Party In The Park
Wednesday I decided to go down to Sawyer Point for the Party in the Park. All my friends are starting to be douchebags, so I thought to myself, "Charlie, why not go network and make friends, like Facebook, irl (in real life)?" Since it was a nice night, I thought I would take the new…
Live Review: Cut Off Your Hands at the Southgate House
According to its government's Web site, New Zealand’s population density is 14 people per square kilometer. (The U.S. population is more than double that—31 people/km2.) Needless to say, concentrated masses of human beings aren’t particularly easy to come by out there. “New Zealand is pretty far-removed from anything that would warrant being in a band,…
Bad Veins Track Listing, Album Art and Acoustic Session
The album artwork and tracklisting for Bad Veins debut — coming out on Dangerbird Records nationally on July 21 — has been posted on the band's label's Web site. The self-titled record will get a local release party on July 24 on Fountain Square.—- The tracklisting and artwork should be familiar to those who've followed…
Music: Bowerbirds
The Bowerbirds took their name from an Australian species characterized by the males’ propensity for creating artistically sculptural nests to attract mates, a quality that accordionist Beth Tacular found worthy of tribute. The band that she so named rose from the ashes of the late, lamented Ticonderoga when guitarist/vocalist Phil Moore and pianist/vocalist Mark Paulson…
Art: Remedies for Rural Conditions at the Bean Haus
A smart, composed series of paintings by Robin Hofstetter is presently on display at Bean Haus in Covington’s burgeoning arts district. The square panels in outdoor house paint that comprise Remedies for a Rural Condition are based on quilt patterns, thus referencing Geometric Abstraction while also infusing the compositions with the honest and quotidian ambiance…
Attractions: SunWatch Indian Village
For anyone who has gone to shows like Bodies at the Cincinnati Museum Center or has seen Egyptian mummies or North American Indians in art or natural history museums, a fascinating exhibition about the ethics of exhibiting human remains has opened in the interpretive center of Dayton's SunWatch Indian Village/Archaeological Park. Called Kennewick Man on…
Heartless Bastards to Do ‘Austin City Limits’ TV Show
The best music show on TV, PBS’s Austin City Limits, has announced the lineup of artists for its 35th anniversary season (yup, ACL can now officially run for President) starting Oct. 3. The roster is another great mix of established artists and relative newcomers, with the Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, Beastie Boys, Sonic Youth,…
New IsWhat?! Video, Remixes
Been meaning to post this for a while, but below is the video for the first song of the forthcoming album from Hip Hop/Jazz faves IsWhat?! The video was produced locally by L. Nashid. The full-length, Big Appetite, is due this fall on Hyena Records. —- IsWhat?! main man Napoleon Maddox —who has been spending…
The Secret History of Cincinnati Punk
In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, “underground” and “indie rock” in the U.S. was birthed by a glut of bands that sprung up in the initial wake of the Sex Pistols. The luckier (or well-financed) bands—back when every stoned, obnoxious suburban kid and art-damaged bohemian miscreant was in a band—would self-release only one or…
Local CD of the Week: Chick Pimp, Coke Dealer at a Bar
Local musical eccentrics Chick Pimp, Coke Dealer at a Bar celebrate the release of their new CD, The People Vs. Lemoncello, with a huge show at the Southgate House this Friday. Performing throughout the Southgate will be The Sundresses, The Lions Rampant, Rumpke Mountain Boys, Wonky Tonk, The Harlequins, CJ the Cynic, Bullying Ben Jones,…
Hoagy Time Gets First W, Rambles On
Things were getting dicey heading into last week. I found myself wondering what was going to happen first — Hoagy Time breaking into the W column or somebody not named Isaac Thorn completing a CityBeat Sports Blog. Fortunately for me, I got great pitching performances from Johnny Cueto, and my odd affinity for Randy Wolf…
Strive Success
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and one Cincinnati group has one million reasons to be flattered. Strive is “a unique education partnership spanning all sectors of Greater Cincinnati society… working to help each child in our urban core succeed from birth through some form of college into a meaningful career” and their approach…
