MP3 Monday: New Shouts
Local band New Shouts is new, fresh and most importantly, this week’s MP3 Monday! New Shouts is made up of former members of Camera and Derek White & the Monophobics, who sought to put together more of a soul sound than their previous bands had. They have a few downloads available Bandcamp, but for now…
A Conversation with The Constellations’ Elijah Jones
“Gnarls Barkley coming out made sense to us — people can open their minds and you don’t have to dumb the music down for your audience.”
Gertrude Stein political club endorses Sestak, mentions Onorato honorably
The venerable and honorable Gertrude Stein Club of Greater Pittsburgh has issued its endorsements for the 2010 election. Statewide, Democrat Joe Sestak garnered the endorsement of the Pittsburgh-based organization, which is devoted to gender equity and LGBT rights. Sestak’s backing is no surprise, since he scores highly on gay-friendly issue scorecards. The gruop made no…
What if the Tea Party Was Green?
Not long ago, we wrote about an online music video by local black activist Jasiri X titled, “What if the Tea Party Was Black?” The premise of the song, of course, is that the Tea Party’s aggressively anti-government rhetoric would be far more controversial — and perceived as much more threatening — if its members…
MP3 Monday: Sodajerk
Though Sodajerk has departed from Pittsburgh and moved south, the fond memories of this once-local band live on in this week’s MP3 Monday. “Songs for the Empty Handed,” the title song from Sodajerk’s newest album, is an upbeat guitar heavy track with some slight hints of Southern rock and ‘90s radio pop-rock. Since the band…
“The Monkey’s Paw” & “Happy Garden of Life”
It’s no surprise that fledgling Microscopic Opera’s second production featured engaging music and fine singing. What was unexpected was the thematic intrigue of the show’s narratives — something opera doesn’t always provide. The contemporary chamber operas the troupe specializes in might be an expection to that rule. (Hard for me to say, because we hadn’t…
In Miles case, justice delayed is problem denied
Jordan Miles, the Homewood student left battered from an encounter with three Pittsburgh police officers in January, has started college now. Theoretically, he could graduate before we ever know what will happen to the police involved. Or not. On August 27, KDKA’s Marty Griffin reported that the FBI’s investigation of the incident “is apparently over…
Anti-drilling activists: you are being watched
A couple of developments worth noting on the Marcellus Shale front. First, yesterday the non-profit journalism outfit ProPublica reported on law-enforcement warnings about environmental extremists that oppose natural-gas drilling in the deeply buried shale layer. The document (which City Paper has also independently obtained a copy of) is an “intelligence bulletin” dated Aug. 30 and…
Short List: Week of September 9 – 16
Perhaps Pittsburgh didn’t know it needed a chamber-opera company specializing in contemporary one-acts, but the Microscopic Opera landed with a bang this past March. Its debut program, with the comic “The Proposal” and the tragic “To Hell & Back,” entertained and stunned, respectively. And because there actually are more contemporary, one-act chamber operas out there,…
Mao’s Last Dancer
It sounds like the plot of an old Hollywood weepie: Child is plucked from rural poverty and sent away to the big city to be rigorously trained as a ballet dancer. As an adult, his trip to the big leagues forces him to choose between his craft, his family and his homeland. This tale really…
Legendary
Wispy high school kid Cal (Devon Graye) takes up wrestling in an attempt to connect to his long-dead dad and his estranged older brother, both former champs of the mat. Mel Damski’s teen-sports melodrama is everything you’d expect – from training montages to the Wise Elder at the Catfish Pond (Danny Glover). The only surprise…
Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child
Judging from the title, you might expect this to be a glowing tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat, who helped bring graffiti art into the gallery before dying at age 27. And you’d be right.
