather Station (Fat Possum); With Trampled by Turtles by Alan Sparhawk (Sub Pop)



8. Always Been by Craig Finn (Tamarac / Thirty Tigers): Craig Finn’s sixth solo album presents a lyrical deep dive from The Hold Steady frontman, produced by Adam Granduciel and backed by his band The War on Drugs as a looped and layered version of Finn’s rock and soul revue. It’s a concept album from Finn’s familiar place, among people living with bad choices. Most tracks revolve around a single character, Clayton, an itinerant preacher, teacher, waiter and soldier on the run from himself. Choice Cut: The fast rocker “Postcards," with a Sam Fender backing vocal, is a reverse Dr. Seuss fable for adults with few directions left to choose. Oh, the places you’ll never go! RIYL: when i paint my masterpiece by Ada Lea (Saddle Creek); Horror by The Mekons (Fire)



9. Aguas da Amazonia by Third Coast Percussion (Third Coast Percussion): It's a good day when I step outside the CHIRP Radio studio and hear marimba—not a ringtone but the resonant real thing—from Third Coast Percussion's practice space. Twyla Tharp's 2025 ballet Slacktide featured a live TCP performance at the Harris Theater of this Philip Glass score. The instrumentation alone is impressive: a glass marimba, another made from red oak planks, plus sun drum, djembe and tuned PVC pipes. Choice Cut: Connie Volk's flute improvisations flutter above the pulsing currents of "Japurá River." RIYL: A Garden Adorned by loadbang (New Focus); Cereus: Chamber Music by Kay Rhie (New Focus)



10. Yowzers by Ben LaMar Gay (International Anthem): Heard in the Stereolab horn section for 2025's Instant Holograms On Metal Film, Ben LaMar Gay leads his Chicago quartet in proclaiming an ambient/gospel jubilee, joyful even in somber moments. Pianist Matthew Davis, guitarist Will Faber and drummer Tommaso Moretti make deft contributions to Gay's math-jazz compositions and folkloric improvisations, joining in warm call-and-response vocals and employing live and looped bells, diddley bow, ngoni, synths and tuba. Choice Cut: "I am (bells)" glides from soul chant to ringing morning meditation to cheeky strut. RIYL: About Ghosts by Mary Halvorson (Nonesuch); Honey From a Winter Stone by Ambrose Akinmusire (Nonesuch)

This feature was first published on the CHIRP radio blog, as was a much briefer Best Albums of 2024 list.

Legendary producer Boyd's book traces rhythm's global roots

Joe Boyd is not a complete unknown. At the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, when Bob Dylan went electric, Boyd was behind the sound board. The next year, with the British Invasion still raging, he was in London as an A&R assistant for Elektra Records and running a club where Pink Floyd gigged. Boyd went on to produce albums for Chris Blackwell's Island and his own Hannibal label, moving from Nick Drake and Richard Thompson to an increasingly diverse set of Caribbean, Eastern European and African genres.

Connections among these and other musical traditions are the subject of Boyd's latest book, "And the Roots of Rhythm Remain" (Ze Books), now in paperback and on my desk as a bulky Chicago Public Library hardcover.

Boyd writes that the book's genesis was not similarity but contrast between the musical sensibilities of New Orleans and Havana, two traditions with African roots. Still, he seems to find direct links wherever he looks, and at 944 hardcover pages, not much escapes his gaze.

Three inches of ethnomusicology does not make a good beach read, but I've been known to take James Joyce to the lake, so why not? In my first summer as a radio DJ in decades, I'm catching up on a lot of music that escaped my notice in between. While following Boyd, many albums dropped into my crate.

Zulu groove thing

Paul Simon's "Graceland" makes a proper staring point. The album has become a symbol of appropriation, but Boyd notes that Simon's adept South African collaborators profited as well. (Notes from the album's anniversary release also brought out their understanding of Memphis R&B grooves.) Boyd pointedly notes that Ladysmith Black Mambazo was not a voice of the streets but the essence of Zulu establishment.

Then he reaches back to Simon's influences, the Weavers' "Wimoweh" and the Tokens' "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," and their origins in "Mbube," itself urban Johannesburg's 1938 take on provincial Natal falsetto. Each ingredient simmers in the pot. That's the recurring story of rock 70 years after Elvis Presley covered Big Mama Thornton's "Hound Dog," itself a Jerry Lieber-Mike Stoller confection. Along the way, Boyd sets me straight on Hugh Masakela's "Grazing in the Grass," so named for being recorded not with more cowbell, but in a marijuana haze.

Another theme Boyd follows across genres is ethnic music's dangerous honesty, which autocrats fear and cannot co-opt. While he has recorded artists such as Jesus Alemañy and Alfredo Rodríguez from London, his Afro-Cuban chapter relies on memoirs from producer Ned Sublette, promoter Bill Graham and performers in Havana, New York and elsewhere, plus a few travel aquaintances ("Fidel doesn't dance, not even one step," one Cuban tells him).

Blackwell brings Boyd closer to the action for his Jamaican chapter, in which Trenchtown reggae gangsters torch the island's respectable self-image. Boyd shows his tradecraft producing Toots and the Maytals' "Rastaman," swapping a trombone track with Toots Hibbard humming the part in rehearsal.

"For a while in the early seventies, I shared a house in the Hollywood Hills with John Cale," Boyd notes 30+ pages into his chapter on Hindu and Roma influences, backgrounding his interests in the classical connections to raga and rock. This dude was everywhere! So, we learn that Ravi Shankar productively collaborated as a performer with both George Harrison (who later plumbed Shankar archives to produce a box set) and as co-composer with Philip Glass (whose music publishing company shook loose royalties for obscure Shankar ragas).

Rebel rousers

In Boyd's telling, rhythm is often trapped in political crosscurrents. Jazz musicians on U.S. State Department-sponsored tours of Brazil bring bossa nova back with them; via the Incredible String Band, Boyd hears about Tropicália singers Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, whose disinterest in politics did not protect them from being jailed as provocateurs.

Boyd traces nominally white tango to its Argentine, Italian and African origins. Commissars alternately purge and sanitize Eastern European folk, while classical composers draw battle lines over whether to draw from peasant melodies. Boyd's world tour returns to Africa and Fela Kuta, whose home is raided in a local Lagos frenzy over sex, drugs and Afropop. Kuti then declares his compound the "Independent Kalakuta Republic," feeding the post-civil war regime's paranoia.

