Rockin’ Bones
“If hillbilly music was ‘three chords and the truth,’ then rockabilly was three chords and testosterone … [beginning] as a yawp in the Southern night,” writes journalist/archivist Colin Escott in the 66-page book accompanying Rhino’s four-CD box Rockin’ Bones: 1950s Punk & Rockabilly. Well, it wasn’t entirely simmering in testosterone, as a quick glom at…
Death Becomes Them
The year-end awards season is just now heating up, yet I doubt we’ll see many upcoming performances more impressive than the one brandished by Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland. Whitaker stars as the brutal Ugandan dictator Idi Amin Dada, who during his bloody reign in the 1970s was responsible for the murders…
‘Once U Go Black’
Michael Kitchen has his hand in damn near everything. He’s a promoter. He’s involved in fashion. He was behind the Charlotte Urban Film Series. Now he wants to shake up Charlotte nightlife. At 6 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, Kitchen was planted on a barstool at Zink American Kitchen on Tryon Street, waiting to see…
Cheap Thrills
CAROLINA RENAISSANCE FESTIVAL Though the original Renaissance took place over 500 years ago, the Carolina version celebrates its thirteenth anniversary. In keeping with the spirit of its European origins, our festival features a medieval amusement park, a 9-stage theater, a 20-acre circus, an arts and crafts fair, a jousting tournament and a feast. The grounds…
Oct. 11 – Oct. 17, 2006
LIBRA The Scales: (Sept. 22 — Oct. 22) You are in a state of grace for the next 10 days. This means that you are in a truly balanced place, the condition for which Libra searches most. You have long-term vision now and the ability to take on whatever tasks are necessary to make your…
And They’ll Sweep Out the Ashes in the Morning:
Nickel Creek’s self-titled Sugar Hill debut in 2000 was a vivid mix of youngblood joy and anxiety running through bluegrass. Raised conservatively — but in Southern California — the trio were prodigies living near prodigals, singing: “My greatest fear will be that you will crash and burn, and I won’t feel your fire, I’m hung…
Bring Me The Head of Ron Tober
Boomer With Attitude
Watching Channel Zero
I’m rarely offended when a classic rock & roll tune turns up in a TV ad. True, it’s a cheesy move advertisers use to infuse nostalgia into their otherwise antiseptic products. Once A Tribe Called Quest pitched for Sprite, that was more or less a wrap on the issue. But The Gap ad with Audrey…
The Blotter
Phoney Baloney: A woman reported that her license plate and bumper sticker had been damaged. Someone had written words on them with a permanent marker. The one intelligible word she was able to make out was: “fake”. Are You Now Or Have You Ever Been A Prostitute?: A man approached a woman at a bus…
Alternative Idol
See & Do 10Moodswing 1210
Film Clips
New Releases JESUS CAMP Just in time for Halloween comes Jesus Camp, featuring a monster more frightening than either Jason or Freddy. Her name is Becky Fischer, and she’s a Missouri pastor who runs a summer camp in which children roughly between the ages of 6 and 12 are trained to be soldiers for God.…
Five Complex Pieces
Performing Arts
View From The Couch
DRACULA (1931) / FRANKENSTEIN (1931). This is the third DVD go-round for both these landmark films, following the Classic Monster Collection box set released in 2000 and the Legacy Collection packs issued in 2004. The selling point this time? Both films are three-quarters of a century old, thus allowing Universal to promote these as 75th…
Stop the Presses
Performing Arts 40Savage Love 48Arts Agenda 4242
22-35
Eat: 22 Eat at Bojangles and wish that Popeye’s was next door. (Really, it’s ridiculous how many Bojangles restaurants are out there. Anyway, maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll get one with free Wi-Fi.) 23 Eat fried chicken at Price’s Chicken Coop on Camden Road (it’s cheap). If you want to splurge, head to The Melting…
99 Things to Do*
Take the Creative Loafing test to find out how well you know your city. Do you rank as a true urban explorer who knows the hip spots that make Charlotte such a dynamic and exciting (and maybe even quirky) city? If you’re a newcomer, what do you need to check out? Go through the list…
Karma Cleanser
Dear Karma Cleanser: I have a friend who is smart, beautiful and fabulous. Except for one thing: her boyfriend. At first he was tolerable, but then it got to a point where I couldn’t stand to be near him because he is so obnoxious. He gets drunk and publicly berates my friend. He’s completely rude…
Hell No, We Won’t Go
Brother with a Pen 18 Citizen Servatius 23Boomer with Attitude 2418
Silly Sausage
That’s what an old English friend of mine would say when we got too ridiculous at the office. Check out the Cockney link for a full lexicon. Everything else is seriously silly … or not. Marlys Magazine http://marlysmagazine.com Photo Boof http://thephotoboof.com Bee Dogs www.beedogs.com Googie www.spaceagecity.com/googie Cockney Rhyming Slang www.phespirit.info/cockney/slang_to_english.htm
36-49
Drink 36 Charlotte Drinking Game (for those who want to get really hammered): Find somewhere comfortable to sit in Ballantyne’s Stonecrest shopping center and down a shot every time a car passes sporting a peeling Bush/Cheney bumper sticker. 37 Grab a brew at a Central Avenue dive — EB’s, Tommy’s, or the other nondescript shanties…
What If ‘God’ Was One of Us?
