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)

'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.

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 mentor your boss is not

“Always two there are, no more, no less. A master and an apprentice.”

What's a quest without a Yoda to challenge the hero?

"Star Wars" lifted a story line as old as Homer, right down to the sage older adviser for Odysseus, a character named Mentor. For ages since, the stories we tell ourselves about our professional and personal lives leave a role for mentors. Mastery requires finding a master.

Except that Yoda was right. An apprentice is just an apprentice. Yoda had a job to do, training Jedi knights. Eight centuries on he's still at it. Here comes yet another hotshot, young Skywalker. Yoda doesn't need this. When Luke shows up, Yoda thinks, Leia this is not. Yoda plays the fool, toying with this pretty boy who crashed on Dagobah with his pet robot. In the end he agrees to help Luke master the Force. Duty calls.

Mentorship likely will confound me till I reach Yoda's age. In this galaxy, mentors are on bad paper. They mansplain the obvious. Their motives are suspect. They look like Harvey Weinstein. They act like Harvey Weinstein.

And while I've trained a lot of people in a lot of jobs, my work was to teach the ways of journalism or blogging or spreadsheets or databases. A mentor your boss is not. At times I strayed from this mission, though. Once as an editor, I told one of my staffers the way to get ahead faster was to work elsewhere. The staffer left journalism, but not immediately. We're still in touch decades later.

Polish Triangle: Don't let the pigeon drive the bus

Picture your route to work. Some of it could move more quickly, but in other places you intentionally stop to talk to friends, or pick up something to eat. Or it's not a destination but a point where you reflect on what's ahead.

For me that's the subway stop near my home. Not so much the subway itself—we share the tunnel with quite a few creatures but it's not like visiting the zoo. And not so much the entrance, where the stairway is getting patched checkerboard style with whatever tile's on hand, and when it rains you have to dodge the puddles.

Beyond the Blue Line entrance at Division is a small plaza, which is possibly even less notable. Milwaukee Avenue is the cross street, and in Chicago we love our diagonal intersections. North, Damen and Milwaukee is just up the street, the gateway to Bucktown, and people are all in a hurry to get somewhere and walking every which way, no matter what the traffic signals say. Here, where Division intersects Ashland just a bit short of Milwaukee, there's this triangle-shaped wedge of a plaza that floats in the intersection like a raft. People mostly avoid it, as if it would float away.

The station and its patchwork staircase are due for renovations, so I was describing this place to a Tribune reporter. It's not as welcoming an area as it should be, I said. There's a constant fight against pigeons. I went on at great length, but those 16 words are all that got in the paper. When talking to a reporter, always keep a sound bite handy. This isn't the one I would have chosen.

It's not fake news. The reporter started out the column calling it a gray pigeony place—if pigeony is a word, it's unknown to Google spell check—and the pigeons helped out by posing for the Tribune photographer. So this part of the story has the insistent coo of truth. But my point was to look beyond the subway station and give some love to what has long been called the Polish Triangle.

Media creatures: MCA's 'I Was Raised on the Internet'

Eva and Franco Mattes, from "My Generation," in the Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition "I Was Raised on the Internet."

Do you talk in an art museum? It's not a library. When art speaks to you, maybe you should speak back.

At work, we needed a summer outing. So we took off for the Museum of Contemporary Art, which plays jazz on Tuesdays near the Water Tower. What could be more Chicago? And just to say we were really working, we took in the exhibit "I Was Raised on the Internet," in which artists in various media make points about media.

We really were working, though. After a round of budget-tightening at work, we needed to rebuild. The magazine most likely will be producing fewer issues with a new art director, while I'm leading a website redesign. So we're sorting out new ideas and bouncing them off co-workers. As a result, I found myself talking through what I was seeing in the art gallery. If you've done brainstorming, you know how liberating that can be. Wild ideas didn't have to wait someone ordered the second round.