Roots music triumphs over racism, snobbery and religious purity across the globe; even American white minstrelsy withers and dies when Black entertainers join the circuit, performing in blackface. They energize vaudeville and popular performers of all races. A final chapter, "How we begin to remember," holds for an extra beat on world music, the bins in back of the record store bins where labels like Hannibal fight for space. The relabeled "global" genre artists always seem behind the times and less vital in their countries of origin, Boyd says.

Now, he wonders if drum machines and programmed beats are spreading too deeply into the countryside, thinning the ranks of live musicians. Boyd's fears do not seem well founded; Mississippi juke joints, Kingston DJs, Bronx MCs and Chicago house parties have not killed live music, only spread its joy. Indie "rock" now defies catagories; it's everything, everywhere, all at once. Whatever comes out of the speakers, the sound waves are real, our reactions are spectacular, and the roots of rhythm hold the reason.

Painting a picture of Mom

Catherine Rynkiewicz, 1931-2025

Catie Rynkiewicz in her art studio is surrounded by her work, including a portrait of her husband, Walter.

Every so often, Mom asked when I would start painting again. I had studied art through my freshman year in college, which convinced me that writing was an easier mess to clean up than drafting or painting. But Catie Rynkiewicz adopted art late in life like her mother, Ethyl van Hercke, who was known for watercolors documenting metro Milwaukee's vanishing farmscape. So Catie reasonably could expect me to come back around to art.

Her apartment's art studio overlooked a big expanse of windows with a view of the county zoo. The space seemed too big for one person, especially as her vision failed and she moved in pain. But I've watched the sunrise from her couch, and I know why she wouldn't settle for less.

She did not always have so much space. By the time I turned 10, six of us were bursting out of a Cape Cod on 80th Street in Wauwatosa.

Catie always had a sewing nook, crammed like my man-cave closet of an office. Cousin Peg Lazarchic called Mom days ago, sharing a memory of how much she loved the fancy dresses Mom sewed, altered and remade for her. My brother Bob remembered the cowboy outfits she made for the two of us one Halloween. She had a costume too, as our Indian guide.

Women played all roles in Suburban Woman's Club of Wauwatosa children's theater productions, including "King Midas and the Golden Touch" in 1966. The actors are identified as Mrs. George Price, Mrs. Walter Rynkiewicz and Mrs. Paul Pakalski.

Catie sewed costumes for Suburban Woman’s Club of Wauwatosa children's theater productions, and acted in them as well. She ran her lines with me at age 11 when she played the lead as King Midas—in one scene, peel-me-a-grape orders to a servant. She'd bark her line imperiously, "Don't ask questions, just cut." I'd just giggle.

Catie also was on the Milwaukee Rep auxiliary board, publicizing events and attending costume workshops at regional theater conventions. She chaired the auxiliary one year, hosting one of those conventions and serving on the Rep's board of directors. For all their fundraising focus, she missed the backstage drama.

She had been involved in theater since high school: Granddaaughter Evie, as a Wauwatosa East student costumer, found a photo of Catie's own costumes. At Marquette, Catie's roles included Lavinia in T.S. Eliot's "The Cocktail Party." (The Milwaukee Journal noted her "unusual stage presence for an amateur.") Catie remembered all her roles, so when she said she was trying to remember a play, I assumed she was recalling a dream.

Dad's friend Bob Gorske was with us at her bedside, and said he fell for her in "Minna von Barnhelm," an 18th century comedy. As the maid, Catie delivered the play's memorable lines but found the 1952 production forgettable. Later that year, she was cast in Thornton Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth" with Marquette debater Walter Rynkiewicz.

Catie's spring 1953 cast photo from "The Cocktail Party" illustrates her fall engagement in the Milwaukee Journal announcement, "Van Herckes Tell of Troth of Daughter."

Marquette's speech students were wrapped up in both drama and new media, meaning television, and she appreciated when I latched onto this novel internet thing, another exploit with one foot in writing and one in design. And when I was cast in the odd church musical, she was in the audience.

These past days, our family has been reliving scenes like these. We are blessed to have all of you with us, helping us, as we think about Catie's artistic legacy, left for us to pursue. For my part, I still have painting ahead of me.

Catherine Rynkiewicz Obituary and Online Memorial (2025)

Legacy.com | Becker Ritter Funeral Home | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Gonna be a long walk home

Arenas are not made for rock bands or rock fans.

I followed a 16-hour work day with a trip to Toronto for my last arena show, and two and three rows ahead of me were eight people, all standing. The one directly in my line of sight for the stage was a full head taller, singing and pumping his fist at the stage. Good for him! I just leaned into the people in front of me, who were doing more talking than listening. Soon enough, everyone would be standing.

It was Nov. 6, the day after the U.S. election, and Bruce Springsteen was sending out "a fighting prayer for my country."

• Last night I stood at your doorstep
• Trying to figure out what went wrong
• You just slipped something into my palm and you were gone

"Long Walk Home" opened Springsteen's set. He goes home to visit family, but the diner is boarded up and the residents are "rank strangers." Still, Dad is consoling:

• "It's a beautiful place to be born.
• It just wraps its arms around you,
• Nobody crowds you and nobody goes it alone
•  
• Your flag flyin' over the courthouse
• Means certain things are set in stone.
• Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't"

A concession from the Boss. The American dream is a mirage, yet we dare to dream. It's why we stay in the arena.

College radio with more asssignments

Is it a second childhood if it starts in college?

The community station CHIRP Radio has a robust playlist, analyzed and reported to the North American College & Community Top 200 chart, and a robust DJ database of programming notes. While reviving my student radio experience as an unpaid DJ, I contribute album reviews to the studio database the Wisconsin campus station never had.

Aspiring media practitioners, who need work samples to get a job, should have an easier time of it now: They can blog or vlog their passions, and it might just lead to paid gigs. I'm happy with my day job, though, so these backlist album reviews are done for fun. Writing forces the critic to think more deeply about the performance they're evaluating. Some releases are old friends and others first impressions, but the listening always reveals surprises.

