In the days between NCAA Tournament games, Sister Jean Dolores Schmidt’s schedule is full.
“I have to get up early in the morning to do what I have to do,” she said. “Besides doing my work for Loyola, I’m doing my work for the basketball team. I write the team so many emails while they’re … quarantined in the hotel.”
As the 101-year-old chaplain for the Loyola men’s basketball team, Sister Jean said she writes the team an email before and after every game, explaining what players can expect and detailing some areas to improve upon.
Sister Jean said Loyola’s team that made it to the Final Four in 2018 and the school’s present team are more alike than they are different, as both demonstrated the same energy and great teamwork.
“When they do plays, they keep passing the ball to the person they think will make the basket,” Sister Jean said. “They don’t care who makes the points as long as the basket is made.”
The 8th-seeded Ramblers play 12th-seeded Oregon State in a Midwest Region Sweet 16 game Saturday afternoon in Indianapolis. The tournament is being played in Indiana.
Three years ago, Sister Jean predicted the Ramblers would make it to the Sweet 16, and the team broke her bracket with a Final Four run.
“This time, I thought, ‘I’m going to have them go to the Elite Eight, and then maybe they’ll push a little harder,'” Sister Jean said. “Maybe we’ll get up to the very top to play that game. [The team] accept challenges. Sometimes we play a better game when the school is a real challenge to us.”
Sister Jean said she has waited for another NCAA win for Loyola since 1963 and is excited for the team to excel whether that means they get to the Final Four again or go further.
“I told them, ‘We can do it, so let’s push,'” Sister Jean said.
During the season, Sister Jean said she has had to turn on her radio for play-by-plays of the games since her apartment doesn’t have the right channels to watch the matches.
While she gained expertise in analyzing just by listening, Sister Jean said she has missed seeing the Ramblers on the court.
“The last two games at Indianapolis have been a real thrill for me, because I’ve seen that they’ve grown a lot since I’ve last seen them face-to-face,” Sister Jean said. “They play faster, play better, play with precision and have a great defense.”
Currently, there is only one Big Ten team, the Michigan Wolverines, left in the NCAA, and Sister Jean said they will likely make their way through the bracket. So far, though, Sister Jean said the Ramblers have held their own on the court and will need to get points early on so they don’t lag behind.
“Bracketologists watch games endlessly, and they watch the plays, but they really don’t know the teams,” Sister Jean said. “I know my team. That’s why I put such faith and trust in them and what they’re capable of doing.”
Sister Jean said she will pray for no injuries on either team, and that this year there is no need to pray for the referees, as, so far, they are making good calls.
“I will ask our God to bless [the players’] hands, to make those balls go into the baskets,” Sister Jean said. “And not to turn over the ball and make too many fouls. Then I say, ‘Amen, God bless you and go Ramblers!'”
MILWAUKEE — A Black man who was paralyzed after he was shot in the back by a white police officer in southeastern Wisconsin filed a civil lawsuit Thursday accusing the officer of excessive force.
Jacob Blake Jr. was shot by Kenosha Officer Rusten Sheskey in August while Blake was about to get into an SUV during a domestic dispute. Blake’s federal complaint against Sheskey, the only defendant, is seeking unspecified damages.
The shooting of Blake, captured on bystander video, turned the nation’s spotlight on Wisconsin during a summer marked by protests over police brutality and racism. It happened three months after George Floyd died while being restrained by police officers in Minneapolis. The white officer charged with murder and manslaughter in Floyd’s killing is currently on trial.
Sheskey and two other Kenosha officers were trying to arrest Blake on an outstanding warrant when a pocketknife fell from his pants during a scuffle. Blake said he picked it up before heading to a vehicle to drive away with two of his children in the back seat. He said he was prepared to surrender once he put the knife in the vehicle.
Sheskey told investigators that he feared for his own safety so he opened fire. A Wisconsin prosecutor declined to file criminal charges against Sheskey, concluding he couldn’t disprove the officer’s contention that he acted in self-defense because he thought the man would stab him.
Court documents do not list an attorney for Sheskey.
The 18-page complaint includes still photos showing each of the seven shots fired by Sheskey. The officer held the muzzle only a few feet away from where Blake’s two young children were seated, putting them in “imminent danger” from being hit by gunfire or ricocheting bullets, according to the complaint.
Shaskey’s actions were “undertaken with malice, willfulness, and reckless indifference to the rights” of Blake, the lawsuit said.
Lauri Markkanen is no stranger to the location of the upstairs offices at the Advocate Center.
