When a car manufacturer wants to sell you a new model, his ads show the vehicle speeding unhampered through an immense, pristine landscape. It’s always some vista utterly unscathed by the mark of human habitation: no Exxon stations, no Taco Bells, no landfills, no asphalt plants, no disfigured mountainsides. Sort of like the scenery captured … Read more
So you’re throwing a little shindig to celebrate your band’s anniversary. As the party gets under way, Richard Thompson glides in, guitar in hand. Then a battle-scarred Tom Waits slouches through the door, Elvis Costello and Dave Alvin close on his heels, while Mavis Staples and Bobby Womack saunter in a bit later. Rounding out … Read more
Of note • Secrets From Space: Not satisfied with their self-titled The Alien Music Club, the band has announced plans to release a new album, Top Secret, later this summer. For more information, visit www.alienmusicclub.com. • Unleashing the ‘core: Asheville’s emo-hardcore rock unit Secret Lives of the Freemasons plan to release their debut CD on … Read more
A recent summer-evening reverie on the porch was abruptly interrupted when a swarming mass of mosquitoes attacked, forcing us to seek shelter behind screens and solid walls. Later, as I pondered the irony of having been put to flight by something no bigger than a freckle and lighter than a hair, I began to wonder … Read more
I well recall the first time I ventured over the river and way out Haywood Road to a scruffy shop in West Asheville, driven by the desperate need for an appliance part. It must have been about 1984. Haywood Road definitely wasn’t happening. Vacant storefronts, some boarded up, seemed more the rule than the exception, … Read more
“You don’t increase water quality by cutting trees.” — ecologist Bob Gale, WNC Alliance In Asheville, the mere presence of a plan of whatever sort is often enough to foster controversy. Pile on the possibility of logging in the city’s drinking-water watersheds, and you have the spark that could ignite a brushfire of public protest. … Read more
“Keep an open mind; be fair; realize that you stand at the intersection of the public and our industry … [and] keep politics as far away from this place as you can.” Those were Nelda Holder‘s parting words of wisdom to the two new appointees replacing her and Lew Patrie on the Western North Carolina … Read more
What do Pittsburgh, Portland, Santa Barbara, Vancouver and Brooklyn have in common? None of these large metropolitan areas has an eight-lane highway running through it. Traffic-engineering consultant Michael Moule reported this tidbit during the Asheville City Council’s July 13 formal session. Moule is one of two consultants hired by the Southern Environmental Law Center to … Read more
The MAIN thing “With corporate media consolidation leading to less local news and a rising tide of Kobe Bryant and Laci Peterson ‘info-tainment,’ local communities are hungry for alternative media strategies,” proclaims Wally Bowen, founder and executive director of the Mountain Area Information Network, an Asheville-based nonprofit Internet-service provider. Earlier this month, Bowen traveled to … Read more
