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Mark Guarino's Word Preserve Trails are open at Word Preserve — So why don't you take a hike? Wander through a body of work that includes a collection of full-length and short plays and an archive of thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. Return weekly for updates. Use the search engine to roam Word Preserve and make a discovery. Good writing and provocative storytelling. It's nature's way. Search Word Preserve |
Jack White waxes nostalgic in bid to reconnect fans to music
Rock star and entrepreneur Jack White hopes his back-to-the-future approach to producing music will generate more creative, inspired recordings. By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor Chicago — On a recent Saturday afternoon this summer, Jack White leans back in his tour bus parked in Chicago's West Loop neighborhood and strikes an analogy to help explain why digital music is killing the tangible experience of listening to music. "[Kids] don't know they're missing out on something. If movie theaters didn't exist today how could you explain it to a teenager?... But thank God movie theaters still exist. Thank God vinyl still exists. Thank God arcades still exist.... All those things are so beautiful," he says. "So if I'm going to be part of a record label, it has to be something that provides a real experience and not just the nifty trick of the week." Waxing poetic about antiquated recording formats is likely not something that takes up the time of most corporate CEOs, especially when they're facing Read more... For New Orleans, Katrina anniversary is both solemn and festive
Dancing, singing, mourning, and crying mixed throughout New Orleans this weekend as the city showcased the progress made since Katrina and honored those who died. By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor New Orleans — At a ceremony in this city commemorating the five years since hurricane Katrina, a brass band played a final round of music Sunday, and out of nowhere, Mayor Mitch Landrieu sprang from his seat to join the musicians onstage. What he then did would be almost unthinkable for most buttoned-up leaders, but here, it’s as much a part of the job as fixing potholes and cutting ribbons. He danced. Dancing, singing, mourning, and crying mixed throughout New Orleans this weekend as the city worked overtime to balance showcasing the progress made since floodwater covered 80 percent of its streets with honoring the 1,836 people who died in its wake. Read more... Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy Team up for "You Are Not Alone"
POWER CHORD: The soul music legend and the Wilco frontman record a new album together By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Magazine Mavis Staples has worked with some of the finest names in music: Bob Dylan, The Band, Booker T. and the MGs, Prince. Topping the list are her father, the guitarist and singer Pops Staples, and her siblings in The Staple Singers, the gospel-pop group that produced some of the greatest anthems of the civil rights era. But when she was told Jeff Tweedy of Wilco wanted to produce her next album, the 71-year-old music veteran had one reaction: “Oh, shucks, that’s great!” You Are Not Alone (Anti-), out September 14th, is a homegrown affair. The seed was planted two years ago at the Hideout, where Staples recorded a live album that would end up nominated for a Grammy. Only 100 or so people were lucky enough to squeeze into the room that night; Tweedy was one of them. Two weeks later, he and Staples met up at a Hyde Park restaurant and shared a meal that stretched over two hours. “He told me about his family,” Staples says. Read more... Would New Orleans levees hold for a second Katrina?
Five years after Katrina, New Orleans is rebuilding. The system designed to protect against future storms is better than before, but questions remain about whether it is fortified enough. By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor New Orleans — Normally, moving to a new house in a new neighborhood is a transition many can feel good about. But for Randy Pratt, an electrician, moving his family into a brick home in this city’s Lower Ninth Ward makes him shrug at the possibility of lightning striking twice. He now lives a short walk from where a concrete barrier collapsed on Aug. 29, 2005, allowing rushing water to destroy the neighborhood that only recently started to rebuild. Does moving back to what many consider the scene of the crime make him hesitate? “I’ve been around levees my entire life,” says Mr. Pratt. “I just hope it’s safe, that’s all.” Read more... Hurricane Katrina anniversary: Can New Orleans' new mayor revive the city?
