A Cincinnati outdoor advertising company announced Tuesday that it will take down controversial billboards that opponents claim are aimed at intimidating voters.

Norton Outdoor Advertising had been contracted to put up about 30 billboards that read “Voter Fraud is a Felony!” The billboards also listed the maximum penalty for voter fraud — up to 3 and a half years and a $10,000 fine.

Opponents of the billboards claim they were strategically placed in predominantly low-income and black neighborhoods in Cincinnati as a means to discourage those largely Democratic voters from going to the polls.

The billboards were funded by an anonymous “private family foundation.”

In a statement posted online, Norton Executive Vice President Mike Norton said the displays would be taken down as soon as possible. He wrote that the foundation and Norton agreed after hearing criticism that the sentiment surrounding the displays was contrary to their intended purpose.

The family foundation didn’t intend to make a political statement, but rather make the public aware of voting regulations, he wrote.

“We look forward to helping to heal the divisiveness that has been an unfortunate result of this election year,” Norton wrote.

Norton had previously told CityBeat that the billboards were not targeted but distributed randomly throughout the city.

Several Cincinnati officials wrote to the company requesting the billboards be taken down. 

ClearChannel Outdoor Advertising announced on Monday that it was removing similar billboards in Cleveland and Columbus.

The billboards throughout Ohio had garnered national criticism and media attention.

 A rival outdoor advertising company is putting up 10 new billboards to rebut the voter fraud ones. 

The new red, white and blue billboards will read “Hey Cincinnati, voting is a right not a crime!”

Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld said in an emailed news release that he reached out to Lamar Advertising Company to ask if they would donate the billboards throughout Cincinnati.

“We should be encouraging folks to participate in our democratic process, not trying to scare them,” Sittenfeld wrote. “I salute Lamar’s generosity and their support in encouraging citizens to raise their voice and not be scared away.”

After Lollapalooza created the "package tour" craze in the ’90s, most of the tours collapsed, faded away or adjusted, including Lolla itself. But the folks behind The Warped Tour figured out how to make it work (mostly by not overpaying bands or treating anyone like prima donnas) and Warped is by far the most consistent and longest running big package tour around. It returns to Riverbend this summer.

The fest brings its usual eclectic lineup of Punk, Metal, Hip Hop and Indie acts back to Cincinnati on July 31. Tickets go on sale April 6 at 10 a.m. (a week from today) and are just $35 (plus ticketing fees). Click here for more on tickets.

The lineups change throughout the Warped jaunt as acts come on and off the tour. Here's who's on board for the Riverbend stop. (Lineup is subject to change.):

Main Stage: Taking Back Sunday, All Time Low, New Found Glory, Streetlight Manifesto, Yellowcard, Piece The Veil, Four Year Strong, Of Mice and Men, We The Kings, Breathe Carolina, Miss May I, Falling In Reverse, Blood On The Dance
 
TBD Stage:  Every Time I Die, Mayday Parade, blessthefall, Chelsea Grin, For Today, Memphis May Fire, Motionless In White, Rise To Remain, Sleeping With Sirens, The Ghost Inside, Vampires Everywhere!, Title Fight
 
Tilly's Stage: Senses Fail, Vanna, Polar Bear Club, We Are The Crowd, Man Overboard, A Loss For Words, Funeral Party, I Fight Dragons, Machine Gun Kelly, Oh No Fiasco
 
TBD Stage: Echo Movement, G-Eazy, Stepdad, The Constellations, Ballyhoo!, Champagne, T. Mills, Tomorrows Bad Seeds, Mod Sun, The Green, Amyst
 
Ernie Ball Stage:  iwrestledabearonce, Born Of Osiris, Chunk! No Captain, Fireworks, Transit, Cold Forty Three, The Scissors
 
Kevin Says Stage:  Make Do And Mend, Matt Toka, Tonight Alive, Skip The Foreplay, Sick of Sarah, Mighty Mongo, Captain Capa, I Call Fives, Hostage Calm, The Silver Comet, Twin Atlantic, The Darlings, Dead Sara
 
Acoustic Basement:   A Loss For Words, Koji, Brian Marquis, Rocky Votolato, Transit, Owen Plant, Anthony Raneri
 
Ourstage.com is also sponsoring a stage this year and local bands are encouraged to sign up for a chance to play their hometown Warped (and possibly even join Ourstage.com's stage for 22 dates). Click here for details.

The city of Cincinnati is prepared to formally recognize King Records’ place in the city’s cultural history with a historic marker, a partnership with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a King-oriented class or lecture series, a King Records Center on the campus of Xavier University and a prominent role in this year’s Cincinnati Entertainment Awards for Music (CEAs). City Councilman John Cranley, Bootsy Collins and others announced the plans at a news conference this morning at the former King Records site in Evanston.

[See photos from this morning here.]

Cranley read from a motion he introduced to City Council that asks for up to $10,000 in city funds to install a historic marker on the former King Records office/studio in Evanston to be unveiled on Nov. 23, with the remaining funds used to book a former King recording artist to perform at that night’s CEAs. This year is the 65th anniversary of the founding of King Records in Cincinnati.

