Jamaican Queens
In a little less than two years, Ryan Spencer and Adam Pressley have gone from a potential career disaster to having one of the most acclaimed albums of the year in the form of Wormfood, their debut as Jamaican Queens. Their tale began in late 2011, when producer/artist Pressley relocated to Detroit with the intent…
Joe Pug
It’s heartwarming that, in an age when new musicians jumpstart their careers via hokey TV talent shows and gimmicky YouTube videos, Folk/Americana singer/songwriter Joe Pug has chosen a different way. An old-fashioned way — trusting in his talent and in the enduring power of performing with acoustic guitar and harmonica. He’s been playing endless small-club…
Angel Olsen
“I went from working in a coffee shop 40 hours a week, and maybe performing a show of mine once a month or something at a house, to working three hours a night on a tour with Will Oldham,” says Angel Olsen, a gifted singer/songwriter from Chicago, in a recent phone conversation. It’s easy…
Cincinnati Loses Jobs in July
The Cincinnati area lost 4,000 jobs from June to July, but it gained 14,000 between July 2012 and July this year, far above the 3,000 necessary to keep up with annual population growth, according to data released today by the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services . The seasonally unadjusted unemployment rate was at…
Pension Amendment Has No Council Support
Councilman Chris Smitherman told CityBeat he doesn’t support the pension amendment that will appear on the ballot this November, which means no council member approves of the controversial proposal. The amendment would privatize Cincinnati’s pension system so future city employees — excluding police and fire personnel, who are under a separate system — contribute to…
Music: Jane’s Addiction
Jane’s Addiction’s legacy has fluctuated wildly over the past almost 30 years. In the beginning, the band was the freaky face of the Los Angeles Metal scene. But albums like Nothing’s Shocking and Ritual de lo habitual captured the music world’s imagination with a sound that was mysterious, often romantic and even more often bombastic.…
Art: Staring Eyes: Real War and Guns and Fences at the Third Party Gallery
Important People is a loose collection of writers based in Cincinnati who aspire to encourage collaboration between various art forms with a non-traditional reading series. Saturday, as part of their independent film series called STARING EYES, Third Party Gallery in Brighton and Important People team up to present the work of two readers and two…
Event: Germania Society Oktoberfest
The Germania Society was founded in 1964 to establish a “German House” for German and German-American citizens to gather in Greater Cincinnati. Their 43rd annual Germania Society Oktoberfest, “Cincinnati’s original and most authentic Oktoberfest,” has all the gemütlichkeit — social good cheer — of the Munich version. With German music; homemade German food, ranging from…
Event: Price Hill Cultural Heritage Festival
Come experience and learn about the various cultures representing Price Hill during the annual Cultural Heritage Fest. Like any good festival, there will be plenty of food, music, art vendors and exhibits and entertainment. Bistro de Mohr, Red Sesame Korean BBQ, Catch-A-Fire Pizza, Cold Stone Creamery and multiple food trucks will all be providing tasty…
Event: Taste of Blue Ash
Whether it’s your dream to see Kenny Loggins, Rodney Atkins and The Pointer Sisters in concert, or you just want to satisfy your taste buds, the Taste of Blue Ash aims to please with its promise of fun for the whole family. Spend your last few dog days of summer feasting on an array of…
Event: Cincinnati Brew Ha-Ha
Not only can you get your drink on, you can get your laugh on, too, as America’s largest beer and comedy festival — Brew Ha-Ha — returns to Cincinnati. With more than 100 beers at your disposal for as little as $1, the laughs are sure to follow suit as more than 50 comedians take…
Events: Wayne’s World Quote-a-thon
If you’re going to spew, spew into this. And by “this,” we mean the Esquire’s Wayne’s World quote-athon. Akin to the audience-dominated Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings, this quote-athon welcomes die-hard and virgin fans to participate in a screening of Wayne’s World without the silent formality of a typical movie theater. So study your scripts,…
Event: Bones Fest