Mitch Landrieu wasn't mayor of New Orleans when hurricane Katrina hit. But he is now, and at the five-year Katrina anniversary, residents are looking to him to move the city forward. By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor New Orleans — Mitch Landrieu now owns the legacy of hurricane Katrina. He was not mayor then. Moreover, he was defeated by incumbent Mayor Ray Nagin in an election only seven months after the hurricane left 80 percent of the city under water. But he is mayor now, having taken office in early May, and it is now his challenge to bring to New Orleans the hoped-for post-Katrina renaissance that has never fully taken form in the five years since. For much of the nation, this month – the fifth anniversary of the storm – marks a moment to chronicle how far New Orleans has come. Read more... BP oil spill imperils Cajun culture
The Cajun culture has a rich tradition with deep ties to the Louisiana bayous. But the BP oil spill's impact on the economy and the environment is straining those ties. By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor Chauvin, La. — Darren Martin is a third-generation shrimp boat operator – and as far as he knows fishing may be in his blood even beyond that. His family has been rooted in the small winding bayous of southwest Louisiana since the 1700s, when the Cajuns of French descent were exiled by the British from their native Acadia, now eastern Canada. With such a rich connection to the land and water here, it would only be natural for Mr. Martin to want his teenage son to continue the family trade – pulling up seafood from the Gulf of Mexico and selling it at his family's stand across from their ancestral home in this quiet town of just over 3,000 people. Yet after years of hardships ranging from hurricanes to floods to shrinking prices and now an oil spill, Martin has determined that commercial fishing, a cornerstone of Cajun identity, is dying Read more... The Big Easy bounces back with its own hip-hop beat
Dance-oriented bounce music, a hip-hop variant unique to New Orleans, is tapped by hitmakers. By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor New Orleans — New Orleans is known as the birthplace of jazz, a percolator of the blues, and where the early pioneers of rock 'n' roll recorded songs that have since crisscrossed continents, cultures, and generations. All this music is still accessible on the streets where it was born – just stroll down Bourbon Street in the French Quarter, visit its many festivals throughout the year, or tune into WWOZ, the city's cherished community radio station, to hear how much. Yet as much as the city thrives by looking backward, the music that has served as the greatest economic engine of its residents of the past 20 years is hip-hop. Bounce, a hip-hop variant that evolved from the city's housing projects, has produced some artists who – unlike their better-celebrated elders such as Allen Toussaint and the Neville Brothers – sell millions of albums and whose music is sampled and recycled by mainstream hitmakers, including Rihanna, Beyoncé, and Lil Wayne. Read more... Robbie Fulks Reinterprets Michael Jackson’s Music in New Album, “Happy”
By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Magazine When Michael Jackson died last year at age 50, the published, broadcast, blogged, and Tweeted tributes rehashed the sordid details of the King of Pop’s saga: Bubbles the chimp, the nasal surgery, his bleached skin, and so on. But all Robbie Fulks could think about was the music. “With Michael Jackson, the celebrity factor is such a distraction,” he says. “Removing that aspect and treating his music as just music is probably kind of a weird gesture, right?” Answering that question is the newly released Happy: Robbie Fulks Plays the Music of Michael Jackson (Boondoggle). The 14-track album snatches the songs out from under the TMZ microscope to reveal the many dimensions of Jackson’s catalog, from playful to paranoid, and filters them through multiple styles, including country soul, bluegrass, power balladry, and art rock. Fulks, one of Chicago’s most musically dexterous performers, planned to release the album in 2005 but got sidetracked Read more... Dead Weather comes alive shopping new music around
May 24, 2010 BY MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times The Dead Weather may be on tap to play some of the biggest music festivals in North America and Europe this summer, but on Saturday the band played for free to 500 people in a renovated carriage house in the West Loop. The unusual setting was courtesy of Microsoft, which is staging several impromptu concerts this month to hype the KIN, a new mobile phone. Like five other concerts taking place in San Francisco, New York City and elsewhere, the Chicago concert used social networking to target fans and let them spread the word virally once the location and time was revealed late Saturday afternoon. The hype delivered a line of fans that stretched outside the Marquardt Trucking Company, down Aberdeen and continuing west down Monroe. People showed up as early as 4 p.m., three hours before the doors opened and five hours before the band hit the stage. Was it worth it? Ask the band. The Dead Weather just released Read more...As BP oil spill fight continues, more areas closed to the public
