Music Menu
WEDNESDAY 9.3 4th Ward — The new material by long running local pop-rockers 4th Ward adds harder elements to their already potent Merseybeat sound — in other words, expect an even more rocking show now. The demos from the upcoming record, Big Dream Baby, show how a good rock band doesn’t get stuck in a…
See & Do
SEPTEMBER 4 – THURSDAY The Light Factory’s Factory Films Series will present Phreaker at 7:30pm tonight in the McGlohon Theater at Spirit Square. Written and directed by Charlottean Mark Young (whose last film, 1995’s hardcore cyber-yarn Dead Bodies, was well-traveled on the international film festival circuit), Phreaker centers on a computer hacker having to contend…
Soundboard
Wednesday, Sep. 3 Blue Beth Chorneau Brickhouse Tavern, Davidson Acoustic Supershow Buckhead Saloon Kenny Floyd Cajun Queen 7th Street Gator Band Comet Grill Pervis & Sonya Lee CPCC North Campus Robin Rogers Duo Cuvee Wine & Art Gallery Trio 21 Double Door Inn 4th Ward w/ Crisis The Evening Muse Michelle Malone & the Low-Down…
Ask the Advice Goddess
Never Say Sever My girlfriend, “Cecile,” sort of dumped me over a year ago. She never told me she was dumping me. She simply stopped answering my calls. When I tracked her down, she fed me cliches like “You’re all I want, but I need time,” and “It’s not you, it’s me.” I was taken…
Worth Falling For
Summer’s over, the holidays are still in the distance, and we have only the fall movies to give us cinematic comfort. But don’t lose hope yet. While Hollywood tends to save its big guns for year-end accolades and dollars, the upcoming season looks fairly decent, with the likes of Clint Eastwood, Quentin Tarantino and Robert…
Stargazer
For All Signs Mercury, planet of communications, travel, and general business, turned retrograde on Aug. 28. The symbolism suggests any verb that begins with the word “retro____.” We often are required to “re-do” paperwork or projects during retrograde periods. We need to work a bit harder to insure that we communicate accurately because details are…
Movie Missives
The Light Factory has come up with a novel idea — in more ways than one. In conjunction with the annual Novello Festival and Charlotte Shout, the venue is sponsoring the Novel Concept Film Weekend, to be held Friday-Sunday, October 3-5, primarily at Spirit Square. The theme is “Celebrating Films That Are Adapted From Literary…
Linguistic Ecology
While reading Mark Abley’s new book, I was reminded of an incident that happened during a tour of China with my brother in 1996. Our tour bus had overheated on the edge of the Gobi desert. Our national guide — the official “handler” for our tour — was looking into the engine with the driver,…
Home Theater
THE HOWLING (1981). The best of the three werewolf pictures released in the same year — the others were An American Werewolf In London and Wolfen — this is one of those rare horror flicks that manages to integrate some humor into the proceedings without detracting from the terror elements. For that, we can thank…
Crazy-Edged Performance Art
You always expect something outsized and outrageous when Carver Johns is onstage — with a slight edge of pure craziness. So it was almost inevitable that Johns and his innerVoices Theatre Company would gravitate toward the solo pieces of Eric Bogosian. They’re opening their first full season at the Central Avenue Playhouse with Bogosian’s breakthrough…
Film Clips
NEW RELEASES THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS This adaptation of Jane Smiley’s novella The Age of Grief isn’t a documentary by any stretch of the imagination, yet try telling that to the married couples who will see this film and feel that they’re experiencing cinema verite in its rawest form. Working from Craig Lucas’ knowing…
Arts Agenda
Classical Music American Chamber Players An innovative chamber music ensemble performing a varied repertoire ranging from familiar masterpieces to neglected gems to newly commissioned American works. Sept 8: Sloan Music Center, Davidson College, Davidson, at 8pm, info at 704-894-2135; Sept 9: George A. Batte Jr. Fine Arts Center, Wingate University at 8pm, 704-233-8300. Call for…
Hidden agenda
If you had to guess who was financing a national push to annihilate key parts of the Clean Water Act and allow raw sewage and industrial waste to be dumped into Mecklenburg County’s creeks and streams, you’d probably guess Big Business. You’d be wrong. An investigation by Creative Loafing has revealed that much of the…
Meet Market
“It’ll be about 15 minutes,” the hostess of Red Star Tavern informed us. “You can wait in the bar.” She handed us a pager. We made our way through a thicket of casually dressed people, but discovered there was little room to stand, much less sit. After five minutes, a party of five was escorted…
Cops Against the Drug War
