MP3 Monday: New Shouts
Lots of big local releases in the month of September — which means lots of fodder for MP3 Monday! This week? A new track from New Shouts. The local throwback pop band is releasing its first EP, Sing New Shouts, tomorrow online, and has its official release show Sat., Sept. 24 at Thunderbird Cafe. Read…
City of Asylum Jazz Poetry Concert
The Jazz Poetry Concert’s seventh iteration was among the better installments of the free series — and that’s not even counting the surprise appearance by the world’s most famous tightrope walkers. Yes, those were three members of The Flying Wallendas (Tino, Alex and Aurelia) doing an unannounced 20-minute tightrope routine 15 feet above the stage…
Quick follow-ups
Welcome back to the working week. A couple of quick updates for you on some old business. First, not so long ago, I profiled Steve Bodner, the Murrysville-born, Reserve-residing frontman of the band Damaged Pies. I mentioned he was getting a Jefferson Award for his community service; in today’s Post-Gazette, the Jefferson Awards write-up on…
Vampires
You really don’t know what to expect from this mockumentary, written and directed by Vincent Lannoo. The premise finds a documentary crew chronicling the life of a Belgian vampire family. The film is full of political satire and humor. But the extra oomph comes from the horror side. These are not your Twilight vampires; these…
Rejoice and Shout
Much of the territory covered by Don McFlynn in his gospel-music documentary is familiar, including the conflict between sacred and secular music. But McFlynn more than atones with an amazing array of vintage film clips showcasing complete (or nearly complete) songs by perhaps 20 gospel stars, from prewar acts like The Dixie Hummingbirds to contemporary…
Magic Trip
It was 1964 when counterculture icon and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest novelist Ken Kesey and his Merry Band of Pranksters began their seminal, LSD-fueled bus trip from Oregon to New York and back. Inspired by On the Road — and with Kerouac pal Neal Cassady behind the wheel — they were on a…
Life, Above All
The hero of this South African drama is Chanda, an adolescent girl whom we meet in mourning for her infant sister. With men largely absent from her life, Chanda negotiates poverty with a sick mother whose illness, AIDS, reveals their village as a miasma of gossip and superstition. Also an outcast is Chanda’s loyal friend…
Short List: Week of September 8 – 15
Thu., Sept. 8 — Dance Ever-experimental Attack Theatre thinks you’ll want in on its latest, What?, from the beginning. Tonight, with just two days of full-company work under its belt, the troupe invites audiences to the first of three “creation” shows it’s calling What is what? — structured rehearsals for a work in progress. Then,…
Critics’ Picks: Sept 9 – 12
[INDIE POP] + FRI., SEPT. 9 Australian-born Annabel Alpers sings of her “electric husband” but goes by the moniker Bachelorette. The electronics-supported songstress’s latest, a self-titled LP, is her fifth record for Drag City. Tonight she plays as part of Vitaminwater Uncapped Live, a three-day mini-fest taking place in the YMCA building in East Liberty.…
On the Record with John Hiatt
John Hiatt, whose songs have been recorded by everyone from Mandy Moore to Iggy Pop and Willie Nelson, recently released his 20th album, Dirty Jeans and Mudslide Hymns. The song “Damn This Town” expresses feelings of angst over small-town life. It seems a lot of people with that kind of background have a love/hate…
Winds (and Strings) of Change
At the South Side’s Beehive Coffeehouse, the members of local chamber-music quintet Aeolian Winds sit on a small platform, where the décor suggests a stylish late-1960s living room. As they move with agility through pieces by Medaglia and Debussy, some audience members sit rapt, facing the stage; some type on laptops or read; others pause…
Static brings electronic music to a big room in the Strip
Two weekends ago, Static, which purports to be Pittsburgh’s first club exclusively offering electronic dance music, opened in the Smallman Street space that many remember as Rosebud and Metropol. The club’s ultimate success might depend on its ability to draw together elements of the city’s flourishing electronic underground and its more mainstream club scene. A…
Clawing Their Way to the Top
Once upon a time, Jesse Hall was in a pop-punk band from Pittsburgh. But in just two years, the 29-year-old guitarist has managed to turn into a Nashville resident who looks like he’s been playing folky rock for half his life — and hasn’t touched a razor to his face in a decade. In 2009,…
On the Record with Bernard Goldstein
Among the programs the Department of Homeland Security created after the Sept. 11 attacks was BioWatch, which helped provide earlier detection of airborne biological attacks in urban areas. Dr. Bernard Goldstein chaired a federal committee that assessed the effectiveness of BioWatch and other public-health programs. He is a professor of environmental and occupational health at…
