The year 2000 brought a number of achievements, not the least by some Chicagoans in the arts community. For the 16th year, the Arts & Entertainment staff has chosen Chicagoans of the Year, those individuals who have made contributions to their community in the last 12 months.
These individuals are recognized for advancing not only their careers but the fields in which they work:
PATRICIA BARBER
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Jazz musician
The innovative singer-pianist has been widely admired in Chicago, her adopted hometown, for approximately two decades. But this year the rest of the world finally caught up with local listeners, who have a knack for ignoring media hype and finding their own favorites. With the release of Patricia Barber’s newest recording, “Nightclub” (recorded live at the Green Mill Jazz Club), the out-of-town press practically fell over itself heaping praise on a Chicago artist who deserves every inch of it. Time magazine, the New York Times, Billboard and other publications gushed about an introspective performer whose recording debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s jazz chart.
The critical accolades and commercial success came as a surprising reward for Barber, who never has sought either. Instead, she steadfastly has gone her own way, developing a smart, spare musical style that presumes her listeners are intelligent enough to decode often witheringly satirical lyrics and sublimely sophisticated vocals. She made no concessions to popular tastes, marketing campaigns or critical hyperbole, preferring to let her quirky, individualistic music speak for itself.
Though Barber repeatedly turned her back on major-label record deals and big-league management contracts, a rapidly growing international audience sought her out. And though she recorded exclusively for tiny, Chicago-based Premonition Records, in this setting she was able to make music as she saw fit. When New York-based Blue Note struck a deal to distribute “Nightclub,” the singer had achieved the best of two worlds: complete artistic control virtually unavailable at a major label, but with the worldwide distribution that no indy label could match.
Ultimately, though, it was the unmistakable intelligence and unassailable musicianship of “Nightclub” that connected with audiences. More than just a collection of standards, the recording offered new ways to consider songs such as “I Fall in Love Too Easily” and “Alfie,” “Bye Bye Blackbird” and “All or Nothing at All.”
Yet it seems likely that Barber’s best work is yet to come. Still uninterested in chasing success, she lately has been honing her talents as songwriter. Her newest tunes suggest that she may be equally adept as wordsmith and tunesmith.
In the end, Barber’s achievements should be instructive to artists hell-bent on attaining fame and fortune: It’s better to concentrate on music alone, and let the rest follow.
— Howard Reich
DANIEL BARENBOIM
Music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Whenever Daniel Barenboim hangs his hat at Symphony Center is when you will find him in dervish mode. In his three-week fall residency, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s music director conducted nine symphonic concerts; took part in an all-star chamber music concert; joined his friend Radu Lupu in a recital of Schubert four-hand piano works; performed a solo piano recital; and directed a Beethoven program with his “other” orchestra, the Berlin Staatskapelle. Such an agenda would have exhausted a less focused musician. As Barenboim sees it, it is the only way he can conduct his life.
What made 2000 different for the 57-year-old Barenboim, and for Chicago audiences, was that quality matched quantity, realization matched intention. He did not just do a lot of things but did them exceptionally well. Circumstances no doubt inspired him. This was the year he celebrated the 50th anniversary of his performing debut, at age 7, as a piano prodigy in his native Buenos Aires. Barenboim returned to Argentina to play an anniversary recital and preside over the Chicago Symphony’s South American debut. It was a grandly nostalgic parade — and the only ones who tried to rain on it were the cultural authorities in Berlin who sought to slash funding to his Berlin State Opera. But Barenboim (who can be quite a persuasive politician himself) came out on top, with $1.5 million in annual subsidies from the German federal government.
Most classical performers, if they are lucky enough to still be at the top of their game after 50 years, would consider themselves lucky to have accomplished half as much as he has. Fewer still would still be questing so tirelessly to discover the meanings behind the music they play, and the music they have yet to play. It was during his stimulating and instructive week of rehearsals, question-and-answer sessions and concerts last spring in New York with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago that Barenboim the performing musician and Barenboim the educator/philosopher found common ground; and it was then that the inquiring intellect that sets him apart from most of today’s jet-propelled musicians came to the fore.