Season of the Bitch
I was thoroughly convinced that I was dying o’ Swine Flu earlier this week. I’m still not entirely persuaded that I’m not! Sore throat. Copious coughing fits. Drinking drugstore knock-off Dayquil and Nyquil from the bottle. Dumping some of it on the ground for my homies.—- Helpful Web site to assuage your swine flu fears:…
Friday Movie Roundup: Same Old Summer
The summer movie season officially kicks off today with the release of Wolverine, a spin-off of Hugh Jackman’s character from the successful X-Men series. —- (Read Scott Renshaw’s mixed review here.) Speaking of spin-offs, get ready for another avalanche of creatively deficient fare — more than half of the big summer releases are retreads of…
World Fair Trade Day
This international celebration of Fair Trade, with events taking place in over 80 countries, takes place on May 9. And who better to host locally than Ten Thousand Villages (2011 Madison Rd.) a store dedicated to making fair trade goods available.—- In a press release about the upcoming celebration, Ten Thousand Villages highlights a few…
Obsessed (Review)
Derek Charles (Idris Elba) is a successful investment banker with a beautiful wife (Beyonce Knowles) and a young son. His wife Sharon was his assistant, and everyone points out his history as a single player around the office, but he points out at every turn that he has retired his jersey happily thanks to the…
Don’t Make Me Pull This Show Over (Review)
Critic's Pick It’s back … that musical with the mouthful name that kicked up so much excitement last summer at the 2008 Cincinnati Fringe Festival: Don’t Make Me Pull This Show Over: Dispatches from the Frontlines of Parenting. Only now Richard Oberacker’s and Robert Taylor’s no-plot, no-dialogue, five-person fantasia on parenting is longer by several…
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Review)
Director Mark Waters (Just Like Heaven) knows his way around spooky romances, and the premise of Ghosts of Girlfriends Past is certainly in touch with some musty old spirits. Fashion photographer and swarmy cad Connor Mead (Matthew McConaughey) returns to the family estate of Uncle Wayne (Michael Douglas) for the wedding of his younger brother…
A Little Night Music (Review)
Critic's Pick So it’s "hail and farewell" to Alan Patrick Kenny and New Stage Collective (NSC). With eight performances of Stephen Sondheim’s and Hugh Wheeler’s A Little Night Music (presented at Know Theater on Jackson Street in Over-the-Rhine), NSC completes its seventh and final season of always ambitious, often audacious playmaking. Predictably, it’s going out…
CityBeat Podcast 4: The Dining Guide
Our Dining Issue Podcast includes interviews with CityBeat writer Anne Mitchell and Tom Wolfe of Tom's Pot Pies. Mitchell describes her fantasy progressive dinner and Wolfe tells us what makes a great pot pie. Yum! Suscribe to our podcast in iTunes or use our RSS feed. —-
Mayor Wenstrup: You Heard It Here First
CityBeat first mentioned him April 3, long before other media outlets named him as a contender, and now the Hamilton County Republican Party has made it official. The local GOP has announced it will hold a press conference Monday in Over-the-Rhine, where it will reveal Dr. Brad Wenstrup as its mayoral candidate.—- Wenstrup, 50, is…
Enquirer Has Double-Digit Drop
As the newspaper industry continues to suffer from declining ad revenues and a migration of readers to the Internet, The Cincinnati Enquirer is being hit particularly hard. Dozens of newspapers nationwide reported drops in circulation, according to the latest figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. But the figures reported for Cincinnati’s only daily…
Girl Talk for Free Tonight in Oxford
If you are up for a quick, spontaneous road trip tonight, you might think about heading to Oxford, Ohio, for a free show by mash-up superstar (and CityBeat cover star) Girl Talk. The "one man band" (who surprisingly puts on a hell of a show, despite the set-up being just him and a laptop) performs…
Talkin’ Trash
Not long before Earth Day, Arbor Day and other green-focused days there’s a vast call for volunteers to do all kinds of thing from trash pick up to planting more green stuff. But after it’s all done, there’s little information provided about what was accomplished.—- Keep Cincinnati Beautiful decided a little post-event publicity was in…
Local GOP: Now You See It, Now You Don’t