The second annual Bones Fest, presented by Friends of Bones, aims to celebrate the life of David “Bones” Hebert’s with two nights of live music, DJs, community raffle prizes and more. Bands performing include Perfect Children, Grotesque Brooms, Hardwicks and Ohio Knife on Friday and Subsets, Jackass, SS-20 and Dixie Trash on Saturday. Friends of…
Comedy: Saleem
It’s a rare chance to catch Saleem in an intimate club setting. The Dayton native has been busy in Los Angeles appearing on numerous TV shows as well as building a name for himself as a top headlining comedian. While the TV work is nice, it’s the latter that’s part of his end game. “My…
Event: Lunch Beat at the Contemporary Arts Center
Lunch Beat is a pop-up lunchtime dance party trend that started in Stockholm three years ago. Today, Lunch Beat takes place in more than 55 cities across the globe, including Cincinnati. The Contemporary Arts Center is hosting their second Lunch Beat dance party on Thursday with music from DJ Kenneth Wright and a take-away lunch…
Music: Crown Jewels of Jazz Heritage Festival
For four days, Jazz takes center stage in the Queen City as Washington Park, the Seasongood Pavilion and various venues throughout Over-the-Rhine transform into a Global Jazz Village, all to support early childhood literacy. An initiative of Learning Through Art, Inc., proceeds from wristbands purchased for the Crown Jewels of Jazz festival go to benefit…
Art: Celebrating the March on Washington at the Freedom Center
The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center commemorates the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington human rights rally with their new exhibit, Celebrating the March on Washington. On August 28, 1963, a quarter of a million people gathered in Washington D.C. to march for freedom, jobs and civil and economic rights as well as to…
Morning News and Stuff
City Solicitor John Curp rebuked a conservative group that asked him to sue the city of Cincinnati over changes made to the city’s parking lease without City Council’s explicit approval. Curp wrote in a letter that the two changes disputed by the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST) were within the lease’s terms…
Onstage: Shakespeare in the Park
Shakespeare’s plays were first presented 400 years ago in open-air theaters such London’s Globe. Maybe that’s why they work so well in the great outdoors, as evidenced by Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s engaging Shakespeare in the Park performances in parks all over Greater Cincinnati during August. You’ll find concise evening productions of the humorous Midsummer Night’s…
City Denies COAST’s Parking Lease Challenge
City Solicitor John Curp on Aug. 15 rebuked a conservative group that asked him to sue the city of Cincinnati over changes made to the city's parking lease without City Council's explicit approval. With Curp's denial, the conservative group behind the request — the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST) — is now…
Qualls Calls for More Government Transparency
Vice Mayor Roxanne Qualls today unveiled a motion that calls for the first expansion of local disclosure and reporting requirements since 1997 that would impose new rules on city officials, lobbyists and contractors and task the city administration with posting the disclosed information on the city’s website. Qualls said the proposal is particularly timely as…
Morning News and Stuff
State Rep. John Becker, a Cincinnati Republican, is pushing to expand the death penalty to include some sex-related crimes. His proposal, made Friday, would allow the state to consider execution in cases of rape, sexual battery and improper sexual contact if the suspect has a previous sex crime conviction and there are aggravating circumstances. Becker…
A Knowing Season (and More) Is Announced
The pickings have been kind of slim at Know Theatre over the past year. The quality has been high (the staging of When the Rain Stops Falling was one of the best shows onstage locally during 2013, and Mike Bartlett’s Cock offered a showcase of strong acting), but the works have felt few and far…
Q&A with Eric Bass of Shinedown
Shinedown has been touring on its most recent album, Amaryllis, for the last two years and has just started its Carnival of Madness tour to complete touring on the record. It is the band's biggest, brightest and loudest tour yet. With each album, Shinedown's rocking sound shows bigger energy and different sides, as well as…
Your Weekend To Do List: 8/16-8/18