Thirty years ago Barenboim made his debut as guest conductor of the CSO. Even he would concede he has grown considerably as a conductor during that time. Of course, not every Barenboim interpretation has met with universal approval, while some orchestra players continue to find his spontaneous musical ideas as hard to follow as his baton. Also, there are lingering grumbles, from audience members and CSO musicians alike, about the uncompromising type of modern music he champions.
More important is the fact that Barenboim and the CSO this year achieved a closer musical rapport than ever before; the results have proved more consistent, less idiosyncratic. The clear consensus, among orchestra musicians, subscribers and press, is that the Chicago Symphony really is his orchestra now. In that sense, 2000 represented a distinct turning point in his relationship with the CSO and the city itself. It will be fascinating to observe how that relationship develops and deepens over the coming seasons, and what musical experiences it will bring.
— John von Rhein
ALEXANDRA BILLINGS
Actress and singer
In the past few years, actress and singer Alexandra Billings has leapt from “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom” to the Steppenwolf stage (“The Berlin Circle,” “Space”). All along, she’s developed a fiercely loyal audience happy to watch her play any series of roles, sing her guts out or just tell stories.
At her regular Sunday night gigs at Gentry on Halsted, Billings is notorious for her constant talking and jiving with the audience. Co-headliner Nan Mason, one of Chicago’s great cabaret divas and one of Billings’ mentors, constantly complains that Billings only sings two or three songs per set “because she’s yakking so damn much.”
But the truth is, most people who get a chance to see or hear Billings get a pretty big crush on her quick. Charismatic, striking, and possessed of a devilish comedic timing, Billings has carved out a unique career that balances high and low culture, drama and wit. And the woman is always busy.
Billings is currently gearing up for Bailiwick’s new production of “Gypsy,” which will be directed by David Zak, a longtime Billings collaborator. In the role of Mama Rose she’ll get a chance to show off tenderness, brashness, and a little leg too. Later in the spring, she’ll star in “You Got Engaged?!” directed by Ann Filmer.
That’s on the heels of 2000, a year in which she had two huge hit comedies, “Xena Live” at About Face Theatre, which premiered in November 1999 and eventually ran for five months, and “Hamlet: The Musical” at Shakespeare Theatre on Navy Pier, which sold out for most of its four-month summer run. She played the big, brassy heroine in the former and the delightfully incestuous mom in the latter. “Hamlet” will likely return in repertory this summer with another Shakespeare spoof from the same comedy team (including Billings), “Medea.”
But perhaps Billings’ biggest 2000 accomplishment was recording and releasing “Being Alive.” A showcase for her huge voice, “Being Alive” has received a barrage of critical praise. Produced by Ralph Lampkin, it’s a collection of Billings’ faves from her Sundays at Gentry on Halsted (and recently Fridays at Gentry downtown).
“Being Alive,” which took years to produce, is also a spiritual triumph. It is, in many ways, the coda to Billings’ “Before I Disappear,” the autobiographical one-person show of years ago that detailed her journey through sexual identity crisis, drugs, prostitution and illness. Where the show dealt with the ephemerality of life, “Being Alive” affirms its preciousness.
— Achy Obejas
ERNEST DAWKINS
Jazz musician
Chicago is blessed to serve as home base for the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), an organization that has energized new music in the city — and around the world — for 35 years. And though one has come to expect dynamic, innovative music-making from AACM artists, one of its stalwart members transcended expectations in 2000.
In August, Ernest Dawkins, a formidable saxophonist, presided over a groundbreaking, cross-continental musical exchange. Having performed regularly in South Africa for the past three years, Dawkins arranged for several of that nation’s foremost jazz improvisers to perform alongside their Chicago counterparts. Though ground zero for these concerts was HotHouse, an indispensable club in the South Loop, the Chicago/South African Initiative also brought these musicians to the city’s parks and neighborhoods.