Left Behind
Don’t ask local activists or civil-liberties experts to pinpoint the worst excess of the “war on terror” since the 9/11 terror attacks. After a decade, they say, there are too many to choose from. Random searches on public transportation. The surveillance and infiltration of Muslims. The demonization of protest and anti-government sentiment — unless it…
… And a Coffee Chaser
Adam DeSimone didn’t want another bar on East Carson Street. That wouldn’t be surprising if he were just another South Side resident. But he’s the owner of Diesel Club Lounge — and when he decided to open a business at 1737 East Carson, another bar would’ve been an easy choice. “You open a bar and…
Cibo
It was a forehead-slapping moment: Until our Regent Square-dwelling friends pointed it out, we’d never noticed that one side of Braddock Avenue in that neighborhood houses all the bars, while the other side is a hot spot for BYOB restaurants. The reason is simple: The “restaurant” side is in Edgewood, which is dry, and the…
Fearing Fear Itself
In the next few days, we’re all going to be asked to remember Where You Were on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Already, the route-number displays on Port Authority buses are instructing us to “Never Forget 9-11-01”; we’ll probably soon be treated to photographs and soundbites we thought we had forgotten: George W. Bush…
Star Wars and Junkies
A poem by Jimmy Cvetic
Savage Love
Dear readers: I’m on vacation. The questions and answers in this week’s column are three recent installments of the “Savage Love Letter of the Day,” which folks with the Savage Love app for iPhone or Android receive daily. If you have the app, you’ve already read these questions and second-guessed my answers. Sorry about that.…
The Man Who Fell to Earth
There are many ways to approach Nicolas Roeg’s 1976 cult classic starring David Bowie as a copper-haired space alien; perhaps the readiest is as a grandiose parable of rock-star degeneration (with loud echoes of Citizen Kane). In one reel, Bowie’s mysterious Mr. Newton goes from solitary nobody to technology tycoon. All he really wants is…
Warrior
The first hour of Warrior tells a core story of a divided family that we’ve seen before, but it’s one worth retelling if you can tell it well. Paddy Conlon (Nick Nolte) was an alcoholic who beat his wife until she moved far away with Tommy, their younger son. Older son Brendan stayed behind. Now…
Pennsylvania Dance Theatre brings a dark new work to town.
“Intense” is the best word to describe Andre Koslowski’s choreography. His works conjure a panoply of emotional states not unlike those of a fellow German choreographer, the late Pina Bausch. Koslowski formerly danced with Pittsburgh Dance Alloy, and became Pennsylvania Dance Theatre’s artistic director in 2003. His more European contemporary-dance aesthetic has been successfully adopted…
Vanities
South Park Theatre has chosen a really weak play, Jack Heifner’s Vanities. Neither director Joe Warik nor his capable cast compensates for the emptiness of the first two acts. The title may refer to the shallowness of the three women whose lives are glimpsed over 20 years. Until the third act, such shallowness is…
A New Brain
Not long after composer/lyricist William Finn won the 1992 Tony Award for his musical Falsettos, he collapsed. Diagnosed with an “arteriovenous malformation” — a screwed-up artery/vein connection — Finn underwent risky brain surgery. During his recovery, he later said, the music poured out of him. He turned those songs into the 1998 show A New…
The REP launches a season of firsts with A Child’s Guide to Heresy
Point Park’s professional theater company, the REP, has staged plenty of world premieres. In 2009, for instance, it debuted Thom Thomas’s drama A Moon to Dance By, starring stage icon Jane Alexander, later produced at New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse. And it’s staged several world premieres by Pittsburgh’s own Tammy Ryan, whose works have been…
County Human Relations Commission presses for action on domestic-partner benefits
After more than a year of prodding, the Allegheny County Human Relations Commission has again asked Dan Onorato to extend domestic partner benefits to county employees. The HRC previously recommended the county implement domestic-partner benefits last June. And in a Sept. 1 letter, the HRC asks that Onorato take advantage of an upcoming enrollment period…
Kathleen George took an unlikely route from theater professor to mystery author.
“My life is a series of accidents,” says Kathleen George. Indeed, George, 67, never expected to become a mystery writer. Drafting her first novel, Taken, was an unexpected twist for this University of Pittsburgh professor, and so were her next three books. Last month, George published her fifth thriller, Hideout, on Minotaur Books. She also…