As efforts continue to stop the flow from the BP oil spill, areas used for recreation and fishing are being closed to public access. It's a blow to recreational and commercial fishing businesses. By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer | Christian Science Monitor Robert, La. — With confirmed sightings of oil across a 50-mile chain of islands that line Louisiana’s Southwestern coast, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) has ordered the affected area closed to public entry. The agency also expanded an earlier ban on fishing in the area east of the Mississippi River. Last Sunday, NOAA announced a ten-day ban on all recreational and commercial fishing between the mouth of the Mississippi River and Florida’s Pensacola Bay. That set off alarms for the state’s fishing industry, which is the second largest in the US, producing up to 25 percent of the total domestic seafood in the lower 48 states. Commercial fishermen harvested more than 1 billion pounds of finfish and shellfish in 2008. The Chandeleur Islands chain represents the first shorelines to receive oil from the April 20 BP oil spill and tanker collapse that NOAA says is releasing 210,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico. Read more...Gulf oil spill: Questions unanswered, residents try legal action
State attorneys general, commercial fishing organizations, and environmental groups are pressing BP to provide more information on the cause of the massive Gulf oil spill. By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor New Orleans — In the wake of the Gulf oil spill, rig operator BP has produced apologies, jobs for local fishermen to aid in the recovery efforts, and a promise to pay for all cleanup costs. But what it hasn’t yet produced are answers to why the explosion happened and how exactly it plans to compensate local fishermen – unanswered questions that, three weeks after the explosion, are frustrating all those affected by the disaster, including leaders of gulf coast states and fishing operators. “All these fishermen here are really uncertain of what the future holds,” says Lance Nacio, who operates a four-person shrimping operation in Dulac, La. “What I would like to hear is some kind of contingency plan for lost revenue compensated for damages now and into the future.” Read more... Town where Katrina made landfall now braces for BP oil spill
Waveland, Miss., still bears the marks of Katrina in trailers, unfinished construction, and a closed waterpark. Now, the BP oil spill is threatening its coast. Residents wonder if the town can survive. By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor posted May 3, 2010 at 7:36 pm EDT Waveland, Miss. — The brand new fishing pier of this Gulf coast city is virtually deserted, and it is no wonder why. “All you hear on the radio is oil, oil, oil,” sighs Gabe Stockfleth, the pier’s manager. Southeasterly winds are pushing acre upon acre of oil-darkened water from the BP oil spill toward Waveland, depriving the pier of its usual complement of fishers of red snapper, speckled trout, and wahoo. But the winds are also bringing something else: a sense of déjà vu. This is the place where hurricane Katrina first touched land in August 2005. Now, it again stands as a literal beachhead for forecasts of catastrophe – a community whose needs are so dire that President Obama has given the mayor a special phone number to reach him directly. Read more... Museum would sing praises of gospelFacility would open this fall in birthplace of rhythmic religious music April 9, 2010 By MARK GUARINO | Special to the Chicago Tribune A South Side minister is hoping to create a museum to honor Chicago's gospel music heritage in Bronzeville, the neighborhood credited with the music's birth 80 years ago. The museum is the dream of the Rev. Stanley Keeble, who is pulling from his personal financial reserves in hopes of opening it on Oct. 26. That would have been the 99th birthday of Mahalia Jackson, gospel's greatest star, who made Chicago her home at age 16. A number of others in the music community support Keeble's efforts to call attention to such people as the man who put gospel on the map: Chicagoan Thomas Dorsey, a blues pianist, composer and later reverend. He took the fervency of the rhythm and blues he played Saturday night at the clubs to the church choirs he conducted Sunday morning. Read more... Could rescue chambers have saved West Virginia miners?