Who says Republicans don’t respond quickly to change? A blog item posted Wednesday by the Hamilton County Republican Party chairman has ignited public outrage, but how much is genuine and how much is political opportunism is hard to tell.—- While writing about the defection of Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter from the Republican Party to the…
Music: The Local Sound Live
Area Rock station 97.3 FM The Sound presents “The Local Sound Live” this Friday at the Madison Theater in Covington. The station has been featuring local bands during its “The Local Sound” feature and also has a local hub online, with free downloads from several bands. This Friday’s 7 p.m. show includes Calloused, 8Kount, Livid,…
Music: Surf Rock Explosion 3
If you are a fan of Surf music, you don’t often have a lot of live music choices in the Cincinnati area. But this Saturday, the Southgate House in Newport will see a wave of solid Surf acts flood the ballroom stage for Surf Rock Explosion 3. Local go-to Surf bands Don’t Fear the Reverb…
Music: Voodoo Puppet
Novelist/playwright/performer Nathan Singer joins new Garage Blues band Voodoo Puppet for a show this Saturday at Adis’ Place in Anderson Township. Singer — whose spoken word pieces are sometimes backed by Blues and who has written a fictional novel about Blues legend Howlin’ Wolf — has even more Blues in his future. This fall, Bleak…
Samantha Crain, A Camp, Paleface and Tim Easton
This week’s posting may be a little lighter than weeks previous and there’s no vinyl reporting this week either. I just didn’t feel the joy of rooting through the shelves this week. My good friend Mark, whose cancer battle I detailed in my March 6 posting, lost that fight on April 17 — and in…
Wolverine (Review)
Wolverine arrives at an interesting moment in the history of the comic-book blockbuster. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight raised the stakes with its quagmire of moral complexity, and the filmmakers here seem to be trying to learn some of its lessons. But after 107 minutes, it doesn’t appear that they learned enough of them. Screenwriters…
Sugar (Review)
Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck follow up their acclaimed indie hit Half Nelson with this tale of a 20-year-old minor-league pitcher (Algenis Perez Soto) from the Dominican Republic trying to make his way in America. Sugar transcends formula by employing a low-key approach, both aesthetically and narratively, to a genre known for bombast and cliché.…
Paris 36 (Review)
Germain Pigoil (Gerard Jugnot) runs the show at a Parisian theater in the early 1930s. His wife Vivienne (Elizabeth Vitali) dances and fools around with various members of the troupe, while his loyal young son Jojo (Maxence Perrin) studies the accordion on the side. The cabaret-styled show hits hard times at the start of 1936,…
Battle for Terra (Review)
The last remaining humans from Earth drift along in a ragtag armada searching for a suitable homeland before their depleted air supply runs dry when, lo and behold, they discover a planet with an environment that can be converted into a life-sustaining system. The only problem is that the planet already has life forms, a…
Music Editor Announces New Recession Pricing Plan
The Internet, ALLEGEDLY, does have more to offer than just porn and “social networking.” The ’Net, for music fans, has been a total blessing, though it has its downside – there’s way more shit online to wade though than there is just skimming through racks at the record store. —- The instant connection musicians now…
The Hands Across Basements Fest
Maybe The Ramones said it best on the seventh track of their 1976 debut album: “Hey daddyo/I don’t wanna go down/To the basement/There’s somethin’ down there.” Imagine the place these primal punks were conjuring up: A damp, dimly lit underground room in an ancient house with a low-hung ceiling, its exposed ductwork and rotting wooden…
Education’s Green ALLY
Ally is Cincinnati’s green introduction service, but it isn’t in the businesses of helping ecologically oriented singles find compatible mates. It’s a nonprofit organization that brings together individuals, businesses and other likeminded groups to create green and healthy schools. “Celebrating Green and Healthy Schools” was the theme of ALLY’s community “mixer” April 23 at Pleasant…
Another Seven Days of New Religions and Old Senators
WEDNESDAY APRIL 22 Everyone knows what it’s like to mess up a job interview by saying something stupid right at the end (you apparently are supposed to ask the interviewer questions about the position but not whether someone is going to watch you pee during the drug test). Miss California Carrie Prejean made a similar…