Most cops discourage partying and street art — not The London Police. The British art duo has been leaving their precision-meets-cartoony signature pieces across Covington throughout the past week and tonight, from 7-11 p.m. at BLDG, The London Police will reveal the sites of their work, which includes several small-scale pieces and one mural. Meet…
Six Public Data Resources You Don’t Know About, But Should
Members of the media are, unsurprisingly, pretty tapped into places on the web where we can find all sorts of useless and not-so-useless information, depending on whether or not we're complementing our BuzzFeed time on lunch break or looking for something worthy long-form investigative coverage. The fact is there are way more sources of useful…
Ozzy Talks Black Sabbath Reunion and Tour
There is no denying the legendary status of Black Sabbath. They are all Rock & Roll superstars, defining Hard Rock and Metal, both as forms of music and lifestyles. Without Sabbath, we would not have seen the likes of the Metal acts of today, like Slipknot and Tool, or fellow legends like Motorhead and Megadeth,…
Morning News and Stuff
Ohio’s unemployment rate remained at 7.2 percent in July, unchanged from June, according to new data from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services . The amount of employed Ohioans went up by 5,300 from month-to-month and 37,700 year-over-year, showing stronger signs of job growth than earlier in the year . But the amount…
Republicans to Reintroduce Anti-Abortion ‘Heartbeat Bill’
Ohio legislators today reintroduced a bill that would ban abortions in the state as early as six weeks after conception, even as questions remain about the proposal’s constitutionality. The bill has been dubbed the “heartbeat bill” because it prohibits abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. In the past, some of Ohio’s anti-abortion groups, including…
Q&A with George Thorogood
Blues/Rock legend George Thorogood has done just about everything a musician can do over his 30 years on the road. Along with his vintage Gibson ES-125, the only guitar he has ever played, cared to play or even knows how to play, he has delighted audiences with a catalog of hits, like “Bad to the…
Cranley Unveils Innovation Plan
Cincinnati mayoral candidate and ex-Councilman John Cranley today announced his two-part innovation plan, which he said would boost government transparency and help continue the nationally recognized momentum Cincinnati has recently gained as a tech startup hub. The plan would take $5 million over four years from the capital budget and ask local startup incubators Cintrifuse,…
Morning News and Stuff
Local and national tea party groups are pushing a ballot initiative that would privatize Cincinnati’s pension system by moving city workers from a public plan to 401k-style plans, but city officials and unions are urging voters to reject the measure because they claim it would raise costs for the city and reduce gains for retirees.…
Council Candidates Facing Petition Problems
Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld and City Council candidate Mike Moroski are both facing issues that could keep them off the ballot this November, but both candidates are renewing their petition drives to correct the issues before it’s too late. Council candidates must file 500 valid petition signatures to the Hamilton County Board of Elections by…
Requiem Could Be Evicted from Emery Theatre Following Ruling
Hamilton County Judge Carl Stitch today ruled against granting a temporary restraining order that would prevent the trio that owns and leases the Emery Theatre from evicting the nonprofit seeking to renovate the building. The ruling comes as a minor victory to the University of Cincinnati, Emery Center Apartments Limited Partnership (ECALP) and the Emery…
A Man on a Mission
B uddy Guy’s new release, Rhythm & Blues, is a rarity in an era where EPs and singles are becoming popular formats to release new music. It’s a double album, 21 all-new tracks deep. Guy and his producer Tom Hambridge didn’t go into the project expecting it to have such an epic output of music.…
Reading, Writing, Rocking
Mardou is a young Cincinnati band that’s made a name for itself as an energetic Post Punk quartet. Having played their first show May of 2012, the members of Mardou have released their debut offering of four songs, known as Cardigan EP. What comes to mind when you think of cardigans? A beautiful day in…
Cowboy Copas Birthday Tribute This Weekend
This Friday and Saturday, the Adams County Historical Society presents its fifth annual Cowboy Copas Memorial Concert. Copas, an Adams County native and Cincinnati resident, is a Country & Western music legend who recorded for Cincinnati’s famed King Records, helping to bring that company into national prominence. Last month would have marked Copas’ 100th birthday.…
