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The need for speed: Where the Google Fiber road leads
For the last couple of years, discussions about gigabit-speed internet in Louisville were similar to the miles of fiber-optic cable lying dormant beneath the city’s streets: something obscure and technical, of interest mostly to engineers and infrastructure nerds. Then, AT&T sued the city on Feb. 25 over an ordinance intended to fast-track Louisville’s potential transformation…
Sugar rushes and doom metal: NYC trio Sunflower Bean isn’t what you’d expect live, and that’s a good thing
In 2014, before they recorded any music, Oh My Rockness named Sunflower Bean the hardest working band in New York City for playing 50 hometown shows that year, although the indie-rock trio claims it was closer to 100. “50 were just the officially listed shows,” singer/guitarist Nick Kivlen told me this past Saturday outside of…
Muhammad Ali, a loving return to a once-conflicted city
Once in 1,000 years does the world receive a gift like Muhammad Ali. This, from Billy Crystal’s eulogy, just adds more testimony that “The Greatest of All Time” is the most famous person in the world. And a personality that colossal requires at least two days of memorial to honor his legacy. Louisville delivered that…
11 things to do under $5 this week in Louisville (6/3)
MONDAY Canyon Collected New Vintage $5; 8 p.m. Start the week off right with some live music at New Vintage. Bands include Canyon Collected, a “Colorado grass band whiskey bent on blurring genre lines” and The Winger Brothers, who play “all your favorite shitty 90’s country songs and look damn good doing it!” TUESDAY Printing…
LEO Podcast #32: Recently Released (June Edition) — we discuss and play new music from Brenda, Parlour and Black Birds of Paradise
Nik Vechery, Syd Bishop and Scott Recker talk about and listen to new music from local bands, including Brenda, Parlour and Black Birds of Paradise in the first edition of Recently Released, a monthly show featuring our favorite new songs from Louisville musicians. Listen through the widget below, subscribe to the LEO Podcast on iTunes…
Fire breathers, aerial gyms and clowns: A look behind the curtain of Louisville’s expansive circus scene
Running away to join the circus is mythic. A young child — already yearning to escape a hum-drum life — sees the seemingly magical feats under the big top. He steals away in the night: Perhaps there is a train yard. The youngster is discovered by a ringmaster, or perhaps an aerialist, and they begin…
5 things to do in Louisville this weekend (6/10)
FRIDAY Coat Check Pool Party Turners Club Pool (3124 River Road) $10; 8 p.m. Why wouldn’t you want a pool, live music and reasonably-priced drinks in the same place? Night Visions Radio’s Sam Sneed, Rad Tantrum Radio’s McKinley Moor and Clay Baker will be at this event, blasting everyone’s favorite summertime tunes for your entertainment. SATURDAY…
Community college study relied on flawed data, methodology
The president of Kentucky’s community college system pulls in $375,000 annually, a paycheck that’s right on the money when compared with similar institutions, at least according to a school-funded consultant’s report. Consultant Lyle Hanna briefed a few members of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System board of regents last week on his comprehensive review…
Thorns & Roses: The Worst & Best (6/8)
Ali… (Rose) Instead of mourning the death of Muhammad Ali, we will use this space to remember all that he brought to the city and world, and to reprise our favorite Ali quote: “Don’t count the days, make the days count.” He certainly did. Whose memorial? (Thorn) Two fatal shootings and a fatal stabbing over…
In case of fire, run: A conversation ?with Peter Tork of The Monkees
The Monkees are perhaps the most misunderstood band in all of rock ‘n’ roll history, and depending on who you ask, they might not actually be a band at all. Michael Nesmith, Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones and Peter Tork were first brought together in late 1965 via a television casting call for a forward–looking Marx…
b-sides: American Lesions
Dave Bird, who started out fronting the criminally-overlooked southern-fried indie group Hedge, went on to perform with dozens of projects, including stints with bands that featured Will Oldham and Sean Garrison, The Healthy and Happiness Family Gospel Band and The Rebaba Group, among others. In some ways, his current band, American Lesions, is a full…
Thaniel Ion Lee: Sleep
(self-released) The aptly-named Sleep from visual and sonic artist Thaniel Ion Lee admirably lives up to its name in a way that hypnotizes and blankets the listener. Comprised of one long and unbroken drone, the 30-minute track is a deep and vibrating pulse that blends seamlessly into the background, humming and throbbing along in the…
