Morning News and Stuff
As a part of his campaign tour of the Midwest, President Barack Obama yesterday at a town hall meeting said his economic program had “reversed the recession” until unfortunate overseas events frustrated the change. "We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again," Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. "But…
Comedy: Alex Stone
Lately Cincinnati has been producing some of the best stand-up talent in the country. Josh Sneed, Geoff Tate, Ryan Singer, Gabe Kea, Rajiv Satyal and Mike Cody (to name but a few) are all Tristate-based comedians performing, and in most cases headlining, clubs all around the country. Next up? Alex Stone. Clad in his now…
Art: Guy Tillim: Avenue Patrice Lumumba
Traveling the dusty passageways and crumbling facades of Mozambique, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guy Tillim’s Avenue Patrice Lumumba is a striking photographic journey. On view at the Contemporary Arts Center downtown, these images explore the effects of 50 years of false starts, broken promises and nationalist visions on the African landscape. Through…
Music: Handsome Furs Perform at Southgate House
What’s a Type A personality to do when he’s splitting his creativity between other bands and can’t find time for a home life? For Dan Boeckner, already firmly ensconced in Wolf Parade and Atlas Strategic, the solution seemed almost too obvious — he started Handsome Furs with his wife, keyboardist and short story writer Alexei…
Music: Stanley’s Summer Music Festival
Stanley's Pub (323 Stanley Ave., Columbia-Tusculum) kicks off its 10th anniversary Stanley’s Summer Music Festival on Thursday with one of the Jam circuit’s most popular Roots/Americana/Bluegrass-fueled bands. Great American Taxi was formed by Leftover Salmon’s Vince Herman when he was trying to build an all-star band for a benefit concert and the all-stars stuck together.…
Events: Asian Food Fest
Summer is coming to an end, but there is still time to experience food, drinks and entertainment from all over the world — all while sticking around Cincinnati. Explore delicious and exotic tastings from Chinese and Vietnamese to Korean, Thai and Indian while enjoying live music, artistic cultural performances, games and beer. Asian Food Fest…
Events: Bill Goodman’s North American Gun and Knife Show
Lets face it: Americans love their guns. America’s second amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms. It precedes voting, trial laws, slavery and (naturally) cruel and unusual punishment. Success or failure in the political world sometimes hinges on gun rights legislation — just ask John Kerry. And what’s not to like about guns? They’re…
Music: The Chocolate Horse
Darkness pervades The Chocolate Horse’s third album, Beasts, evidenced by the moody cover art (a horse’s ebony head atop a human form barely visible in the shadows) and actualized with a powerfully melancholy sound. And yet, flickers of light pierce the album’s dark veil.“This record was after a pretty intense portion of my life,” frontman…
Events: Women of Over-The-Rhine Awards
Over-the-Rhine has undergone an amazing transformation in recent years, having reawakened as one of Cincinnati’s most culturally and historically vibrant neighborhoods. The roots of this transformation can be found within the ranks of the city’s own residents and entrepreneurs, and this Thursday the Emanuel Community Center will honor five such outstanding women whose contributions to…
Music: Neko Case With My Morning Jacket
Neko Case’s life was hovering across the expanse of continental North America well before it was part of her job as one of today’s biggest-selling independent-label artists. The soul stirring singer/songwriter/journeywoman — whose Middle Cyclone entered Billboard’s album chart at No. 3 in 2009, pushing Case’s profile (and commercial bankability) to peak levels — was…
Music: Jessie Torrisi and The Please Please Me