Woodstripper's Ball [and Chain]

Jazz Age musician Bix Beiderbecke, patron saint of woodshedders and woodstrippers (Cliff Wirth / Chicago Sun-Times)

At the Chicago Sun-Times, I talked myself into taking over the remodeling column.

After coming into the office every Monday morning with stories about hanging doors and patching concrete, my boss thought I should put my research to better use. I followed the great Les Hausner's first-person format, plus the frequent dashes and paragraph breaks. This Around the House installment is a sentimental favorite. It's for serious rehabbers: An out-of-town friend read the piece and asked me, "What was that all about?" But I still giggle over Cliff Wirth's illustration. [Published June 2, 1996].

It's back to Sundays with Bix.

Bix Beiderbecke, the young man with a horn, on the radio. Bix woodstripper slowly melting the plastic tuning knob.

Like the Paul Whiteman Orchestra cornetist, this stuff could just about cut through brass.

On and off for a year, I would get fidgety feet long before the first downbeat of Dick Buckley's Sunday afternoon as program on WBEZ (91.5 FM). I'd be off the davenport and scraping paint off the woodwork in our pre-Beiderbecke rowhouse.

The stripper calls again this summer, like the trumpet trio in "San." A clothes chute that we liberated from behind a wall needs to go naked. Same for the white sheets of paint behind our bedroom doors, and the weathered green window frames that look like an alligator's backside.

Let them tweet cake: 'Marie Antoinette' at Steppenwolf

Ericka Ratcliff, Tamberla Perry and Alana Arenas in "Marie Antoinette" (Steppenwolf Theatre Company)

Liberté, égalité, fraternité is just another meme.

In Steppenwolf Theatre Company's production of "Marie Antoinette," we're invited to think of the Enlightenment as the start of our unenlightened age. Seems like a daft notion, but then again how can rebels still see beheadings as all the rage?

The production starts with the Capet queen and her ladies-in-waiting decked out in wide-contour crinoline, but engaged in the idle girl talk of reality television: Marie Antoinette as Kim Kardashian. Alana Arendas has the task of reigning over a Moulin Rouge court, a pastiche that makes Antoinette only 1% aristocrat, or places her in the aristocracy of the 1%.

David Adjmi's play sets her in a tourist Versailles, a hall of scratched mirrors. It's not a vast palace but a small jewel box of family and friends, with not much to the lot of them beyond their aloof, over-the-top image. Louis XVI is not playing a delicate game of empire and reform. Tim Hopper's king is mostly distracted, the inheritor of the family business; his fall, a few convocation missteps. Axel von Fersen (Ariel Shafir) is a flirtatious count on his grand tour, not Rochambeau's aide in the march on Yorktown. There's not much revolution in this rarefied air.

A measured approach to youth programs

Once the program's over, leaders ask: What just happened?

Project managers call it monitoring and control. We gather data to measure progress toward our goals. Nonprofit funders may require it. When children are research subjects, sponsors may set ground rules. In any case, youth program leaders admit the challenges of collecting and presenting the data.

At the Hive Chicago Buzz hackathon, members of a data working group dubbed the Think Tank pledged to create a self-evaluation tool, plus professional development to help members conduct their own analysis or work with outside consultants. I'm a journalist fellow in a member group, The News Literacy Project.

We started by listing own data challenges: tracking the reach of our programs, surveying young participants and presenting the results. Many of us have similar goals – to teach critical thinking, raise engagement or encourage careers – so common benchmarks could help us compare outcomes. Not all of us have resources at hand to create or analyze a database.

Brainstorming sessions were led by Jeremy Dunn of the Chicago Public Library and Eve Gaus of the Field Museum. Stephanie Levi of Chicago STEM Pathways Cooperative presented a starting point for self-evaluation, a checklist based on Harvard research on after-school programs. Tene Gray of Digital Youth Network advocated digital badges as way to demonstrate and track what students have accomplished.