The convergence of the two musical cultures proved revelatory, with Dawkins coaxing visitors Feya Faku, Moreira Conquica and Zim Ngqawana into avant-garde territory. The guest musicians reciprocated, drawing more openly melodic playing from Dawkins than one typically encounters.
Without Dawkins, Chicagoans would not have become so closely acquainted with these artists, who were in residence in the city for several days. Nor would listeners have been able to see and hear the fireworks that ensued when they shared a stage.
The Chicago/South African Initiative alone would have represented an important contribution, but Dawkins didn’t stop there. In September his incendiary New Horizons Ensemble helped open a 35th anniversary celebration of the AACM at the Museum of Contemporary Art. By teaming with guest flutist James Newton, New Horizons achieved a particularly majestic performance, notable for trumpeter Ameen Muhammad’s sonic bursts, trombonist Steve Barry’s dramatic horn calls and Dawkins’ expansive alto solos.
The fervor of this performance, as well as those of other South Side bands, attested to the enduring vitality of the AACM. Moreover, because the AACM for the first time celebrated an anniversary in a high-profile, easily accessible location, every concert was packed.
No one summed up the spirit and importance of the AACM, 35 years after its birth more pervasively than Dawkins. Yet for all the importance of Dawkins’ work as organizer and bandleader, it was the sound of his saxophone that ultimately lingered in the ear. Regardless of where and when he played, Dawkins brought a ferocious but tautly controlled energy to his playing. Here was a soloist conversant with practically every period of jazz history yet constantly searching for new sounds and ideas.
That degree of depth and commitment had to inspire anyone fortunate enough to experience it.
— Howard Reich
BRIAN DICKIE
General director of Chicago Opera Theater
He knew full well that taking over the reins of Chicago’s second opera company, given its recent financial problems and artistic ups and downs, would be no bed of roses. As he told the Tribune earlier this year, Chicago Opera Theater “has got to persuade people to come and see our performances. Chicago audiences recognize quality when they see it, and quality is what we will emphasize.”
Brian Dickie has been as good as his word. His personal stock soared when Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” — the first opera COT produced under his watch as general director and a risky esoteric venture for Chicago — opened in October to rave reviews and did more than respectable business at the Athenaeum Theatre. Dickie, who was still coming down from the high of Philip Glass’ “Akhnaten,” which had enjoyed a sold-out run three months earlier in its COT and local premiere, must have pinched himself. The company had turned an important corner, and the urbane, 59-year-old Englishman was the man who made it happen.
Just because COT is a small opera company — at least by comparison to the mighty Lyric Opera — doesn’t mean it has to think small. That’s Dickie’s view in a nutshell. His master plan for moving the Opera Theater in new directions involves shifting the company’s focus to 17th and 18th Century operas audiences cannot hear anywhere else in town — certainly not at so high a performance level. He also is continuing COT’s longstanding commitment to modern American opera. His vision is reflected in the season’s upcoming shows — a new production of Robert Kurka’s “The Good Soldier Schweik” in March, Handel’s “Acis and Galatea” in June.
Dickie came to Chicago with nearly 40 years’ experience as an opera administrator, notably as general director of England’s Glyndebourne Festival Opera, later as chief executive of the Toronto-based Canadian Opera Company. Many in the opera world were surprised that he would want to take on Chicago Opera Theater after his long association with these international institutions. But he clearly recognized the organization’s growth potential amid an increasingly sophisticated Chicago arts scene. What really clinched his coming, however, was COT’s long-awaited move to the new, 1,452-seat Chicago Music and Dance Theater in September 2002.
Although subscriptions have risen roughly 60 percent from a year ago — they now stand at 1,670 — that’s a far cry from the previous high of 10 years ago, when the number of subscribers was as high as 4,000. The good news, for now, is that COT ended its most recent fiscal year with a $30,000 surplus of earned income over expenses. Also encouraging to Dickie is the fact that COT has managed to convert a fair number of single-ticket buyers to “Akhnaten” and “Orfeo” into season subscribers.