MidPoint Music Festival Submissions Closing Soon
The final deadline to be considered for a performance slot at this year’s MidPoint Music Festival (returning to Downtown this Sept. 24-26) is Friday, May 1. Get thee to mpmf.com to submit. There have also been a couple of other MPMF09 developments. The first performer for the fest has been announced — ex-Drive-By Trucker Jason…
We’re Different … or So We Think
“I bet Peggy Noonan would feel differently if it was her son being waterboarded.” That’s one of the first thoughts I had upon hearing the amazing comment uttered from her mouth during a recent discussion on an ABC political talk show. Noonan, 58, was a speechwriter for President Ronald Reagan and now is a columnist…
AmerAsia (Review)
There are many signs of a good restaurant — the loosening of the belt, the phrase “I’m stuffed,” silence at a table full of people concentrating on the flavors of their meals — but my favorite is when you’re reading the menu at the end of your meal to plan the next one. That’s what…
Award Winners
Earlier in April the 2009 Pulitzer Prizes were announced, including recognition “for a distinguished play by an American author, preferably original in its source and dealing with American life.” This year’s winner is Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, a horrific tale of wartime rape and brutality set in the Congo that nevertheless manages to affirm life and…
Potential Closing of Hebrew Union College Deserves More Media Coverage
In the past month, The Los Angeles Times and The Enquirer have reported the possibility/likelihood that Hebrew Union College will close its historic Cincinnati campus on Clifton Avenue. HUC, founded here in 1875, is the oldest continually functioning Jewish seminary in the world. It trains Reform rabbis in New York, Cincinnati, Los Angeles and Jerusalem.…
Beyond the Big Tent
The first big stakes will be driven into the ground in May, but the real support structure for the summer of 2009’s attempt to propel the industry’s dreams of box-office glory just might be a scattered collection of projects that could bring niche audiences under the big tent. Now, of course, I can hear the…
Half Pint Brawlers
Midget Wrestling at the Gypsy Hut. The Half Pint Brawlers are to blame.
Teens Go Green
What happens when talented teenagers are teamed with design professionals and asked to interpret “green” concepts in billboard-like format? Plenty happens, as can be seen in The Outdoor Museum, or TOM, in Eden Park now through May 31, in Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park June 13–July 26 and Mt. Airy Forest Aug. 15–Sept. 27.…
High on the Hill
If I were about ready to die or, better yet, just leaving town for a bit, the following would be my ideal last meal in Cincinnati. First, I’d choose Mount Adams, because I live there and because its history of drunks and monks appeals to both sides of my nature. I’d start at DaVeed’s, because…
Miscommunication
Lockland police officer Brandon Gehring shouldn’t be in the hospital right now. He was simply trying to do his job. Unfortunately, thanks to elected officials so damn proud of their ability not to spend money, Gehring wasn’t equipped with a two-way radio that would allow communication with officers in another department a few miles away.…
Cincinnati Sports Fans Not Miserable Enough
Because Forbes Magazine would never get away with doing a swimsuit issue, the editors have decided the occasional sports article passes for light enough fare, even if their sports article would pass for heavy lifting in the newspaper sports section. More often than not, in fact, the Forbes sports article makes enough news to merit…
A Day To Remember with The Devil Wears Prada
With an idea to do something distinctly different, A Day to Remember assembled six years ago from the ashes of a variety of other bands in the flourishing Metal/Punk scene around Ocala, Fla. Utilizing influences that ranged from Post-Hardcore to Pop/Punk to Death Metal, ADTR crafted their 2005 debut, And Their Name was Treason, in…
Couple That Plays and Prays Together
It takes a certain amount of faith to be in a band. For Andrea Summer and Tye VonAllmen, being in Cincinnati’s Artists & Authors is a test of all of their various faiths — the faith that musicians have in each other when they play together, the faith that a married couple has in each…
Are You Ready to Eat?