killii killii: I Believe in Rollerblading
(self-released) With I Believe in Rollerblading, indie-prog rockers killii killii make their debut with a heavy emphasis on big sounds. The bass and drums bounce, and the guitar and occasional synth serve as textural work more than anything else, oscillating between lead lines and an almost shimmering kind of ambient thing. The vocals are traded…
Brenda: Night School
(Dark Circles) How any band can so perfectly encapsulate the summer or good times is beyond my comprehension, but Brenda excels with their indie, rocked-out B-52s vibe. This is the album you need at every party in your future. It’s perfect for swimming or sipping on beers in the shade. Tracks like “Top Shelf” really…
Boner City: Kentucky
(self-released) If you were looking for a dose of in-your-face, no-nonsense punk fury, then Kentucky, the debut album by Boner City, is just what the doctor ordered. The energy is infectious, and it channels some amazing artists into a synthesized whole. There is more than a little hint of The Monorchid or Skull Kontrol, filtered…
Lemonade
We started playing Beyoncé on WFPK. That’s a sentence I never thought I’d write. Nothing against Queen Bey, but we’re not a Top 40 station, and that’s where her music roosts. Then again, it’s 2016, and this isn’t the world I grew up in, thankfully. We used to define ourselves with genre. If you listened…
‘Two Gentleman from Verona’ opens season in a new direction
To change the time period, or not to change the time period? That is the question many producers of Shakespeare face, in some cases, several times a year. A traditional setting for the plays are either Elizabethan garb, or costumes tied to the time period presented in the play — ancient Greece, Scotland in the…
‘Bagged and Bored,’ locally-produced laughs aplenty
It’s a late May evening, at a table outside Kaiju in Germantown, and Matt Gaither, Sean Keller and April Singer are drinking beer and laughing at inappropriate jokes, as friends often do. They hardly resemble their character counterparts from the much buzzed about web series, “Bagged and Bored.” “Bagged and Bored” is a hilarious, scripted…
King’s ‘End of Watch,’ a gripping, realistic trip
End of Watch by Stephen King (Scribner; 448 pgs., $30) C’mon, admit it: Ever since Stephen King became the undisputed master at externalizing our mundane, universal and closely held fears, weren’t you curious about how he’d handle old age? For decades he’s zoomed us all in close to consider mortality, but now he’s reached a…
River House scores a solid average
J.P. Morgan famously said that if you had to ask how much his yacht cost, you couldn’t afford it. The good folks at River House Restaurant & Raw Bar may have had this iconic wisdom in mind when they set up their “reserve” wine list for their new eatery in the yawning riverside quarters that…
Spargel plenty with ?Grüner Veltliner!
It’s that time in Kentucky when buffet tables are laden with traditional favorites such as country ham, corn pudding, beef tenderloin dressed with Henry Bain’s sauce and chocolate desserts flavored with generous lashings of bourbon. Since this is the beginning of the fresh vegetable season, the earliest local greens will be on the table, too.…
Supermarket sushi: ?Does it measure up?
A few years ago I wrote a song about a ghost that haunted a Kroger; it was the ghost of someone who had died after eating spoiled supermarket sushi, and its eternal mission was to warn others, lest they meet the same fate. No, it wasn’t my best work, but the point was clear: Why…
Ali, the poet with a punch
Rednecks full of hot-dogs and mercury who have never played war are now in a race to out gross each other by throwin’ every racist and derogatory epithet they have in their limited vocabulary at Muhammad Ali … look, you dastardly dudes and lil’ lords of confusion, I know you’re sitting there in your shit-shack…
‘… as long as they ain’t free, I ain’t free’
Muhammad Ali was always more than a story. If you were a young black child in the West End, you were likely to be connected in some way. Through family or friends, he was more than some person on the news. He was a favored son from our streets, our neighborhood, one of us. In…
The Greatest
I was all ready to write a column about the shooting of that gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo, as well as about the deplorable conditions of the Wildlife in Need zoo in Southern Indiana. From the irresponsibility and arrogance of humanity as demonstrated by these recent cases, to Sea World’s treatment of orcas, my tolerance…
Your Voice
on faces of hope: new legacy aims to break the prison cycle I think this is a wonderful concept, and a very needed service. Thank you for what you’re doing. —Fausta Luchini This is great to know! I do prison ministry, and know of other resources in Louisville, but had not heard of this ……