Odessa | The Handsome Family | Carrot Top | 1995

Guitarist Brett Sparks and lyricist Rennie Sparks were Chicago singer-songwriters searching for their style on their first album, with Rennie on bass and Mike Werner on drums. Named for Brett's Texas hometown, "Odessa" takes backroads from hillbilly Americana to punk and grunge. The Handsome Family website describes the album as "written by young kids trying to find a pathway inward to find the old, lost songs." One tradition they reclaim is the frontier murder ballad, updated in "Arlene" (2★) with a truckstop stalker as narrator—plan to lead in to this one, it’s a scary place. The Sparks are empathetic chroniclers of infantilism with “Pony" (3), depression in “One Way Up" (4★) and pseudoscience in "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (7). "Water Into Wine” (5) is a country drinking song with Steve Thomas on pedal steel guitar. The world is scary awesome in "Giant Ant" (6), "Gorilla" (8) and "Big Bad Wolf" (12), a theme the Handsome Family will revisit after their move to Albuquerque, New Mexico. "Moving Furniture Around" (11★) is a dose of Wicker Park apartment angst, "She Awoke With a Jerk" (13) a morning-after wake-up call and “Happy Harvest" (14) a children's folk lampoon. RIYL: Andrew Bird, Robbie Fulks, Violent Femmes. Chicago classic

Twilight | The Handsome Family | Carrot Top | 2001

Brett and Rennie Sparks in 2001 were busy touring with Wilco and moving from Chicago to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Yet the couple’s Gothic themes as the Handsome Family were still tied to Wicker Park’s vanishing pigeons and parking lots. The duo were more confident musicians: Brett’s baritone grew more resonant and his guitar and keyboard arrangements more adventurous in the studio, and the post-9/11 landscape had not tempered Rennie’s mordant lyrics. Life goes on in “The Snow White Diner” (1★) as a car and corpse are winched from the lake. What follows are more alt-country studies in urban isolation, where birds have fled the park (“Passenger Pigeons,” 2★) or nested in phone kiosks (“A Dark Eye,” 3) and artificial light hangs over the night sky (“All the TVs in Town," 5). A tremulant organ and musical saw send “Gravity” (6) into low orbit. “Cold Cold Cold” (7★) follows a prairie road “where sometimes at night people disappear.” “I Know You Are There” (9) presents a litany of haunts. Animals are close at hand: “Birds You Cannot See” (10) are everyday guardians and “A White Dog” (11★) is a ghostly guide to the netherworld. “So Long” (12) gives ill-fated pets a sendoff. “Peace in the Valley Once Again” (13) finally arrives when nature reclaims the last shopping mall. RIYL: Gram Parsons, Jeff Tweedy, Wye Oak. Chicago classic

Roland Kirk Quartet | Rip, Rig, and Panic | Limelight | 1965

Rahsaan Roland Kirk played everything, everywhere, all at once. The late multi-instrumentalist could do soul (with Quincy Jones) and 1920s hot jazz (sampled by Mocean Worker for "Right Now”); here he leans into post-bop and free jazz. Kirk introduced Charles Mingus’ raucous "Haitian Fight Song" to Ed Sullivan's TV audience and gave the Austin Powers movies their kitschy flute theme. Appearing onstage with multiple horns around his neck, he used two or more at once, a vaudeville show that gave him striking harmonies. The uptempo “No Tonic Press” (1) is Kirk’s avant flex of a Lester Young (Prez) tenor sax riff with no tonic note. After some self-accompanied sax foreplay, he launches into a sultry tenor stroll through “Once in a While” (2★), ending on a high note. “From Bechet, Byas, and Fats” (3) is a celebratory callout to his influences, with Kirk bringing big Don Byas energy to the woofing low tenor. On “Mystical Dream” (4), Kirk opens with a soldiers’ march fit for “The Wizard of Oz"—tripling on oboe, tenor and alto with a whistle for good measure—before switching to flute. The title track (5★) freely combines feedback effects from Kirk and bassist Richard Davis, taped natural sound at different playback speeds, shattering glass and a wake-the-dead Elvin Jones percussion finale at 6:33. “Black Diamond” (6) is a bright soprano-sax dance in 6/8 time, pianist Jaki Byard playing it Dave Brubeck-cool. Tape samples return with electronics, sirens and Byard stride on “Slippery, Hippery, Flippery” (7). Recorded within weeks of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” this session mapped jazz’s path ahead. RIYL: 8 Bold Souls, Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, Roscoe Mitchell.

Stills & Collins | Everybody Knows | Cleopatra | 2017

Stephen Stills and Judy Collins met in 1967; at Ravinia 50 years later, they opened their first tour as a duo. This crowdfunded studio album features nine songs from their set, plus Collins' wistful reprise of “Who Knows Where the Time Goes" (9★). Collins is in fine voice at age 78; Stills at 72 provides solid vocals and elegant electric guitar breaks. Russell Walden leads a propulsive backup band with bluesy piano and organ. Stills & Collins makes a fair case for the Traveling Wilburys pastiche "Handle With Care" (1), Collins leading. "So Begins the Task" (2) is a Stills standard from 1972’s Manassas” and his "Judy" (4) dates from when the two were an item in 1968. Collins solos on her nostalgic "River of Gold" (3★) and dreamy “Houses" (6). The title duet (5★) is more bittersweet than the Leonard Cohen original, considering the pair’s history of sex, drugs and rock and roll. (Collins has been in recovery since 1978 and Stills finds drugs "no longer fun.") Stills leads on Tim Hardin's "Reason to Believe" (7) and Bob Dylan's "Girl from the North Country" (8). The set ends with Buffalo Springfield's "Questions" (10), which Stills recycled as "Carry On" for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. RIYL: Neil Young's "A Letter Home." 

Thelonious Monk | Monk’s Dream | Columbia | 1963

In 1963, when jazz was stirring the cocktail circuit, pianist Thelonious Monk was the hard stuff. Despite notice as a composer, Monk's percussive hard-bop style, surprising voicings and manic stage presence were an acquired taste. "Monk's Dream" gave mainstream label exposure to an accessible Monk setlist. The title tune (1) is a modal retooling of "I Got Rhythm" and "Bright Mississippi" (3) spins out from "Sweet Georgia Brown." Monk solos on "Body and Soul" (2★) and "Just a Gigolo" (6), abstracting two jazz standards with a harmonic and rhythmic complexity that would complement hip-hip or prog-rock tracks. Charlie Rouse is a soulful tenor sax complement on "Bolivar Blues" (5★) and the uptempo "Bye-Ya" (7★) could launch Outkast's "Hey Ya!" RIYL: Robert Glasper, Khruangbin, Radiohead, Tame Impalas, Vampire Weekend.