During a lunch break, I chatted with with Christie Thomas of the University of Chicago about Lawrence Lessig's lectures on "institutional corruption." (For the news media, that means forces undermining their public-interest mission.) After that ethics appetizer, Thomas led the group in exploring the issues of working with children.

Research rules are well established, dating to the government's 1979 Belmont Report. But parents can find them intimidating when they're outlined on a consent form. Are students giving informed consent when blogging or posting their cellphone selfies, and are their parents on the same page? Does putting children in a control group deny them benefits? Would a program for high school students be more effective in middle schools?

The group wrapped up by documenting their thoughts on an evaluation toolbox for Hive members. Future training could cover survey construction and emerging standards for connected learning. Work will continue in monthly meetups at the Harold Washington Library Center.

This article also appears at Civic Artworks.

iPod Shuffle doesn't repeat? Then explain Lang Lang!

A blackjack card counter might not beat the iPod odds, but that doesn't make Shuffle random. Most likely it's an algorithm we haven't cracked but a formula just the same.

In any case the game's fixed: We choose what to load on the device, so patterns are there to be found. On my aging iPod Touch, it's an equal mix of roughly 7-minute classical selections I've been replaying for years and music of all sorts that caught my attention in just the last six months — stumbled-upon library CDs, Loop noon-hour concert selections, acquisitions for Brenda's gym playlist.

Today after recharging, the same shuffle started to replay. A random act? A failing battery? Steve Jobs' reach from beyond the grave? Whatever the reason, attention must be paid. Listen to the blues long enough, and odds are you'll find a shuffle pattern:

Lang Lang: Albéniz - Iberia, Fête-dieu à Seville
Jill Barber: If It Weren't for Loving You
Johnny Cash: If You Could Read My Mind
Kings of Leon: The Immortals
Artur Rubenstein: Chopin - Impromptu No. 3 in G-flat
Black Stone Cherry: In My Blood
Beach Boys: In My Room
OK Go: In the Glass
Cage the Elephant: Indy Kids
Decemberists: The Infanta
Artur Rubenstein: Brahms - Intermezzo in A-flat
Lacuna Coil: Intoxicated
Keith Jarrett & Charlie Hayden: I'm Gonna Laugh You Right Out of My Life
OK Go: Invincible
Jonas Kaufmann: Verdi - "Io l'ho perduta! ... lo la vida"
John Mayall: It Ain't Right
Airborne Toxic Event: It Doesn't Mean a Thing
REM: It Happened Today
Passion Pit: It's Not My Fault I'm Happy
Easley Blackwood: Ives - Piano Sonata #2

Civic engagement: Free symphony and Chicago blues

If the symphony is an acquired taste, the first step is to acquire cash. Main-floor tickets to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra cost $47 and up even on a weeknight. Box seats go for $220 each. But there's a way to take in the Orchestra Hall experience for free. It could be ticket to a lifelong interest in classical music.

Symphony Center's tuxedo-clad ushers open the house of Riccardo Muti, Georg Solti and Fritz Reiner to free performances of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, an accomplished youth symphony. Its members also perform at Chicago schools and fieldhouses, but the full complement of musicians performs downtown several times a year. A friend introduced me to the group years ago with a performance of Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony. The musicians got most of the notes right, and didn't seem to mind premature applause at the end of the third movement.

I'd almost forgotten about the Civic Orchestra till Brenda surprised me four years ago with Symphony Center jazz tickets for my birthday. Listening to jazz was an obvious sacrifice for her though, so since then I've been taking closer looks at the Orchestra Hall schedule to find concerts more to her taste. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra also handed out its calendar during Muti's revelatory 2010 concert in Millennium Park, when I heard the CSO lend unexpected subtlety to pops warhorses like Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet."

