Cover Story
Season of reflection
There’s one thing Fenton Johnson wants you to know about reading this article — in this moment, as you pore over these words, we are all here together. Subject, writer, reader — a trinity held together by language and the printed page, sharing the same space for a few moments. This is not some hokey…
Creatio Ex Nihil
Good news, guys, we found Riki Rachtman! Turns out he was hiding inside the new Stonecutters album, Creatio Ex Nihil (Latin for “Creation from Nothingness,” apparently). Fans of the old, real “Headbangers Ball” will be thrilled by the new collection, and any thrashers who just woke up from a 1988 coma will not be surprised…
Appalatin spreads the love around
Mountains are the common link between the six members of Appalatin, who each took a different path to arrive in Louisville before the turn of the aughts. Yani Vozos, Kentucky-born, picked up Spanish while living in Honduras on a Peace Corps trip. His lingual education wasn’t far off from Marlon Obando’s upbringing in Nicaragua. On…
Locavore Lore: Sweet meat
It might look simple enough: a guy standing at a cart three or four days a week, when the weather’s nice enough, selling sausages on the side of the road. But for Busta Grill proprietor Adam Colvin, it’s just one part of a unique business model. His food reaches many more people around Louisville on…
Staffpicks
Wednesday, May 29 Arsis Diamond Pub (Highlands) 630 Barret Ave. diamondpubandbilliards.com $10; 8 p.m. The past few years have been hard on Arsis, between line-up difficulties, the health struggles of frontman James Malone, and the less-than-stellar reception of their last record, 2010’s Starve for the Devil. Then 2012 saw them re-emerge with a new line-up,…
Advice: Savage Love
Q: I’m a woman in a relationship with an amazing guy for eight years. We have great chemistry and are best friends. My man has this fantasy about seeing me fuck his friends. It comes up every single time we have sex. He begs me to call out their names during sex. I love to…
B-sides
Teeth pull you For about a decade, The Teeth have made some of the finest No Wave proto-punk you’ve probably never heard. An early career plagued by line-up changes has ultimately resulted in the current iteration of Matt Dodds on guitars/vocals, J.R. Rector on drums, Ben Herning on vocals, and Brad Anderson on bass, as…
Keep on the Sunny Side
Playing possum George Jones died on April 26. He was 81 years old. I was so sad and surprised to hear of George’s death. He had really come to seem immortal. When Tammy Wynette died 15 years ago, she was only 55. George outlived Tammy by 26 years! Tammy was always kind of sickly, but…
Industry Standard: Insider info for those who dine out
Last week, I read with interest multiple media accounts of the saga of Amy’s Baking Company, a restaurant in Scottsdale, Ariz. Amy’s is the latest of a long list of ailing restaurants to throw itself into the arms of the producers of “Kitchen Nightmares.” “KN” stars ubiquitous Chef Gordon Ramsay, who famously swoops in to…
Dumbo’s Circus
Island Earth’s latest, like so much of their output, is either love or hate. Circus takes the Villebillies model to the next logical step. They trade much of the twang of their parent group for 808s and even some dubstep wobble at times, and in the end, Circus works. “Bump in the Night” is easily…
Comedy: What’s black, white and laughs all over?
Rich Regains and Cleveland have been close friends and cohorts for more than two decades. They’ve been starving artists and road warriors and personal confidants through growing up, marriages, divorces, the pangs of starting families and everything in between. And they can still get on stage and laugh about all of it together, two brothers-in-arms…
Inbox — May 29, 2013
Correction Last week’s Editor’s Note, “Cancer, Interrupted,” misstated the recommended amount of time a drug like Tamoxifen is taken to reduce the risk of breast cancer. In most cases, the regimen is five years. LEO regrets the error. Breast in Show I’ve been reading/enjoying LEO since it came out more than 20 years ago. The…
Glimpses of meth hell
Among all the drug traffickers I’ve interviewed in 30 years, the most memorable series was with a meth dealer with a moral dilemma. “I can’t do this much longer,” he said. Watching his buyers slowly lose everything healthy persons value was nagging at his conscience. He described the downward spirals of his best customers. They…
Book: Heavy metal and the other
‘What Are You Doing Here?: A Black Woman’s Life and Liberation in Heavy Metal’ By Laina Dawes. Bazillion Points; 224 pgs., $16.95. Reading this book makes me excited, because it is an experience I know quite well, having lived an almost identical one. I want to kick myself, because I should be writing about my…
Plugged In
Readers are strongly encouraged to call ahead to verify these listings. To get your musical act listed, send email to pberkowitz@leoweekly.com with PLUGGED IN in the subject line. The deadline is FRIDAY at NOON the week before the show happens. We do not accept listings via social networking sites. Wed MAY 29 Air Devils…
Taste Bud: It’s a St. Louis thing
I don’t normally venture so far outside Louisville for a Taste Bud, but this one sort of found me. A couple of months back, a reader contacted me regarding a column I’d written about Pizza King, a unique pizzeria in Southern Indiana. He asked if I’d ever had Imo’s pizza from St. Louis. I told…
Video TapeWorm
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS: A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD 2013; $19.98-$39.98; R With Bruce Willis’ John McClane character now an integral part of the national zeitgeist (check out the music video for “Yippee Ki-Yay, Mother Fucker” on the web), it was inevitable that he’d take his reluctant-army-of-one show on the road, this time to…
Monomania
A lethargic malaise runs throughout the sixth album from Atlanta indie-rockers Deerhunter, as if the band is intentionally channeling the best of the ’90s slacker/grunge generation. Tracks like “Leather Jacket II” almost have the energy of contemporaries Women, albeit as filtered through the reverb-soaked Americana that accounts for the majority of the album. Deerhunter certainly…
Sing to the Moon
The UK chanteuse could not be more confident and assured on her beautiful debut. With cosigns from the influential Gilles Peterson on that side of the ocean and KCRW on this, Sing focuses on timeless production from Steve Brown rather than trend-chasing or radio seduction. Outside of the foot-stomping singles “Green Garden” and “That’s Alright,”…
Executive session
Sen. Rand Paul’s very public ambitions toward running for president in 2016 — as well as grabbing headlines — continued as usual last week, capped off by a Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week” in which he called for comprehensive immigration reform, an issue Congress will tackle this Summer. Two days earlier, Paul attended a…
Theater: Life unfolds under a ‘Catfish Moon’
‘Catfish Moon’ An Actor’s Choice Theater’s production. Directed by Michael J. Drury. Continues through June 2 at the Henry Clay Theatre, 604 S. Third St. For tickets or more info, call 495-8358. Once upon a time, three friends grew up on and around an old fishing pier in the South. They swam and skinny-dipped, drank…
