Critics’ Picks: School of Seven Bells, Liz Phair, Ted Leo and more
Music highlights for the week of Jan. 20-26, including the Winter Void Music and Art Festival and a local electronic music showcase.
After a quarter-century, Stephen Petronio Company offers a retrospective of its sexy, inventive dance works.
“For 25 years I fought to build the Petronio style and I thought, ‘Now what do I do?'”
An art exhibit suggests a new normal of downsizing, sharing and DIY pluck.
Derk Wolmuth’s “This Free Public Shower” is a fully functioning bathing station made of materials from condemned Braddock houses.
Our Hit Parade arrives with its wild, love-hate takes on the top-10 pop countdown.
“Oh, we’re going to do a goth-rock verison of a Katy Perry song.”
The search for gender identity keys Stacey Waite’s new poetry collection.
Waite’s work has a searching feel, wielding all those nos and nots as tools of self-definition and discovery.
Basic Cuts
State’s low-cost insurance is on life support
Encore Performance
Anne Feeney hasn’t stopped fighting
On the Record
A Q&A with Joe Sestak
The Fuzzy Blue Line
The city pays again for ‘off-duty’ cop actions
Off to the Races
CP takes an early look at city council’s primary elections
Paczki Sweeten Winter Gloom
The wait is over: The pre-Lent polish pastries are back.
The Warhol makes Oakland inroads, while Drusky Entertainment celebrates five years
Among the recent shifts in Pittsburgh’s concert ecosystem, 2011 sees new developments from presenters like Drusky Entertainment and The Andy Warhol Museum.
Musical Chairs
From a list of city proclamations, each passed by Pittsburgh City Council, marking local or national musicians for their accomplishments
Plenty of Pittsburgh-based musicians are skilled with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other standard online promotion tools. But Kellee Maize operates on a different level. Just Google “female rapper,” and behold her spot at No. 1. “That was a goal, awhile ago,” Maize says, via phone; an intern with a knack for search-friendly websites helped make…
Musicians like Jonathan Coulton build a grassroots following through Twitter follows
Singer-songwriter Jonathan Coulton quit his programming job in 2005 to pursue an independent music career, armed with an acoustic guitar and the Internet. By 2007, according to a New York Times feature on him, Coulton was earning a decent living — thanks to songs like “Code Monkey” and his earnest cover of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby…
Communing with Spirits
Summer Voelker is haunted by spirits. The fermented kind. “Whenever I’m thinking of new cocktails and I’m stumped on it — or I try it, and it’s gross — I get mad, and then I don’t sleep,” she says. “I wake up at 4 in the morning, and I’m writing down [notes] in my journal.”…
Savage Love
I am a 23-year-old female. A year ago, I moved across the country after college to live with my boyfriend of four years. He is in graduate school and is the only person I really know here — I am working two part-time jobs, and my coworkers are either much older than me or a…
Firing Blanks
From Stanton Heights to Tucson, nothing changes
Brothers Size playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney is busier than ever as City Theatre stages his Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet.
“He absolutely creates his own world, and it’s probably one you haven’t been to before.”
5 AM
The 32nd edition of this venerable poetry newspaper, edited by Ed Ochester and Judith Vollmer, is out and as usual worth a look. The twice-yearly 5 AM, which has published continually for about 20 years, is devoutly democratic in its approach. By design, the work is accessible (i.e., non-academic). The tabloid-formatted publication is handsome in…
Fitzgerald takes up tax reassessments
Allegheny County President Rich Fitzgerald plans to introduce legislation tonight that will urge state government — including Tom Corbett and a Republican-controlled legislature — to halt Allegheny County’s reassessment process. In a statement sent out around noon today, Fitzgerald said that the reassessment “singles out the residents and businesses of Allegheny County, and will have…
MP3 Monday: Spontaneo
Hi! Hey! Welcome to the third week of January, 2011! I hope you’re having an introspective Martin Luther King Day. Here to add some levity to the day is our MP3 Monday, courtesy of the band Spontaneo. Spontaneo released its first full-length on Modern Short Stories last year; today’s MP3 comes from that record. Before…
Nichole Canuso Dance Company’s TAKES
I’d never before seen anything quite like this Philadelphia-based troupe’s new show, making its Pittsburgh premiere at the Kelly-Strayhorn this week. The set was contained entirely within a 25-square-foot enclosure of sheer white fabric, the walls about 10 feet high. Thus the two dancers were completely confined and separated from the audience – most of…
WDUQ sold, for much less than its owner sought
Well, it could have been a worse. A lot worse. Duquesne University could have sold WDUQ-FM — which it put on the block last year — to a bunch of religious nuts, as some people feared. Instead, the school announced today that the station will be sold — for $6 million — to a joint…
A couple of psyche-up songs
It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Pittsburgh Year again, and a couple of local bands — one quite seasoned, the other more of an up-and-comer in the game — have brought out Steelers fight songs to get you stoked for Saturday’s game against Those Damn Ravens. KardaZ — about whom I wrote a couple…
The seat ain’t cold — it ain’t even empty — but Flaherty hopes to fill it
Even as county excecutive Dan Onorato is holding a press conference to discuss his future plans, county controller Mark Patrick Flaherty is announcing his plans to seek Onorato’s job. Moments ago, Flaherty released the following statement: “Dan Onorato has served the people of Allegheny County with distinction over the past 30 years. First, as a…
Short List: Week of January 13 – 20
Off work for Martin Luther King Jr. Day? After you’ve reread “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” or dialed up one of King’s epochal speeches online, get out and do what the man himself would prefer (assuming that you’re not already busy organizing the poor for social reform): Engage your community. This Jan. 17, Pittsburgh offers multiple,…
Beyond Repair?
