Paste:Local Chicago weighs in on this year's best live music in the Windy City.

Paste:Local Chicago weighs in on this year's best music from the Windy City.

“When words can’t be heard, language is translated to what is visual,” Joseph Grigely told Paste: Local about the opening of his new exhibition, St. Cecilia, now through February 22 at the Museum of Contemporary Art. Named after the patron saint of music, the fourth floor exhibit comprises work that parlays the acclaimed deaf artist’s memories of sound into video and sound installations, sculptures, and paper works focusing on the idiosyncrasies of communication.

After 12 Angry Months, Chicago’s own alterna-rockers Local H are coming home for the holidays with a show sure to be both naughty and nice. December 31 marks the band’s annual New Year’s Eve event, held this year at the Bottom Lounge, where fans can feast on the best of the band’s six-disc catalogue before embarking on New Year resolutions. Before the clock strikes midnight, Local H frontman Scott Lucas counts down the top five ways Chicago rocks during the holidays for Paste:Local. 

Over the past six months, Latin psych-pop group Allá’s debut, Es Tiempo, has received acclaim for its songs that mix styles such as tropicalia, psychedelia and hip-hop; the band is currently recording an EP of covers and will play Dec. 28 at the Empty Bottle. But if you, like Paste:Local’s Kent Green, have limited Spanish knowledge, is it possible to understand what Allá is trying to convey in its music? We tested Longfellow's aphorism of music being “the universal language” by interpreting Es Tiempo’s Spanish-spun tracks with the band's guitarist/producer, Jorge Ledezma.

As the youngest person to ever achieve the rank of Master Sommelier, Chicagoan Alpana Singh knows a thing or two about fine wine. Her unparalleled expertise has led to an impressive career with gigs including being Everest’s sommelier and the director of wine and spirits for the Lettuce Entertain You brand. Author of Alpana Pours: About Being a Woman, Loving Wine, and Having Great Relationships, she’s perhaps most known as the host of the popular WTTW program, Check Please!, which reviews various Chicago dining establishments via viewers' experiences. With the launch of her new wine blog, Singh offered Paste:Local her suggestions on where to be in the company of good spirits in Chicago.

“I’m not Christian so I don’t give a flying fruit loop about Christmas, but I am excited about that Mariah Carey holiday song on the radio,” prefaces actor Mitchell Fain, mixing a dry martini and toasting a sold-out crowd at the start of Santaland Diaries, the one-man show that shakes and stirs the happy snowglobe world of Christmas with the less-than-jolly adventures of Crumpet The Elf, running til January 3, 2009 at Theatre Building Chicago, Thursdays through Sundays.

There are ways to be creative at cutting corners during times of economic strife without resorting to Spam-levels of desperation. From all-day breakfast to stacked club sandwiches and meat-free options, these three Chicago diners take you to all corners of the city while offering a whole menu of ways to save a buck.

As Chicago marked the somber 40th anniversary of the 1968 Democratic National Convention protests, Pilsen's National Museum of Mexican Art opened its 22nd annual La Vida Sin Fin exhibition in honor of the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday, celebrated each Nov. 1 and 2. Running through Dec. 14th, the exhibit's paintings, etchings, photography and installations are dedicated to the victims of another historical coup, the Tlatelolco Massacre, which devastated Mexico City just months after the violence in our own town. Find Paste:Local Chicago's full review here.

Last month WXRT’s Eclectic Company held a live taping at Metro, hosted by noted Chicago musicians Jon Langford and Nicholas Tremulis. The first-ever Eclectic Company Live Concert Special featured special guests Eleventh Dream Day, Robbie Fulks, The M’s, Ezra Furman & The Harpoons, Cliff Johnson, the Nicholas Tremulis Orchestra and Metro owner Joe Shanahan spinning between sets. The taping broadcasts on 93.1 FM at 10 p.m. tomorrow, but for a visual expose of what you’ll be hearing, Paste:Local attended the live taping. Looking for an added sneak peak? Eleventh Dream Day premiered a couple songs from their forthcoming album, including “Satellite,” due out next year. There are also a couple surprising collaborations. And we won’t say whom, but someone does a really cool cover of The Stone Roses’ “I Wanna Be Adored.” For the rest, you’ll have to tune in tomorrow night.