“As long as one doesn’t try to repeat one’s triumphs, one could conceivably do quite nicely in this job,” says the general director. So far, he is doing just that.
— John von Rhein
JOHN EIFLER
Architect
The Ward W. Willits House in north suburban Highland Park is widely viewed as Frank Lloyd Wright’s first great Prairie Style house. But when Chicago architect John Eifler began the painstaking process of restoring it 15 years ago, the roof leaked, beams sagged, art-glass windows were missing, and the stucco exterior walls (originally an earth-toned light brown ) had been painted a jarring off-white.
Today, the house is in astonishingly good shape — so good that the American Institute of Architects in Chicago gave the Willits House restoration its highest honor — the distinguished building award. Eifler also was lauded for his ongoing restoration of Chicago’s Garfield Park Conservatory, the nation’s largest public conservatory when it opened in 1907.
Eifler belongs to the ranks of Chicago architects — such as John Vinci, Wilbert Hasbrouck and Gunny Harboe — who have struggled mightily to make the past a part of the future. Yet he believes that historic preservation should be a normal — and highly valued — part of every architect’s practice rather than an isolated specialty. “When I get the title of preservation architect, I just sort of cringe,” he says.
Eifler, 48, grew up in Racine, Wisc., home to Wright’s S.C. Johnson & Son Administration Building, with its mushroom-shaped interior columns. He had a brief stint at Booth-Hansen Associates in Chicago, then spent 10 years at the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. Like Wright, who secretly designed single-family houses while he was working for Louis Sullivan, Eifler did some moonlighting before he opened his own shop, Eifler & Associates, in 1990.
In the early 1980s, while still at Skidmore, he carried out a sympathetic restoration of Wright’s Herbert Jacobs House in Madison, the first of Wright’s middle-class “Usonian” houses. That led him to be recommended for the Willits House, which had been purchased by Milton and Sylvie Robinson. Eifler credits them for making a commitment to the house that is both financial and emotional.
“I don’t think they had a clear idea of what they had really gotten themselves into,” he says. “But like many people do, they bucked down and they got on top of it. A lot of people would have been totally overwhelmed.”
Besides righting the wrongs of a previous owner, Eifler worked with the Robinsons to make the house livable. Because wide eaves blocked sunlight, for example, the Willits’ House dining room seemed dark despite its spectacular art glass windows. To correct the problem, Eifler tucked “supplemental lighting” into soffits and added extra wall scones. There and throughout, the result is exactly what Wright had intended: a design for living.
“If you don’t make people comfortable in these places, they’re not going to take care of them,” Eifler says. “They need to be proud of it . . . and invest money for the rest of their lives.”
— Blair Kamin
STEPHEN LITTLE
Art Institute of Chicago curator
One of the great rarities in the world of art museums is the exhibition that treats an area of art history unconsidered even by specialists.
Stephen Little mounted the first show on the philosophy and religion of Taoism 12 years ago in Cleveland. It had only 25 pieces. But ever since he became the Art Institute of Chicago’s curator of Asian art in 1995, Little has worked to examine the subject more comprehensively, and this year saw the fruit of his labor: “Taoism and the Arts of China,” the groundbreaking exhibition of 150 works that continues at the institute through Jan. 7.
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Only twice before in 30 years — James Speyer’s “Europe in the Seventies” (1977) and Richard Townsend’s “The Ancient Americas: Art from Sacred Landscapes” (1993) — has a Chicago institution organized an exhibition that instantly became the main point of reference for future work in the area. Like those others, “Taoism and the Arts of China” is truly a landmark show — with the added difference that no one in the East or West had attempted anything like it before Little.
When first asked by institute director James Wood what such a show might look like, Little could only say “I don’t know,” since in 1995, research into Taoist visual art had scarcely begun, even in China. Now, thanks to Little’s exhibition and catalogue — a book that has become the standard reference in the West — no one with an interest in the subject can ever say that again.
