Cover Story
Leaving the nest
Phil Rollins has been immersed in the University of Louisville hoops tradition for half a century. His playing days predate Freedom Hall. As a senior in 1956, he starred on Louisville’s team that ruled Madison Square Garden and has been a fixture at Freedom Hall since 1963 after his pro career ended. He’s red and…
Mixed bag
Just as the U.S. Department of Commerce reported last week that home sales plummeted 11.2 percent in January to their lowest rate in nearly 50 years, a Louisville warehouse at the corner of 18th and Main streets continued to slowly disappear. For the better part of a year, this once-massive, 19th-century brick structure has been…
Tea party patriots: all-jokes edition
How many tea party patriots does it take to change a lightbulb? Ten million and five: One to go to Wal-Mart and buy a lightbulb (and a gun because he’s going to the store anyway), one to scoff at global climate change, one to draw a rally poster making fun of Al Gore, one to…
Plugged In
Readers are strongly encouraged to call ahead to verify these listings. To get your club, comedian, musical act or karaoke listed, please send e-mail to mherron@leoweekly.com with PLUGGED IN in the subject line. The deadline is NOON THURSDAY the week before the event occurs. We do not accept listings via social networking sites. Wed. Mar. 3…
Staffpicks
March 3-7 ‘A Song for Coretta’ Thrust Theatre 2314 S. Floyd St. 852-6814 $12 ($8 students); 8 p.m. (w/ 3 p.m. matinee on Sun.) Written by Pearl Cleage, “A Song for Coretta” takes place in 2006 at the memorial service in Atlanta for Coretta Scott King. The story focuses on the interactions of strangers waiting…
Bawn ready
Paducah, Ky., isn’t outer space, but Bawn in the Mash describes itself as intergalactic folk and Americana. Through three studio albums and a 2007 live one, the aim has always been testing limits. “Compared to the other three records, it will be the same feel, the same band,” says mandolin player Thomas Oliverio. “I’m looking…
Double Jointer
On their debut, Brooklyn’s Golden Triangle create an endearing racket so simplistic, it’s a wonder it took six band members to create it. The record has a cavernous, distant-sounding production that feels coated in appealing layers of grime, and while the songwriting is a little undercooked, the band has panache to spare, and their amateurish…
July Flame
“Rapture” was the first Laura Veirs song I ever heard. It was buried mid-album on Carbon Glacier, furnished with a simple guitar/keyboard arrangement and Liz Phair-levels of keylessness. It was an oddly haunting song and I liked her imperfect voice and vaguely apocalyptic lyrics. I looked in to some of her older albums and found…
They can kill you, but they can’t eat you
There was this kid I’ve known since high school: 22 years old, chronically unemployed and a month’s rent away from homelessness. His father drank himself to death. His mother disappeared. And his sister, who’d gotten him through his formative years, had just OD’d in Florida. I suppose it was more than he could take. He…
Cricket’s Café adds flavor to Sunny Side
You want fries with that? Eh. I’ll admit I often save a little time and eat a chain burger or corporate taco. But I know there are alternatives out there if I need them. Over in Sellersburg, Cricket’s Café offers such an option. Primarily a catering boutique for business lunches and corporate events, Cricket’s also…
Industry Standard: Insider info for those who dine out
The day after Valentine’s Day, a friend asked where my boyfriend had taken me to dinner. I’m afraid a whoop of laughter escaped before I could clap a hand over my mouth. “Oh, is he one of those non-romantic Valentine’s Day haters?” she asked. To set the record straight: My Valentine’s Day was plenty romantic,…
Frets on fire
Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero know they’re not the first guitarists to fuse Latin rhythms and rock. To them, knowing your history is vital. On the liner notes to their new album, 11:11, the Mexican-born duo pays homage to string heroes like Pantera’s Dimebag Darrell, Jersey City’s jazz fusion impresario Al Di Meola and Alex…
Book: Carlin’s life and stuff
Last Words By George Carlin, Tony Hendra. Free Press; 294 pgs., $26.99. With George Carlin comes certain expectations. We loved his comedy because it contained sociological and linguistic intelligence; it used humor as a vehicle for his realizations about religion (especially the Catholic Church) and politics (in the second half of his career). So in…
Video TapeWorm
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS: CAPITALISM: A LOVE STORY 2009; $20.95-$24.95, R Forget what you’ve been told by the Republican-controlled press: Michael Moore loves the American way of life as much as any man alive, and he demonstrates it in this solid little doc about the corporatocracy that now rules our country — if not the…