The Bulls forward simply chose not to visit them the last week leading up to the Thursday trade deadline.
“No I didn’t go talk to him,” Markkanen said, when asked if he paid a recent visit to executive vice president of basketball operations Arturas Karnisovas.
The invitation was definitely out there.
Head coach Billy Donovan made that very clear, insisting to his players on several occasions that if they had questions about their standing within the organization, there was a simple way to resolve it.
“My feeling has always been if you’ve got a question, if you’re hearing something that you’re concerned about, that you need to go to Arturas and to [general manager] Marc [Eversley] and sit down and talk to them, and they’ll be straight up and honest with you,” Donovan said on several occasions leading up to the deadline.
Markkanen’s feeling was, “I’m good.”
In the end he was.
A source said that the Markkanen to New Orleans for point guard Lonzo Ball had some life going into the deadline, but the Pelicans asking price was too much.
Like Orlando, New Orleans wanted the 2021 first-round pick packaged in, and Karnisovas and company were much more comfortable using that pick for Vucevic rather than in the Ball deal.
There were other calls on Markkanen, but the source said none serious. The Bulls did talk to the Wizards about adding Markkanen in the deal, but Washington didn’t want to part with a first-round pick.
“I felt, I’m in a good place that I can focus on the task at hand, I can play games and it’s not gonna bother me,” Markkanen said on Wednesday. “I can’t control [trades], I knew that was one possibility when I didn’t sign my extension before the season, so I knew that was one thing that can happen. So it doesn’t affect me at all.”
At least not yet.
In acquiring the likes of All-Star center Nikola Vucevic and a defensive-minded big like Daniel Theis, Markkanen no longer has the pressure of being the second option to Zach LaVine in the scoring department or play out of position on the defensive end.
More importantly, in adding Vucevic and Theis – each with Euro backgrounds – Markkanen has a few veteran players that he has more of a common background with. If he can’t make this work, it might very well be time to let him walk as a restricted free agent this summer.
“Besides the quality of players we added, I think also the players have been in playoff games,” Karnisovas said of the two Euro players that were added. “They’ve played in meaningful games. They’re also a competitive bunch.”
It will now fall on Donovan to get the new faces into the mix, and figure out how they will play with the likes of a Markkanen, LaVine and a Thad Young. Either way, the goal is to win games down the stretch and reach the playoffs.
It would be really nice if Markkanen is there for the ride, and then the next order of business can be discussed with him this offseason.
“We try to win games,” Karnisovas said. “That’s basically why we’re in this business. And again, right from the beginning from the time we got here, we said that we’re trying to get back to relevancy and [Thursday] made it happen. Expectations are always obviously winning and getting in the playoffs and getting our team better.
“There’s a lot of interesting pieces there and has different attributes each player. A lot of them we’ve liked for a long time and were targeting in different situations and now was a chance to acquire them and we’re really excited.”
An alleged shoplifter shot and seriously wounded a security guard Thursday afternoon at a Home Depot on the South Side then shot a Chicago cop in the shoulder before dying in a shootout nearby with other officers, police said.
The officer was the fourth Chicago cop to be shot in two weeks.
During a news conference outside Mount Sinai Hospital, Chicago Police Supt. David Brown said the officer appeared to be in “good spirits” after suffering a gunshot wound to the shoulder. The wound wasn’t thought to be life-threatening.
The suspect was pronounced dead at a hospital, Brown said.
Police officers stand at the scene where an alleged shoplifter shot a security guard and then later shot a CPD officer.Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times
About 4 p.m., a loss prevention officer at a Home Depot store in the 2400 block of West 46th Street saw a suspect shoplifting, Brown said. During an ensuing struggle, the suspect shot the security guard, who was in grave condition.
The guard, who was in his early 50s, was taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center, Chicago fire spokesman Larry Merritt said. In a statement, police said the guard was shot in his head.
When the suspect fled, officers pursued and one officer was shot, Brown said. The officer, a four-year veteran of the department, was treated at Mount Sinai, police said.
Following that shooting, other officers continued to pursue the suspect, Brown said. The suspect was then shot and killed during a shootout with police, Brown said.
At the scene of the shooting, police officers blocked off a residential stretch of 46th Street between Western Avenue and Rockwell Street as residents congregated behind the police tape to catch a glimpse of the investigation and exchange rumors over the sound of helicopters.
Police officers investigating outside a Home Depot in Brighton Park where an alleged shoplifter shot a security guard March 25, 2021.Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times
Nearby, officers taped off sections of the Home Depot parking lot across Western Avenue and laid down evidence markers near the entrance.