Jessie Torrisi has done time in over a dozen New York bands (Unisex Salon, Les Fleurs Tragiques and Laptop among them), although kept time would probably be a more fitting description. Is there anything sexier than a female drummer? Early in 2009, she pulled up stakes and relocated to Austin, Texas, the unofficial music capitol…
Art: Paintings by Art Academy Graduates
Art pundits make pronouncements (“Realism is dead,” “Abstraction is dead”), but artists go blithely along making art and often death has been prematurely reported. Case in point, the lively Art Academy of Cincinnati show featuring 15 alumni who graduated between 1972 and 2009, on view now through Sept. 2 in the Pearlman and Convergys galleries.…
Glee: The 3D Concert Movie (Review)
OH, MY! THE CONCERT MOVIE SHOT DURING THE GLEE LIVE IN CONCERT SUMMER TOUR OF 2011! HOW CAN I NOT KEEP THE CAP LOCKS ON AND THE EXCLAMATION POINTS POINTING!!!! As someone who has never seen an episode of the television series, I instinctively know that I’m not part of the target audience for this…
Events: Mainstrasse Car Show
Come to MainStrasse Village to see over 250 cars along the Sixth Street Promenade for the eighth annual Mainstrasse Car Show. The show will have classics to modern cars and antiques to hot rods, all from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. Awards will be given at 4 p.m. to the top 50 cars overall and to…
Art: Still[ed] Life on Display at The Taft Musuem of Art
How many people can make jokes in porcelain? Or even, going up to the next level, are witty in porcelain? Artists Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis regularly carry off that difficult feat in the course of creating works of considerable beauty and technical éclat. Current examples of their joint productions may be seen in…
Final Destination 5
Steven Quale, a second unit director on Avatar, knows how to make good use of 3-D effects. If you want to see gushers of blood and guts or the individual fragments of shattered glass or impossibly sharp knives or the edges of jagged metal pipes launched at you as if to impale themselves in vital…
Sweet Taste of Success
CityBeat intern Michela Tindera spent the past two weeks preparing recipes for the Hamilton County Fair's pie-baking contests. This is Part II of her story. —- Have you ever experienced that sensation when every time you close your eyes all you can see are outlines of pie on the back of your eyelids? Well, I…
Q&A with My Morning Jacket
The effect My Morning Jacket has had on live Rock music in America over the past several years is hard to deny. Spawned from the fertile Louisville music scene, the band’s legendary live show is an electrifying experience for all who attend. At the end of May, MMJ put out its sixth studio album, Circuital,…
Squeeze the Day for 8/16
Music Tonight: Straight off a hyped, packed show at Lollapalooza earlier this month (see video below), the independent Hip Hop self-starters of Atmosphere jumped right back on the road for touring duties behind recent album, The Family Sign, bringing Slug, Ant and pals back to Greater Cincinnati for tonight’s “Family Vacation Tour” stop at Bogart’s.…
MidPoint Serves Music at W&S Open
At first blush, a pro tennis tournament named for a financial corporation and a music festival all about indie music and culture might seem like awkward bedfellows — not quite “oil and water,” but more “banana and helicopter.” But last year, organizers of the Western & Southern Open tennis tournament — featuring top players from…
Morning News and Stuff
Conservative commentator Bryan Fischer recently posted a blog about “whether it’s a good idea for women to get involved in the rough and tumble of politics.” While Fischer didn’t come out and say anything blatantly misogynistic, he expressed that he didn’t feel a woman would be up to snuff as president. But on his radio…
Western & Southern Open Begins!
