Jul 9-15, 2014

Jul 9-15, 2014 / Vol. 28 / No. 20

Cover Story

Grocery Store Wars Episode IV: A new low-price hope

Not very long from now and in a neighborhood not very far away, empirical grocers will wage a war against one another for consumers like you and me. Although grocery stores compete on razor-thin margins, once they have moved onto a competitor’s turf, they will drop prices to beat out the other guy. The grocery…

Tricia Childress

Weekly horoscope (July 10-16)

For All Signs: The full moon on the 12th is in the sign of Capricorn. It pulls the major grand square that we have experienced for many months into a knot of greater tension. The global and local news is likely to be startling indeed. Try not to play the games of rash actions, argumentative…

Vivian Carol

Bizarre crime from Charlotte police files (July 10)

Play or Die: An 11-year-old boy called police last week after his “friend” knocked on his front door to hang out. While knocking, the kid allegedly threatened to kill the victim if he did not come outside and play with him. More worrisome is that the victim “believed the suspect would carry out the threat…

Ryan Pitkin

CD review: Ancient Cities’s Ancient Cities

With 2010’s Talking Machine, Stephen Warwick emerged as one of the region’s rising star songwriters. The LP was stacked with memorable melodies, sharp storytelling and triumphant choruses, and highlighted by judicious blending of electronic and orchestral accents. But Warwick, perhaps unwilling to be pigeon-holed as another folk-pop singer-songwriter, shed his Secondhand Stories band-skin for this…

John Schacht

Magic Man

I’ve done some crazy things in the name of love. I’ve been involved in incidents that ended in broken bones, fires, appendages bursting through walls, poison ivy in very intimate places, and nights in jail. I’ve had accidental threesomes — you know, the kind where you think everyone is joking around, until they’re not. I’ve…

Abby White

Teacher-pay tax divides county commissioners

Mecklenburg County Board of Commissioners Chairman Trevor Fuller got off to a rocky start when he assumed the top position last December, given that he got the job only by way of Commissioner Pat Cotham’s ouster and a tense 5-4 split vote. Any attempts at forging a united board was going to be tough, though…

Jerry Klein

The Beck playlist

Accidental spokesperson for a slacker generation or workaholic music pioneer? Musical dilettante or stylistic sponge? Detached snarkster or squishy-hearted romantic? Beat lyrics expert or fridge poetry absurdist? Beck Hansen’s been in all those pigeonholes over the years, some with more justification than others. It’s hard to say that a guy who’s gone platinum four times…

John Schacht

Beware of the knockout game

A disturbing and brutal trend is afoot. It’s a deadly game that has been played in America for centuries but is now going by a new name — the knockout game. Young black men, you must take extreme precaution against it. The game works like this: Fringe media connects isolated incidents of crime around the…

Erin Tracy-Blackwood

Royal Blood is driven beyond the bass

The high tones are there at the start; so are the rattling drums. Then a bass groove slinks in behind it all as the vocals start. A guitar riff bounces between thumping and screaming pitches. Royal Blood’s hit single “Out of the Black” sounds like a mixture of Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked…

Jeff Hahne

Frozen in front of my songwriting hero

There’s probably no one in history who hasn’t had a moment when they wish they could change careers. One thinks sympathetically, of Boston first-baseman Bill Buckner, whose error in the 1986 World Series was so childish and goofy, it looked like something right out of the Little Rascals. Followed by a trumpet going “wah wah…

Peter Gerstenzang

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