Music: Riverbend ‘Second Stage’ Taking Shape
The Raconteurs play their first area concert June 10 at the new National City Pavilion. The Raconteurs, featuring Cincinnati musicians Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler along with Jack White of The White Stripes, will play their first area concert June 10 at the new National City Pavilion at Riverbend. Initial confirmed dates are being released…
Music: The Replacement
Press Here Publicity New lineup = new chemistry for Widespread Panic Perhaps no other guitarist could have better understood the challenges George McConnell faced during his four-year stint in Widespread Panic than the man who replaced McConnell in the lineup, Jimmy Herring. McConnell was brought into the band during the summer of 2002 at…
Onstage: Review: Bug
Sherman Fraser (top) and Christopher Guthrie star in Bug at New Stage Collective. It would be easiest to dismiss Tracy Letts' 1996 play Bug as a sitcom on HELL-TV. Sleazy motel room. Crack-smoking, vodka-swilling cocktail waitress Agnes, her beauty fading as her life unravels. Abusive, possessive ex-con, ex-husband Goss. Lesbian best buddy R.C., who's suffering…
Onstage: Review: Bare
Deogracias Lerma Tim Hein and Piper Davis star in Know Theatre's production of Bare: The Musical. Bare: The Musical has been heralded as the heir to Rent since its first production in 2004, and Know Theatre is staging its regional premiere. Like Rent, this musical is about young people struggling on the brink of adulthood,…
Deadly accurate reporting
Journalism has consequences. That's the ethical issue that faces reporters on certain kinds of stories. Is all information good? Or is some information more harmful than good? My colleague, Ben L. Kaufman, believes the law is sound that forbids reporters from naming covert CIA agents — the law involved in the investigation into who leaked…
The Pleasure of Her Company
After having a rather childish argument with a female friend, the smart thing for me would have been to simply go home. I seldom do the smart thing. There I was walking down Monmouth Street in Newport feeling annoyed with my infantile behavior. I looked across the street and saw an adult bar called The…
Opening Day an Opening for OTR
Despite the rain and gray skies, March 31 was a wonderful day. Opening Day is special for Cincinnati and those who take the time off of work or school to wear red, come downtown and watch the Findlay Market parade. The Reds lost, which isn't terrific, but it's hardly noticeable. They'll win next time, I'm…
Here’s the Windup and the Pitch
I'm playing a little game of musical chairs this week, trying to hop around to a couple different topics. Speaking of music, it's another one of those serendipitous weeks in Greater Cincinnati when music lovers have almost too many choices for ways to spend their free time and extra money. Our cover story highlights one…
Cover Story: Now … and Again
songtone Bill Frisell This week, the MusicNOW festival returns to Memorial Hall for its third year, bringing with it national attention from Spin, Pitchfork and several blog outlets. While the festival began in 2006 as a sort of Indie-meets-Classical/Chamber Music showcase, it's grown and evolved to include some of the Indie scene's top names.…
Cover Story: The Real Guitar Hero
Bill Frisell says MusicNOW is "just another opportunity to play and grow and figure out new things in the music." When fans talk about their favorite guitarists, hundreds of names are put forth and endlessly debated. When guitarists talk about their favorite guitarists, one name consistently winds up on the short lists of some…
Sheriff Leis’ Way or the Highway
Our ever-petulant sheriff's statement in Joe Wessels column "One for All, All for One (issue of March 26) that "you have 50 or 60 (police) chiefs in this county sitting on their thumbs" indicates all too well Simon Leis general condescension to anything or anyone not under his thumb. I for one am fed up…
Music: All the Not-So-Young Punks
Carbon/Silicon Tony James (left) and Mick Jones, formerly bandmates in the pre-Clash/pre-Generation X band London SS, re-team as Carbon/Silicon. Besides being among the primary architects of Punk Rock, The Clash with its many politically charged songs about poverty, strife in England and state-supported wars in locales around the world helped bring the protest song…
Another seven days of smelling fear, tazing the innocent and attracting visitors
McCain vs. Clinton? WEDNESDAY MARCH 26 President Bush called Chinese President Hu Jintao today and told him it's not cool that China has been beating up all those monk guys lately. According to Reuters, GW asked Hu Jintao to engage in "substantive dialogue" with the Dalai Lama and to please keep China's domination of…
This Week in Wellness
Leaves of Learning, which offers support programs for homeschool students, presents Convergence: A Day of Peace and Beauty, a holistic health fair. All ages are welcome. Free, but donations are encouraged and go to the Leaves of Learning cooperative. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. April 5. Grailville Education and Retreat Center, 932 O'Bannonville Road, Loveland, 513-683-2340. The…
