Passafire’s Ted Bowne says he has nothing but respect for his peers in reggae, but there’s one figure in the modern game he doesn’t like—Snoop Lion, formerly Snoop Dogg. “I thought the transformation was well-intended, but if someone starts coming around your house and wearing your clothes and talking like you, it is weird,” Bowne […]
Beer is like a moody lover. It can do you so right, before turning around (as soon as the next morning!) to do you so wrong. But beer still loves you, baby. Don’t be like that. Seasonal beers, more than any other, know how to find the right mood. In the summer, you want to […]
The only thing that could make the banh mi sandwich better is if there were some obscure, obnoxious way to pronounce it. Then all the people who call pho “fuh” could lord their culinary superiority over everyone else in yet another way. “It’s not a ‘bon-me,’” they’d say. “It’s a ‘boon-mh.’” I take that back. […]
Live music is as important now as it’s ever been. With the days of the huge record contract all but behind us and the era of the small label in full swing, most bands can’t make a living without hitting the road hard. “It’s a hard business,” Cold War Kids front man Nathan Willett told […]
There’s a scene in Animal House where John Belushi’s character Bluto walks by a folk singer strumming a tune in the Delta Tau Chi fraternity house. He listens to the lyrics for a moment—“I gave my love a chicken that had no bones” —before smashing the guitar against the wall and handing it back to […]
I was once talking to my boss from across his cubicle when he stopped me mid-sentence and asked, “What’s that smell?” Of all the people you don’t want to hear this from, your boss is probably behind only someone you’d like to bed. Maybe it’s not me, I hoped. But after a quick self-inventory, I had […]
I am a mindless follower, a sheep that would walk with the rest of you straight to the slaughter if given the chance. About eight years ago, while living in Chicago, I started taking down espresso drinks two at a time. You might guess this coincided with the growing popularity of a certain coffee shop chain […]
Ben Rindner is standing over one side of a freshly slaughtered pig. In front of him, running left to right along the butcher block at JM Stock Provisions & Supply, is the animal’s bisected backbone. Below that are loins and chops, shoulders and shanks, meaty muscles tucked into the carcass’s cross-section among organs, bones, ligaments, […]
If Lem Oppenheimer is at all worried about perpetuating the stereotypes that come with being in the reggae business, he didn’t show it when he walked into a Belmont coffee shop for an interview on October 18. Tall and lanky with close-cropped hair, Oppenheimer clutched a handful of CDs produced by his record label, Easy Star […]
I’ll admit it. I don’t love tamales. I do love the idea of tamales. Believe me, the first time I was at a hipster bar in Chicago’s Bucktown and a Mexican woman walked in carrying a cooler full of hot masa dough surprises, I was first in line, lack of FDA-oversight be damned. But the […]