The Western & Southern Open kicked off in grand fashion Aug 13, spotlighting the renovations to the Lindner Family Tennis Center that now allow it to accommodate both men’s and women’s action simultaneously. More importantly, the immediate impact hit when the news arrived (at day’s end) that Saturday drew an all-time record for attendance with…
Handsome Furs
What’s a Type A personality to do when he’s splitting his creativity between other bands and can’t find time for a home life? For Dan Boeckner, already firmly ensconced in Wolf Parade and Atlas Strategic, the solution seemed almost too obvious — he started Handsome Furs with his wife, keyboardist and short story writer Alexei…
Neko Case with My Morning Jacket
Neko Case’s life was hovering across the expanse of continental North America well before it was part of her job as one of today’s biggest-selling independent-label artists. The soul stirring singer/songwriter/journeywoman — whose Middle Cyclone entered Billboard’s album chart at No. 3 in 2009, pushing Case’s profile (and commercial bankability) to peak levels — was…
Jessie Torrisi & the Please, Please Me
Jessie Torrisi has done time in over a dozen New York bands (Unisex Salon, Les Fleurs Tragiques and Laptop among them), although kept time would probably be a more fitting description. Is there anything sexier than a female drummer? Early in 2009, she pulled up stakes and relocated to Austin, Texas, the unofficial music capitol…
Squeeze the Day for 8/15
Music Tonight: Relatively slow live music nights like tonight are a good chance to catch some of the local artists who perform regular weekly club shows. Mondays are, for example, when rootsy, eclectic “Gypsy Swing” troupe Michael McIntire and the Marmalade Brigade plays each week at Clifton cafe/coffeehouse Sitwell’s. The Brigade’s usually acoustic live performances…
Weekend Sound Advisory for 8/13-14
Live Music Saturday: Cincinnati Folk/Roots/Pop duo-turned-trio Shiny and the Spoon shows just how much its sound has developed in a short period of time with their new release, Ferris Wheel, the band’s high-quality debut album coming out Saturday in conjunction with a release party at the Southgate House. With superb songwriting, expressive and versatile performances,…
Your Weekend To Do List: 8/12-8/14
I hope you got some rest last night, because you're not going to want to miss all there is to do this weekend for a little thing called "sleep." Anyone who the first FAR-I-ROME-produced Turntables 'n' Snares last year knows how crazy amazing it was. Local bands teamed up with live DJs to create exciting,…
Morning News and Stuff
All 36 Republican presidential nominees during a TV debate last night decided to lay in to President Barack Obama instead of one another. Michele Bachmann told the President he was “history” and a one-term president. Other highlights of the debate include: Tim Pawlenty and Michele Bachmann being two seconds away from going all Marquess of…
Leyla at Lolla: Lollapalooza 2011 Day 3
How did 48 hours of exciting live music draw to a close so fast? I woke up Sunday morning with the slightly wistful feel that my whirlwind weekend would soon be over, but I quickly shook that and rushed to the “L” to get downtown for the final day of Lollapalooza 2011. Due to my…
Q&A with Cage the Elephant
The inaugural Kanrocksas Music Festival took over Kansas City's Kansas Speedway last weekend, with headlining performances by Eminem, Muse, The Black Keys and many others. Impressive and well-organized in its debut year, the festival is being called a mini-Lollapalooza, as many of the same bands performed as they made their way to and from the…
Full MidPoint Schedule, New Features Revealed
An avalanche of information about this year’s MidPoint Music Festival reveals the event’s growth and focus entering its 10th year. The full schedule of performances — from an eclectic assemblage of artists that includes Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Booker T. Jones (pictured), rising Australian Indie Dance champs Cut Copy and clever Pop duo…
Squeeze the Day for 8/12
Music Tonight: Now that the full schedule for this September’s MidPoint Music Festival has been announced, come down to Fountain Square for this evening’s free MidPoint Indie Summer concert to discuss the lineup with other MPMFers and maybe score some tips on who to check out when the fest rolls around in less that two…