Bug, Bare, The Golden Acrobats, Spoon, lots of comedy and much more
Van Ackerman The Golden Acrobats WEDNESDAY 4/02 ONSTAGE: A SLEEPING COUNTRY, winner of the 2008 Mickey Kaplan Play Prize, continues at the Playhouse in the Park. See Rick Pender's review here. MUSIC: MUSIC NOW takes over Memorial Hall with four days of experimental Pop music. See cover story here. ONSTAGE: KING LEAR is presented…
Regarding Words from the Pulpit
Liberty University Jerry Falwell said God damned the U.S. on 9/11, and Republican candidates didn't renounce him. Whether consciously or not, the mainstream corporate-controlled media have a double standard in effect for white presidential candidates and black presidential candidates. Talk shows on cable TV and radio were ablaze in recent weeks fanning the controversy…
Remembering Howsam, Bender and Nuxhall, Men Who Made the Reds
Jerry Dowling We always want Opening Day to be a day of "Hello," but it couldn't possibly go that way March 31 for the Reds. As the Reds and their public communed for the first time following an offseason of sorrow, "Goodbyes" had to come first. So, belatedly, "Hello" to Dusty Baker, Corey Patterson…
Art: A World of His Own Making
Matt Morris Man of vision: Christian Schmit At Covington's Art Off Pike last fall, amidst the more anticipated tents assigned to anxious-looking artisans, I came up to an outhouse-sized structure with wheels called "The Draw Box." The public was invited to put suggestions for drawings into a slot on one side of the box…
Onstage: Review: King Lear
Rich Sofranko Bruce Cromer (top) plays the mad King Lear, here with the blinded Gloucester (Skip Lundby). Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, King Lear, can easily become a one-man show. If the actor playing the crazed king isn't up to the role, the production will fail; if he's great, he can carry it. But if other…
Lisa Britton
Lisa Britton Lisa Britton Lisa Britton uses her camera to reveal the spiritual in nature. Her quiet, meditative photographs can be seen in Beauty Matters, a group exhibition at the United Way (2400 Reading Road, Mount Auburn) through April 25. Here, Britton reveals her inspirations. (Tamera Lenz Muente) Classical music. My father, a classical…
Film: Good Rockin’ Tonight
Emerging Pictures Danny Glover is Tyrone "Pine Top" Purvis in Honeydripper. Fans of Cincinnati's King Records who believe that the label's post-war African-American hits changed history will find more support in Honeydripper, the 16th and latest movie from director/writer John Sayles. It aims to tell how the Blues begat R&B and Rock & Roll…
Diner: Smoking Out Stealth Food
Bill Bullock/TinctCreative It might be too early to name the moment but not to notice that the moment is coming. The way we think about what we digest is on the verge of a major overhaul. The signs are everywhere: Jamie Oliver's fame in the UK; Michael Pollan's runaway best-sellers in the U.S. (In…
Spring Eats, Oyster Festival Returns
Joe Lamb Reserve Restaurant and Piano Lounge This year marks Morton The Steakhouse's 30th anniversary. The company will celebrate by partnering with the Make A Wish Foundation in its ¨30 Wishes for 30 Years" national campaign in order to raise at least $250,000 the largest charitable initiative in the company's history. Funds raised through…
Plays That Last: Highlights from the 2008 Humana Festival in Louisville
Harlan Taylor Halley Wegryn Gross (left) and Tom Nelis star in Great Falls, one of many offerings at the recent Humana Festival in Louisville. In a four-day stretch I recently saw plays by 18 writers, beginning with Melanie Marnich's new script A Sleeping Country at the Cincinnati Playhouse on March 27 and wrapping up…
Locals Only: : Karizmata
KARIZMATA – KARIZMATA While Cincinnati's Indie and Garage Rock acts continue to get the lion's share of the national spotlight, there are still quite a few straight-ahead Hard Rock bands in town, and Karizmata is among the best. The band shows off its songwriting and musical chops on its self-titled debut, a collection of…
Locals Only: : Pike
Pike One noticeable fact about the Cincinnati-based PiKE is that they have an uncanny sonic similarity to the Pixies, insofar as female vocalist Kelly Jarvis really sounds like Kim Deal. Typically anything that mildly evokes the often-dismissed Indie Pop princess makes me beam, and PiKE is no exceptiongenerally, they are very listenable. One of…
Music: A Band of Brothers
Ryan Thomas Banderas Jonathan Rhys Meyers is a beautiful man whose career is largely ignored. This is due in part to the fact that he performs admirably in movies that are often less than admirable and often difficult to watch, such as the m/lange of soccer, Hindu culture and Keira Knightly, Bend it Like…
Make Your Community Livable Again
The phrase "Make the community livable again" is lifted from Eugene Perterson's translation of Isaiah 58, perhaps my favorite passage in all of Scripture. That's pretty much the mission statement of my church. (I'm pastor of Vineyard Central Church in Norwood.) So how are we accomplishing this mission? Here are some ways we're currently trying…