In the last two weeks, three other Chicago cops have been wounded in shootings.
“I get questions all the time about what is the department doing about violence, what are we doing about the shootings, what are we doing about the homicides. What we are doing is risking our lives every day to protect this city,” Brown said.
He noted that law enforcement officers across the country are “under attack,” reflecting on the cop who was shot and killed responding to the recent mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado.
“But here in Chicago … it’s the idea that cops are putting their lives on the line every day and it seems that these offenders are acting with impunity. … And yet with hyper-criticism, officers continue to run toward danger,” Brown said.
Police Supt. David Brown speaks to reporters after a CPD officer was shot March 25, 2021.Tom Schuba/Sun-Times
On Saturday, an officer was shot in her hand during a SWAT standoff in the Austin neighborhood by a man who allegedly wanted to “lure” cops to the area. On March 15, an off-duty officer was ambushed by two gunman while stopped in traffic in the Calumet Heights neighborhood.
And a day before that, an on-duty CPD sergeant was shot while standing in the parking lot of the Gresham District police station, at 7808 S. Halsted St. The bullet grazed his chin, and he was released from a hospital later that day.
John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, walked near the scene of the shootings Thursday and lamented what he called an “anti-police” atmosphere that he blamed for encouraging violence toward police.
“I’m sick and damn tired of my officers getting shot, and I know this anti-police sentiment is largely responsible for this careless disregard for life, especially for officers in this city,” Catanzara said.
“I’d like to see this whole damn city and every elected politician in this city and state start standing up for police and letting criminals know there’s going to be some repercussions for bad behavior; maybe that will stop them,” he said.
One of the Chicago-area’s most anticipated annual music festivals has announced its return, following last year’s pandemic postponement.
North Coast Music Festival 2021 — the electronic music, hip-hop and house extravaganza — will take place Sept. 3-5 at SeatGeek Stadium in Bridgeview, it was announced Thursday, along with the lineup for the return to a three-day festival of music and art.
Also new this year, a fourth stage specifically for artist-run record label takeovers.
The lineup headliners include Kaskade and Louis the Child (Friday); GRiZ and Ganja White Night (Saturday); and Zeds Dead and Rezz (Sunday). See the full lineup below.
Three-day general admission and three-day VIP passes go on sale at 1 p.m. March 26 via northcoastfestival.com. Single-day tickets will go on sale at a later date.
Northcoast Music Festival 20212021
Experiential/interactive art installations round out the festivities for the Labor Day weekend event.
The festival will adhere to all state and local pandemic protocols in place at the time of the event. However, organizers also stated that full refunds will be issued (or your tickets can be held over to 2022) if the festival cannot take place as scheduled due the pandemic.
“We’re thrilled for the various atmospheres the new stadium campus offers,” Thursday’s statement from festival organizers said. “The Main Stage will be inside the stadium, where fans can dance on the playing field or watch from the elevated grandstands. Another stage will be inside a massive air-conditioned, well ventilated, full-field soccer dome, with two more stages on the seven brand-new surrounding soccer turf fields.”
The city took another step toward easing off outdoor dining restrictions Thursday as the controversy over vaccinations given out improperly by Loretto Hospital continues.
Read the latest from today below.
News
TOP STORY: Chicago eases outdoor dining restrictions; most indoor rules remain in place
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Thursday authorized bars, restaurants and outdoor performance venues to increase outdoor capacity even as she sounded the alarm about a troubling surge in coronavirus cases among young people.
The news arrived as Chicago’s coronavirus testing positivity rate took another troubling step up.
What Lightfoot calls an “alarming trend and uptick” reminiscent of the surge Chicago saw in October is concentrated among 18-to-39-year-olds living in North Side neighborhoods including Lincoln Park, Old Town, Old Irving, Dunning and Portage Park.
“This is a cohort that we’ve had varied challenges throughout the pandemic reaching. Young people. We were all young once. We all think we’re invincible. We never think something bad is going to happen to us. And the reality is that young people have gotten sick. Very sick. And young people have died from COVID,” Lightfoot said.
“We can’t do bar crawls. We can’t do mass events. And I’m concerned with spring break happening — both for colleges and schools — that this is a concerning trend,” the mayor said.
Tough as it is to break through, the city needs to “reach them where they are”–through “a tremendous amount of messaging through texting and social media.”
“We’re gonna continue to push to reach this group and say, `COVID is real. It has not gone away from our city. It’s still very much part of our present….The vaccines are obviously giving us a ray of light at the end of a very dark tunnel,” but it’s not time to let down your guard.
