Belt magazine, November 2014 — The critics were brutal. Headlines called it a “fizzle,” a “fiasco,” and “a total bust.” Some 30,000 people had gathered on the banks of the Chicago River in the city’s downtown on the night of October 4, waiting to see three floating houses set ablaze… Read my story in Belt magazine. Photo by… Continue reading Burn or fizzle? Public art, economic renewal, and the curious case of the Great Chicago Fire Festival
Author: Robert Loerzel
Winter 2014-15 pop concerts preview
What if the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 never happened?
WBEZ’s Curious City, October 2014 — A thought experiment conducted by WBEZ’s Curious City, inspired by a question posed by Chicagoan Kevin Borgia. What if one of the most famous events in Chicago history — the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 — never happened? What would the city look like today? Read — and hear… Continue reading What if the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 never happened?
Play review: ‘The Night Alive’
Make It Better magazine, October 1, 2014 — Ghosts and devils often mingle with living human beings in Irish playwright Conor McPherson’s dramas. If there are any supernatural elements in his latest play—which is debatable—they aren’t quite so obvious… Read my review in Make It Better. Photo by Michael Brosilow
Gonerfest in Memphis, Tennessee, September 25-28, 2014
By Robert Loerzel Wondering Sound, September 29, 2014 In its opening moments, Memphis’s Gonerfest looked like a tame affair. Parents with toddlers and al fresco diners mingled with punk rock fans, both old and young, around a gazebo in city’s Midtown neighborhood as power-pop legend Paul Collins played. “When I started, Goner didn’t exist,” Collins… Continue reading Gonerfest in Memphis, Tennessee, September 25-28, 2014
The last days of Hot Doug’s
Five reasons to brave crowds for ‘David Bowie Is’ at the MCA
Concert preview: Ty Segall at Thalia Hall
Michael Abramson’s photos of 1970s Chicago nightclubs
Chicago magazine, October 2014 — As a graduate student at the Illinois Institute of Technology in the late 1970s, photographer Michael Abramson spent a lot of time in clubs with names like Perv’s House and Pepper’s Hideout… Read more — and see some of Abramson’s photos — in Chicago magazine. Photo by Michael Abramson
