Aug 1-7, 2012

Aug 1-7, 2012 / Vol. 26 / No. 23

Cover Story

Trouble in mind: The hard truths of Thornton Dial

“Life’s been tough with me, how’s it been with you?” – Thornton Dial Thornton Dial is 83 years old. He managed to get through his first 60 years without fame or fortune or a host of interested white people. About 25 years ago, Mr. Dial was visited at his home in Bessemer, Ala., by a…

Scott Lucas

Jaws, Full Metal Jacket, MST3K set among new home entertainment titles

(View From The Couch is a weekly column that reviews what’s new on Blu-ray and DVD.) FULL METAL JACKET (1987). The plight of Stanley Kubrick’s final two films served as a depressing example of movies morphing from something worthy of discussion and analysis into mere matinee fodder for the kiddies. Had 1987’s Full Metal Jacket…

Matt Brunson

CD Review: Mr. Invisible’s It’s On Us

It’s been close to three years since Charlotte hip-hop duo Mr. Invisible has released an album, but It’s On Us fills that void. Comprised of five quick-hitting tracks, the nearly 16-minute EP showcases the group’s old-school style and high-quality production work. On “Just an Example,” Mr. Invisible uses back-and-forth rhyme spitting by MCs Aswell and…

Jeff Hahne

CD Review: Giant Giant Sand’s Tucson: A Country Rock Opera

Howe Gelb’s 32-year-wide catalog stretches on like the Sonora desert that surrounds the protagonist of this LP, his adopted hometown Tucson. The city’s border-hopping adobe aesthetic has flavored Gelb’s music ever since he moved there from Pennsylvania in the ’70s and began morphing into the Thelonious Monk of country rock. Like the jazz eccentric he…

John Schacht

Capsule reviews of films playing the week of Aug. 3

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN Perhaps it’s best to think of Sam Raimi’s 2002 Spider-Man and Marc Webb’s 2012 The Amazing Spider-Man as the cinematic equivalents of Coke Classic and New Coke. Despite some alterations to the source material (hey, where’s Gwen Stacy?), the Raimi take earned the trust of most purists, offering a near-perfect Peter Parker…

Matt Brunson

Where to go for Julia Child Restaurant Week

Aug. 15 marks what would have been the 100th birthday of Master Chef Julia Child, who died in 2004. Child single-handedly introduced the American public to French cuisine. Her first cookbook, the 734-page Mastering the Art of French Cooking published in 1961, made French cuisine accessible for the “servantless” American cook, using “no out-of-the-ordinary” ingredients.…

Tricia Childress

The Secret Chocolatier is not so secret anymore

Five years ago, a coffee shop in Rock Hill, S.C., was selling handmade truffles to its customers from an unknown source. The menu noted that the truffles came from a “secret chocolatier” but offered no other information. Bill Dietz was still working in downtown Charlotte with the Sonoma Group when Lell Trogdon commissioned him to…

Keia Mastrianni

Bizarre crimes from Charlotte police files (Aug. 2)

Jail Bird: A 25-year-old man called police after he was beaten up by his girlfriend during an argument. The man told officers that he was arguing with the woman because he claimed that she never took responsibility for her actions. The woman got mad and slapped him in the face several times. She also used…

Ryan Pitkin

Total Recall: Remember 1990, forget 2012

TOTAL RECALL (2012) *1/2 (out of four) DIRECTED BY Len Wiseman STARS Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel TOTAL RECALL (1990) *** (out of four) DIRECTED BY Paul Verhoeven STARS Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin For those who don’t keep up with the show-biz trades, there are several notable remakes in the works, all promising to offer different…

Matt Brunson

Letters and online comments from the readers (Aug. 2 edition)

Don’t Pick Pat In your recent sit-down interview with Pat McCrory (July 26), the Republican candidate claims, “in my past experience as mayor for 14 years, there was no breach of ethics, no hint of corruption … ” That claim is simply not true. For example, McCrory testified before Congress, as mayor of Charlotte, against…

Weekly horoscope (Aug. 2-8)

Leo The Lion (July 22-Aug. 22)Next week, on Aug. 8, Mercury will turn direct. Decisions that you may have set aside in recent weeks will be easier to settle. Your sense of stability will return. This week, your attitude is hopeful and friends will be very helpful. For All Signs: Over the weekend, we have…

Vivian Carol

The swordplay’s the thing in Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline

Take your pick: Hamlet, Lear, Othello or Macbeth. If you’re a major character in one of these Shakespearean tragedies, chances are you’re going down. Odds of survival are equally grim in George F. Walker’s Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline, now in its Charlotte premiere at Carolina Actors Studio Theatre. What makes this 1977 script stand…

Perry Tannenbaum

No rest for the prolific: Between the Buried and Me

Prolific songwriting often suggests a certain musical simplicity and thematic directness. It’s the domain of garage-rock stompers and volatile punks exorcising whims and committing them immediately to tape. Composing multi-part songs that usually stretch beyond 10 minutes and function as conceptual chapters within even larger pieces, logic would suggest, takes a little more time. Raleigh’s…

Bryan C. Reed

Thornton Dial and the Rev. Howard Finster

Defining the extraordinary works of untrained, mostly uneducated artists from America’s rural backwaters has been a delicate topic for decades. In the 1980s, when the Rev. Howard Finster, of Pennville, Ga., became all the rage not just among the New York art elite but in popular culture at large — with no small thanks to…

Mark Kemp

Corporate America is not your buddy

“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present … As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves — and then we shall save our country.” —Abraham Lincoln, Dec. 2, 1862 The ugly corporate boardroom plots and rancor that followed Duke Energy’s sacking…

John Grooms

This week’s concert listings (Aug. 2-8)

** Bullet points indicate CL’s critics’ picks** Thursday, Aug. 2 Blues/Roots/International Bayou Butch Lucas (Villa Antonio (Ballantyne)) Blues and More… (Wet Willie’s) Latin Thursdays (Dream Nightclub, Matthews) Classical/Jazz/Smooth Beats and Keys (Encore Bistro and Bar) Bill Hanna’s Vintage Dance Band (Grand Central Events) John Alexander (Blue Restaurant & Bar) Country/Folk Open Mic w/ Brett Greer…

Close to home: Scowl Brow

Two years ago, Robby Hale was living in his truck. He’d spent a year in Sarasota, Fla., but his situation there fell apart. So the often-homeless musician returned to his natural state: rambling. After three months, he landed in Atlanta, played two shows there and blew through his money. But he wasn’t far from the…

Corbie Hill

A donkey of a different color

It will be a historic week of celebration for Democrats when President Obama comes to Charlotte for his party’s convention in September, but the scene is likely to be an ironic footnote before a period of darkness. Come November, state Democrats are at high risk of losing statewide elections that would shift political power for…

Mike Cooper

Interview: Elle Palmer, Urban Gypsy

An adorable cottage with a bright orange door on a tree covered street in Plaza Midwood is the humble abode of a renaissance woman and her rock star husband. Surrounded by antiques, collectibles (including a bamboo bicycle), multiple four legged friends and a whole room for a closet, Elle Palmer leads a very unconventional life.…

Lauren Blake

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