4:33 p.m. California to open vaccinations to everyone 16 and older
SANTA ANA, Calif. — California is expanding its coronavirus vaccine eligibility to anyone 50 and over starting in April and anyone 16 and over on April 15.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday that California expects to receive 2.5 million doses a week in the first half of April and more than 3 million a week in the second half of the month. That’s a big jump from the roughly 1.8 million doses a week the state currently gets.
“In just a few weeks, there’ll be no rules, no limitations, as it relates to the ability to get a vaccine administered,” Newsom said at a news conference in Orange County. “This state is going to come roaring back.”
The move comes as some California counties have veered away from the state’s vaccine eligibility criteria by opening up the shots for people with a broader range of medical conditions than those required in most places, and in some cases, at younger ages.
Newsom said the state will continue to target underserved communities by working with labor groups to reach essential workers and letting health providers target vaccinations by ZIP code.
California’s announcement comes as governors across the country have expanded eligibility for the vaccine as supplies have increased. Florida said Thursday it will open eligibility to anyone 18 and older on April 5, while New York has expanded eligibility to anyone 50 and up.
3:58 p.m. Lightfoot not satisfied with Loretto exec’s resignation
The resignation of the Loretto Hospital executive at the center of a coronavirus vaccination scandal hasn’t put out the political fire with Mayor Lori Lightfoot.
Saying she knows of “at least one other story in the works” with potential to embarrass Loretto, Lightfoot demanded Thursday that the hospital hire an independent auditor to detect the problems that allowed its vaccination campaign to be hijacked by the politically connected and “come clean about it.”
The mayor seemed duly unimpressed that Anosh Ahmed, Loretto’s chief operating officer, had resigned after a week of revelations about what she called “misappropriated precious vaccine” at a West Side hospital whose “core responsibility” is serving low-income Black communities.
“They need to come clean about every instance in which vaccine has been committed to people that don’t fit into that West Side footprint and tell us about it. Audit, detect the problems and then, come clean about it,” Lightfoot said during a conference call with City Hall reporters.
“I’ve been reassured repeatedly that, ‘Oh, mayor. We’re doing that.’ But clearly, that’s not true. And so now, it feels like it’s death by a thousand cuts for them. My understanding is there’s at least one other story in the works. So they’ve got to take care of their business. They’ve got to do a fulsome audit. And they’ve got to own responsibility for what has happened. That has not happened yet.”
3:02 p.m. Biden doubles goal of COVID vaccines to 200 million doses
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden opened his first formal news conference Thursday with a nod toward the improving picture on battling the coronavirus, but he was immediately pressed on thorny issues, like immigration and voting rights, now testing his administration.
Biden doubled his original goal on COVID-19 vaccines by pledging that the nation will administer 200 million doses by the end of his first 100 days in office. The administration had met Biden’s initial goal of 100 million doses earlier this month — before even his 60th day in office — as the president pushes to defeat a pandemic that has killed more than 545,000 Americans and devastated the nation’s economy.
But while Biden had held off on holding his first news conference so he could use it to celebrate progress against the pandemic and passage of a giant COVID-19 relief package, he was quickly pressed at the question-and-answer session about all sorts of other challenges that have cropped up along the way.
A pair of mass shootings, rising international tensions, early signs of intraparty divisions and increasing numbers of migrants crossing the southern border are all confronting a West Wing known for its message discipline.
“I am going to deal with all of those problems,” Biden pledged.
2:02 p.m. Less than half of CPS students — including 1 in 3 high schoolers — choose 4th quarter in-person learning
An empty hallway is seen at Edward K. Duke Ellington Elementary School in the South Austin neighborhood earlier this year.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Fewer than half of all CPS students and about one-third of high schoolers have chosen to return to their classrooms later this spring in their last opportunity to resume in-person learning before the fall, according to newly released district data.
Those modest return rates come despite the share of students opting to return increasing from the last time officials asked families, and now including thousands of high school students for whom this was the first chance to make their preferences known.
In all, 121,000 students in all grades and programs said on a survey returned earlier this week that they’re interested in returning to school, CPS said. Another 136,500 opted to continue remote learning, and 20,700 students didn’t answer the survey and will default to virtual schooling.
“These are all very hopeful trends for us,” Sherly Chavarria, CPS’ chief of teaching and learning, said at Wednesday’s virtual Board of Education meeting.
“Too many students have not been well-served by remote learning, and that’s why we’ve been working night and day to offer an in-person option for our high school students.”