Kentucky wants your nuclear waste? Hardly
Lawmakers often lament that in the cacophony of the 24-hour news cycle, their words, deeds and policies are drowned out in a din of conflicting messages, celebrity gossip and public indifference. So when one of the nation’s most respected news magazines of record — Newsweek — turns its far-reaching and influential attention toward your small…
Inbox — March 3, 2010
Broader Views I find it fascinating that the six individuals who wrote the Guest Commentary (LEO Weekly, Feb. 17) are so obviously one-sided when it comes to Israel’s incursion into Gaza. I, too, was not happy with the Goldstone Report. Apparently there were things that happened in Gaza that were very wrong, but I doubt…
Comedy: Greg Giraldo
Greg Giraldo has built a reputation for being the meanest guy in the room, but with his cool, nonchalant delivery, it’s hard to be mad at him, even when you’re the target of his hostility. As the ringleader of the Comedy Central roasts, he’s gotten to take some hilariously obscene digs at people like Pamela…
The Stimulus Package
This album is going to be hard to beat, and it’s only March. Whether it’s an official album, mixtape or an odd guest verse on someone else’s song, Freeway annihilates the microphone. You always read in film reviews about an actor “chewing up the scenery”; this is the model Freeway uses. Jake One provides a…
Mug Shots: Cold-weather beers
My ancestry is as clear as mud — specifically, the flat and indefensible terrain formerly occupied by land-owning Junkers in eastern Germany and the western half of what is now sovereign Poland. Rest assured, my people were the German workers hoeing endless rows, not the Bismarckian aristocrats in the manor house. My guess is that…
The Grape Escape: Winehouse rock
It’s worth the small effort to learn how to taste wine as the wine geeks do. Why? Because quality wine (defined as a “bottle that costs at least twice as much as a six-pack of microbrewery beer”) should merit more attention than Coca-Cola or iced tea, or what’s the point of the extra toll? Good…
Art: Meditative space for The Healing Place
Last fall, as the darker hours of the day stretched longer and longer, Miya Ando started making weeklong trips from her Brooklyn home to The Healing Place, an alcoholism and addiction recovery facility here in Louisville. After being commissioned by Healing Place president Jay Davidson to design an installation for the meditative space in the…
Off the Edge: Live at the Highlands Festival
Edgehill Avenue sounds like a great band. They’re rooted in the classic rock and soulful blues that sappy music critics (myself included) go crazy over. The guys write downhearted songs that are as solid as their sound. On Off the Edge, a live album recorded at last year’s Original Highlands Festival, the band gives a…
Mwaliko
Mostly comprised of duets with guests, including Angelique Kidjo and Esperanza Spalding, plus three songs with his trio, Mwaliko could have been a disaster. The clarity of Lionel Loueke’s vision, however, weaves the album’s disparate threads into a unified tapestry. “Ami O” sets the pace. Loueke’s lilting guitar and Kidjo’s singing sound warm and full.…
A brilliant mistake
Last time we met, as we were parting ways, I blurted out that it might be time for you to watch the Coen Brothers’ recent movie, but I mistyped the name. The actual title is “A Serious Man.” I wrote “A Simple Man.” When I reviewed the record later, I was disappointed in my lapse,…
Theater: ‘Sirens’ goes for easy, forced laughs
Sirens Part of the 34th Humana Festival of New American Plays. Continues through March 28 at Actors Theatre. Directed by Casey Stangl. For tickets or more info, call 584-1205 or visit www.actorstheatre.org. It’s a risky business for a writer, mining the zeitgeist for laughs and meaning. Drill into the culture at the wrong time…
Theater: ‘Fissures’ gets lost quick but is eventually found
Fissures (lost and found) Part of the 34th Humana Festival of New American Plays. Continues through March 28 at Actors Theatre. Directed by Dominique Serrand. For tickets or more info, call 584-1205 or visit www.actorstheatre.org. Actors Theatre continues its 34th Annual Humana Festival of New American Plays with “Fissures (lost and found),” a collaboration of…
Introducing Perunika Trio
It’s unlikely you’ll hear another record like Introducing anytime soon. The album isn’t just stylistically quirky – it traffics entirely in choral Bulgarian folk songs, which are alien to most Western pop music listeners. The record is mostly a cappella, and none of it’s in English. In other words, it’s hardly going to be everyone’s…
