Jaye Jayle As explained to me by Young Widows front man Evan Patterson, the story goes like this: during visits to see his girlfriend in Santa Fe, where she’s currently attending grad school, the Louisville native decided to string up an acoustic guitar and experiment with solo work. He never expected much from it—probably just a way to pass the time—describing the first few songs as “tongue-in-cheek.” But after sampling some of the tracks, friends encouraged him to keep on and make a record out of it....

Fred Falke French DJ and producer Fred Falke plays at Primary Nightclub on east Division Street on Friday night. I’ll be out of town, but it might be worth the trek into ground zero of drunken-lout territory to catch him play. As Miles Raymer points out in his Soundboard write-up, Falke has spent the past few years doing more remix work for commercial artists like Kesha and Katy Perry. But there was a time when Falke and frequent collaborator Alan Braxe were pumping out the kind of effects-heavy disco-house that one could hear in some of Basement Jaxx’s late-90s work or on some of the deeper cuts on Daft Punk‘s Discovery (“Voyager” feels like one giant homage to Braxe and Falke’s aesthetic)....

This Sunday, Northwestern University’s Block Museum of Art will present a free program of short films featuring artist David Wojnarowicz, who died in 1992 of complications from AIDS. At the same time, the Rogers Park gallery Iceberg Projects is presenting David Wojnarowicz: Flesh of My Flesh, an exhibit of his visual art, through August 4. These two events mark the first major memorials to Wojnarowicz in Chicago, coinciding with an exhibit of his work at the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City....

Chicagoans is a first-person account from off the beaten track, as told to Anne Ford. This week’s Chicagoan is Michelet Boursiquot, elementary school custodian. “All my life I deal with kids. I’m the oldest of 20 kids—17 sisters, two brothers—and I had to take care of them. Haiti, that’s where I’m from. I was 20 when I came to the U.S. I came here in February, it was snowing like crazy....

Courtest of Sterns Records Amadou “Ballaké” Traore Yesterday one of Africa’s greatest and most dynamic singers and bandleaders, Amadou “Balaké” Traore, died in Ouagadougou, the capital of his native Burkina Faso, at the age of 70. In recent years he was one of the key vocalists in the veteran pan-African salsa juggernaut Africando, but starting in the 60s he was a true journeyman, settling in for spells in Mali, Ivory Coast, and Guinea, among other locales, finding his way within regional styles....

1531 N. Damen 773-235-4039 bigstarchicago.com Runner-Up Irazu

After ending his long-running indie-pop project Casiotone for the Painfully Alone in 2010, Chicago-­based musician Owen Ashworth launched Orindal Records. It was part of a musical rebirth, but more a spiritual move than a sonic one: the label’s first release, a 2011 split, features one of the first singles from Ashworth’s post-Casiotone project, Advance Base, which like its predecessor trades in warm, wistful songs. When I wrote a Reader feature about his career ahead of Advance Base’s 2015 album, Nephew in the Wild, Ashworth told me he saw Orindal as a home for recordings that otherwise wouldn’t exist....

Rob Hoffman/Invision for Parkwood Entertainment/AP Can we get a Beyonce emoji please? Reader staffers share stories that fascinate, amuse, or inspire us. • About one Indian man’s quest to supply remote areas of the world with sanitary pads? —Julia Thiel

Harsh Toke At last week’s Earthless show a friend of mine suggested I check out another San Diego-based instrumental rock band, Harsh Toke, which I’m pretty sure is the best band name I’ve ever heard. Turns out Harsh Toke was an excellent recommendation, trading in Earthless’s proggy influence for more of a stoney, Sabbath vibe. The two songs available on their Bandcamp page are 20-minute-long psych jams, stacked with shredding guitars, groovy drums, and wailing organ—you can practically smell the grass burning through your speakers....