Among special education cluster students and those in preschool through eighth grades, 95,000 kids — or 46% of the 205,600 in those programs and grades — chose to return. Tens of thousands of those students have already been in classes. About 77,000 initially opted in last time around — though that dropped to 60,000 by the time K-8 schools reopened earlier this month.
11:14 a.m. The reality of work-at-home Zoom fatigue and how to combat it
Chances are, if you’re someone who began working at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, you’ve found yourself sitting on a Zoom video call when you didn’t want to be on camera.
People have been voicing their frustrations with video conferences on social media throughout the pandemic. Writer Roxane Gay tweeted, “I miss calls where I don’t need to show my face. It doesn’t need to be a Zoom. It just doesn’t.”
There are even web tools, like Zoom Escaper, that allow users to self-sabotage their call, giving them the perfect excuse to leave their virtual meeting.
Melissa Dowd, a therapist at virtual mental health and primary care company PlushCare, says it’s normal for people to feel an “added pressure” to be in front of the camera throughout the day.
“Unlike in-person meetings where the focus might be on one speaker, during Zoom calls everyone is looking at everyone,” she says. “This can be intimidating for some people and cause social anxiety.”
Amy Nicole Baker, professor and assistant chair of psychology and sociology at the University of New Haven, says this blurring of work and home boundaries is one reason it’s important to disengage from video when you can.
“People need time to disengage from work, it is healthy, it actually makes you more productive and actually improves worker well-being,” she says. “The assumption that we’re working from home on Zoom and we’re available any time encroaches on that ability to disengage, and I think that may be part of the reason we’re seeing such Zoom fatigue.”
9:42 a.m. Loretto Hospital executive resigns in wake of COVID-19 vaccination scandal
Anosh Ahmed, the Loretto Hospital executive at the center of a series of COVID-19 vaccination controversies, has resigned, the hospital’s board announced Wednesday night.
The board said it is continuing its investigation into actions taken by Dr. Ahmed, Loretto’s chief operating officer, and Chief Executive Officer George Miller, after a series of reports that hospital executives had taken city-supplied vaccine and used it to inoculate people at the Trump Tower downtown and at other locations, rather than use it for residents of the Austin community that Loretto serves. In some of the cases, the hospital gave shots to those who were not eligible.
“If our review should uncover anything further that indicates our processes were compromised, there will be additional consequences imposed on those responsible for these actions,” Chairman Edward Hogan said in a statement.
About 14% of Illinois’ 12.7 million residents have been fully vaccinated.
The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 2,793 new COVID-19 cases — the most in a day since Feb. 11 — detected among 79,381 tests.
Analysis & Commentary
9:44 a.m. Loretto board can’t afford to duck its responsibility to hold wayward execs accountable
The longer the top executives at Loretto Hospital hang on, the more negative stories are going to come out about how this safety-net hospital is being run.
State Rep. La Shawn Ford knows this.
He resigned from the hospital’s board of directors Tuesday, citing his disappointment with the “reprimands” handed down to CEO George Miller and COO Dr. Anosh Ahmed, for the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination scandal.
“The reason I stepped away was to make sure the hospital regains its confidence that may have been lost, and focus on the community,” Ford told me in a telephone conversation.
“I’m very concerned about the fact that the first doses have been taken away and there are thousands of people that got their first dose and are waiting on their second dose. People are now confused,” he said.
On Wednesday, the board of trustees accepted the resignation of Ahmed, its COO and CFO.
Chairman Edward Hogan thanked Ahmed for his contributions and vowed the board “would continue to investigate any and all deviations from the rules and regulations guiding their vaccination policy.”
“If our review should uncover anything further that indicates our processes were compromised, there will be additional consequences imposed on those responsible for these actions,” Hogan said in a news release.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Thursday signed a law banning transgender women and girls from competing in school sports teams consistent with their gender identity, making the state the second to approve such a restriction so far this year.
The Republican governor approved the measure despite objections from medical and child-welfare groups that it would have devastating impacts on transgender youth. Hundreds of college athletes have also urged the NCAA to refuse to hold championships in states that enact such bans.
“This law simply says that female athletes should not have to compete in a sport against a student of the male sex when the sport is designed for women’s competition,” Hutchinson said in a statement released by his office. “As I have stated previously, I agree with the intention of this law. This will help promote and maintain fairness in women’s sporting events.”
Republicans in at least 20 state legislatures have been pushing for similar bans this year. Mississippi’s governor signed a prohibition into law earlier this month. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem had initially said she would sign similar legislation sent to her but has since pushed for changing it to exclude college sports.
Arkansas’ law covers K-12 as well as collegiate sports.