The Rock Hall of Fame in Cleveland has agreed to construct, donate and maintain the historic marker, and if Cranley’s funding request is granted the Rock Hall president has agreed to attend the marker unveiling and the CEAs. The institution also will work to develop a class or lecture series on King Records at Cincinnati State.

Other newsworthy items from this morning:

• Xavier officials are looking into developing a King Records Center on campus, a history exhibition that also could be a working recording studio for use by students and the public.

• CityBeat Marketing and Promotions Manager Dan McCabe announced that the 12th annual CEAs for music will be the first event held at the reopened Emery Theater in Over-the-Rhine. The CEAs were the final public event at the Emery just before it closed in 1999.

I'm reviewing another show for next week's issue of CityBeat, but on a few nights ago I saw the final rehearsal of New Edgecliff Theatre's staging of Peter Shaffer's Equus. This is one you'll want to catch, and since this is the opening weekend, now's the time to do so — once this is reviewed by others and the buzz gets going, it will be hard to get tickets for the tiny Columbia Performance Center (3900 Eastern Ave., Columbia-Tusculum).

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This week’s CityBeat features the announcement of the first several weeks’ worth of headliners for PNC’s MidPoint Indie Summer Series. The free, every-Friday concert series on Fountain Square again features an interesting array of out-of-town artists and Cincinnati music’s finest. The concerts begin June 3 with local Electronica duo You, You’re Awesome headlining a typically eclectic night of provocative sounds. It’s good prep for 2011’s MidPoint Music Festival this fall. The Indie Summer kick-off is your first chance to get MidPoint ’11 tickets — MPMFers can buy three-day passes at a discounted rate while they last at the events this summer.

Below, take a look/listen to the performers announced so far.

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In the summer of 2009, several student filmmakers from Northern Kentucky University decided to make a documentary about Newport music venue the Southgate House. With a soundtrack loaded with local music (Mack West, The Tillers and many others), the movie features some great historical information about the old mansion, lovely footage of the interior and exterior of the building and lots of interviews with area musicians, music lovers, Southgate employees and longtime operator Ross Raleigh, all discussing the uniqueness of the club and what it means to the local music community. There are some prescient comments towards the end about what losing the Southgate would mean to the music scene. Click below to watch the full shebang.

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It’s funny that The Fray are called what they’re called, because they hardly ever leave any loose threads or ragged edges — whether on their perfectly-produced, radio-friendly songs or live in concert. The piano rock band is so harmless and clean-cut that they probably couldn’t hurt a fly if their lives depended on it.

It’s no surprise, then, that their concert at PNC Pavilion Monday night, opened by Richard Swift and alt-rock band Jack’s Mannequin, felt like a quintessentially American outdoor summer party: laid-back, pleasant and totally innocuous.

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People who’ve never heard of her or the carpet cleaning company are tuning in now by the thousands, thanks to a YouTube video, cleverly titled “The Stanley Steemer Variations (by Mia).” Gentile generated with local musician and producer Roger Klug. Julie Spangler, a professional pianist and musical theater instructor at CCM, introduced Klug and Gentile, who wanted to produce a voiceover demo of the various musical styles she could reproduce (which appears to be limitless). Klug convinced her to translate her vocal performances into a video, which they shot in one day over the summer. “It was a total collaboration,” Klug tells me. “We talked about what each character would look like, she did the makeup and hair, I shot and edited the thing. We completely did it for no other reason than ‘just for the fun of it.’” It was shot at the local studio Mental Giant with Klug using a Sony Handycam.

Well, that it was — it’s apparent from watching. But everyone is getting in on the fun, and the video has taken off virally on YouTube. When Klug contacted me on Monday morning, it had had 40,000 hits in just a few days. By midnight the piece had exploded, exceeding 100,000 hits. He and Gentile have created a blog site to support it: http://miavideo.wordpress.com.

Even better, the Stanley Steemer people have picked it up, hyping it on their Facebook page, which has led to a suspicion that the whole thing is a clever marketing ploy. “Another faction thinks Stanley Steemer owes us a big check,” Klug jokes, “which I'm inclined to agree with!” It’s spread to an international audience now, dare I say “picking up steam” with a mention and a link in the U.K. edition of The Huffington Post. Before this winds up, Gentile will need her own 1-800 number!

We received word this afternoon that legendary Funk guitarist and Cincinnati native Phelps “Catfish” Collins succumbed to cancer today at the age of 66. Collins (along his younger brother Bootsy) was an architect of Funk as a member of James Brown’s JB’s, Parliament/Funkadelic (fellow P-Funk guitarist Gary Shider passed away just a couple of months ago) and Bootsy’s Rubber Band and was responsible for some of the greatest Funk guitar riffs every laid down.

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(** UPDATE FOLLOWS AT BOTTOM.)

Mark Miller isn't a subtle guy.

Miller, treasurer of the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), recently apologized publicly after using the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to tweet a comment comparing the attacks to a political battle about the planned Cincinnati streetcar system.

Now Miller has posted an altered photograph on his Facebook page that some people believe is racist. The photo depicts a streetcar filled with young African-American males brandishing weapons. The streetcar has a sign that reads, “Banks & Freedom Center Only.”

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