A concert series was still outside our budget, but on Thanksgiving weekend we sprung for Orchestra Hall tickets to watch the movie "West Side Story" in Cinemascope with the CSO playing the orchestral parts live. This symphonic spin on a DJ gambit made it hard to decide whether to concentrate on the Jerome Robbins choreography, Natalie Wood/Marni Nixon as Maria, the live musicians, their gilt-edged setting or the Bowery backdrop. Mayor Emanuel, the noted ex-dancer and a presumed Robbins fan, was waiting in the lobby afterward, with a force field of open space around him. That was a performance in itself: When a citizen dared approach, he simultaneously shook her hand and pushed her toward the door.

The Civic Orchestra doesn't get on the mayor's schedule but its concerts are in the Symphony Center fliers, and tickets can be ordered online for $1. This season our household was just comfortable enough to afford a CSO concert and a Civic engagement featuring one of my gateway drugs to classical music, Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony.

In high school I played the trombone part in the violin-free concert band arrangement, which is what the marching band performs in the cafeteria for parents after football season ends. Mr. Folsom conducted the master-blaster last movement, but not at the breakneck orchestral pace. The finale's metronome marks are a point of musicological dispute, but our music teacher simply was trying to make it playable, the same way classmate Pat McCurdy's garage band slowed down Sha Na Na's "Duke of Earl" and accidentally sounded like Gene Chandler. In the bleak mid-winter friend and I would slip out of study hall to listen to Leonard Bernstein's LP Fifth. I learned there was more to this moody work than I knew, and more to my friend, who revealed thoughts of suicide.

In summer, on a lunch break from my messenger job, the Shostakovich Fifth joined the modest classical music library I was building from $2 LPs on the "Standard Repertoire" list in Stereo Review. It would have been in the collection much earlier if the record-club disc I ordered had not inexplicably arrived with a rock album packed inside the sleeve.

Not only do I have a history with this piece, the piece has its own history as well. I got a refresher course from Stephen Press' pre-performance lecture after a quick burrito at Chipotle. (Neither is a concert tradition, but it's a new era.) In 1936 Shostakovich had received a bad writeup in Pravda, and with the thought that Stalin thus had it in for him, billed his next year's symphony as "the creative reply of a Soviet artist to justified criticism." Such a plot line would be hard to swallow today but for the evidence of Stalin's brutal and mercurial nature.

The program notes had more along these lines, which I read waiting outside the hall for rehearsal to end. Civic Orchestra concerts are general admission, so patrons simply look for open seats, even those behind the orchestra. I chose fifth-row center, too close for clear views beyond the string section but great to take in sound under the domed stage. I've become a regular at Chicago Cultural Center chamber-music performances for the same reason: Live music and especially piano are far superior to the iPod even with stage-monitor earbuds.

Even with free admission, the classical music audience skews older -- I chatted with a Sun-Times retiree I knew, and many surrounding patrons seemed about the same age. But the two younger men next to me were taking iPhone photos of the brightly lit hall, and themselves in it. Many had saved space for friends and were discussing what they knew about the program. Everyone seemed to appreciate the music and their chance to hear it.

The Shostakovich has a lot to hear, a brassy hi-fi spectacular with two harps, timpani, xylophone, celesta and bells. In form it's a conventional, heroic symphony but like generations of loyal Soviets to follow, the composer seems to be delivering subversive messages between the lines. Martial music takes a fun-house cadence and odd dissonant chords undercut the triumphal notes. Jarring left-hand piano notes and pounding drums build a palpable tension.

Press' lecture encouraged the audience to dwell on the morose third movement and not the bombastic finale as the work's heart, and in his description of its D minor construction I recognized a blues scale. Conductor Cliff Colnot, a composer and arranger in classical, rock and jazz, seemed tuned in to the folk and blues overtones, and the musicians combined for a 45-minute blues that built toward not triumph but exhaustion: free at last, thank God almighty.