Only one state, Idaho, has enacted a law curtailing transgender students’ sports participation, and that 2020 measure is blocked by a court ruling as a lawsuit plays out.
Arkansas’ law, if it isn’t blocked by a legal challenge, would take effect this summer. Under the new law, a student or school who suffers “direct or indirect harm” could take a school to court for violating the ban.
The measure is among several targeting transgender people advancing through the majority-Republican Legislature this year. Another bill on Hutchinson’s desk would allow doctors to refuse to treat someone for moral or religious reasons, a measure opponents says would allow LGBT patients to be turned away.
A final vote is also expected next week on legislation that would ban gender confirmation surgery or treatment for minors.
The measures have won support as a hate bill measure backed by Hutchinson has stalled, facing conservative resistance. The current version of the bill would impose additional penalties for committing a crime against someone because several characteristics, including gender identity or sexual orientation.
Arkansas is one of three states without a hate crimes law.
When Ric Menck was a young rocker in Barrington, he didn’t associate 1980s music with the synthesizer washes, booming drums and the slick sheen commonly found in such big-haired acts as A Flock of Seagulls, Def Leppard and Cyndi Lauper.
He was part of the decade’s alternate pop-rock narrative, driven by tight songwriting, lean production and guitars played with little distortion or flash.
Much of this music earned a nickname, “jangle,” as bands embraced Rickenbacker guitars a la Roger McGuinn of the Byrds, whose first hit was Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” with its “jingle jangle mornin’.”It also was part of the college rock scene that paved the way for such ’90s breakthroughs as Nirvana and Pavement.
“There was the MTV ’80s, and then there was the other ’80s,” says Menck, who now manages a Minneapolis-area record store while continuing to drum with Matthew Sweet and others. “When people started complaining about the ’80s, I’d say, ‘Well, my ’80s was pretty cool.’ “
Those ’80s are having a moment:
“The Pylon Box,” out Friday on CD after selling out its vinyl edition, is a four-disc set that showcases this groundbreaking Athens, Georgia, band. Pylon’s brittle, propulsive attack bridged the gap between that college town’s more famous exports: the B-52’s and R.E.M.
“Strum & Thrum: The American Jangle Underground 1983-1987” picks up where Pylon left off. This two-disc compilation is a deep dive into little-known tracks released on independent labels.
Seminal art-rock legends Pylon released Pylon Box in November, including studio albums Gyrate (1980) and Chomp (1983), which have been remastered from their original tapes and made available on vinyl for the first time in nearly 35 years. New West Records
I was a jangle fan. And I recognized exactly one of these acts: the Windbreakers, a Jackson, Mississippi, band fronted by singer-songwriters Bobby Sutliff and Tim Lee. Lee’s ears also were opened by this collection.
“Half the people on that record are great friends of mine from way back, and the other half I’ve never heard of,” says Lee, now living in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Most of these songs are of the instantly catchy, verse-chorus variety as they spread sunshine even while lamenting love gone wrong. Many evoke R.E.M., which rose from college faves to arena-conquering superstars over this period.
R.E.M. tipped its cap back toward Pylon by covering its swirling 1981 single “Crazy” in 1985. In the hardcover book that comes with “The Pylon Box,” R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck calls Pylon “a huge influence,” and drummer Bill Berry testifies, “To this day I haven’t seen a better live band.”
The four Pylon members were University of Georgia art students. Three of them — singer Vanessa Briscoe Hay, bassist Michael Lachowski and drummer Curtis Crowe — worked weekend jobs at the nearby DuPont textile factory. The band took its name not from the identically titled William Faulkner novel but the safety cones scattered around the factory floor.
The industrial setting also informed the band’s aesthetic visually, sonically and lyrically. While guitarist Randy Bewley (who died from a heart attack in 2009) whips up inventive, circular figures, Lachowski offers one- or two-note counterpunches, Curtis Crowe puts the beat into overdrive, and Briscoe Hay delivers clipped phrases in everything from a murmur to a feral shriek.
“I was fitting into those spaces,” Briscoe Hay says from her Athens home. “It’s like we were a machine, and everybody had their place in it.”
Over the speed-surf attack of “The Human Body,” Briscoe Hay sings with typically intense commitment, “I have my safety glasses/I have my safety shoes/I’m putting in my earplugs/Use caution in what you do!”
In “Driving School” Briscoe Hay shouts, “Caution! Red Light! Bus Stop! Turn Right! Reverse! Forward! Neutral! Low Gear!”
“There’s good information in there, but these gotta be the funniest lyrics ever,” Briscoe Hay says. “We had our tongue in our cheek so firmly sometimes.”