McCartney II As at least one Reader writer insinuated recently, J.R. Nelson‘s Soundboard capsule for Paul McCartney’s appearance tomorrow night at the United Center is a welcome and amusing slam of the former Beatle and longtime salamander. While I agree with some of J.R.’s assessment of McCartney’s more, er, remunerative practices, I cannot agree with his take on Macca’s music. In particular, I will vigorously defend 1980’s McCartney II, a quirky and unexpected patchwork of bedroom-pop experiments, muppet disco, and proto-synth-pop....

Kaplan (right) at the Large Hadron Collider The new documentary Particle Fever, which opens today at the Music Box, recounts the opening of the Large Hadron Collider in 2008 and the events leading up to the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson (a subatomic particle first theorized in the mid-60s). For a movie so concerned with the scientific process, it’s surprisingly lively and good-humored—as I note in my capsule review, it often feels like a sports movie, steadily building excitement as the physicists come closer to realizing their goal....

Nico Soto/Guazu Media Speranza (center) on the set of Rambleras As I wrote last Thursday, I’m an admirer of recent Uruguayan cinema in general and Daniela Speranza’s Rambleras in particular. A wise, generous, and visually stunning comedy about overcoming life’s disappointments, Rambleras strikes me, after three viewings, as a nearly perfect film. Every detail of characterization or decor reflects careful consideration, and the graceful storytelling allows one to savor each one....

Around 11 PM on Wednesday, January 18, Abigail Kruger was sitting on her couch in her Lakeview duplex, just south of Wellington and Racine, when the evening’s quiet was shattered by a loud bang. Kruger says she then assumed Zidek had been the victim of a hit-and-run. But the motorist who injured the cyclist was actually an as yet unnamed police officer who sped through the intersection at Wellington and Racine—which has four-way stop signs—en route to a burglary call....

Gay camp and heartwarming sincerity typically go together like oil and water, so I was delightfully surprised and touched by this fun little one-act holiday emulsion by Bryan Renaud and Emily Schmidt. In a queer twist on the 2003 Christmas family comedy Elf, Barney (Roy Samra), a lipstick-wearing, golden-voiced bundle of unconditional love, is exiled from the North Pole workshop to the streets of Chicago by Santa Jr. (Jaron Bellar), a tyrannical, Trump-like autocrat....

AJ Sacco ajsacco.com Runner-Up Justin Purcel

Rip away your mittens, your beanies, your down jackets! No longer need your johns be long! The sun has returned, and with it, plenty of things to do this week. Here’s some of what we recommend: Tue 2/21: Glam-horror-soul-psychedelia-industrial-infused rock group Crazy World of Arthur Brown tours the U.S. for the first time in 40 years, stopping at Reggie’s Rock Club (2105 S. State) tonight. Steve Krakow writes, “the man still has moves, costumes, and a voice so powerful it boggles the mind....

It’s no secret that, like countless other Chicagoans, I’ve been miffed with Mayor Rahm for quite some time now. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was somewhat compelled by his prepared remarks at the Department of Justice press conference. On January 13, he stood alongside outgoing U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch as she unearthed her bureau’s findings, and the “agreement in principle” to enter into a consent decree that would address the Chicago Police Department’s deficiencies and misdeeds....

Candide Leonard Bernstein’s operetta—premiered in 1956 and much revised over the decades—uses a buoyant, quasi-classical score to illustrate Voltaire’s 1759 philosophical satire, about a naive young man whose optimistic ideals are shattered by the harsh realities of war, religious persecution, and the infidelity of his lover, Cunegonde. Bernstein’s score—featuring lyrics by Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, John Latouche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, and Bernstein himself—is a dazzling pastiche that evokes the work of Mozart, Offenbach, Strauss (Johann and Richard), and Mahler....

Since leaving her native England eight years ago to settle in rural Madison, Georgia, with Texas-bred bandmate Lawyer Dave, Holly Golightly and her band the Brokeoffs have been releasing albums annually without fail. Although she’s retained the scrappy, raw garage-rock vibe of the music she made in the UK, Golightly’s Brokeoffs work has embraced American roots, often toggling between country and blues from song to song, although never with any regard to stylistic purity....