— Alan G. Artner
BERNIE MAC
Comedian and actor
In 2000 Bernie Mac was “discovered” again. In 2001 Mac is expected to shine.
Mac, a product of 69th and Morgan streets on Chicago’s South Side, is one-fourth of the Kings of Comedy, with Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley and Cedric “The Entertainer.” The quartet has the most successful touring standup shows in history, its popularity further exploited through a concert film released this summer by director Spike Lee.
Hughley is seen weekly on UPN’s “The Hughleys,” and Harvey and Cedric co-star on the WB’s “Steve Harvey Show.” Mac was the only one who didn’t have a television show.
“Now, I’ve got a television show,” says Mac, 43.
In fact, it seemed a day didn’t go by without his name being attached to one project or another:
Mac has a deal with Fox for the development of the tentatively titled “Bernie Mac Show.”
Mac has been named to star in the feature “Deadbeat Dad Detective,” a new comedy where he hunts down those who skip out on paying child support.
Mac is set to appear in “Oceans Eleven,” the big-screen remake of the Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin-Sammy Davis Jr. caper flick with George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts and others.
Mac and his fellow Kings are to team up in “Seven Spells,” where the guys plan their own caper — one that involves the Oscars.
And not only does Mac have separate films in the works with Martin Lawrence and Angela Bassett, but he’s writing a book about his life, he may revive his 1995 HBO variety series “Midnight Mac,” and he’s created a cartoon character for the Internet — Bunny Mac.
Mac, who lives in suburban Crete with Rhonda, his wife of 25 years, has been hopping this year, achieving the same type of exposure as his fellow Kings. It’s all good for the comedian who next year will celebrate his 25th anniversary in show business.
Mac overcame a rough upbringing as one of 15 children who dodged the influence of gangs and the street life. He graduated from Chicago Vocational High School and worked at General Motors while taking comedy gigs on the weekend starting in 1976.
Only after 1990 did Mac start to gain notoriety, thanks to appearances on HBO’s “Def Comedy Jam,” which eventually led to movies “Friday,” “House Party 2” and “Who’s the Man?”
As his raucous standup became more popular, Mac appeared in more films, including “The Players Club,” “Booty Call” and “Life.” For a few seasons, Mac had a recurring role on UPN’s “Moesha.”
Mac has gone through several interpretations of comedy — from clown to the class clown at CVS (“I was selling out lunchrooms”), to a pure standup, to an overall entertainer, complete with a band.
With high-profile gigs in TV and movies on the horizon, Mac has truly ascended the comedy throne he’s always worked for.
— Allan Johnson
MIKE NUSSBAUM
Actor
Mike Nussbaum’s career as a Chicago actor stretches back to the 1960s, when his day job was running his pest-exterminating business and his acting was confined to an occasional community theater production. From the start, he was a good actor, his early roles including several prime productions at the old Hull House Theatre in the 1960s and leading roles in the new plays of David Mamet in the 1970s. Over the years, with directing added to his talent file, he also has worked in television and has had prime featured roles in such big movies as “Men in Black.”
The year 2000 was something special for him, however. Now in his 70s, he tackled two demanding, difficult roles and brought them off brilliantly, scaling heights and sounding notes he had never reached before.
In Bruce Norris’ “The Infidel,” in the Steppenwolf Studio Theatre, his portrait of an aging, distinguished jurist caught between official propriety and obsessive lust was overwhelming in both its craft and passion. And in American Theater Company’s production of Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame,” he gave the performance of his life. As the ancient, cantankerous Hamm — a role that director Nicholas Rudall said “scared Mike to death” — he was alternately wheedling and demanding, poignant and overbearing, in charge and at a loss. Sitting in his battered chair, dressed in a ragged bathrobe, his eyes shielded by dark glasses and his face covered in a scruffy white beard, he was magnificent.
One is tempted to call it the crowning achievement of his career. But at the rate he’s going, who knows? The best may be yet to come.