They were two white guys cruising through the black part of Paterson, NJ, back in the 1970s. One was an undercover police officer named Jack Cole, the other an informant known as Fast Eddy. Posing as heroin buyers, they ran into trouble with three thugs who tried to rip them off and who slashed Fast…
French Grapes Love Heat
In case you’re out of touch with your TV, radio or newspaper, France is rather heated these days, and not just emotionally at the US. An extended heat wave has the normally cool French sweating, and the grapes in their most prized vineyards maturing unusually early. Temperatures have soared into the upper 90s and low…
Letters
Give Out Needles Of course Tara Servatius is right in her comment that certain behaviors are risk factors for HIV/AIDS (“Yes, Sex Causes AIDS,” August 27). However, people have been engaging in risky sexual behaviors since the beginning of recorded history. One program which would at least help to reduce the spread of HIV would…
Florida Bay Seafood Company
Reel Food Local restaurateur catches the casual seafood wave BY TRICIA CHILDRESS The concept of having both scene and cuisine has faded a bit during the “00s. Nowadays, some, for whom these economic times have not been kind, are looking strictly for value and care more about maxing out credit cards than dining with linens…
Politics, Hotdogs and Music
As the son of a dyed-in-the-wool union man, I wasn’t going to miss Monday’s Labor Day parade. It’s a day for the laborers (translation for bankers: the ones that actually create the capital). It’s a day for all those who make a difference and usually go unnoticed. And face it, it’s also a day off…
Pendergraph Is Irresponsible
OK. So maybe Creative Loafing wasn’t kidding about that little prisoner beating problem at the Mecklenburg County Jail. Maybe, politically speaking, this thing won’t be so easy to brush under the rug after all. Now that the image of Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s deputies beating the tar out of inmate Stacy Cunningham has been broadcast into…
Summer of Hair Cute guys and greasy pizza
Some of us neighborhood swim team people were hanging out after a meet in one of those pizza places that feature weirdly glowing buffets piled with food that only looks good if you’re a starving adolescent or at the tail-end of a marathon drunk. You know the kind of swill hole, almost always staffed with…
Lies Will Do
It’s astonishing how many people will simply lie to your face. It’s even more astonishing how bad they are at doing it. I get lied to constantly about issues from the minute to the momentous — from petty and barely believable lies like “the dog ate my homework” to enraging lies about car wrecks, I’ve…
Good Eats
All Around Town Anntony’s Caribbean, 400 S. Tryon St., 704-339-0303; 2001 E. 7th St., 704-342-0749. All locations have different owners. A hint of the tropics; rotisserie chicken with Jamaican jerk sauce, ribs, Paradise Island fish special, curries, and Caribbean styled greens. $$ Azteca, 116 Woodlawn Rd., 704-525-5110; 9709 Independence Blvd., 704-814-9877; 1863 W. Franklin Blvd.…
Mars Attacks!
Last week, Earth and Mars were the closest they’d been in 60,000 years. Amateur astronomers everywhere were beckoned out into the early morning to see the Red Planet up close and personal. Professional astronomers, meanwhile, were awed by what they saw through their somewhat more sophisticated equipment. They were able to observe features on Mars…
Hard To Peg
Jon Shain and Leon Russell don’t have much in common except maybe that they’re both hard to categorize. Russell does that mysterious carny rock god pose, while Shain, who shuns labels of any kind, might grudgingly accept something along the lines of blues guitarist with jazz inflections who’s also a singer-songwriter of the Americana persuasion.…
The Blotter
A FISHY THREAT: The following message was left on a man’s answering machine by an unknown person: “I’m going to beat you up for hitting my dog; and I’m going to hit you with a trout. I’m going to steal your car, lazy boy, and take your job.” No word yet on if PETA plans…
Abe Does Ebay
A live New Year’s Eve show with Abe Reid & The SpikeDrivers is currently up for bids on Ebay. Not to sell themselves short, Reid and company have started the bidding at $2500. The band also included a disclaimer of sorts stating that they reserve the right to nix the show if the person would…
News of the Weird
The Lord’s work: In August, St. Louis, Mo., school board member Rochell Moore sent Mayor Francis Slay an open letter criticizing his school-closing management reforms and advising him that because of his obstinacy, she had placed a curse on him. According to a report in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Moore’s curse was modeled after Deuteronomy…