Mine rescue chambers have been required since 2006, even though federal authorities could have required them as far back as 1969. But it's still unclear whether miners in this week's explosion in West Virginia could have reached the chambers. By MARK GUARINO, Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor posted April 9, 2010 at 7:55 pm EDT Chicago — Monday’s explosion at a West Virginia coal mine is becoming a possible test case for the benefit of rescue chambers, which federal legislators mandated all mine operators have installed four years ago to save lives underground in case disaster strikes. “Mines in this country really haven’t been tested. This is the first test where chambers had been installed,” says Patrick McGinley, a professor of law at West Virginia University who enforced mine safety laws in Pennsylvania as a former special assistant attorney general. West Virginia disaster: Will Congress take on coal mining companies?
Mining companies have been slow to adopt new safety requirements. Critics say the West Virginia disaster shows that Congress needs to step in. The industry says it needs clearer guidance. By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor posted April 7, 2010 at 6:10 pm EDT Chicago — The deaths of 25 coal miners in West Virginia Monday in what is considered the worst mining accident in a quarter century is raising questions about whether a congressional overhaul of mine safety four years ago went far enough. The Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response (MINER) Act, passed in 2006 in response to a disaster in Sago, W.V., that killed 13 miners, was intended to improve miner safety by mandating the installation of preventive and emergency technologies. Casablancas' quickie concert doesn't quite satisfy
April 7, 2010 By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times He could be dabbing his morning oatmeal with a fork. He could be waiting at a bus stop by himself at 3 a.m. He could be asking a waitress which way to the men's room. Or he could be headlining the Vic Tuesday on a solo headliner tour. Does it matter? Whatever motivates Julian Casablancas to walk onstage to perform, it never appears to be an interest in walking onstage to perform. The guy is simply b-o-r-e-d. Yet, the singer, best known as the lead vocalist for the Strokes, is kind of the Peter Falk of rock: a disheveled, meandering, clumsy boho from Soho, who, when backed by the Strokes' machine-gunning rhythms and jackknife riffs, suddenly and unexpectedly comes alive. The tension created between their precision and his aloofness helped refresh the rock mainstream 10 years ago and has a grimy energy that holds up today. Read more... Could the Hutaree militia have spawned a Timothy McVeigh?
One of the prosecutors who helped convict Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, says militias like the Hutaree are most dangerous when they create lone wolf terrorists. By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor posted March 31, 2010 at 8:52 pm EDT Chicago — A former federal prosecutor who helped convict Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh suggests that the great risk of America's growing militia movement is not necessarily in the militias themselves, but in their capacity to spark rogue actors like Mr. McVeigh, whose 1995 attack on the Murrah Federal Building killed 168 people. Aitan Goelman was a member of the Department of Justice team that helped win convictions against McVeigh and Terry Nichols in the Oklahoma case. Speaking two days after nine members of the Hutaree milita in Michigan were indicted on charges of conspiring to attack police officers and "levy war" on the United States, he says that there are parallels between 1995 and now. Read more... Hutaree: Why is the Midwest a hotbed of militia activity?