— Richard Christiansen
JIM ROMENESKO
Creator of mediagossip.com
All journalists have different pre-work rituals — slamming down a cup of coffee, cracking the knuckles, praying to the muses for a catchy lead — but there’s one daily habit that an increasing number share: a quick check of an Internet Web site (www. Poynter.org/medianews) that covers the media like a foot of snow on outdoor statuary.
The site, formerly known as mediagossip.com, is run by Jim Romenesko, 47, who works from his Evanston home. A year ago, Romenesko was producing the daily digest in his free time, culling stories about print and broadcast media from about 150 other sites. For his day job, he wrote an Internet column for the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
Then the Poynter Institute, a non-profit journalism think tank based in St. Petersburg, Fla., got wind of Romenesko’s site. Last January they hired him to produce it full time under their imprimatur. Now it’s an online phenomenon, drawing more than 13,000 visitors daily, setting the agenda for what media professionals — and anybody else who cares about the quality of information disseminated in a democracy — think and talk about.
Romenesko, a Marquette University graduate, rises at 5 a.m. each day to make his electronic rounds. The site links to news not only about personnel shifts, but also media mergers, ethical controversies and bias complaints — stuff in which everybody, not just journalists, ought to be interested.
Said Howard Kurtz, media reporter for The Washington Post: “Jim Romenesko’s column has become an addiction for otherwise clear-thinking journalists who, like me, often check the site a half-dozen times a day.”
— Julia Keller
ROCHE SCHULFER
Executive director of the Goodman Theatre
Like any proud father, Roche Schulfer spent much of the year carrying a walletful of snapshots of his offspring, ready to flip them out and show them to anyone who asked. In Schulfer’s case, however, the new baby was not a squawking infant, but a building, the new Goodman Theatre complex in the North Loop.
For 12 years, Schulfer, Goodman’s executive director, had been working toward raising the money and planning the move from 200 S. Columbus Drive, in the rear of the Art Institute, where the Goodman had been anchored since 1925, to its new $46 million home on North Dearborn Street between Lake and Randolph Streets.
Many factors, including city support and a hefty donation from Albert Ivar Goodman of the founding Goodman family, contributed to the theater’s successful official opening in December. But it was Schulfer, now in his 27th year at the Goodman, who ramrodded the project, shepherding it through all the meetings, conferences and crises that attend a major building effort.
In the end, when the handsome and inviting new theater opened with August Wilson’s “King Hedley II,” Schulfer was there in the lobby, either working the crowd or, like a virtuoso ticket taker, pointing the customers toward the proper aisle and answering any questions they might have. He had done the same thing in the mid -’70s when he was a very young man, standing at the entrance of the old Goodman Stage 2 space in the Ruth Page Center and showing the folks their seats. Now, however, the building was bigger, the odds were greater, the success more glittering.
“People asked me if I was worried about the nicks or bruises the new theater might suffer once we got it opened,” Schulfer said, “but, no, I was just happy to see it full of people. I want it to have that lived-in look.”
— Richard Christiansen
SOLOMON CORDWELL BUENZ & ASSOCIATES
Architects
Looking only at the high-rise condos of River North and the new Nordstrom store near Michigan Avenue, you could easily conclude that Chicago is simultaneously undergoing a building boom and an architecture bust.
But there are gems out there, and one of the firms shaping them is Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates (SCB). Its best-known work is a modernist jewel — the Crate & Barrel flagship store at 646 N. Michigan Ave, where a glassy, cylinder-shaped atrium holds down the corner and entices buyers in.
SCB has hardly been resting on the laurels of that project, now 10 years old. In the past year, it has received design honors for another sleek steel and glass pavilion, the Tetra Pak Inc. U.S. Headquarters in north suburban Vernon Hills. And it has completed one of Chicago’s most graceful new condominium towers, the Bristol, a 42-story concrete structure at Rush Street and Delaware Place.
