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Monday is Valentine’s Day. Usually that involves some sweet treats and sweet nothings but perhaps you’ve found yourself hard pressed to come up with a unique experience for you and your date.

On Thursday afternoon, the Daley administration made the latest in a series of inscrutable moves to assure a future of stultifying mediocrity and/or political shenanigans at Taste of Chicago and the six other Grant Park music festivals.As first tipped by Crain’s and then reported at length by

UPDATED THURSDAY AFTERNOONAmong American companies in the business of serving the public, Ticketmaster is both uniquely disdainful of its customers and uniquely powerful: Many openly despise it and think they radically overpay for its services, but they have nowhere else t

 UPDATED THURSDAY MORNING: I was a little off on my ancient history in the original version of this piece regarding Chicagofest and Taste of Chicago (see bullet points numbers one and two below) and Whet Moser has corrected me on that in Chicago maga

My friend and "Sound Opinions" colleague over at the Tribune has been the first out of the gate to report Lollapalooza's headliners every year since it came to Chicago as a reinvented "destination festival"--one with a long-term, tax- and competition-free deal for Grant Park

As first reported here on Monday, mayoral frontrunner Rahm Emanuel has received campaign contributions from the two top executives at the controversial and monopolistic national concert giant Ticketmaster/Live Nation: $5,000 from ruthless CEO Michael Rapino and $10,000 from executive chairman Irving

For knowledgeable music fans, two things jump out from the list of donors to the campaign of mayoral frontrunner Rahm Emanuel.