Tamra Davis begins her documentary in bohemian early-1980s Lower Manhattan, where Basquiat gravitated after a (largely unexplored) falling-out with his middle-class family.…
Hubble
While part of Toni Myer’s IMAX doc follows the 2009 mission to repair and upgrade the universe’s most famous telescope, it’s not the astronauts who are the stars of Hubble so much as it’s — well, you can probably guess. The film, made in cooperation with NASA, is both a fascinating look at the barely-known…
Film Kitchen
Three locally made films get an screening
Restrepo
The cinema vérité-style film documents the 15-month deployment of the U.S. Army’s Second Platoon Battle Company, which was sent to the far-eastern dangerous Korengal Valley in May 2007. Two events create a loose narrative beyond the film’s apt tagline of “One platoon, one valley, one year.” First, the soldiers reclaim a Taliban artillery nest high…
Café Notte
A tempting tapas menu, offered in a charming locale
New Works Festival
The Pittsburgh New Works Festival has been a home for new one-act plays for two decades now. The 20th season (and second at McKees Rocks’ Father Ryan Arts Center) features a new program of four one-acts each weekend for a month, each staged by a different local company. While winning plays come from around the…
One-Man Archy & Mehitabel
Newspaper columns are seldom the stuff of stage. But archy & mehitabel weren’t the stuff of your everyday newspaper column. The pair were the invention of New York columnist Don Marquis. Archy, a cockroach, was a poet in a previous life. As for mehitabel, archy recounts: “who were you / mehitabel i asked her i…
The Umbrella Man
One early attraction of the new theater season is all tied up with the movies. The Umbrella Man, a stage drama by Edward J. Delaney, started life as “Conspiracy Buff,” a short story Delaney published in The Atlantic in 1996. The screenplay version he co-wrote found its way into the hands of film and stage…
Almost, Maine
Some playwrights, it must be said, are fairly amazing. The world is in a horrible state, indifference to human suffering has never been higher, there’s war without end, hunger without cease, pain without relief … and some playwrights take a look at that landscape and say, “Gee, nobody’s written a play about people falling in…
This Just In: September 9 – 16
Highlights from the local TV news: Goo Goo over Gaga
Art of the Steel
A New CMU Exhibit Celebrates Steelers Fandom
Work, No Release
County wants to use jail inmates for outdoor labor
Empty Bars
Is the state prison on the North Side being underutilized?
Route Limitations
PAT cuts will take larger toll on riders with disabilities
Changing the Channel
PCTV working to find balance between free speech and quality programming
Target Practice
A poem by Christina Murdock
Sweet Tammy’s
A Squirrel Hill bakery is kosher, dairy-free and sinfully delicious
Pittsburgh’s Wise Blood makes national waves, despite playing only one show
“I don’t care if you’re making music if you have no ambition.”
Local band Worn Out Tigers has energy to spare on new EP
Catch a tiger by the tail, even a tired one, and you’d better hang on.
Instrumental Massachusetts band Caspian creates earnest, epic post-rock
The band obviously understands how to use the tension between its quiet moments, relaxed rock and balls-out post-metal.
Five Questions with The Glitch Mob’s Ed Ma
“You’d do the Michael Jackson ‘Black or White’ dance to get the girls’ attention, then when the slow song came on, you really had to dance.”
Toronto power-pop band Zeus heads up multimedia event Sunday
“We were actually harvesting worm castings — so it was pure worm shit, is what we were dealing with,” Quin recalls. “It was actually a really good job.”
Savage Love
A few nights ago, I got drunk and knocked on my roommate’s door and confessed my attraction to him while he was lying in bed in nothing more than his skivvies. (It was dark and I stayed at the door, so I didn’t know that until after the fact.) And then I asked him if…
At Associated Artists’ 100th Annual, some gems emerge from the crowd.
The Annual is like living on a street in Pittsburgh; some of your neighbors are here to stay and others will take what they need and move on.
Playing that same old Toomey
I’ve covered a lot of campaigns where the candidates sounded so much like each other that it was hard keeping the quotes straight. This year’s Pennsylvania Senate campaign isn’t one of them. This year, there’s no confusing the messages of Democrat Joe Sestak and Republican Pat Toomey. This year, the question is whether voters are…