The result was the Civic at the most accomplished I have heard it, and the most affecting. Often I'll tear up at dramatic music, whether it's an aria, a bolero or Broadway, and here I felt that wave of emotion. Colnot kept the musicians onstage for a long ovation, pointing to each soloist to take a bow. On the trip home, a subway busker was playing "The Thrill Is Gone." The Civic Orchestra had something to teach him, and at the price of admission he should have been there.

The best concerts push the audience outside its comfort zone, or push familiar works into uncharted territory. This performance had both elements, and suggests good things ahead for the rest of the schedule, which includes Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" and a Beethoven piano concerto with Emanuel Ax as soloist. They should be hot tickets. They're already free.

Time out: Leisure reading for the hurried

If you bought books at the Friends of the Oak Park Public Library book fair last summer (or vinyl at Reckless Records, there's a good chance you have something from my collection. When my basement library became an exercise room, I had to revise the Zero Book Growth policy that barely kept my library confined to my bookshelves.

When I did the math, the solution was to shrink the book cave to closet size. Reading a dozen or so books a year, I wasn't going to finish what waited on the basement shelves in this lifetime. Even if I went nuclear purging the excess, I could still hit the much bigger stacks at the new West Town library branch.

What do newspaper folks make time to read between morning and evening newspapers and a few dozen websites? Not much, I suspect. The proprietor of the Trib Nation blog was asking around the newsroom what people were reading. Good luck with that.

I keep track of my CTA reading at Goodreads.com. Looking over the list reminds me of my father's reading habits at my age: mysteries, short stories and plays that could be read in short bursts of spare time.

Half my reading is non-fiction but it's just as episodic in nature. Last year, Jerome Loving's Mark Twain: The Adventures of Samuel L. Clemens, a lucky find at the Harold Washington library, has a short-chapter format like one of Twain's subscription novels, which nicely fits a subway commute. Twain's crotchety late years remind me of legendary wire-service reporter Helen Thomas in this year's YouTube dustup. God knows what I'll be ranting about at age 90, but I'm sure I wouldn't want it to define my career.

Harold Evans' They Made America, which filled out my airline reading, could have been titled "Lives of the Innovation Saints." Self-help books also fit the bill as quick reads: Judy Carter's The Comedy Bible, was an unexpected recommendation from a friend in Toastmasters: a book on the mechanics of being funny. (Yes, the man needs a book to figure out funny.)

Funny-strange how my book choices read more like biopics. Fiction included Gore Vidal's JFK potboiler "Washington, D.C.", Thomas Pynchon's "Mason & Dixon", which was kind of like an art-house buddy flick, George MacDonald Fraser's "The Reavers" (same but more PBS) and A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines (two scientists meet cute).

Some great recommendations came from obscure sources. Barbara Kingsolver's "Pigs in Heaven" was listed in an Arizona guidebook. Jim Lynch's "Border Songs" was blogged by one of my ex-students at Columbia College Chicago.

And a postcard from the author sent me to the hard-luck omnibus "American Salvage." Turns out my neighbors know Bonnie Jo Cambpell. So I have high hopes in starting "The Memory of Running." Ron McLarty's book was an oblique joke on HBO's "In Treatment" – recommended reading from a self-unaware shrink. Can't get much more obscure than that.

Friend me, I'm a musician

What does a YouTube phenomenon do for an encore? David Choi is getting nightclub gigs. Web-analyst friend Matt knew his opening act at the Beat Kitchen, Mia LeBlon, so we took in their all-ages show after work. ("Then I'll split," my younger friend told his office mates at the bar, "because I'm old.")

Choi gets enough YouTube love to parlay into a CD and (his Facebook bio says) commercial work. I thought that was all I needed to know about his song "You Tube (A Love Song)," but like John Mayer, Choi has a light, date-friendly repertoire. He's so earnest that Matt detected no irony in a song about an online crush. These lovers aren't ready for "I love you too."