Pylon’s deadpan humor contrasted with the campiness of the B-52’s, who didn’t stick around Athens after breaking through with their self-titled 1979 debut album.
“We were in Athens, stayed in Athens and were on the scene and at the parties when all the subsequent bands were emerging,” Lachowski says, referring not only to R.E.M. but also such bands as Dreams So Real, Love Tractor and Flat Duo Jets. “We were right there listening to them. And they were listening to us.”
But as the music industry’s demands were “getting more annoying,” as Lachowski put it, Pylon called it quits. (It regrouped to record a 1990 album not included in the box.)
Still, the band had a lasting impact on musicians such as Chicago producer/engineer Steve Albini, who saw Pylon as a Northwestern undergraduate and founded his band Big Black in 1981.
“Hearing them play validated a lot of ideas I had at the time, about how music could be all kinds of things, instruments and voices didn’t need to fit a pattern, and all of it could be presented frankly, without showbiz, and still be invigorating,” Albini writes in “The Pylon Box.”
Pylon’s second album, “Chomp,” was engineered by Mitch Easter at his Drive-In Studio in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Given how many chiming guitar bands he wound up producing — R.E.M.’s debut EP and first two albums plus Game Theory, the Windbreakers, the Connells and his own Let’s Active — Easter could be considered the Godfather of Jangle, but he’s no fan of the term.
Mitch Easter.Provided
“The word ‘jangle’ still makes my hair stand up a little bit,” says Easter, who still operates a studio in the Winston-Salem area. “Some people think it’s actually like you sign a pledge. For us, it was just playing our [expletive] guitar and writing our stupid songs.”
Easter, like Buck and others, played a Rickenbacker. But the guitar wasn’t the point.
“Guitars had gotten so associated with blues electric guitar and a heavier tone,” Easter says. “That’s what these bands didn’t do.”
“We all went in different cars and wound up in the same place, kind of,” says the Windbreakers’ Lee, who cited inspiration from the Southern power pop of Big Star, the dB’s and Dwight Twilly plus Zion’s own Shoes.
“Strum & Thrum” documents how a sound became a movement before technology made it easy for musicians in far-flung regions to keep up with each other’s work.
“I was obsessed with all that stuff and was buying those singles when they were coming out, but there were not a lot,” Menck says. “I don’t know if I’d call it a scene, but there were five or six cool bands in every city.”
Two of Menck’s bands appear on “Strum & Thrum.” The collection kicks off with the Reverbs’ “Trusted Woods,” one of those bright jangly tunes that instantly embeds itself in your head. Menck said the Barrington band, which released one EP in 1984, played a total of just six shows, including opening gigs for Oingo Boingo, the Bluebells and the Clash.
“We were about to go on tour opening for R.E.M., but we broke up after the second Clash show,” Menck says.
After moving to Champaign, Menck formed the Springfields with singer-bassist Paul Chastain, also his partner in the popular ’90s power-pop band Velvet Crush (whom Easter produced). With its arpeggiated chords and gentle harmonies, the Springfields’ “Sunflower,” floats past like a sunlit cloud.
“Strum & Thrum” also features Archer Prewitt playing bass on the Bangtails’ driving “Patron of the Arts” before he became a Chicago music fixture in the Coctails, the Sea and Cake and his own solo career. Future Smashing Pumpkins/Nirvana producer and Garbage member Butch Vig recorded the White Sisters’ “Misery, Me, & You” at his then-new Smart Studios in Madison.
Several of these bands are fronted by women. Barbara Manning sings 28th Day’s “Pages Turn” before finding acclaim in World of Pooh and as a solo artist. Donna Esposito supplies lead vocals and lead guitar to the Cyclones’ “I’m in Heaven” as well as the Riff Doctors’ Easter-produced “Say Goodbye.”
Credit Brooklyn label Captured Tracks not only for its savvy song selections but also the snazzy, relatively affordable “Strum & Thrum” package. The $35 two-LP edition, currently being re-pressed, comes with extensive liner notes plus a full-color, 86-page book featuring an oral history of the period. A two-CD set is available for $22 on the label’s website.
New West Records’ even more elaborate “The Pylon Box” offers the band’s first two albums, “Gyrate” and “Chomp,” and discs featuring an otherwise unavailable early work tape (“Razz Tape”) and stray recordings (“Extra”) plus a 200-page hardcover book. The $150 vinyl version sold out quickly, but the $85 CD collection includes the same book. “Gyrate” and “Chomp” can be bought separately on CD and vinyl.