Full MidPoint Schedule, New Features Revealed
An avalanche of information about this year’s MidPoint Music Festival reveals the event’s growth and focus entering its 10th year. The full schedule of performances — from an eclectic assemblage of artists that includes Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Booker T. Jones, rising Australian Indie Dance champs Cut Copy and clever Pop duo Mates…
Experi-Metal: Beneath Oblivion Readies New LP
Cincinnati’s dark, progressive Doom/Sludge Metal quartet Beneath Oblivion are gearing up to release its new album, From Man To Dust, at the end of September. The band’s boundless approach to composition has made for some defiantly unique releases for independent label, The Mylene Sheath, which has become a favorite of the experimental Metal underground with…
Women to Take Over Entire MidPoint “Strip”
The full lineup for this year’s MidPoint Music Festival is expected to be announced before Friday’s MidPoint Indie Summer concert on Fountain Square, but the schedule for one specially-themed hub of venues is now known. The stages along Jackson Street, the small cut-through road on which Know Theatre (which has two MPMF stages) and ArtWorks…
Punk Rock Comedy Tour Comes to Northside
If you Google search “John McClellan,” you’ll find the late Democratic senator from Arkansas and the 19th century chemist. So what is comedian, Akron native and onetime Cincinnatian John McClellan — who brings his "Punk Rock" stand-up tour, the Fuck All Comedy Ball into Northside's tiny music club/bar, The Comet, this Saturday — doing to…
Fleet Foxes, Beastie Boys, Emmylou Harris and Todd Rundgren
As you’re reading this, I am relaxing on a shore in northern Michigan. There is some form of alcohol within easy reach and I am serene. I will likely write a review every day that I’m here, if not more, but it won’t seem quite like work. It’s the pine forest-and-lakefront version of those slightly…
Squeeze the Day for 8/11
Music Tonight: Though Brooklyn is viewed as the U.S. capitol of Indie music cool, that doesn’t mean every musician working out the New York borough fits the bill. One such band is progressive Funk/Rock jammers Dopapod, who moved to Brooklyn from Boson, where they met and formed as students at the Berklee College of Music.…
Senator: GOP’s Overreach will Help Dems
One of Ohio's two U.S. senators says Democrats need to get better organized so they can counteract private conservative groups that secretly draft legislation for Republican lawmakers. The Porkopolis column in this week's CityBeat features excerpts from an interview with U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). As is often the case with print media, there was…
Morning News and Stuff
British Prime Minister David Cameron gave rioters a stern warning while addressing Parliament today. "To the lawless minority, the criminals who have taken what they could, we will hunt you. … We will punish you," he said. Cameron says he will take “uncompromising measures” to find these criminals, such as blocking Twitter, blocking text messages…
Green Group Plans Council Forum
A forum is planned to question Cincinnati City Council candidates on issues involving “green” building techniques, making the city more sustainable and other environmental topics. The event, which is free and open to the public, is scheduled for 6 p.m. Oct. 12 in the rear stage area at the Northside Tavern, 4163 Hamilton Ave. Before…
Leyla at Lolla: Lollapalooza 2011 Day 2
Lollapalooza Day 2 dawned bright and early — I woke up a tad late, having burned the midnight oil too long the night before. Rule No. 2 of Lollapalooza: Get enough sleep. Always. Especially if you’ll be walking every-the-heck-where. I had been invited to an after-party Friday night, sponsored by Belvedere Vodka, at the W…
ACLU Warns Springboro
School officials in a suburb north of Cincinnati are being warned not to add creationism to their curriculum if they want to avoid a costly legal challenge.—- The ACLU of Ohio recently sent a letter to the Springboro Community City School District stating that the teaching of creationism in public schools is both unconstitutional and…
Wednesday Movie Roundup: Where’d the Summer Go?