The Soft Machine | The Soft Machine | Probe | 1968

The UK psychedelic scene emerged from London’s UFO Club, where Soft Machine and Pink Floyd were house bands. The Soft Machine taped its debut album in NYC on a tour with Jimi Hendrix, who inspired Mike Ratledge to run fuzzbox and pedal effects through his Lowrey Holiday Deluxe organ. This edition of the band had Kevin Ayers on bass, Robert Wyatt on drums and Daevid (DAH-vid) Allen on guitar, replaced on tour with Andy Summers, later of the Police. (The reviewer owned a vinyl copy with a peekaboo photo-wheel cover, as on Led Zeppelin III.) Songs run together but can easily stand alone with quick fades in and out. “Hope for Happiness” (1) starts with cosmic chants in each channel, then breaks into an anarchic 6/8 march, interrupted by “Joy of a Toy” (2), a Haight-Ashbury guitar solo, before a reprise of the original theme (3). Similarly, the odd narrative of “Why Am I So Short” (4) leads into a jam, “So Boot It at All” (5), with organ, bass and drums each getting a solo turn, then shifts to “A Certain Kind” (6★), a sweet ballad over churchy organ. “Save Yourself,” “Priscilla” and “Lullaby Letter” (7-9) is a ragtag suite opening side 2, the last cut being the most fully realized. “We Did It Again” (10★) is a fun ostinato groove, with the title phrase repeated through a fuzzbox. The sequence builds to the proto-prog “Why Are We Sleeping?” (12★); Ayers relates a dystopian nightmare, or maybe a political platform: “It begins with a blessing/And it ends with a curse/Making life easy/By making it worse.” RIYL: Robert Fripp, The Nice, Vanilla Fudge.

Sally Timms | Cowboy Sally | Bloodshot | 1997

When Chicago’s fabled Loop nightclub Bar Double-R Ranch introduced British art-rockers the Mekons to country and Western, vocalist Sally Timms developed a taste for the genre’s bittersweet notes. Cowboy Sally, a character Timms voiced in TNT’s mid-‘90s cartoon block, re-emerges on this solo EP and later alt-country outings as a roadhouse crooner. John Anderson’s Everglades lament “Seminole Wind” (1★) is firmly in folk territory, featuring fiddler Jessica Biley and Jon Langford’s Waco Brothers band. Brett and Rennie Sparks, aka the Handsome Family, join Timms in their ode to failure “Drunk By Noon” (2★) (“Sometimes I flap my arms like a hummingbird/Just to remind myself I'll never fly”). Harry Trumfio of the Pulsars gives “Tennessee Waltz” (4) a Caribbean steel-drum pulse. Brendan Croker, Steve Goulding and Langford, fellow Chicago transplants from the Mekons collective, back Timms on Merle Haggard’s “Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You” (3) and Lefty Frizzell’s “Long Black Veil” (5★). As in later projects, Timms is drawn to the relationship songs of wayward men. RIYL: Gillian Welch, Lucinda Williams, Lainey Wilson.Chicago classic

Sally Timms | Cowboy Sally's Twilight Laments for Lost Buckaroos | Bloodshot | 1999

Timms and Mekons collaborator Jon Langford (Waco Brothers) throw a pity hoedown, recorded in three days in Chicago with an ace alt-country assemblage featuring Grievous Angels’ Jon Rauhouse on banjo and pedal steel and Hawaiian guitars. “Dreaming Cowboy” (2) sets the melancholy vibe: Timms’ sweet voice carries dark undertones in Guy Lawrence’s song about Texas freedom at the bottom of a glass. Andrew Bird is on violin here, Jessica Biley on most other tracks. “The Sad Milkman" (3★), with Harry Trumfio on steel drums, bemoans the fate of those who reach for the stars; “Snowbird” (7), with fiddler Steve Ropsen, is another Handsome Family cover but in Carter Family style. Timms and Langford’s “Dark Sun” (4★) suggests mutual assured destruction, from a night doing shots if not a nuclear blast. Other Timms-Langford originals are “Sweetheart Waltz” (6) and “Cancion Para Mi Padre" (10), the latter with Latin percussion from Fred Armisen, Timms’ husband at the time. Robbie Fulks accompanies Timms on guitar for his faux-17th century broadside "In Bristol Town” (5). More covers add to the sadness: Johnny Cash’s “Cry Cry Cry” (8★), Jeff Tweedy's "When the Roses Bloom Again" (9) and Jill Sobule’s “Rock Me to Sleep” (11★). The first and last tracks are spoken, casting the set as a sort of distant “National Barn Dance” broadcast. RIYL: Ryan Adams, Avett Brothers, Hoyle Brothers.Chicago classic

Matt Ulery's Loom/Large | Festival | Woolgathering | 2016

Chicago jazz bassist Matt Ulery stretches out in two pieces with a 27-piece Large orchestra featuring Snarky Puppy violinist Zach Brock. Jimmy Rowles' iridescent "The Peacocks" (1) and Ulery's time-shifting "Hubble" (2★) recall the 1970 big-band rhythm experiments of Chicago Symphony Orchestra percussionist Dick Schory. Ulery pushes forward in the next half-dozen arrangements for his smaller Loom ensemble. "Canopy" (6★) gives his ideas their best airing, with Rob Clearfield laying down a minimalist piano foundation for byplay with Geof Bradfield's clarinet, Russ Johnson's trumpet and Jon Deitemyer's drums. Clearfield switches to pump organ with Ulery on tuba for the last five Festival songs. Ulery's spooky daybreak lyrics for "The Silence Is Holding" (9) and eldritch harmonies on "Depth of Winter" (10★) make this Festival section closer to a New Orleans funeral parade without the second line dancing. RIYL: Derek Hodge, Liberation Music Orchestra, Miles Mosley, Maria Schneider Orchestra, Esperanza Spalding. Chicago classic

Caution: CHIRP Radio DJ in training

I'm a disc jockey in training at CHIRP Radio, an independent music station streaming at chirpradio.org and broadcasting on Chicago's North Side at 107.1 FM. So music is taking up more space in my brain.

On Your Sunday Sonic Sundowner Aug. 11 and 18, I am grasshopper to Craig Reptile's kung fu master. Time is carving me, and I must shape my playlists according to my true nature. What would you select in my place? Something familiar? Something unusual? Or is it the balance you seek, the tai chi? Choose wisely, dear listener, and request a song, via voice or text, at 773-DJ-SONGS, or e-mail dj@chirpradio.org.

While taking in Breezy Rodio's solo blues set (and a Mango Dreamcoat draught) Aug. 11 at the Rockwell Blues & Jazz Street Stroll, I was working on playlists to deploy across the street at the CHIRP studio, a walk-up in a former custom photo-album bindery.

At the Rockwell street fest I stumbled on Delmark's recordings of the Fat Babies, a 1920s swing ensemble led by Andy Schumm, seen here on cornet taking the Bix Beiderbecke vehicle "San" out for a spin. Schumm's Cellar Boys band plays Sundays at the Tonk in Pilsen and Tuesdays at the Green Mill in Uptown. At a block party, a neighbor couple, much younger than your DJ grasshopper, told me they visit the Green Mill Tuesday nights to dance, which is the thing behind that swing. The Chicago Cellar Boys have a record on the traditional jazz label Rivermont, "Busy 'Til Eleven."