Briscoe Hay says she’s “flabbergasted” that this short-lived art-music project is drawing an enthusiastic audience today.
Credit the music’s immediacy; While many ’80s songs, great or not, have a time-stamped feel, Pylon’s 40-year-old debut and much of “Strum & Thrum” burst from the speakers with contemporary power.
Shortly before Pylon pulled the plug on its first incarnation, Lachowski recalls, it was playing the same venues as A Flock of Seagulls, all while the clubs were outfitting themselves with video monitors.
“All of that was threatening,” Lachowski says. “[We felt] if this is where the culture is going, we’re probably about to become passe.”
Yet it’s the alternate-narrative ’80s that now are inspiring us to, as Briscoe Hay sang, turn up the volume.
ATLANTA — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Thursday signed into law a sweeping Republican-sponsored overhaul of state elections that includes new restrictions on voting by mail and gives the legislature greater control over how elections are run.
Democrats and voting rights groups say the law will disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color. It is part of a wave of GOP-backed election bills introduced in states around the nation after former President Donald Trump stoked false claims that fraud led to his 2020 election defeat.
Republican changes to voting laws in Georgia follow record-breaking turnout that led to Democratic victories in the presidential contest and two U.S. Senate runoffs in the once reliably red state.
Kemp signed the bill less than two hours after it received final passage in the Georgia General Assembly. The bill passed the state House 100-75 earlier Thursday, before the state Senate quickly agreed to House changes 34-20. Republicans in the legislature were in support, while Democrats were opposed.
Democratic Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler said the bill was filled with “voter suppression tactics.”
“We are witnessing right now a massive and unabashed assault on voting rights unlike anything we’ve seen since the Jim Crow era,” Butler added.
Democratic Rep. Rhonda Burnough said the bill was based on lies told by Republicans after last November’s election.
“Georgians turned out in record-breaking numbers because they could access the ballot,” Burnough said. “Lies upon lies were told about our elections in response, and now this bill is before us built on those same lies.”
Among highlights, the law requires a photo ID in order to vote absentee by mail, after more than 1.3 million Georgia voters used that option during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also cuts the time people have to request an absentee ballot and limits where ballot drop boxes can be placed and when they can be accessed.
Republican Rep. Jan Jones said the provisions cutting the time people have to request an absentee ballot are meant to “increase the likelihood of a voter’s vote being cast successfully,” after concerns were raised in 2020 about mail ballots not being received by counties in time to be counted.
One of the biggest changes gives the GOP-controlled legislature more control over election administration, a change that has raised concerns among voting rights groups that it could lead to greater partisan influence.
The law replaces the elected secretary of state as the chair of the state election board with a new appointee of the legislature after Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger rebuffed Trump’s attempts to overturn Georgia’s election results. It also allows the board to remove and replace county election officials deemed to be underperforming.
That provision is widely seen as something that could be used to target Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold covering most of Atlanta, which came under fire after long lines plagued primary elections over the summer.
Republican Rep. Barry Fleming, a driving force in crafting the law, said that provision would only be a “temporary fix, so to speak, that ends and the control is turned back over to the locals after the problems are resolved.”
The law also reduces the timeframe in which runoff elections are held, including the amount of early voting for runoffs. And it bars outside groups from handing out food or water to people standing in line to vote.
The law does not contain some of the more contentious proposals floated by Republicans earlier in the session, including limits on early voting on Sundays, a popular day for Black churchgoers to vote in “souls to the polls” events. It instead mandates two Saturdays of early voting ahead of general elections, when only one had been mandatory, and leave two Sundays as optional.
But those changes haven’t tempered opposition from Democrats or voting rights groups.
About 50 protesters including representatives from the NAACP gathered across from the Capitol building Thursday in opposition.
During the rally, Bishop Reginald Jackson of the African Methodist Episcopal Church called for a boycott of Coca-Cola Co. products.
Jackson, who leads more than 400 churches across Georgia, said the Atlanta-based soft drink company had failed to live up to the commitments it made last year to support the Black Lives Matter movement by not forcefully opposing the voting bills pushed by Republicans.
“We took them at his word,” he said of Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey. “Now, when they try to pass this racist legislation, we can’t get him to say anything.”
Jackson said boycotts also were possible against other large locally based companies such as Delta Air Lines and Home Depot.
The Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce pushed against some proposals Republicans later dropped, including eliminating no-excuse absentee voting. But the business lobbies and top Atlanta corporations have not vocally opposed all changes.
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Associated Press writer Jeff Amy contributed to this report.
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