Can the repair shop survive in a global economy? Someday, it may be the only thing that does.
Donato’s
A gently updated, Italian-inflected twist on the classic fine dining experience
Made in Dagenham
There’s a pretty good chance you’ll really, really like Rita O’Grady (Sally Hawkins), a working-class British gal who led women in a 1968 strike against the automaker Ford: She’s a Norma Rae of sunshine standing up for equal pay, and the strike produced new labor laws in Britain. Nigel Cole, directing William Ivory’s articulate script,…
Country Strong
An up-and-coming country singer named Beau (Garrett Hedlund) joins the tour of a fresh-out-rehab C&W star Kelly Canter (Gywneth Paltrow), at the request of her husband/manager (Tim McGraw). Add a beauty queen named Chiles (Leighton Meester), who’s got cow eyes for Beau, Kelly and stardom. Hoo boy — just add Jack Daniels and this is…
Blue Valentine
As Blue Valentine unravels, we meet Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) at different points in their relationship. Cianfrance’s doesn’t tell his challenging slice-of-life drama in chronological order. The departure from a straightforward chronology frees us from wondering what will happen next, and allows us to concentrate on what’s happening right before us. Each…
A visiting choreographer finds novel ways to combine dance and video.
Canuso and Jan wanted to create a work that combined the ways in which we watch a movie; view an art installation; and absorb a live dance performance.
Mary Poppins
It’s hard not to take something like Mary Poppins personally. I mean, what are the chances that one show could contain every single thing I hate about theater? You go into something like this stage-musical version of the kiddie film on the assumption that it’s going to be … well, not Mourning Becomes Electra, but…
This Just In: January 13 – 20
Highlights from the local TV news: Gimme All Your Lovin’ — And Everything Else!
A young local writer parlays his interest in mixed martial arts into a nascent career.
“You can’t be a writer and a fighter.”
Duquesne University clarifies pharmacy policy
Contrary to a report in last week’s City Paper, a Hill District pharmacy operating under the auspices of Duquesne University does not, and will not, offer contraception or Plan B.
Behind in the Count
For a big sports town, there are few women reporting on the action
New supergroup Terrible Things features members of Taking Back Sunday, Hot Rod Circuit and Coheed and Cambria
Based on nearly 50 arsons that terrorized Coatesville, Pa., in 2008-9, Terrible Things’ new album offers a Springsteen-ish vision of wasted lives and redemptive hopes.
Dean & Britta’s show at Carnegie Lecture Hall revisits the music of Galaxie 500
Galaxie 500 played stark songs, where the simplest chords could cast a hypnotic spell and many songs ended with long, psychedelic guitar solos.
Black Tape For A Blue Girl unspools, then winds up as 10 Neurotics
Sam Rosenthal uses narrative sketches and characters to explore salacious subject matter: S&M; furries; adulterers; exhibitionists; humiliation play; and anonymous sex.
Rivertowne Pour House
The beer alone makes it well worth the quick jaunt to the suburbs.
Johnstown collective My Idea of Fun hosts showcase at 31st Street Pub
Not exactly a label, not a publisher, My Idea of Fun is more a clearinghouse for like-minded artists.
This summer, dying on us
A poem by Carolyne Whelan
Savage Love
Any time I have relationship questions, I always ask my inner Dan Savage, and he never leads me astray! My boyfriend and I have had a wonderful relationship for six years. We have had “girlfriends” in the past who were involved with both of us simultaneously. But he recently met a girl and they instantly…
Homestead’s Bulgarian-Macedonian cultural center is a uniquely resonant venue for am exhibition of contemporary art.
Petrov’s abstract paintings hang in a state of constant flux, simultaneously defined by the viewer’s imagination and the building’s history.
Port Authority board approves service cuts
The Port Authority amended its service reduction plan slated for March and will only cut 15 percent of its bus and light-rail service. The agency expects to lose 13,000 riders due to the cuts, which are scheduled for March 27. The agency will eliminate 270 positions and expects about 180 of those as layoffs. The…
Pick your Poison tonight at Howlers
It’s snowy. I get it. You probably don’t want to venture far tonight, for fear of getting stuck on one of the roads that Pittsburgh Public Works forgot existed. Well, if you’re in or close to the Bloomfield area, go get a drink and check out a rock band from Italy. Eh? Betty Poison is…