CHIRP is a volunteer-run station that regularly brings on music-curious listeners as DJs. Forgive the trainees if the audio stream has occasional miscues or tardy song-title posts; there's a lot to do, and we're doing it live. For those who would like to learn what's involved in DJ work, fill out the new volunteer form at volunteers.chirpradio.org

Here I'll post the set list for my training run, a mix of new releases and a few odd covers, including the Blasters' 1981 take on Little Willie John's "I'm Shakin'". The Slash Records album cover suggests vocalist Phil Alvin's contortions at the mic. In this training, I hope I can tap some well of inner peace.

8-11-2024 Set List

• Elvis Costello and The Roots, Walk Us Uptown, Wise Up Ghost (Blue Note)
• Why?, Brand New, The Well I Fell Into (Waterlines)
• Willie Dixon, Pain in My Heart, Willie Dixon: The Chess Box (MCA / Chess)
• The Drin, Lease on Life, Elude the Torch (Feel It)
• Parannoul, Ï£ºÎßàÎì± (A Lot Can Happen), Sky Hundred (Self-Released)
• Keefe Jackson & Jason Adasiewicz, "Putting it On, Taking it Off," Rows and Rows (Delmark)
• The Drin, Lease on Life, Elude the Torch (Feel It)
• Nathan Bowles Trio, Are Possible, Are Possible (Drag City)
• Lucy Dacus, Addictions, Historian (Matador)
• XTC, Radios In Motion, White Music (Virgin)
• Snowcuffs. Ivy, single (self-released)
• James Brown, Think, Star Time (Polydor)

8-18-2024 Set List

• Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings,"100 Days, 100 Nights, 100 Days, 100 Nights (Daptone)
• Sam Cooke, Meet Me At Mary's Place, The Man and His Music (RCA)
• The Pretenders, Back On The Chain Gang, Learning To Crawl (Sire)
• Lava La Rue, Poison Cookie, STARFACE (Dirty Hit)
• 100 gecs, Doritos & Fritos, 10,000 gecs (Dog Show/Atlantic)
• The Gaslight Anthem, Ain't That a Shame, Get Hurt (Island)
• Cassandra Jenkins, Aurora, IL, My Light, My Destroyer (Dead Oceans)
• Sakkaris, A Real Thing, Quiet Light (Birthdiy)
• Wilco, Art of Almost, The Whole Love (dBpm)
• David Bowie, Jump They Say, Black Tie White Noise (Savage)
• The Monkees, The Girl I Knew Somewhere, Then and Now (Arista)
• The Jam, David Watts, All Mod Cons (Polydor)
• Parlor Greens, Irish Goodbye, In Green We Dream (Colemine)
• Oneida, Reason to Hide, Expensive Air (Joyful Noise)
• This House is Creaking, If You Want Me to Be, This House is Creaking (THiC)
• The Blasters, I'm Shakin', The Blasters (Slash)
• Nigel Mack, Strut Your Stuff, Devil's Secrets (Blues Attack)
• Elvin Bishop, Struttin' My Stuff, Struttin' My Stuff (Polydor)
• Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday (Sub Pop)
• Osees, Also the Gorilla ..., SORCS 80 (Castle Face)
• Rufus Wainwright, Poses, Poses (Dreamworks)
• John Hiatt, You May Already Be a Winner, Riding With the King (Geffen)
• badsoma, burn out, kicking and screaming (Dead Comet)
• Crack Cloud, The Medium, Red Mile (Jagjaguwar)
• The Fat Babies, San, Chicago Hot (Delmark)
• Flamingos In The Tree, Make U Smile, as it falls into place (Self-Released)
• The Kentucky Headhunters, Skip a Rope, Pickin' on Nashville (Mercury)
• Pharez Whitted, Watusi Boogaloo, For the People (Origin)
• Randy & the Rainbows, Denise, Doo Wop Heaven (The Right Stuff)

Long live Lisagor

Presidential aide Tom Johnson (from left), Peter Lisagor and Lyndon Johnson.

Peter Lisaor's breezy Chicago Daiily News writing helped establish Chicago’s mid-century reputation for muscular, no-nonsense journalism.

Peter Lisagor died in 1976, just before I graduated from j-school at Wisconsin. As the Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Daily News, his political reporting was syndicated in large and midsize newspapers nationwide, which its how I would have read them (when Erin Gessert, a journalism graduate student at DePaul University, asked about Lisagor, I suggested checking archives such as NewsBank).

Lisagor was a lively writer; a collection of Daily News reporting, Done in a Day, reprints a 1959 dispatch on a trip to the U.S. by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, in which he writes, “Traveling with Khrushchev is like holding a stick of dynamite with a sputtering fuse.”

One sign of Lisagor’s reputation was his frequent TV appearances on “Meet the Press” and “Face the Nation.” The format of the Sunday talk shows at that time was a panel of reporters would be assembled to ask a newsmaker questions for 30 minutes straight. Lisagor was also the long-running, early host of “Washington Week in Review,” essentially first with the now common political news format in which reporters analyze recent events. I remember his reporting of both parties as closely observed and nonpartisan.

The Chicago Headline Club started its annual local journalism awards in 1977 in Lisagor’s name, The idea of establishing a memorial to Lisagor was likely the driving force in getting the awards program started. The early format is essentially unchanged, from the judging by Society of Professional Journalists chapters to the sketch of Lisagor oy Daily News editorial cartoonist John Fischetti engraved on award plaques. As a new member, I attended the first Peter Lisagor Awards for Exemplary Journalism presentation at Marina City. Howard Dubin would have been a club officer about that time; he was president in 1977-78.

For the first 10 years of the Lisagor Awards, a “Washington Week” retrospective was part of the awards program; when I chaired the Lisagor Awards in the 1990s, I found wire-service photos of Lisagor with LBJ and “Face the Nation” clips in which Lisagor would respectfully but persistently press for direct answers. Lisagor’s reporting has faded from memory but the awards do justice to his drive to look for the revealing moment and tell it without pandering to his audience.

Conversational AI in Marketing: A Calculated Guess at PR’s Future

Joost Crop / Unsplash photo

AI chatbots like ChatGPT won’t replace content strategists but will make marketers’ work more efficient and distinctive.

A few of us recall when calculators were not allowed in school and we had to learn how to use a slide rule. Keeping track of decimal points in our head wasn’t as simple as reading from a Radio Shack dot-matrix display, which made chemistry class a slog. Now, we see old ways continue in communications despite the availability of ChatGPT, a calculator for words that many public relations agencies are still reluctant to embrace.