Another summer is rapidly winding down, which means it's almost time to assess the relative quality of the movies that have graced our screens over the past three months. I said almost because there are still a few weeks left (the season traditionally runs Memorial Day to Labor Day) and, more importantly, there are still…
Q&A with Janet Jackson
Janet Jackson literally comes from a musical royal family. Her successes have extended the legend of the Jackson family positively, and with her strong voice, sharp dance instincts and a performance style perhaps only matched by her brother, the late King of Pop himself, has made her the second biggest superstar in the clan. The…
Morning News and Stuff
The Republican leaders in the House and Senate today announced their six appointees to the 12-member, bipartisan congressional “super committee” that is supposed to find at least $1.2 trillion in budget savings by Thanksgiving. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is appointing Sens. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Pat Toomey (Pa.) and Rob Portman (Ohio). McConnell said he’s…
The Emergence of a Tennis Mecca
“The tennis tourney Tuesday was marked with the brilliant and fast playing on the part of the contestants, awakening the greatest interest in what promises to be the most successful tournament ever held in Cincinnati, if not the entire West.” — Sept. 19, 1899, edition of the Cincinnati Times Star T he tennis tournament now…
Textbook Buyer’s Guide
C ollege is expensive. There’s no doubt about it. College is also incredibly finite. One can lose the opportunity to attend easily. One of the biggest culprits of failure is, well, literal academic failure. Thus one must be armed with all the right tools to succeed. Textbooks, like college, are expensive. Textbooks on average equate…
Cowboys
Make no mistake that Cowboys is a book very far removed from whiskey, spurs, horses and any other accoutrements of the Old West. It’s a 188-page graphic novel weaving the exploits of family-man FBI agent Tim Brady and detective Deke Kotto, whose sexual appetite and devil-may-care ingenuity leads him to deadly places. When their investigations…
Sweet Sounds of Cincinnati
• Local Indie Rock band Sweet Ray Laurel has organized what members hope will become an annual event, the multi-band showcase Sweet Sounds of Cincinnati. The inaugural Sweet Sounds concert this Saturday will present an array of mostly newer area groups (16, to be exact) on two stages in Covington — at The Mad Hatter…
Spin, Play, Ride
A teacher from Shelbyville, Ind., Amber Nash — who sings and plays ukulele and guitar with Cincinnati-based Folk Pop duo Shiny and the Spoon — wears a porcupine claw and a white, tooth-shaped piece around her neck. On her left arm, a tattoo peeks out. Her hair, reddish brown curls. Nash, who got her start…
One Nation Under Sex
“How the private lives of presidents, first ladies and their lovers changed the course of American history,” promises the cover of One Nation Under Sex, which also bears the byline of Hustler publisher and onetime Cincinnatian Larry Flynt, towering over the decidedly smaller one of historian David Eisenbach. If Flynt knows anything, it’s how to…
Convention Center and Chris Smitherman
[WINNER] CONVENTION CENTER: In what’s the largest solar project in downtown Cincinnati to date, 429 solar energy collection panels have been installed on the roof of the Duke Energy Convention Center. The 101 kilowatt installation is expected to receive 1,000 hours of sunlight annually and reduce the center’s greenhouse gas emissions by 57.9 metric tons…
August 3-9: Worst Week Ever!
WEDNESDAY AUG. 3 Sometimes Cincinnati City Council members debate an issue, take a vote and do what’s best for everyone in the community instead of people in their family who own development companies the people whose votes they need to keep their $60,000-a-year part-time jobs. But other times a conservative majority might vote to block…
Handling Addictions
Would it shock the hell out of you that a 57-year-old man would love Amy Winehouse’s music? I do. When I found out she died late last month I played her Back to Black CD over and over again. Winehouse had a unique, soulful voice and was one of the best songwriters ever. For those…
30 Minutes or Less (Review)
When a couple of numbskulls (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson) kidnap a slacker pizza delivery guy (Jesse Eisenberg), strap a bomb to his chest and order him to rob a bank in less than 10 hours, the pizza guy grabs his best friend (Aziz Ansari) and gets stone cold gangsta in this comic heist that…
Re-Meet the Raisins
In fall 1983, I did publicity/promotion for Bogart’s, which necessitated distributing posters and flyers around Short Vine. I was on my rounds when Raisins guitarist Rob Fetters turned the corner at Charlton at a full gallop, wild eyed and hair flying. The Raisins’ debut album, produced by future bandmate Adrian Belew, had just dropped and…