Burn Baby Burn 82Watching channel zero 83QC Inferno 84Robert Cray 8688
King Harvest
Corkscrew
50-70
Be Merry 50 Go clubbing at the Spot on Pecan Avenue some Saturday night and gaze wistfully at the almost urban skyline view you spy from upstairs. 51 Bestir yourself to attend a gig at Amos’ SouthEnd, Tempo or any of the smaller venues and wait in befuddlement, wondering why shows start so damn late…
My, My
Kitchen Witch 62Corkscrew 66Good Eats 7062
The Bread Ambassador
Kitchen Witch
71-99 (and the Scorecard)
71 Decide to sell your Charlotte home and move to a “real city.” Change your mind after the only apartment you can afford near New York is a 400-square-foot basement studio in Jersey City, despite the broker’s kind offer to throw in a free space heater. 72 Finally peel the “W the President” sticker off…
Back on the Mean Streets
The Last King of Scotland 32Infamous 32Film Clips 3432
Oktober Is Here
No Sex In the City. According to Forbes.com, Charlotte ranks 25th in the top 40 metropolitan cities for singles. As a member of the endangered single species, I disagree with such a high spot. Some further investigation on the topic is needed. First, I looked at the kind of data they used to conduct their…
Letters to the Editor
FEAR AND LOATHING IN N.C. Thank you so much for the “Parrots of Doom” article! (Boomer With Attitude, Sept. 6) You described exactly what I have been thinking for so very long: By bombarding all the world with the word “terrorist,” morning, noon and night, the Bush administration is actually feeding the terrorists’ energy and…
So You Think You Can Dance
Last spring, FOX audiences were invited to witness the challenge “So You Think You Can Dance.” Now the show that’s launched maybe as many careers as “America’s Next Top Model” is taking its act on the road. Season 2’s top 10 will make their 22nd stop overall in the Queen City for a live show…
He Just Wants to Testify
Sometimes, the passing of the years has a way of putting old clichés to rest. That has certainly been the case for Robert Cray. It’s been nearly 20 years since Cray was rather simplistically (and falsely) touted by much of the music press as “the great black hope for the blues.” To be sure, that…
Free Ain’t Free
Moodswing
See & Do Picks
Wednesday, October 11 Time to juice up the RV, rip out the passenger seat, and holler, “Boogity, boogity, boogity, let’s go racin’ boys!” Race weekend officially begins Oct. 11 and ends the night of Oct. 14. You’ll get to inhale that sweet mixture of exhaust fumes, burning rubber, and armpit (no wait, that’s every day).…
Guitar Gods
Rock & roll’s staple, celebrated: My Morning Jacket has had an online buzz going for some time that its new live double album, Okonokos (RCA), will finally cement the hirsute “American Radiohead’s” rep beyond a doubt and put their thang across to the uninitiated. Well, even if Okonokos doesn’t ultimately rival such career changing concert…
Homeland Security Horrors
Citizen Servatius
How has American mission in Afghanistan fared so far?
Saturday, Oct. 7, was the fifth anniversary of the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. Dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom, it was the first military campaign of President Bush’s War On TerrorTM. When he announced the start of Enduring Freedom to the American public, President Bush said that the mission’s objectives were, “to disrupt the…
Pay-for-Parking Plan hits NoDa
How do you know when your neighborhood has really gentrified? When people get pissy about parking. The decision by Neighborhood Properties owners Paul McBroom and Sharon Pate to charge $3 for parking in the gravel lot running adjacent to and behind the Neighborhood Theatre has stirred up controversy in the North Davidson neighborhood. “I know…
Retire Columbus Day
Brother with a Pen
