Are you satisfied with the visual fare offered regularly on your nearest television? Are you sufficiently stimulated? You could change the channel, but you know what to expect. You could go rent a movie, but maybe you've seen everything that looks interesting...

Digging up the roots of rock ‘n' roll is a venerable quest for any musician and many music listeners, but for one campus fingerpicker it became another career. Brian Thornton spends his days teaching classes and hovering around his Reavis Hall office...

Hey ho, let's go one last time. Joey Ramone died last April after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind his final album, "Don't Worry About Me," and a musical legacy. The new album is exactly what one would expect from the father of punk rock. While...

The independent spirit is alive and well in the music world, in the form of Ani Difranco. Difranco, known for her self-started company Righteous Babe Records as much as her non-stop work ethic, performed to a nearly full house at Illinois Wesleyan University's...

A world-renowned musical group performed Tuesday night at the Music Building and few people know the significance of its four musicians, nor do many people on NIU's campus know that the four men are members of the music department's faculty and together...

Two decades ago there was a television show that detailed the life of the rich-but-loveable Ricky Stratton. "Silver Spoons" aired with the idea that being rich doesn't necessarily mean being happy. But how can you be unhappy when you have a train going...

Thank you Hollywood, we needed that. Written by James Kearns, directed by Nick Cassavetes and presented by New Line Cinema, "John Q" addresses the poor state of health care coverage in this, the richest country in the world. While a bit melodramatic at...

Tinges of warm breezes and increasingly delayed sunsets might tell you. For the literal, the calendar offers a good indication. But for those warmed by the hot stoves of winter, four words indicate spring - "pitchers and catchers report." Baseball's professional...

If Frank Sinatra ever had decided that rockabilly music was his thing, we never would have needed Chris Isaak. "Always Got Tonight" is like a road trip from the sandy beaches of California to the high stakes tables of Las Vegas. Yes, this is the same...

The NIU School of Theatre and Dance's performance of "Guys and Dolls" doesn't contain the popular dance move "jazz hands." Although, Alice Pacyga, a first-year MFA student, admits that some dance sequences feature outstretched arms and hands - but the...

DeKalb and other area residents will have the opportunity to see the much-talked-about musical "Rent" when it visits the Coronado Theatre, 300 Elm St., Rockford for a one-night-only show at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. The Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning...

Murder, gambling and poverty. All the comforts of Catfish Row, now available in DeKalb for a limited time. George Gershwin's classic folk opera "Porgy and Bess" will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Monday at The Egyptian Theatre, 135 N. Second St. NIU students...