5321 N. Clark 773-784-8936 alamoshoes.com Runner-Up Lori’s

Sharon Jones Earlier this week we premiered Tattoos, the nervy new EP from local rock outfit Coaster, and on Saturday the band will celebrate its release with a show at Township (listen to it here until then). If you want to see a good show and for some reason that doesn’t suit your fancy there are plenty of others to pick from the next few days. “There’s a certain panache to a band name like Tweens—and this young Cincinnati trio sounds just like you’d figure,” writes Kevin Warwick....

Bloom Yoga Studio 4663 N. Rockwell Runner-Up 105F Chicago’s Original Hot Yoga

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, May 22, 2017. Emanuel reveals plan to borrow $389 million to keep CPS schools open Mayor Rahm Emanuel revealed his plan to borrow $389 million in order to keep Chicago Public Schools in session through the end of the 2016-2017 school year and to make a payment to the teachers’ pension fund Friday. The Chicago Board of Education will have to approve the city’s borrowing $389 million and borrowing against the $467 million that Illinois owes the district this week....

Starting back in the 1950s, the Alley was a sprawling weekly party in Bronzeville where people of all ages came together to hang out, exchange ideas, spin jazz records, and perform. Flanked by murals and photographs, the jazz happenings lasted for nearly 30 years until the host was forced to close them down. Its spirit persists today, however: iterations of the Alley—including Back Alley Jazz, held in July 2018—have moved into new spaces on the south side....

South-side DJ collective the Chosen Few, which Wayne Williams founded as a high school student in 1977, played an instrumental role in popularizing disco and house music in Chicago during the late 70s and early 80s—at first, both styles were largely confined to gay clubs. Given the huge influence that house has had on pop’s subsequent development, its embryonic years have acquired a mythological glow that rubs off on any artist active in the field at the time—and the Chosen Few have found a way to share their slice of that glory....

Kingston Mines 2548 N. Halsted Runner-Up Buddy Guy’s Legends

pitchforkmusicfestival.com Runner-Up Riot Fest

Runner-Up Oak Park

Lost Lake 3154 W. Diversey 773-293-6048 www.lostlaketiki.com @lostlaketiki

Plenty of flourishing Nashville songwriters have failed to translate the success they’ve had penning hits for artists into onstage popularity in their own right, but Chris Stapleton has delivered gold—actually, double platinum. After topping the charts with songs for the likes of Kenny Chesney, George Strait, Luke Bryan, Brad Paisley, and Dierks Bentley, he joined their ranks with his 2015 debut album, Traveller (Mercury), a convincing collision of outlaw-country verities and raspy soul modes....

Last week, Shawn Rosenblatt of the local one-man indie-rock project Netherfriends posted an EP to Bandcamp that he recorded in 2013. The simple bedroom-pop record is called Logan Square, and delivers six quick tunes that are packed with harsh and biting commentary on staples of the Chicago garage-rock scene: Rosenblatt blatantly talks shit about brother-sister duo White Mystery, late-night spot the Owl, and shuttered DIY venue Animal Kingdom, among others. His commentary is both hilarious and really mean-spirited, calling out kids for being in crappy bands, dressing badly, and overusing drugs; it’s clear he’s got a bone to pick with the people who make noise around town....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, September 19, 2017. Kenneka Jenkins’s family asks FBI to investigate her death in hotel freezer The family of Kenneka Jenkins is asking the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate her death at a suburban hotel. Jenkins was found dead in a freezer September 10 at the Crowne Plaza O’Hare & Conference Center in Rosemont, and on Friday officials released video showing her staggering alone through the hotel’s hallways and in the kitchen....

Peter Gannushkin / downtownmusic.net Pandelis Karayorgis at the Hungry Brain Chicagoans usually have many nightly options when it comes to quality jazz, but this is an especially fertile weekend. In this week’s Soundboard I wrote previews for shows by violinist Regina Carter, guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, and pianist Brad Mehldau, but there are three more strong bands—both local and touring—playing around town over the next couple of nights. Tonight at Constellation the fantastic Boston pianist and composer Pandelis Karayorgis will perform with the Chicago-centric quintet responsible for last year’s Circuitous (Driff), one of my favorite albums of 2013....

At the Reader‘s Fall Cocktail Challenge event last week, bartenders weren’t challenged to use a specific ingredient (as they usually are in our ongoing feature), but to create a cocktail evocative of fall. (The one exception was Dustin Drankiewicz of the Promontory, who was tasked with using pumpkin and created a pumpkin pie-inspired recipe with brown butter pisco, graham cracker syrup, spiced pumpkin soda, and whipped cream topped with spices.) It’s a broad category, and excellent drinks abounded, making the task of the judges—the Reader‘s Gwynedd Stuart, Imbibe digital content editor Emma Janzen, and me—a difficult one....

Daniel Bachman continues to see past the limitations of acoustic guitar music. He’s only 26, but he’s already waxed nearly a dozen albums (not counting side projects released under different names), revealing a quiet virtuosity that’s always subservient to mood and tone. His strongest work yet, November’s eponymous album for Three Lobed, artlessly braids together some of the related strains on which his playing has recently focused. Like so many fingerstyle players, he’s fully conversant in the American Primitive approach pioneered by John Fahey, whether it’s an ambling blues or a meditative ragalike vibe....

Mike Sula Klin maeng da I never pass up a chance to make insect sauce, so I was thrilled when Friend of the Food Chain Leela Punyaratabandhu offered to send me some water-bug essence she brought back from Thailand. Maeng da na essence, or cà cuống essence as it’s known in Vietnam, is a pheromone collected from the male Lethocerus indicus, a fearsome-looking denizen of rice paddies that makes our common cockroach look positively Lilliputian....

3000 S. River Rd., Des Plaines 888-307-0777 riverscasino.com/desplaines Runner-Up Horseshoe Hammond

Intrepid food blogger Titus Ruscitti roams far and wide documenting regional eats for his blog, Smokin’ Chokin’ and Chowing With the King, but it’s his concentration on the taco specifically that has the makings of a scholarly work of historic importance. The Chicago Taco Tour is an illustrated atlas cataloguing the offerings at some 172 taco joints in the region, with lovely color photos and tasting notes on everything from the jerk chicken taco at the Jamaican Jerk Shack (“only a matter of time before Caribbean Fusion tacos take hipster hoods by storm”) to the lamb barbacoa at MeztiSoy Food Market (“wonderful”) to the tacos de canasta at Don Pepe (“What I thought separated them from the norm was the spicy cole slaw that came with the plate”)....

For the Tomorrow Never Knows festival in 2017, the Audioleaf talent-buying team for Lincoln Hall and Schubas booked Monobody to open for Tortoise. The move was a tacit endorsement of the position of the younger band as the new torchbearer for Chicago’s decades-long postrock tradition. Monobody’s nervy, whiplash-inducing take on the form bends toward metal, bleeds into prog rock, and gets its power from punk. Which is only fitting, since the members of the band’s monster rhythm section cut their teeth playing in some of city’s dirtiest DIY punk holes-in-the-wall; bassist Steve Marek and drummer Nnamdi Ogbonnaya previously played in erratic math-punk group the Para-medics, and the band’s other bassist, Al Costis, still gigs with adrenalized punk experimentalists Pyramid Schemes....