Full MidPoint Music Festival Schedule Available Now
Head to MPMF.com right now to see the full lineup and schedule for the MidPoint Music Festival, coming up Sept. 26-28 at various venues in Downtown and Over-the-Rhine. Due to the legal wrangling over the management of The Emery Theatre (widely covered in CityBeat and at citybeat.com), the classic Cincinnati venue — a favorite from…
I’m Still Watching ‘True Blood’ (And Probably Always Will)
Some people go to church or watch a big game every Sunday, but in my house, we have a bunch of friends over every week for quality TV-watching. From Game of Thrones to Mad Men, the best shows are on Sunday nights — and why should everyone have to pay for premium cable, anyway? With…
Woody Allen Mines the Venal Depths of Financial Despair
Woody Allen’s recent run of critical and box office success, beginning with Sweet and Lowdown (1999), has bedazzled audiences with variety and precision that has harkened back to earlier Allen heydays of the 1970s and the ’80s. There have been full-on acting assaults — the seemingly volcanic eruptions of Sean Penn in Lowdown and Penelope…
Morning News and Stuff
A federal judge on Tuesday extended the temporary restraining order recognizing a gay couple’s marriage in Ohio. As CityBeat covered here , Jim Obergefell and John Arthur, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and is expected to die soon, sued local and state officials hoping to have their Maryland marriage acknowledged by Ohio before…
Tides of War Touch Home
The Lloyd Library and Museum may not be on your accustomed arts radar but its extraordinary current exhibition could put it there. Wounded Home reflects the ghastly physical toll war has on its participants as well as its psychological toll on them and their families. Conceived in response to the Civil War sesquicentennial — but…
Local Mixologist Makes Waves in Cocktail Culture
Talking with Lindsay Laubenstein could drive you to drink — in a good way. Her enthusiasm for cocktail culture is contagious. Laubenstein, vice president of the Southern Ohio Bartenders’ Guild and currently behind the bar at Igby’s (122 E. Sixth St., Downtown), recently developed the cocktail menu at Barrio Tequileria in Northside, and previously tended…
Walter De Maria’s Legacy: Public Art as Pilgrimage
Public art in cities is becoming a mass-participation event, as the recent LumenoCity event at — make than on — Music Hall shows. Add that to ArtWorks’ wall murals and some of the “street art” projects presented by Contemporary Arts Center — Shepard Fairey’s citywide poster project and whatever JR has planned for his upcoming…
City Could Acquire Emery Theatre, Allow Requiem Project to Proceed
The city of Cincinnati might take over the Emery Theatre following a legal dispute between the Requiem Project, a nonprofit seeking to renovate the theater, and the University of Cincinnati, Emery Center Apartments Limited Partnership (ECALP) and the Emery Center Corporation (ECC), the group of leasers and owners trying to push Requiem out of the…
City to Cut Ties with Local Startup Incubator
The city of Cincinnati is suspending its relationship with SoMoLend, the local startup that the city partnered with in December to connect small businesses and startups with up to $400,000 in loans. The broken partnership comes in response to accusations of fraud from the Ohio Division of Securities that have forced SoMoLend to stop giving…
City Council Approves Various Development Deals
City Council met on Aug. 7 for the first time since June and passed a slew of development deals and projects spanning six Cincinnati neighborhoods. The approved deals include a 15-year tax abatement for the second phase of The Banks, which will produce 305 apartments and 21,000 square feet of retail space; several other apartment…
Disparity Study Now
City Council on Aug. 7 approved the first few steps required to conduct a study that would gauge whether the city should change its business contracting policies to favor minorities and women. While approval for the study was unanimous in Council, it wasn’t long before a string of critics broke out the social media and…
U Square (Profile)
U Square at the Loop — the $80 million, 80,000-square-foot entertainment and apartment complex adjacent to University of Cincinnati— has been slowly rolling out retail stores and restaurants since the spring. U Square covers two city blocks between McMillan and Calhoun streets, which are littered with a passel of new and old offerings. On McMillan,…