Conversational artificial intelligence tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its bot rivals—Google Bard and Microsoft Sydney among them—will not replacde PR professionals but will make copywriting faster and focus content strategists on exploring unique brand values. That’s a win-win for us and our clients. The handy Tandy calculator eventually earned a place in the classroom and paved the way for laptops and tablets. The same is in store for AI, so it’s worth sharing some of what we’ve learned.

AI in PR: The First Rough Draft of Story

If the slide-rule analogy seems ancient, think of the new chatbots as autofill for an entire document. Their large language models simply predict the next word in a sequence, on and on for hundreds or thousands of words. The result is far from unique, though, and more helpful in structuring a document or checking grammar than saying anything that will attract a journalist or search engine’s notice. On the production side, AI chat also corrects coding syntax, generates images and produces working code snippets, shortening the “staring and swearing” stage of development.

Some communications teams have been happy to turn over their thought leadership to a conversational AI tool and cut out the content writer entirely. However, they’re more likely to produce thought followership—the quick takes of those who just did a Google search and proclaimed themselves experts. 

Chatbot copy will not top search engine results pages; it can’t even qualify for copyright under current law. At worst, it simulates expertise with fact-free copy that is more BS than PR, or plagiarizes its source material and puts its users in legal jeopardy.

To avoid falling into a galaxy-mind trap, AI should be in the hands of marketing professionals who can bring out the unique characteristics of their brands. For content strategists who already know their way around search queries, AI is search and spell check on steroids—a time-saver in researching a nuanced presentation. Its copycat content calls for rewrite from a communications pro with subject matter expertise and human perspective. Marketing AI cannot innovate. AI chat is not the end of storytelling but the start.

Social Media Conversations: AI Sentiment Analysis

For social media marketers, chatbots can identify the sentiment of posts, comments and messages and identify social media influencers. In ChatGPT, the Google chatbot Bard or a multisource AI tool such as Quora’s Poe, sentiment analysis might start by entering text with this prompt: “What is the sentiment conveyed in this text? Is it positive or negative?” In a social media tool such as Hootsuite Insights, AI can help trace the causes of a change in sentiment. Coca-Cola saw a 42% engagement boost using AI in analyzing metrics and conversations.

A simple way to learn about AI is just to ask the chatbot. For instance, you might ask, “How can I prompt ChatGPT to extract the aspect and direction of sentiment in a text?” ChatGPT will respond with a choice of detailed suggestions, such as “Prompt: What are the different sentiments expressed in this text, and in which direction are they leaning? Please provide specific examples of positive and negative directions."

ChatGPT shared a detailed cheat sheet that reminds us of the instructions a new hire might need to perform a task. Spending more time on prompts may seem time-consuming, but the process is a reminder of how many factors go into well-crafted content. Conversational AI works much like search: The way a question is phrased makes all the difference in the results.

Conversational AI will help marketers personalize a customer service response (the bot is always polite), such as a follow-up message or survey after a purchase or interaction to gather feedback and address any concerns. Neurodiverse users have even used chatbots to rehearse social conversations. There are good reasons to be cautious about getting personal with a program that collects and shares information. But who knows where this kind of code-switching might lead?

Martech Meets AI: Software Startups

Dozens of new AI products go to market every week, including marketing technology aimed at marketers. A Marketing AI Institute webinar presented 20 AI writing tools, and the daily AI newsletter Ben’s Bites often debuts new content production products. Among recent marketing AI software startups are Charlie and Copymatic, which write ad, blog and social media content;  Copy.ai, Lavender and Rasa.io , geared to newsletters; SEO tools Demandwell, Frase and MarketMuse, and image and video generators GlossAI and Visla.

AI upgrades are in the works too for familiar research and writing essentials. Word, Excel and other Microsoft 365 tools are due for AI updates; GPT-juiced Bing search has made the Edge web browser a complement to the Purpose Brand content team’s favorite Chrome alternative, Opera. (Apple users also can try Quora’s multichannel AI platform Poe.) 

Google has made more tentative AI moves, warning that Bard “may give inaccurate responses” or “offensive information that doesn’t represent Google’s views.” But Google’s adoption of snippets, maps and local results has set the pattern for AI integration—and a note of caution for businesses that rely on SEO. AI chat results eventually will make search engines even more of a self-contained tool and give fewer users a reason to click through to source material.

Rapid improvements are likely for conversational AI, but it won’t replace humans. Like Kazuo Ishiguro’s artificial friends in “Klara and the Sun,” future AI chatbots will run into trouble once they try to mimic empathy. When our research robots seem smarter than us, then we’ve forgotten how to tell a distinctive story and left our hearts out of our work.

First in a series by the author published on the Purpose Brand blog and the whitepaper AI in PR: A Guide to Marketing Innovation.

'Ink Master' Draws Life Lessons

Mentors and apprentices make their mark in the 'Ink Master' tattoo contest when they put their clients and each other first.

Which is more manipulative, reality TV or cable news? I've made my choice. I'm binge-watching a decade of "Ink Master." Don't judge.

"Ink Master" is a tattoo competition. A dozen or so tattoo artists are thrown into a Brooklyn loft (or more likely a New Jersey film studio that looks like a Brooklyn loft). The undercard to this competition is a timed challenge to test tattoo technique. I enjoy when the artists are assigned an unusual medium—a pig carcass, a wall, a scrap heap, a steel plate, a staple gun, a half-ton of candy. Next, they get a live client or "canvas" and a deadline assignment to tattoo a specific subject in a specific style. You will not believe how many different ways you can draw a skull. But this is reality TV, and the main event is a ritual hazing. Judges give a critique that sends one of the contestants home.

I've gone this long in my life without adding a tattoo to my permanent record. My hours spent on parlor games have not convinced me to change. For one, everything in my life is tentative. If no tattoo seems to satisfy the judges, I would probably could not live with flaws that stare back at me day after day. Also, "Ink Master" does not give me a fondness for tattoo artists. The competitors certainly are trash-talk masters. There's so much bleeped-out sniping in each episode that I feel tats are less of an old maritime art form and more like "Moby-Dick" without Moby. But mostly, I'm too sqeamish to think ink. Whenever needles appear in close-up, I close my eyes.

But decorum and nausea aside, there are life lessons to be learned from watching others make their mark. I've scratched out a few.

Sugary sweet success

Nerds candy boosts Itasca plant's fortunes

Reporters once might have been drawn to newspaper work by the printing machinery rumbling a few floors beneath their desks. For sure, I couldn't resist touring a factory. As a Chicago Sun-Times business reporter in 1984, I wrote about not only healthcare innovations like MRI scanners and PPOs, but also candy breakthroughs like the Everlasting Gobstopper. Ferrara, which now owns the Willy Wonka brands, is a PR client. Working with their team sent me back to my musty clippings and reminded me that jobs at the candy factory just seem like fun.