Welcome to CityBeat’s annual Dining Guide, a roundup of great restaurants in Greater Cincinnati. Following the tradition that started in 2005, rather than serving up a comprehensive, A-to-Z list of more than 900 places to get eats in the Queen City, we’ve created a list of 270-plus restaurants that are worthy of your investigation —…
Why You Should Eat Like the Ancients
About 5,000 years ago, the great saints of India downloaded a complete dietary system that can help you lose weight without eating less, achieve balance and serenity and live a longer life. OK, it sounds like an Acai Berry ad, but it’s actually part of the oldest and most authoritative of Hindu texts, the Vedas.…
Functioning
Functioning I read Larry Gross’ Living Out Loud column about depression (“Listening to the Birds Sing,” issue of April 8). I have suffered from it for years now and take medication daily. I’m a functioning depressed person, but to those around me I’m simply a “functioning person.” There’s a stigma associated with the word “depressed,”…
The Silver Ain’t Just in the Anniversary
As I looked at the calendar recently, considering the dozens of ways I might disappoint my wife on our 25th wedding anniversary this summer, I was struck by a rather startling revelation. I realized that the year we were married was the same year that I started writing about Cincinnati music. I moved here from…
Cool and Copacetic
Given my status as a college student, supporting myself by working three days a week at a part-time job, I don’t have the time or money to try many of the upscale dining spots Cincinnati has to offer. So consider this the fantasy meal for the working (er, barely working) man. To satisfy my sashimi…
Coltrane Motion with The Seedy Seeds
When singer/composer Michael Bond and guitarist Matt Dennewitz relocated from Cincinnati (where Bond helped helm the still-in-operations datawaslost collective/label) to Chicago a few years back, the Indie music world was just beginning to show more of a whole-hearted interest in danceable, electronic sounds. It was perfect timing for the admittedly more adventurous and noisy duo…
Why We Love Restaurants
Restaurants serve important functions in society in addition to serving us food. We celebrate the big moments of our lives in restaurants, from birthdays and new jobs to wedding receptions and anniversaries. Getting dressed up, spending money and being treated well at a top-notch restaurant makes any special occasion more special. We travel the world…
The Flaming Lips, Miss California and Going Country
[HOT] LIPS GET STATE SONG HONOR All U.S. states have “official songs,” but did you know that several states have official Folk songs, official Polkas, official Waltzes and official children’s songs, as well? A couple of the cooler states even have official Rock songs — Ohio’s is “Hang on Sloopy,” while Washington’s is the lewd…
Big and Gas Guzzling
A few weeks ago, my friend Julie and I were walking the sidewalks of downtown and decided to take a No. 1 bus to Mount Adams. It was a nice spring afternoon, and we wanted to take in the sights up on the hill. While walking in Mount Adams, I couldn’t help but notice all…
Live Review: MDC at The Mad Hatter
A small, diverse crowd ranging from thirtysomething fans and overweight mosh-marchers to lanky, high school kids and excessively tattooed crust-punks packed into Covington’s humid, poorly ventilated (yet ever-endearing) Mad Hatter on Tuesday night for an evening of average-to-fantastic Speed Punk and Hardcore.—- The first thing you should know about this show is that the headliners,…
Funky Spot Exam
That “healthy tan” you’ve been trying to maintain over the winter months in a tanning bed and will be the focus of many hours in the warmer months to come might be the start of skin cancer. A weird looking freckle, mole or some other funky looking spot are indicators to pay attention to.—- “One…