Michigan is second only to Texas in the number of 'patriot' groups, including militias like the Hutaree. It has a long tradition of spawning antigovernment groups. By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor posted March 30, 2010 at 8:22 pm EDT Chicago — Michigan, the home base of the Hutaree militia, has one of the highest concentrations in the United States of militias and other extremist groups that see the federal government as the enemy. Only Texas, with 57 so-called "patriot" groups, outstrips Michigan's 47, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit civil rights organization in Montgomery, Ala., that tracks hate group activity. Nationwide, the patriot movement has grown dramatically since the election of President Obama. Between 2008 and 2009, the number of such groups increased from 149 to 512, SPLC numbers suggest. Read more... Hutaree militia arrests point to tripling of militias since 2008
Federal authorities arrested nine members of the Hutaree militia, a fringe Christian group in Michigan, this weekend. The indictment alleges that the group was planning to kill law-enforcement officers as part of a plan to 'levy war' on the United States. By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor posted March 29, 2010 at 3:42 pm EDT Chicago — The arrests of nine members of the Hutaree militia, a Midwestern Christian militia Hutargroup, are illustrating a rise in militia activity, which had been relatively quiet during the term of President George W. Bush but has shot up dramatically since the election of President Obama, experts that track militia groups say. The FBI conducted raids Saturday and Sunday in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and suburban Chicago to round up senior members of the group, which a federal indictment released Monday calls an “anti-government extremist organization” intending to “levy war against the United States.” The group is charged with five counts, including seditious conspiracy Read more... Richer Norah Jones concert comes with strings attached
March 21, 2010 By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times When Norah Jones sat down to play piano, people whooped. No big surprise — after all, in 2003 the subdued mood she and it created on a debut album raked in multiple Grammy awards, sold millions of copies and ensured placement on Starbucks counters until the Columbian bean fields run dry. Like all mass successes, a franchise was born, which resulted in two follow-up albums over a subsequent three-year run. Except this time, for this tour, for this album, Jones did not get to the piano right away. The whooping for the old reliables had to wait until eight songs into her sold-out show at the Chicago Theatre. Before that moment, a new, and evolved singer stepped onstage: She strapped on a guitar and before long, melted into a new band of stylists who presented songs that involved textures and grooves more layered and deeper than she had ever tried before. For Jones, this is a fortuitous move. Read more...Classy Jay-Z shows why he has staying power
March 19, 2010 By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times In the remaining half hour of his show at the United Center on Thursday, Jay-Z thanked and excused everyone in the audience who came to hear his most recent hits and then announced it was "overtime" — a chance for him to return to songs from "Reasonable Doubt," his debut album circa 1996. Fourteen years is a generous sprint for a rock band, but for a hip-hop artist, it's an eternity. Shawn Carter, a 40-year-old rapper also known as a record executive, entrepreneur and Beyonce's husband, represents his own category — a hip-hop artist who not only is enjoying hit songs in his middle years, but who can still fill basketball stadiums when he wants to hit the road. Yet on this tour, Jay-Z wasn't a wizened veteran or protective mentor -- two roles he could have played if he wanted. Read more... Small Illinois town willing to be next Guantanamo
President Obama wants to ship Guantanamo Bay detainees to a rural Illinois state prison. Why are locals welcoming the detainees? By MARK GUARINO | Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor posted February 17, 2010 at 4:54 pm EST Thomson, Ill. — As in many small towns, pride here comes in small doses: the single stoplight that hangs in nearby Savanna, the only one in the county; or the fact that Thomson is known as the "melon capital of the world" for its prodigious crop of summer's sweetest treat. Quaint particulars like those are about to be upended in this Mississippi River town with a turn of events guaranteed to put it on the world map – and possibly save an area that is among those hit the hardest by the nation's economic decline. President Obama wants to ship Guantánamo Bay detainees to the Thomson Correctional Center, a nine-year-old underutilized state prison in northwest Illinois, Read more... Mariah shows why she remains the people’s diva
February 14, 2010 By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times Mariah Carey doesn’t have to be contemporary and she doesn’t have to be old school because she’s both. At the Chicago Theatre on Saturday, the first of two sold-out nights, she showed the fruits of a 20-year career: a sampling of crossover pop hits spanning R&B balladry to hip-hop soul. Of course, the former suited her natural inclinations more than the latter — for a singer with such a titanic voice, a speed workout like “Obsessed” (a slick toss-off to Eminem, no less), sounded like calculated slumming. Instead, her skills came to shine in her older material, which in her possession sounded as ferocious as ever. Yes, her voice occasionally scaled into chipmunk territory — a vocal talent as instinctual as her knowing when to turn it on. But what stood out in isolated moments of Saturday’s show was her ability to produce vocal riffs that overtook songs (“Fly Like a Bird,” “Emotions”) and pushed them higher into mighty pronouncements of pain, desire and inarticulate bliss. Read more... Suburbs: The new face of America's poor?
