“You really don’t want to hear me sing it a cappella,” suggests B.B. King. He’s wrong, of course — who wouldn’t relish the chance to hear one of the last great bluesmen croon just to them over the phone? “Here’s the way it went,” King finally concedes, before launching into some laid-back singing: “Pepticon sure … Read more
By the time classical Greek poet Aristophanes wrote his second anti-war comedy, 15 years had passed since The Acharnians, his initial foray into pacifist theater (and humankind’s first extant anti-war drama). For six years longer than that, the poet’s beloved Athens had been at war with Sparta. It was autumn of 413 BC, and thousands … Read more
“The woman I loved was rushed into the arms of grace this morning, sometime close to dawn.” — opening sentence of Divining Women, by Kaye Gibbons It’s 1918. Death seems everywhere. The Great War continues to rage in Europe. The flu epidemic that will kill millions worldwide is beginning its rampage. Expectant mothers won’t buy … Read more
Volume is power, as Pete Townshend once said. And yet refusing to blare one’s message may be an even mightier move. With aggressive restraint, lo-fi ponder-rockers American Analog Set have bravely evoked an emotional and tonal palette that seems unorthodox even against the standards of today’s underground music. Onstage, the nearly decade-old, Austin-based quintet known … Read more
Of note • The sounds of scavenging: Local producer and sound engineer Doug Mitchell of Scavenger Studios has recently been recording new material for local pop-punkers Zombie Attack, Brodeo (featuring former members of Red Penny Arsenal) and Maverick Saints (featuring former members of Bro-9). Although no release dates for any of this material have been … Read more
The image of the chef as temperamental, egotistical, effete tyrant is well established in the public perception, however unfair it may be to more congenial kitchen artists. And the celebrity chef, complete with cookbooks and TV shows, is a cultural fixture. So meeting Brian Canipelli, the executive chef at Asheville’s Savoy Cucina Italiana, is something … Read more
The intrusion of unbridled development into an area that has hosted four-footed wildlife for millennia has inevitably escalated tensions between gardeners and hungry critters. Here are some plants that deer seem to dislike. Datura or angel’s trumpet (Datura inoxia and D. metel) is the annual form of a family of deadly plants best known as … Read more
I suppose I could gloat. While all my gardening friends are still waiting for delivery of the stuff they ordered last month as they drooled over seed catalogs, I’m about to harvest corn. No, not sweet corn, which would surely deliver more pleasure than a mortal soul could handle this early in the season. But … Read more
“What’s taking place at Twenty One Battery Park is great, but … some people can’t afford to continue to own property downtown.” — real-estate appraiser Mac Swicegood The long-abandoned former department-store building is gone, its utilitarian bulk having succumbed to the business end of a wrecking ball. In its place, a massive crane looms over … Read more