Paranoia
Power plays abound when a low-level pawn (Liam Hemsworth) at a major tech company gets positioned as a corporate spy within the ranks of a competing firm. Director Robert Luketic, leaving his rom-com roots (Legally Blonde and The Ugly Truth) behind, doubles down on his thrilling experience in the big money world (21) by pitting a pair…
Foreign Interest
L ocal and national tea party groups are backing a city charter amendment that would semi-privatize Cincinnati’s ailing pension system. But local officials and unions are urging voters to reject the measure in November because they claim it would raise costs for the city and reduce gains for retirees. At the center of the issue…
Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Fictionalizing the story of an American original, director Lee Daniels (Precious) sets his sights on the epic narrative of a White House butler (Forest Whitaker) — an African-American man who began his life on a plantation and eventually ended up serving eight presidents during the historic and tumultuous 20th century. This complex eyewitness had to…
Kick-Ass 2
Writer-director Jeff Wadlow (Cry_Wolf) has fast-tracked his way into the comic book super-lottery. He takes over the helm of Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass graphic novel, capturing the further adventures of high schooler Dave Lizewski (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) as he juggles everyday teen geek life with his nocturnal escapades as a brawling hero with an even younger — and far…
Rebirth Of A Brewery
W hen people talk about the current resurgence of metropolitan Cincinnati, some of the first destinations that come to mind are recently renovated Cincinnati landmarks like Fountain Square and Washington Park. With those two cases in mind, it seems that the best approach to building a better town might not be constructing an altogether new…
Jobs
Chronicling the rise of Steve Jobs (Ashton Kutcher) from college dropout to celebrated technology entrepreneur, helmer Joshua Michael Stern (Swing Vote) and screenwriting newbie Matt Whiteley packs in the much-documented highs and lows of this iconoclastic figure. With Josh Gad as Jobs’ Apple sidekick Steve Wozniak and additional support from J.K. Simmons, Dermot Mulroney, Lukas…
The Answers Issue
H ere at CityBeat, we ask ourselves, each other and complete strangers a whole lot of questions. If you ask most journalists why they got into the biz, you’ll usually get an answer containing a couple of key, rather predictable components: some ornery remark about enjoying poverty, the love of a good story, a commitment…
Nobody Puts Cincy in a Corner
Cincinnatians don’t like their city to be pigeonholed. At least not in a manner they perceive to be off target. That’s so Cincinnati. A pair of recent online attempts to encapsulate Cincinnati went viral, at least locally, and the responses to them inadvertently shined a light on a few overlooked traits of Cincinnatians — thin…
Class of ’83
On the last day of eighth grade at Forest Park Middle School in June 1979, my mostly black class of soon-to-be incoming high school freshmen was gathered in the gymnasium, its infamous sallow light emanating from caged government-issue fixtures to protect the bulbs from errant volleyballs and kickballs we’d never again smack and kick as…
Cincinnati vs. the World 08.14.2013
Two University of Cincinnati law professors who married in 1986 and divorced 10 years later have been mired in a 17-year legal fight which has appalled local judges who have accused the two of self-servingly manipulating the legal system and setting a negative example for students and the profession as a whole. CINCINNATI -2 Will…
Worst Week Ever!: Aug. 7-13
WEDNESDAY AUG. 7 Since the days of wearing tunics and drinking poison to prove you were right and everyone else was a dumbass, people have revered guest speakers. This is why the next meeting of the Southwest Cincinnati Tea Party will feature a presentation by Dennis Michael Lynch, an oddball documentary filmmaker. Lynch’s appearance at…
Daft Conspiracy, Katy’s Truck and Brown is Down
Daft Punk Truthers Stephen Colbert showed why he’s one of the funniest people on TV when Dance music stars Daft Punk bailed on the “StePhest Colbchella ’013: The Song of the Summer of the Century: It Ain’t the Heat, It’s the Rock-midity” episode of The Colbert Report. Colbert’s explanation that the cancellation was due to…