Suburbs, not inner cities, are home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the US. Unfortunately, they don't often have the services to help. By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer | Christian Science Monitor / February 9, 2010 Chicago — David Knox sits at a suburban Chicago food pantry, scanning local headlines that seem less dire than those that might sum up his own life at the moment: His home is in foreclosure. He lost his job in September. His wife is on disability after a car accident. Mr. Knox lines up once a month at a food pantry in Hoffman Estates, a middle-class suburb just a short drive from the biggest mall in the area and the global headquarters of Fortune 500 companies like Motorola, McDonald's, and Kraft Foods. Knox, a computer programmer, used to be part of that prosperous world. But at 53 and with skills he says are rapidly becoming obsolete, he doubts his ability to climb back in. "I'm older, and in a lot of cases they want to hire younger people," he says.Knox, once a middle-class suburban homeowner, may be the new face of American poverty. The suburbs – not the inner cities – are now home Read more... Why some Americans mix Christianity, Eastern religions
Worshipers are borrowing from Eastern religions and New Age beliefs. Open-mindedness or a dilution of faith traditions? By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer | Christian Science Monitor Chicago — Because she attends Catholic mass every Sunday and observes all the religious holidays of her faith, Angela Bowman may well exemplify the Latin root of the word “religion,” which is “to bind.” But the Chicagoan also meditates several times each day and practices yoga every other week. She knows Catholicism, Hinduism, and Buddhism have contradictory elements but is unfazed by her multiple observances because, to her, “it’s all pretty much the same thing.” “The biggest part of praying is opening yourself up to a connection with God, and I perceive clearing your mind in meditation as another form of receptivity,” says the 30-something textbook editor. Although she is a devoted Roman Catholic, she says she doesn’t “believe it’s the one true path and anything else is flirting with the devil.” Ms. Bowman’s attitude tracks with those in a study released last month, Read more... Buddy Guy: Ambassador to the blues
MUSIC | The faithful line up one last January before the legend moves to new digs January 24, 2010 By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times Just before midnight on a recent Saturday, the temperature stops at zero. Snowflakes persist; sidewalks in the South Loop are abandoned. Into this kind of night, Buddy Guy decides to take a stroll. His fingers flutter against the strings of his guitar as he steps off the stage, passes through the crowd, crouches to sing eyeball-to-eyeball with enthralled fans at one table — and then takes off. He leans against a post to say one last farewell, but it doesn’t take long: He’s out the door, the (wireless) guitar still at top volume. On the northwest corner of Eighth Street and Wabash Avenue, while his club, Legends, is packed with fans, Guy stands alone, playing to the night sky. Days earlier, well before noon, Guy sits at the Legends bar reminiscing about learning that trick from one of his heroes, the Louisiana guitarist and singer Guitar Slim. Read more... Lady Gaga not quite ready for arena circuit
January 9, 2010 By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times If there was a moment to sum up Lady Gaga’s first of three nights at the Rosemont Theatre Friday night, it was probably when she pulled a Tommy Gun off her piano and sprayed her audience with sparklers masquerading as gunfire. “Do you like the show so far?” she snarled, and of course, the crowd gave her what she demanded: adoration at top volume. The call-to-arms happened throughout the night, but in not so obvious ways. Lady Gaga, the persona created by 23-year-old Stefani Germanotta, is meant to be a confrontational, sexually affronting street diva, but on Friday she illustrated, intentional or not, she is also obnoxious, derivative and needlessly raunchy. In-between songs she frequently struck poses, including yawning, to imitate she was bored with her audience — the same people who were forced to re-purchase tickets when her production team Read more... In time for trial, a celebrity makeover for ex-gov Blagojevich
Illinois' ousted governor is all over the media, boosting his star power. Will that help Blagojevich when his corruption trial starts in June? It might, some analysts now say. By MARK GUARINO Staff Writer Christian Science Monitor / January 8, 2010 Chicago — The continued celebrity makeover of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich may boost his star power, but some say another motive is at play: to influence potential jurors in a federal trial scheduled to start in June. Since being charged in December 2008 with 16 counts of corruption, including racketeering conspiracy, wire fraud, extortion conspiracy, attempted extortion, and making false statements to federal agents, Mr. Blagojevich has taken his case directly to the public. His is a bid to generate income for his family and to reshape his image from conniving play-for-pay politico heard on federal wiretaps to working-class populist who told reporters Friday he was “hijacked from office” by statehouse enemies. He is living, he says, “an epic story.” “I think it really is a strategy to influence a jury pool, and I think it’s become more and more likely [to have an effect] than even in the beginning,” says Elizabeth Brackett, a Chicago PBS anchor and author of “Pay to Play: How Rod Blagojevich Turned Political Corruption Into a National Sideshow." Read more...Do you know where this weekend's Lady Gaga concerts are?