Both LeBlon and Choi pepper their sets with references to Facebook fandom, which was strong enough to fill the room with Naperville teens (Choi patter: "Did you say Neighborville?"), Northwestern students and a few idly curious wage-earners. After Matt left for greasy appetizers at the front of the house, Choi sang "Happy Birthday" for anyone who might be there to celebrate, and took crowd shots on his cellphone. It was just goofy fun, like YouTube.

25 songs on my iPod (Randomly chosen)

1. Gideon Kremer/Keith Jarrett: Part, Fratres


2. Thelonious Monk: Monk's Mood


3. Kronos Quartet: The Cusp of Magic


4. Maurizio Pollini: Chopin Nocturne #15


5. John Moulder: Freedom


6. Martha Wainwright: So Many Friends


7. Rufus Wainwright: Release the Stars


8. Joan Baez: Oh Happy Day


9. Frank Kimbrough: Wig Wise


10. LaVerne Baker: Without a God


11. Michael Bates' Outside Sources: Prodigal


12. Ron Sexsmith: Brandy Alexander


13. Belle & Sebastian: Sukie in the Graveyard


14. Ahn Trio: Oblivion


15. Vic Chesnutt: Virginia


16. Bob Mintzer Big Band: Swangalang


17. Cedar Walton: Clockwise


18. Cynthia Felton: Long as You're Living


19. Dropkick Murphys: Rude Awakenings


20. Boston Pops: Gaite Parisienne


21. Jimmy Cobb Quartet: Never Let Me Go


22. Duke Robillard: When Your Lover Has Gone


23. Dandy Warhols: Bohemian Like You


24. Calexico: Inspiracion


25. R.E.M.: Gardening at Night

Another Frank Lloyd Wright affair

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright was once the proverbial prophet without honor in Oak Park. Early in his career, Wright showed bad form in skipping town with a client's wife. Last year a writer from Oak Park, Nancy Horan, found the story intriguing enough to imagine it from the woman's perspective. I read her book Loving Frank as my wife and I planned our own intimate association with Wright. We would live in one of his houses, if only for a day or two.

When I first came to Oak Park 30 years ago, Wright was re-emerging from obscurity nearly 20 years after his death. His turn-of-the-century early work were known mostly as the inspiration for the ranch house, and neighbors told me that for a long time his sprawling single-story commissions were viewed as no different from any other home in the comfortable Chicago suburb. Except that local roofers kept patching their leaks.
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But in 1978 the village had seen enough tourism potential in Wright to publish a guidebook to his homes, and a housewalk was organized to show Wright buildings that were on their way to becoming museum pieces. In the local weekly newspaper, the Oak Leaves, I reported with some fascination that "they have color TVs and children and dogs, like other homes." In Oak Park it was easy to buy into the Wright mystique.

In the '70s Wright's architectural office was being restored and opened for tours. That's where volunteer docents told me of the Cheney scandal, which did not involve Haliburton, an energy task force or a quail hunt. Wright built a low-slung rambler of a single-story home on East Avenue for Edwin and Mamah Cheney. Then he left his wife and split with Mamah for Europe, where he would publish a portfolio that influenced the emerging Bauhaus designers. Horan paints the couple as hounded by scandal-mongering press, which struck me as 21st-century embellishment until I read the actual news coverage. In 1909 the Chicago Tribune called the affair "an affinity tangle of character unparalleled even in the checkered history of soul mating."

Oak Park is home to 34 Wright structures, according to the most recent catalog of his homes, plus another 11 in neighboring River Forest. Wright designs had a name, the Prairie School, with carpenter-Gothic examples scattered throughout the Midwest. Wright moved his architectural practice to Wisconsin so I saw a lot of Prairie homes growing up. The Prairie School had a required reading list of Emerson and Thoreau, the better to recognize patterns from nature in his art-glass windows. There was even a typography based on his drawings, which influenced the Oak Park map I drafted for my wedding invitations.