The firm also is responsible for the only winner among the new buildings in the massive North Bridge development, an Ohio Street parking garage whose facade consists of a deliberately off-kilter aluminum grid that reflects the angle of the garage’s ramps. To add a little frosting on the cake, SCB’s design for a ski slope-like wall of solar panels bested more than 115 other entries in a national design competition for remaking the south facade of the U.S. Department of Energy’s headquarters in Washington. Congress still needs to fund the project, however.
“We try to use simple materials and elevate them to a higher form of art,” says firm president, John Lahey, restating a principle that has guided Chicago architects since the first skyscraper rose here in the 1880s.
The firm’s other leaders are chairman John Buenz, 67, who typically sports a bow tie; senior vice president Martin Wolf, 49, who, like Lahey, used to work for Helmut Jahn; and senior vice president Beth Durkin, 46, who heads the firm’s interior department.
Founded in 1931 as L.R. Solomon & Associates, SCB today has 125 employees.
That’s up from 50 in the recession-plagued mid-1990s.
The firm’s current work includes office buildings, stores, corporate interiors, and university and commercial housing.
Indeed, SCB has designed enough high-rise apartment and condominium buildings to house the population of a small city.
Among the residential work is Carl Sandburg Village, the complex of high-rises and townhouses that helped revitalize Chicago’s Near North Side. To be sure, this part of SCB’s portfolio includes duds, such as Presidential Towers, four monolithic 49-story towers just west of the Loop. But there also are winners, such as the Chicagoan, a 37-story rental apartment building at 750 N. Rush St. with a subtly curving profile.
That word — “subtle” — should be underscored. For in contrast to the “look-at-me” Crate & Barrel store, most of SCB’s work doesn’t strain to stop the show.
As Chicago architect Jack Hartray once observed, SCB is among the Chicago firms that “invented a form of urban housing so well adapted to the economy and technology of our time that it has become almost invisible.”
— Blair Kamin
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BEN WEASEL
Punk rock legend
“The band members, besides being ugly and incredibly stupid looking, can barely play their instruments — not that it matters since the atrocious mixing makes it almost impossible to hear anything but the Bobby Brady-style drums and the pathetic, uninspired, out-of-tune vocals.”
Those words were written in 1988 by Mt. Prospect native Ben Foster, a.k.a. Ben Weasel, in reviewing the work of his own band, Screeching Weasel.
The record he was describing, “Boogadaboogadaboogada” has gone on to sell more than 100,000 copies through independent distribution channels, and has become a pop-punk classic that helped lay the groundwork for multimillion-selling bands such as Green Day and Blink-182, both of whom cite Weasel as a primary influence.
In its early albums, Screeching Weasel nailed the anxiety and contradictions of teen life in suburbia.
In a world defined by boredom, dead-end jobs and hypocritical authority figures, Screeching Weasel’s twisted humor was a survival tactic and their anthemic-in-spite-of-it-all music a means of rising above.
Besides releasing 10 albums with Screeching Weasel over the last decade, Weasel has also authored countless columns for punk bible Maximum Rock-N-Roll that turned him into one of the most notorious and influential figures in the international underground.
He now runs his own record company (Panic Button) with longtime bandmate John “Jughead” Pierson.
At 32 Weasel is something of an elder statesman in the punk community, yet Screeching Weasel’s most recent releases, “Emo” and “Teen Punks in Heat” (Panic Button), are among the best rock records of recent years. They prove just how much still can be said within the narrow confines of guitar-based rock built on a handful of chords, deeply introspective works that nonetheless roar with the joyous, life-affirming power of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll.
In late September Screeching Weasel played its first concerts in seven years, triumphantly returning to the stage with a pair of sold-out shows at the House of Blues that were among the year’s best.
“We become what we hate,” Weasel sang in closing the first show, a warning to all rock ‘n’ rollers who lose their grip on what made their music so urgent and necessary in the first place.
In contrast, Weasel has not only remained true to his original ideals but turned his perceived limitations as a musician and a person into the foundation of his art, a celebration of the underdog.
— Greg Kot