Cover Story
Twist of the Wrist
For the first 10 seconds you are plugging along, taking in the hills rolling alongside you while the sun plays tricks on your eyes through the clear plastic shield on your helmet, and the low rumble of the engine as it winds through third gear begins to fade. The wind takes over, whipping your head…
Greg Fischer interview: Part II
LEO Weekly recently sat down with the candidate, talking about the Metro Council, billion-dollar bridges, The Cordish Cos., Louisville’s restlessness and his mayoral philosophy. Here’s an excerpt from that interview: LEO: What are your thoughts on the $950,000 The Cordish Cos. used to renovate the Sports & Social Club at Fourth Street Live? There are…
Beer and loathing in America
The White House happy hour President Obama convened last week to soothe hurt feelings between Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge Police Sgt. James Crowley was yet another glimpse at the undeniable reconciliatory power of beer. Beer has been making jokes funny, furniture comfortable and homely people sexy for at least 10,000 years,…
Between Noise and The Indians
At first glance, Bloomington, Ind., trio Push-Pull are just another rush of punk silliness. To dismiss them as such ignores how solid their latest album, Between Noise and the Indians, really is. These guys bump along on a wave of instrumental adrenaline and don’t let up. Opener “Write, Right” kicks into overdrive, and the pyrotechnics…
Floating
Invaders are much more than a fuzzed-out version of The Merediths, but that’s the starting point. Joe Meredith wants to plug us into the dream-space of someone who’s reacting to his new band’s sound, as opposed to simply giving us the tunes with an aural sauce of distortion and echo. Engineer Kevin Ratterman at The…
Pilot lights
For Oregon outfit Blind Pilot, it all started with a couple of bikes. Singer-guitarist Israel Nebeker and drummer Ryan Dobrowski, the band’s founding members, got going with a bike tour down the west coast in 2007. That trip ended due to a theft of their transportation in front of San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art,…
Inbox — Aug. 5, 2009
Not So Fast Am I crazy, or have you completely removed your local music listings? My next question, if I’m correct about this, is why would you ever do that? Something LEO could definitely brag about was their coverage of local music. I’m sorry — your picks of a few shows here and there doesn’t…
Mugshots
I’m packing tonight for our annual (and purely educational) NABC company jaunt to Madison, Wis., and another fervent immersion in the city’s unequaled craft beer celebration, the Great Taste of the Midwest. As always, the Great Taste takes place on a single Saturday afternoon at a pleasant wooded park alongside Lake Olin, with a gorgeous…
Jerry’s kids
Louisville businessman Greg Fischer was quick to announce his candidacy for mayor, and he believes the early entry will help set the tone of his campaign. “I would like to see a city that’s more open, transparent, inclusive and empowering,” he says. “One that celebrates its successes, but also a city that has no problem…
Team wonderdyke goes south
I woke up at 5 a.m. to the smell of cat pee. I don’t know of a word that accurately captures this smell; cat pee is its own world, and generally speaking, whatever reaction might happen after the discovery of it before 9 a.m. — short of killing — is the correct one. Last week,…
Industry standard: Insider info for those who dine out
It happens to every restaurant patron at some point: disappointment over poor service, a substandard dish or an unpleasant atmosphere. The trick to getting a satisfactory resolution in such situations is twofold. First, attempt to pinpoint the source of the trouble. Second, make your dismay known to the proper parties — that means management. For…
Giving sushi a new twist
“I just can’t do sushi,” my Facebook friend Suzie in Arkansas posted. “It’s the redneck in me.” Maybe. But even the most ardent sushi-hater could be rehabilitated at Dragon King’s Daughter, where Toki Masabuchi puts an international twist on the creative sushi delights that have built her a loyal following at Maido Essential Japanese in…
A real American comic book hero
