In the mid-70s, guitarist and vocalist Kim Salmon dreamed of playing punk music in his hometown of Perth, the isolated capital city of western Australia. Though he initially had nothing to work from except a six-week-old issue of NME and a Ramones record, by the summer of 1978 he’d spent time in one of Perth’s few early punk bands, the Cheap Nasties, before joining up with local group the Exterminators, which morphed into a new group he christened the Scientists....

Ever since I saw the wonderful 1996 documentary When We Were Kings, about the legendary 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in the Congo (formerly Zaire), I’ve been curious about the prefight concert, which took place over three nights in Kinshasa. The fight itself ended up delayed by five weeks after Foreman sustained a cut near his eye while sparring, but the music went on as planned on the original dates, September 22 through 24, drawing a crowd of 50,000....

courtesy of Surefire Agency Brian Shimkovitz World Music Festival: Chicago wraps up this weekend, with loads of terrific shows happening all over the city. Oddly, one of the most exciting international music events occurring this weekend isn’t a part of the festival: on Friday night Evanston native Brian Shimkovitz, best known as the man behind the blog and label called Awesome Tapes From Africa, will DJ at Smart Bar from his voluminous collection of African music cassettes....

Yesterday I ran an interview with Daniel Notkin, oyster marketer and conservationist from Montreal, whom I met at Shaw’s Oysterfest last week. Today, from the other end of North America’s oyster habitats, I speak with Tommy Cvitanovich, who runs Drago’s Seafood, a New Orleans restaurant with three locations (the original is in Metairie; there’s also one in the Central Business District and one in Jackson, Mississippi). Drago’s, named for Cvitanovich’s father who started it in 1969, is most famous for a dish Tommy himself invented in 1993: the charbroiled oyster....

Leave Home Every few years I wind up completely immersing myself in the Ramones’ discography. I’ve been doing it all this week, triggered by the news on Friday that founding drummer Tommy Ramone has passed away. That means all four original Ramones are now dead, which is a total bummer. Every time this happens to me, I’m reminded of how completely perfect the band is, creating incredibly melodic pop tunes at hyperspeed with the most minimal approach....

For me, Saint Patrick’s Day has never been an occasion to wear awful green clothing and go bar hopping until I vomit. My vision of Saint Patrick’s Day is informed by the mystical Celtic folk-blues of one of my favorite singers and artists, Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison. For today’s 12 O’Clock Track, rather than go with something off of one of Morrison’s more popular works (such as Astral Weeks or Moondance or even a cult classic like Veedon Fleece, my personal favorite album), I’m going to go with a deep cut from Morrison’s 80s work....

As much as I love emo in many of its forms, I sometimes get dispirited after listening to one too many recent albums by bands that just want to be American Football. But there are plenty of groups that see fit to crib only a few notes from the genre’s second-wave acts instead of studying them like they’re a manual, and the resulting sounds are generally fascinating. A number of these off-the-map releases ended up being among my favorite emo albums of last year, including Dreamliner—it’s a noisy and crusty LP from locals Brighter Arrows, whose drummer John Olds also released a couple killer outre emo songs last year as part of a three-piece called Mans....

Chapter & Verse, which finishes a run in Chicago tomorrow night, follows a former gang leader (Daniel Beaty) who, after serving eight years in prison, reenters society and struggles to adapt to his changed Harlem neighborhood. Beaty cowrote the film with director, educator, and activist Jamal Joseph, who loosely based the narrative on his own experience. Leah Pickett: According to the Sentencing Project, one in three black men in the United States will end up in prison....

People tend to talk about long-lived rock bands as though it’s surprising or admirable that a group of folks can stick together for so many years. But I think belonging to a band can be the thing that helps you soldier on through the challenges and hurdles of life. The husband-and-wife team of guitarist Tara Key and bassist Tim Harris have been the core of New York band Antietam since they founded it in 1984 (they’d previously played in Louisville’s Babylon Dance Band)....

Furious Spoon Wicker Park 1571 N. Milwaukee Runner-Up Wasabi

I miss the old Kanye, who wasn’t pro-choice in regard to slavery. I wish I could still binge The Cosby Show without contemplating real-life violations of consent. But in this era of MAGA meatheads and #MeToo reckonings, as famous and powerful men trash their own legacies left and right, the only celebrity I have sympathy for is Clem Burke. Rock’s best journeyman drummer became a Hall of Famer in 2006 for his decades in Blondie, with an awesome asterisk for his cup of coffee with the Ramones and a skinny tie full of midwest power-pop merit badges for his service with the Romantics....

The cover of “Trip II the Moon (Pt. 2)” For me the highlight of the Pitchfork Music Festival was DJ Spinn’s set on Sunday, in which roughly 30 people were onstage rapping, dancing, embracing, and generally doing everything they could to get the crowd moving. The music was at once futuristic and deeply aware of electronic music’s past, particularly some of the hallmarks of early-to-mid-90s rave music. At certain points the breakbeat-heavy music sounded no different than some jungle and ‘ardkore that I’ve heard, mostly thanks to Simon Reynolds’s mind-melting Generation Ecstasy....

If Pee-Wee Herman practiced Santeria, his playhouse might look something like Angel’s Tire Shop and Grocery Store. Screaming from the corner of 18th and Leavitt, the exteriors of the adjoining storefronts, painted in eye-popping red, yellow, and spearmint green, are covered with strings of Christmas lights, shiny rims, American and Mexican flags, a portrait of the Virgin Mary, an anthropomorphic sun sculpture, a rusted gargoyle, and a pair of large toy vehicles....

The Inconvenience theinconvenience.org Runner-Up Carisa Barreca

Old Town School Music Store Various locations Runner-Up Chicago Music Exchange

Sure, laugh at the Mormons and their crazy creation myths all you want—but are they really any nuttier than stories of, say, a virgin getting pregnant and delivering a deity? The Book of Mormon, the 2011 Tony-winning musical now making a brief pitstop at the Oriental Theatre, has always worn its affection for the mysterious workings of faith on its short white shirtsleeves. Creators Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone also clearly love and understand the conventions of musical theater....

Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, alarm, amuse, or inspire us. Hey, did you read: • That National Geographic sold its magazine to Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox? —Deanna Isaacs

We try to avoid anniversary stories around here, because really, who the hell cares? Forty years since the Beatles did this, 50 years since Elvis did that—in popular culture, an anniversary is usually just a marketing hook, a new banner to slap across an old book, record, or movie. The Chicago International Film Festival has been celebrating its 50th anniversary since the beginning of the year, with retrospective screenings at the Cultural Center and on WTTW, and now the real thing has finally arrived, with even more blasts from the past: if you count the two director’s cuts being presented by Oliver Stone, a full sixth of the features screening this year are revivals....

Have we reached peak food list yet? There’s no surer vehicle for clicks than lists, however Pavlovian they may feel when you’re the one clicking on them, and food media have taken to them with a vengeance, announcing the ten best burgers and the 11 sexiest pho joints and the 12 chicken ‘n’ waffles you must eat now to be a playah. I could certainly make a case that lists are edging more substantive food-related content out of the marketplace—”I’m gonna write about sexism in wine selling just as soon as I finish ranking Chicago’s ten hottest somms”—but I’d be a hypocrite for doing it because I write them too....