Wright originals were not particularly lucrative for the architect. A running theme of Horan's book was Wright's continuous borrowing to finance a globe-trotting lifestyle and high-profile divorce. The architect made ends meet selling art prints he picked up cheap in Japan. Wright also designed massive wood furniture in the Arts & Crafts style, which in the 1970s was eagerly being bought up by Domino's Pizza baron Thomas Monaghan. Craftsman sofas built like workbenches were an acquired taste, though, and I had found one of its mass-market descendants for my college apartment at the Goodwill shop off campus.

The townhouse Brenda and I bought in Oak Park was across from the Unitarian church Wright designed, and we considered selling postcards to tourists scaling our front porch for a better camera angle. We could imagine living in a Wright house — the oak benches actually were pretty comfortable — but not paying for one. Wright homes now all have million-dollar price tags, even the so-called bootleg houses Wright designed while moonlighting from the Louis Sullivan firm. A Phoenix house he designed for his son is listed for $4 million.

This past March, Brenda spotted a New York Times article about Wright homes available for overnight rental, and was taken with the idea of living in a Wright house, if only for a couple of days.

So we planned a road trip through Pittsburgh to visit Fallingwater, Wright's best known house — a river runs through it. We booked a tour of another Wright curiosity: Kentuck Knob is maintained by the British lord who once owned Mies van der Rohe's Farnsworth House south of Plano. He lives there only a few weeks a year but keeps Claes Oldenburg sculpture and a piece of the Berlin Wall on the premises.

And we'd stay in a Wright home somewhere off the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Acme, PA. Mapquest could get us to the Dairy Queen in Donegal, where we could call for directions: turn right at Brady's Restaurant, when you see a fork in the road bear right, open the gate yourself and don't kick up too much gravel.

At the end of the rocky road was a ranch house on steroids, very long and low. We parked under the carport and let ourselves in. It was a time trip to the 1950s: a red Formica kitchen with built-in oven; a greatroom with stone fireplace and shag carpeting, and not Wright built-is but House of Teak knockoffs. This wasn't a museum piece, it was Graceland. What had we gotten ourselves into?

Owner Tom Papinchak arrived and filled us in. We had just taken a coals-to-Newcastle trip: Duncan House was built outside Lisle in DuPage County.

Wright's engineer in the 1950s, Marshall Erdman, was one of the early manufacturers of prefabricated homes. Duncan House was a 1957 attempt at a Wright prefab, a ranch house on steroids but modest by Wright standards. The Wright prefabs were a failure: Multiple changes to the stock plans ate up Erdman's profits. Only 11 were built.

Elizabeth Duncan saw the prefabs in a magazine and convinced husband Donald, an electrical engineer, that they could afford a stripped-down version in cinderblock instead of limestone. After Don Duncan died the 2-acre lot was subdivided, and four years ago the house became another DuPage County teardown. It escaped demolition, though. Crews dismantled the house, labeled the parts and packed them on semitrailers for a 500-mile trip East.

There the pieces sat for two years. An attempt to reconstruct the house as a museum ran out of money. (See a pattern emerging?) Papinchak, a contractor in the rebuilding effort, finally bought the warehoused house and spent a year piecing it back together, upgrading to a stone facade in the process.

He rebuilt Duncan House on the grounds of yet another failed Wright project, a subdivision of Wright homes that stalled after the architect's death. This would be the third house, joining two designed by a Wright apprentice. A year after the home was completed, Papinchak's plan to turn the grounds into a conference center appeared to be faltering as well. Catering supplies and gift-shop goodies were packed in the basement.

Secluded it was, but not exactly a resort. We could use the microwave and toaster oven but not the wall oven or range. The mattresses were hard. The wireless connection worked if the computer was docked against the wall. Cabinets were bare but for odd pieces of trimwork, their location labeled in Magic Marker.

Yet, spending time there, it was obvious the architect knew how his homes would be lived in. Thirty years ago, the owner of one of those Oak Park Wrights told me about "a constant play of light through the windows." It kept changing day and night. Learning firsthand what she meant made this an affair to remember.