Chuck Dixon may not be a household name, unlike several of the characters he’s depicted in a comic book career that spans nearly three decades. There’s the grim and gritty vigilante the Punisher, J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy staple the Hobbit, America’s favorite family the Simpsons, and the truly iconic Batman, all of which are among the…
Of The Cathmawr Yards
Ex-Eleventh Dream Day and current Freakwater vocalist Janet Beveridge Bean heads an eclectic roster of Chicago-based musicians, and their debut is rather surprising. While Freakwater tend to play it safe within the established parameters of alt-country, The Horse’s Ha are moody and sprawling. The vocal interplay between Bean’s silky melodies and James Elkington’s smoky, Lee…
It means a lot
I have always considered myself something of a weird holy man. I do not believe in an omniscient deity or a creator as most adherents to organized religion seem to. Nor do I believe in an afterlife. To borrow the words of a great human poet, I imagine that there is no heaven (it isn’t…
Definition of Me
I never learned through the album’s 20 tracks what exactly 2-3 stood for, but I will say that after my 2-3rd listen, I liked what I heard. On my first spin, I nearly ejected the disc by the fifth song. Most albums get their first spin in the car, and on my short ride home…
Video Tapeworm
New, encore and low-price releases on Tuesday, August 11 THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS I LOVE YOU, MAN 2009; $29.95-$39.95, R Paul Rudd and Jason Segel star in this uneven, if very watchable, look at male bonding — or maybe how women think guy friendships are made. Rudd is a quiet young man with no…
Freak
Johnny Legs is back. The award-winning writer/performer of the hit one-man shows “Freak” and “Sexaholix … A Love Story” is launching his latest laff riot, “John Leguizamo LIVE!,” at Actors Theatre Aug. 7. Leguizamo may be known to most as a film and TV actor, having appeared in over 80 projects with titles like “Moulin…
Auditor in chief
Testifying before a Metro Council committee about a lack of oversight in the city’s payroll system, Metro Human Resources Director Bill Hornig tried to downplay one of several blunders uncovered by a recent internal audit. The snafu in question stemmed from Mayor Jerry Abramson’s decision to pay two top officials more for accrued vacation time…
A.D. (After David)
The saddest thing about the news that David Hawpe is retiring from The Courier-Journal is how little news it made. Sure, there had been an anticipatory stir locally over the past couple weeks, and plenty of web busybodies have been dancing on the professional grave of the liberal they loved to hate. Editor & Publisher…
Everybody Come Outside
Whoever happens to be in charge of deciding release dates at Lujo Records deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom or the Nobel Prize or something roughly equivalent. Maybe a Klondike bar. I would have liked the Pomegranates’ sophomore album, Everybody Come Outside, whether it came out in June or January, but I love it best…
B-Sides
Etta James’s Aug. 16 show at The Louisville Palace has been canceled due to personal reasons, according to a statement from Outback Concerts. Ticket refunds are available immediately at point of purchase. Contact The Palace box office at 583-4555. Amherst break up Post-emo outfit Amherst play their final show at Headliners (1386 Lexington Rd., 584-8088)…
Outside Love
He’s prolific, no doubt, but the better of Sam McBean’s two musical endeavors is not this band, it’s the other: Black Mountain. Coincidentally, or maybe by design, the names say it all. Black equals darkness, fear, danger; mountain is power. Pink is, well, a little gay. And the mountaintop: pointy with nowhere to go but…
The most unusual of gatherings
We’re sitting at one of the half-dozen red picnic tables, roughly dead-center at the 129th Fancy Farm Picnic, and the thick musk of barbequed pig permeates from nearly every pore of this place: our picnic table, our clothes — the trees, even. One would expect no less from the world’s largest one-day barbeque, which also…
The Spirit of ’74
In June of 1974, The Grateful Dead were going to honor the end of my first year of law school at the University of Kentucky, and my impending 23rd birthday with a show at Freedom Hall. I “got on the bus” during my senior year of high school, when the Dead played Bellarmine College on…