Making candy for pre-teens is hard even for the folks at Willy Wonka Brands to swallow.

"When kids are young they look for distinct flavors and bright colors," said Dick Gower, national sales manager at the Itasca candy plant. He grabs a Wacky Wafers tablet off the assembly line, but takes only one bite. "Sour apple flavor," Gower explains. "Too strong for an adult."

Nonetheless, the grown-ups at Willy Wonka have a keen taste for children's confections. The division of St. Louis-based Sunmark Inc. has proved it with a product called Nerds.

Introduced last year, it was 1983's fastest growing brand, and started 1984 with a bigger market share than even such industry heavyweights as Curtiss' Butterfinger or M&M/Mars' Milky Way.

"It sells like the blazes," says candy broker Howard Wirth, chairman of Wirth-Daniels Corp. in Rosemont. (Privately held Sunmark won't disclose sales figures.) Wirth calls Willy Wonka "a supoer house, very attuned to the young audience. They're very innovative people with superb packaging."

The quirky Nerds package, a split-chamber paper carton that dispenses separate flavors of the sugary Nerds nuggests, contributes to the product's strange appeal. So does the name, negative connotations and all.

On college campuses, where "nerd" has much the same meaning as "egghead," engineering students have made Nerds a cult item. Sunmark's co-opting the term won Nerds the 1984 "Great Names to Go Down in Marketing History" award from the trade magazine Adweek.

While fad items are common in the Willy Wonka catalog, Sunmark's marketing people cautiously predict that Nerds is no fad, They've capitalized on the cute, Schmoo-like charachters adorning the package for T-shirt and stuffed toy promotions, and expect to license the characters to appear on products from lunch boxes to Saturday morning cartoon shows.

"To really do it the right way you have to create a history of the Nerds character," says general manager Ron Salek, an Itasca resident. "We're working along those lines."

The foray into oddball chic continues with Fruit Runts candy, which is getting a West Coast market test, An attention-getting day-glow package comes decorated with banana, strawberry and grape gremlins. The candy itself is shaped like fruit, in vivid New Wave colors—a neat production trick. "The banana wasn't easy," Salek admits.

Willy Wonka is a character in an old English reader, "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," and a 1971 film, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Sunmark produced chocolate bars for Quaker Oats under the Willy Wonka name, then bought the brand and recipes when Quaker dropped the line,

Sunmark ultimately renamed its Breaker Confections unit after the character, and names from the Willy Wonka story live on in products like the Everlasting Gobstopper—a jawbreaker built in layers to change flavors over several hours. "It lasts a heckuva long time," Salek says. "Not forever."

Willy Wonka no longer has its chocolate factory, but has expanded the Itasca plant to more than 100 employees. Salek expects to build an addition to the 90,000-square-foot plant next year to expand it by one-third.

Jawbreaker and roll-candy production fills the Itasca plant with the scent of different flavorings. "It goes from cherry to fruit punch to any other flavor," Gower says. "I don't smell it anymore."

The concoctions are as much a creation of the sales force as the R&D people. "We have several brainstorming sessions a year," Salek says. "We got our marketing and design people together, and we even invite some outsiders."

The method figures in Willy Wonka's success—Nerds was a back-burner project of the company's candy makers that only caught fire when combined with the jazzy packaging and title ideas. Children taste-test the concoction before test marketing begins, and test stores are monitored for sales trends.

The creative teams often capitalize on fats, notably a few years ago with UFO candy packaged in a plastic saucer.

We're an ethical company in the trade," Salek says. "If we think it's a fad item, we tell our customers to only reorder once and be very careful after that. As a result, if we have a product that's going to be a barnstormer they'll really support it.

"We also leave a couple of markets for the end," Salek says, "so that when it stops selling we can move our stock to another town where it's a new proposition."

Willy Wonka's candy men try to lead fads rather than follow them. As domestic candy companies attemp to produce imitations of foreign Gummi Bears imports, Wonka is producing a gelatin-based candy squid with a slimy, chewy texture.

The world of children's candy is comfortable enough that they don't want to grow up into less sugary lines for adult tastes. "The energy we put into other products just doesn't get the same awards," Gower says.

What does a Google E-A-T?

How editors can feed the beast

Who is your most important reader? Business editors imagine it's a company's chief executive, or the people desperately trying to understand what the CEO is doing. Investors, business partners and especially potential business partners hang on the CEO's every word. Crain's Chicago Business used to advertise itself as "Where the Who's Who read what's what," till Who's Who, the place you looked up famous people, started being replaced by Google. Who's Who? Say what?

Editors should think about another very influential reader: Google. Its audience is nearly everyone in business. Like the CEO, Google has tremendous resources. And like the CEO, it does not have much time for us. As a result there's a thriving marekting specialty, search engine optimization, or SEO. Its practitioners—let's call them SEOs too—all want Google to share a bit of that audience.

Their problem is not a mystery. SEOs all want a listing at the top of search engine results, and there's not much room at the top. Whatever the SEO tells you, the search engine is not hocus-pocus either. It's a powerful computer, but it's most comfortable reading code. English is its second language. As a reader, Google has artificial intelligence at its disposal, but it's still not very intuitive. Even so, its decisions can make or break a business.

Vacation in the time of COVID

It’s a tough time to travel.

Once upon a time, humans actually traveled to meet people and see things for themselves. Now tourists want to get back in circulation, but the covid virus had the idea first. We’re ready to bust of the house, but wherever we go the residents aren’t quite ready to bust out of the house to greet them. That leaves Michigan, with its scenic roadside attractions and high vaccination rates.

Michigan farm country has not only acres of corn and soybeans but also grape vines, and wineries have moved their tastings onto the terrace. These are not brewery tours, where you stop and smell the yeast. A winery tasting involves taking the tine to get familiar with one or two flights of wine, and then more time to forget about them and sober up. The first rule of tastings: Always leave something on the table.

I’m direction challenged even when fully caffeinated. Fortunately, we now have Siri to give directions. But she can be a bit chatty. She’ll start out saying, “Stay on I-94 for the next 80 miles,” but can’t leave it at that. “In two miles, stay on I-94.” ”In a quarter mile, use the left three lanes to stay on I-94.” Yes, Siri, I get it. Don’t stop for gas or Siri starts tapping the Apple Watch on your wrist. “Make a U-turn! Return to the route!” She’s entirely too anxious. Can’t she just enjoy the scenery?