Three Chicago shows were moved and resold last week, leaving some ticketholders confused and angry January 5, 2010 By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times “I’m ticked off. I’m very ticked off.” That’s one of Lady Gaga’s Chicago fans, Gregory Scott Halpern, voicing the frustration of many trying to figure out where they’re going to be sitting at three sold-out concerts by the pop singer Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The ticketing snafu also is shedding light on how market dynamics in the concert industry may be damaging the trust of fans and, in some cases, distorting access to the best seats in the house. Concert promotion giant Live Nation originally booked Lady Gaga this weekend at the Chicago Theatre; two additional dates were added due to demand following a high-profile appearance by the pop star at the American Music Awards, news that she received five Grammy nominations and the chart success of her new album, “The Fame Monster” (Interscope). Read more... Schoolhouse rock: Tech, support makes teen rocking easier
The kids are all right, thanks in many cases to the involvement of their parents, whose influence is felt by a new generation of bands By MARK GUARINO | Chicago Sun-Times On a recent Thursday night in the Old Irving Park neighborhood, a group of Chicago parents huddle in a kitchen, enjoying conversation and drinks, as their kids -- three students from Lincoln Park High School, Whitney Young High School and Near North Montessori School, who collectively play as the Blisters -- run through their original songs in the basement. The band formed six years ago through school and since has played shows around town from the Hideout to Lollapalooza. But the members remained together because the parents, who previously did not know one another, struck up friendships. "We always thought of the band as our soccer. It brings our families together," says Leslie Schwartz, whose son Hayden Holbert plays guitar. "We had to be friends for it to continue. If we hadn't gotten to know each other and enjoyed each other's company, I think it would have gone away." Read more... Number of full-body scanners at US airports to triple in 2010
Full-body scanners could have foiled the Christmas Day airline bomb plot, some experts say. In 2010, US airports will add at least 150 to the 40 already in use, the TSA says. But critics say the machines won't help. Chicago Sun-Times: Lofty Deeds 'good art, good storytelling'
Musical takes country singer to 'Lofty' heights By Mary Houlihan | Chicago Sun-Times Staff Reporter The House Theatre of Chicago's world premiere production of "All the Fame of Lofty Deeds" is built around a rambunctious visual and aural landscape. Playwright/rock journalist Mark Guarino (a frequent Sun-Times contributor) hit on a gold mine of ideas when he partnered with Chicago musician-artist Jon Langford (Waco Brothers) to create this show. Using Langford's country-themed music and art as inspiration, Guarino weaves the story of a washed up honky-tonk singer who looks back at his life to fully understand the effect of his legacy. Director Tommy Rapley has taken all these elements and melded them into a creatively edgy production. Guarino based his characters -- Lofty and Lefty Deeds -- on country music legends the Louvin Brothers. As the play begins, Lofty (a sturdy turn by Nathan Allen) lives in a rusty trailer in the desert subsisting on a diet of whiskey and pills. Read more here. Chicago Tribune Raves About 'Lofty Deeds'!!! |
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Mark Guarino's Word Preserve Trails are open at Word Preserve — So why don't you take a hike? Wander through a body of work that includes a collection of full-length and short plays and an archive of thousands of newspaper and magazine articles. Return weekly for updates. Use the search engine to roam Word Preserve and make a discovery. Good writing and provocative storytelling. It's nature's way. Search Word Preserve |
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