Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Lieutenant Geordie Kelly, 46, director, Navy Band Great Lakes. Military bands do a lot of ceremonial things. The navy band in D.C., three times a week they do funerals with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Also, they go to the Pentagon and perform a whole ceremony when the joint chiefs of staff meet their counterparts from Japan or Brazil or wherever....

Alex Friedland Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes and Samantha Urbani Tal Rosenberg: The big news out of the first day of Lollapalooza was Blood Orange; unfortunately, troubling news about festival security overshadowed otherwise positive feedback about the Dev Hynes-fronted band’s set. According to multiple tweets from Hynes and a Pitchfork report, the frontman and his girlfriend Samantha Urbani were assaulted by security. In a bizarre coincidence, Hynes was wearing a T-shirt with the names of Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Oscar Grant, and Jordan Davis written on it; Urbani wore a T-shirt that read “STOP POLICE BRUTALITY....

Almost Royal BBC America first gained popularity by offering Americans a glimpse into the magical world of British television. Shows like Doctor Who and Top Gear found new life on this side of the pond, and their well-done drama Orphan Black seemed to indicate that the channel was heading in the right direction with its original programming. The premiere of Almost Royal was its first foray into original comedy and, two episodes in, I’m afraid the serious stuff may be the station’s strong suit....

3733 N. Southport 773-871-6604 musicboxtheatre.com Runner-Up Gene Siskel Film Center

Longman & Eagle 2657 N. Kedzie Runner-Up Francesca’s Bryn Mawr

Discussions of inspiration in hip-hop (or really in any genre) tend to focus on specific influential albums or artists, but Chicago rapper-producer Ausar Bradley found creative fuel in an algorithm. In a recent video interview with local hip-hop blog Illanoize, he talked about what happened when he uploaded his first single to Soundcloud in fall 2015. “Excuses,” with its lightly chattering percussion and mellow soul keys, accumulated thousands of plays almost immediately, which confused Bradley—as much as he’d hoped to attract listeners, he knew he was an unknown, and he couldn’t figure out where all those people were coming from....

After spending the last three years working to unite the worlds of art and gaming under one roof, the Video Game Art Gallery will soon have a roof to call its own. The local nonprofit announced today that on August 11 it will level up to a brick-and-mortar location at the Bloomingdale Arts Building alongside the 606. The institution will be a first of its kind cultural outlet in Chicago and one of only a few in North America....

For the past 18 years, A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been in heavy rotation at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Counting the current mainstage production, there have been six Midsummers since 2000, a record that none of Shakespeare’s other 36 (that we know of) plays comes close to approaching. The lights come up to reveal an Athenian court dominated by a massive marble (or marble-looking) wall that evokes Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias.” Like the fallen monument of the poem, the great wall of Athens topples to insignificance as the regimented world of the court morphs into an enchanted forest....

The Chicago Jazz Festival gets under way next week, and next week’s edition of the Reader will feature a comprehensive preview written by John Corbett, Bill Meyer, and yours truly. But the action gets started even before the paper hits the streets, with a couple of free screenings of Sun Ra documentaries A Joyful Noise and Mystery and Mr. Ra at the Chicago Cultural Center on Monday and Tuesday (part of larger celebration of the pianist and bandleader’s centennial) and a three-part series of early-evening solo piano performances at PianoForte Studios, also free....

There’s plenty to do this weekend. Here’s some of what we recommend: 1/6-1/8: The formidable punk-rock-fest staple known as Ian’s Party returns to Wicker Park for its ten-year anniversary. More than 75 bands play at 1st Ward (2033 W. North), Double Door (1572 N. Milwaukee), and Subterranean (2011 W. North), including headliners Meat Wave, Sass Dragons, and Absolutely Not. For more stuff to do this weekend—and every day—check out our Agenda page....

ARTIST: Ryan Duggan SHOW: Soulside, Coliseum, and Poison Arrows at Subterranean on Wed 11/11 MORE INFO: ryanduggan.com

Aquanaut’s three regular-rotation beers will debut in cans, not bombers, so these labels are provisional. For a beer columnist, I don’t go to all that many beer festivals—I’m missing Sierra Nevada’s Beer Camp Across America at Navy Pier to write this, for instance. But I’ve made it to enough to have seen the name “Aquanaut”—and the name “Strange Pelican,” which is what this Chicago operation called itself until March, when it decided to change colors after legal threats by Pelican Pub & Brewery in Pacific City, Oregon....

This spring Linklater programmed a revival of Veronika Voss by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, one of his cinematic heroes. Read part one of this interview. So, that’s the industry. You can create your own world outside that too. That’s what I always wanted to do, just live in my own cinema universe and not think about shit like that. And to a large degree, that’s become true. I’m always kind of unnerved when my cinematic universe collides with the reality of the business side, but I just have to deal with it....

Anything Goes, the slapstick comedic musical that tells the tale of high jinks on an ocean liner and features some of Cole Porter’s most iconic music, has been revived by director Rudy Hogenmiller and the cast of Music Theater Works with a live orchestra. It’s retroactively become a sort of jukebox musical of jazz standards that have, in the past, been sung with improvisation and flair by the likes of Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Bennett, and Gaga....

Jim Newberry Harrison Bankhead A couple of years ago the venerable, versatile Chicago-area bassist Harrison Bankhead—a key force in Edward Wilkerson’s great 8 Bold Souls and a trusted collaborator of Ernest Dawkins, Hamid Drake, Fred Anderson, Dee Alexander, and Roscoe Mitchell, among others—finally stepped forward with a recording under his own leadership. Morning Sun Harvest Moon (Engine) was a hard-hitting, soulful jam that delivered an alchemical blend of lean-but-insinuating written themes and extended improvisation....

Gene’s Sausage Shop and Delicatessen 4750 N. Lincoln Runner-Up Eataly

Runner-Up Bill and Giuliana Rancic

Lake View YMCA 3333 N. Marshfield 773-248-3333 www.ymcachicago.org/lakeview

Test your mettle at Seinfeld Trivia Night or stuff your face at the Chicago Hot Dog Festival. There’s plenty to do this weekend, and here’s what we recommend: Sat 8/12: Chance the Rapper adds “grand marshal” to his resumé at the Bud Billiken Parade (King Dr. and Oakwood), themed “Honoring Hometown Heroes.” The day features local bands, drill teams, marching units, and floats. 10 AM