Life After Lucy
The constant reminders are all around Michele Hobbs' Prospect Hill home — a puppy named Leo, a half-finished garden. Lucy's room is still just the way she left it, the fish she caught in a neighbor's pond still in the fishbowl. At times, says Hobbs, it's overwhelming. Nearly every minute of the day, she says,…
Brave New World
M ost people are familiar with the typical study abroad setup: living with a host family and taking classes at a university with local students for a full semester. Area universities offer a plethora of options for students interested in broadening their horizons through such study abroad programs. In addition, short-term immersion programs over spring,…
The Value of the Degree
N o one has to tell a college student that the job market is scarce. Now, more than ever, it seems like students are struggling with choosing the “right” degree — one that interests them but will also provide job security and a steady income for a lifetime. Even after making that tough decision, some…
From the Catbird’s Seat
Daniel Dorff literally has the catbird seat from which he keeps his artist's eye on the transformation now underway in Over-the-Rhine’s Washington Park, where Cincinnati Center City Development Corporation is building an underground parking garage for patrons of Music Hall and others. What he sees from his vantage point, on the fifth floor of a…
And the Best BLT in Town Goes To…
Summer is tomato season, and that makes the BLT the king of summer sandwiches. Bacon, lettuce and tomato are three ingredients that really complement each other — bacon giving the tomato the salt it always needs; lettuce adding color, crisp crunch and stability. Tomatoes. Red, ripe and robust. I’ve known people who hate tomatoes. I’ve…
Pho Saigon (Review)
As a reviewer, a lot of people ask me if I've tried a place that they like, and often it's a pretty standard place that I've known about for a while. But when my Indonesian neighbor who's a dedicated, hard-core foodie makes a recommendation, I always follow up. He turned me on to House of…
Madeira Celebrates British Punk Rock
Who knew that Madeira is a hotbed of British Punk Rock scholarship? Those familiar with the quiet, upscale northeast Cincinnati community might think its musical interests fall more toward Streisand and Manilow than The Damned and The Sex Pistols. The political content and D.I.Y. approach to making unpolished music might have made British Punk a…
Senator: GOP has Misplaced Priorities
A fter spending several weeks in the nation’s capital waiting for a chance to vote on a deal to raise the federal debt ceiling, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown is glad to be back in Ohio. Brown, the Democrat from Avon, a Cleveland suburb on Lake Erie, was in Cincinnati this week to visit with constituents…
Life During Wartime
Todd Solondz's breakthrough feature, 1995's Welcome to the Dollhouse, was so lacerating in its depiction of humanity as a clot of pitiless predators and doomed prey that it practically required a field dressing upon exiting the theatre. Solondz has dropped off the radar of late, but the good news — or bad news, if you’ve…
The Help
Once upon a time, the only available job for black women in Southern states was working as a domestic, which was basically the same set of tasks that black women, a generation or two before (at best), performed during slavery. Of course, by the turn of the 20th century, domestic work went towards keeping a…
Showboat: All Aboard for 2012
Even as the Showboat Majestic opens another show this summer (The Art of Murder by Joe DiPietro kicks off tonight and continues through Aug. 28), it’s time to announce the ’boat’s 90th season in 2012, featuring an all-American slate of musicals and comedies to please patrons aboard America’s last showboat, a National Historic Landmark. Here’s…
Catching Up With WEBN Album Project Alumni
Younger local musicians and the music fans who love them might find it hard to fathom, but once upon a time, Cincinnati’s corporate Rock radio juggernaut WEBN was one of local music’s biggest allies, a wild, wooly and eclectic FM outlet as open-ended and freeform as any internet radio station or podcast. In the ’70s…
Prepping For the Pie Contest
As I wandered through the glass cases of the Hamilton County Fair's Arts and Crafts building in a heat-induced stupor, my eyes glassy and perhaps a bit crazed (like the prize-winning cows located several hundred feet to my left), all I could see amongst the displays of vegetables, embroideries and canned preserves were the silky…
Squeeze the Day for 8/10
Music Tonight: The ukulele has led an interesting existence since first invented in pre-United State Hawaii in the late 1800s. A cornerstone of Hawaiian music, American Jazz musicians and vaudeville acts took to the instrument in the early ’20s, but it eventually became just a cheap toy in most Americans’ eyes. In the ’90s, artists…