Siri is always certain. Several times she instructed something like, “Take Rockland Road south,” followed immediately by “Take Rockland Road north.” She'd be more helpful to state, "The destination is around here somewhere." Can’t she read the signs? Still, it’s better to second-guess Siri than to get mad at the driver. "Shut up!" I'd say, which I realize is not helpful. I should be saying, "Siri, shut up!"

Just another crime non-statistic

Most crime goes unreported. The reasons remain unexamined.

No one wants to be another statistic, but that's how the police police. Chicago keeps a tally of where crimes are called in, and stations more cops there. Only 2 out of every 5 violent crimes are told to police. But any attempt to prevent crime has to start somewhere. Cops follow where the data leads.

We know most crime is hidden from police because the Census Bureau also keeps statistics. The National Crime Victimization Survey asks a sample of Americans about all the nasty things that might have happened to them in the last six months.

I know. Nasty things have happened to me, and I've been asked. A census field representative showed up at my door pre-Covid. Trump was griping about the census so much that I figured whatever business the census taker had must be good. So we had a thorough discussion about crime. Very thorough.

Has something I carry—luggage, a wallet, purse, briefcase, book—been stolen?

Clothing, jewelry, or cellphone?

Bicycle or sports equipment?

Things in the home like a TV, stereo, or tools?

Things outside my home such as a garden hose or lawn furniture?

Things belonging to children in the household?

Things from a vehicle, such as a package, groceries, camera or CD? Wait, what's a CD?

OK, did anyone attempt to steal anything?

If this doesn't sound like the usual census experience, it isn't. The chatty gent was working on the National Crime Victimization Survey which collects data on trends in violent crime, costs of crime, crime in schools and how law enforcement responds.

Most census visits don't go into this much detail. Still, this long-form interview soft-pedaled one particular fact. A census rep would come back every six months to ask the same questions once again. This is how we learn about crimes beyond the statistics. Someone just keeps asking and asking.

A subscription there always is

We pay a bundle for entertainment, but not for news. And we get what we pay for.

How many entertainment subscriptions do you have? My cable TV package is just big enough to get the White Sox, plus more than enough reminders of the channels I can't watch. But wait, there's more:

• Netflix, even though I can't really chill
• Amazon Prime, because shipping is free
• MLB TV, filling the urgent need for baseball in March
• Peacock, for old Battlestar Gallactica
• HBO Plus, to watch competitive ceramics
• Apple Plus, because I bought an iPhone
• Disney Plus, because baby Yoda
• Hulu, because at least it isn't Hulu Plus
• I think I needed Roku to watch Apple Plus
• Maybe there's some other subscription kept on the down low

Now, how many news subscriptions do you have?

I have the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Block Club Chicago, New York Times and Washington Post. I have work accounts for quite a few more sites, which sometimes means when I log in the website gives my boss a cheery welcome.

I may be an outlier because I'm willing to pay other people for what they do. Most people heard the phrase "information wants to be free" and didn't think it was about censorship. They thought, yeah, I like free stuff!

So getting something for free is now the business model for the internet, as well as trade show exhibits, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The strategy doesn't hold up well.

As a boomer of course I'll admit I had a hand in every bad situation. My college newspaper experience was to go to the lunch counter at Rennebohm Drug, get a cup of coffee and ask if someone else's newspaper is stashed behind the counter. When I built websites in the 1990s, this was the experience I was trying to recreate.

Tribune slow jams the news

Tribune Tower is converting to condos, and the Tribune is converting to hedge fund control.

The Big Buyout: Everything Must Go!

Reading the Chicago Tribune is hard these days because all the columnists are writing the same thing. No, not that Trump really won the election. They're posting farewell columns. Dahleen Glanton, John Kass, Steve Johnson, Phil Rosenthal, Mary Schmich, Heidi Stevens, Eric Zorn—nearly everyone with photo next to their name is taking themselves out of the picture. No relief on Twitter; the people who I worked with behind the scenes are adding the word "formerly" to their bios. Even people barely out of journalism school have stopped chasing crime scenes. It's not a brain drain; it's a royal flush.

Let's just call it the big buyout. The hedge fund Alden Global Capital is taking Tribune Newspapers private. Perversely, it can pay off shareholders by borrowing against the Tribune's own physical assets. Now Alden is disposing of the papers' human capital, giving 80 employees severance deals to eliminate their jobs; 26 of them in the Chicago guild. It's not the first round of buyouts, either. I left in a round of them 7 years ago. It wasn't the first round. Newspapers of course aren't the only place to lose your job. Any business with a steady cash flow is an opportunity for the owner to cash in. They get taken over, they shed overhead and in another decade it's all over.

It's hard to get old working in newspapers. A few of the departing columnists will stay in the Tribune in syndication, which costs the Tribune much less than keeping them on the payroll. Newspapers always been low-cost operations. They're willing to make new stars and lose the old. But until this point they've been able to draw replacements from the pipeline of new journalism talent at small daily papers and suburban weeklies. Before I worked at the Chicago daily papers I was in the pipeline, reporting for the Elmwood Park Elm Leaves. I talked to politicians, teachers, merchants, realtors, wannabe actors, nursing home residents. I judged the Kiwanis Club Miss Peanut contest. I looked up a lot of dictionary words, and wrote about all of it. This is how I learned how to spell, how to write in a hurry, doublecheck what I know, and know what I still haven't learned. My readers learned if what I wrote was worth reading.

The Elm Leaves publisher now is the Chicago Tribune. I looked it up and read the editor's farewell column. It's hard to imagine what the pipeline for daily journalists looks like now, with so many fewer journalists. Maybe they'll hire from TikTok. We'll all learn a few new dance moves, but not much else, unless Jimmy Fallon will still slow jam the news.

A year for the books

The novel survived the coronavirus. Reading habits mutated. Have you caught the bug?

Mom called to ask for audiobook recommendations; her reading habit has not dimmed despite lost sight. What have I read lately? If I recall sunlight on the page from a bus window, it was not this year. Books were important in my commute, timed so I could take a seat and turn pages. The pandemic lockdown seemed like the end of a literary chapter, but it was only a plot twist. Book sales surged on Amazon and in superstores, and publishers ended the year strong.

To understand what happened I turned to big data—my reading list on Goodreads, a diary of reading exploits that Amazon and Google can unlock at any time.

Turns out I've read at least 20 books in 2020, more than any time since I left newspapers, and more on the couch than the commute. I didn't hear as much about having my nose in a newspaper or computer, though that could have been my hearing, and sometimes read past midnight to clear my head.

A Blatz from the past

I'm from Milwaukee, and I ought to know.