Cover Story
Three-leaf clover
It’s a muggy early summer morning and Tara Littlefield, a field botanist for the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission, is taking me on an adventure to see one of the most endangered species in the state: the Running Buffalo Clover. We pull up in her state-owned jeep to the entrance of the 600-acre Adair Wildlife…
Mount McKinney erupts
Depending on whom you talk to, opinions vary on exactly what former U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney represents. While serving in Congress, the Atlanta Democrat was known as one of the first and most outspoken critics of the Bush administration, drafting legislation against the war in Iraq and asking tough questions. But like most political figures…
Film: The Global Lens Series continues at the Ali Center
It snows in Iran. This is probably not a concept that drifts to the front of our minds when we consider the region. Enriched uranium, maybe. But snow? And yet, as the film “Those Three” shows us, snow can be a big thing in Iran. For Youssef, Essi and Darius, military deserters lost in the…
Treeg Salaam
Released in conjunction with their first-ever European tour this past June (the first time audiences outside of Western Sahara saw them perform), Group Doueh’s second album, Treeg Salaam, on the always-intriguing Sublime Frequencies label, is an achievement. Discovered by label founders Alan Bishop and Hisham Mayet in 2005, the group is built around the relentless,…
A trip down the river
The first call came from a person in the know. The report, incendiary if we’re being diplomatic, indicated that a person or people affiliated with a certain local conservation group were so incensed by LEO’s cover story last week that they’d begun pulling issues out of racks and hoarding them from the reading public. Now…
Strict Joy
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, also known as The Swell Season, took the world by storm a couple years back with their debut release, the Oscar-winning soundtrack to the film “Once.” They are following up that success with the new release Strict Joy. Off the bat, I can’t say this album is as likable as…
Art: Shepherding images of humanity
I confess: I drove past Glynis McManamon’s studio three times before I finally found it. Tucked into a strip of shops on Bardstown Road between Roanoke and Richmond, it is as inconspicuous as a book on a library shelf. On an early autumn evening, I came to the Shepherding Images studio because I had been…
Jerry’s kids
A stretch of several blocks near Eastern Star Baptist Church has experienced flooding many times over the past 45 years, says the Rev. Alex Moses. Most recently, the Aug. 4 flash flood that struck Louisville caused major damage, and the California neighborhood minister says the area is still being affected due to an exodus of…
The Blanket Party EP
This record shouldn’t be listened to via conventional means; rather, it should be played at its own midnight screening, with introduction and commentary from Joe Bob Briggs. In and out in less than 10 minutes, The Blanket Party features four brief slices of Cramps-style gonzo horror punk with all the nuance and subtlety of “Evil…
Bar Belle: Tap into the Louisville Beer Store
Caution: This column may contain references to drinking alcoholic beverages. If you regularly attend AA meetings or are not yet of legal drinking age, please skip to Free Will Astrology. If you’re reading online, please do not bookmark the Bar Belle Blog as your homepage. Driving down I-65 to Nashville, you encounter signs that…
I am not Superman
Someone told me that I should write something lighthearted and happy this month. Lighthearted? Happy? Mean old me? OK, I’ll try. I’ll start my “happy” Message by talking about broken limbs and death. Don’t worry, it’ll end good (smile). This year has been sucky. Doctors concluded in February that my grandmother’s cancer was no longer…
Club List
19th Green ?1740 Williamsburg Drive Jeffersonville (812) 284-9088 60 West? 3939 Shelbyville Road?719-9717 930 Listening Room 930 Mary St., 635-2554 Air Devil’s Inn? 2802 Taylorsville Road?454-4092 Al’s Bar? 601 N. Limestone St. (859) 309-2901 Angel’s Rock Bar ?4328 S. Fourth St. 540-1461 Babolooz ?7302 Grade Lane 361-3301 Backstage Café? 109 N. Mulberry St. Elizabethtown?(270) 234-1686…
Book: Cross ups the ante in ‘I Drink for a Reason’
I Drink for a Reason (By David Cross. Grand Central Publishing; 256 pgs., $23.99.) When comedians write books, the results can be decidedly unfunny. While it may seem professional comedians are well suited to the task of authoring a book, that’s not always the case. When a comedian writes jokes for a stand-up routine,…
The Broad Street Bully
This is not a proper album but not quite a mixtape. IndependentSiccness.net tends to gather pretty decent names who just happen to be in between record deals (Ginuwine, Mobb Deep, Styles P) for “albums between the albums,” short-term deals often allowing an artist to empty vaults or hard drives with a collection of unreleased songs.…
Inbox — Nov.18, 2009
To conserve and protect? You succeeded in uncovering some of the twisted truths of River Fields’ strategies on important community issues for the last 5-6 years. It was not until the final route for the East End Bridge was announced about 10 years ago that River Fields and other downtown leaders began to talk about…
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 publication. We do not accept listings via social networking sites. Wed. Nov 18 Buster’s: Alexa…
B-Sides: Music & Other Ephemera
Brawling bastards Lucero have a new one, 1372 Overton Park, and it’s a horn-fueled festival. The band return to Headliners (1386 Lexington Road, 584-8088) Saturday, Nov. 21, as part of their all Memphis tour, featuring Cedric Burnside, Lightnin’ Malcolm and Dirty Sheets. Cover is $15. Charlie Louvin Mr. Louvin joins Dex Romweber Duo to start…
Landing
Some days a record just falls into place. It strikes with the right mood at the right time, slicing a moment out of thin air and setting it into stone. Landing provides a perfect, thematically appropriate soundtrack for an evening of travel — an album’s worth of escape from the everyday. It would have been…
Piggish behavior all around
You say you’ve heard the story about three little pigs? Not this one. Little Pig One, a neighborhood association, built pretty loft condos and fostered urban development in a place called Butchertown, where unpleasant smells and industrial traffic from the local slaughterhouse shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Little Pig Two, Food and Commercial Workers…
Prodigal daughter
Her writing is expansive; Barbara Kingsolver has written about everything from missionary work in Africa to how to eat out of your own backyard. Her 1998 novel “The Poisonwood Bible” — a deep, ambitious book — was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, cementing her status a mainstream novelist (read: She sold a lot of books).…
KY History X
“These damn niggers. I had one almost run me off the road a minute ago. They ought to send every last one of them back to Africa.” That’s how Dave Hall, a native of Prestonsburg, Ky., first introduced himself to Pastor Harold Ray Redfeairn, head of the Aryan Nation, one of the most violent hate…
Hill Country
Back in the fall of 2006, Louisville’s original hard rock music scene got a much-needed jolt, when former members of the widely popular band Breckinridge and The Constant resurfaced and announced they were joining forces and calling themselves Heaven Hill. Based on prior successes of Breckinridge, Heaven Hill was immediately pinned with parallel expectations by…
Light in a dark place
Synovial sarcoma attacks tissue cavities around a person’s joints and tendons. It’s rare — between 5 and 10 percent of 10,000 new soft-tissue sarcomas, or groups of tumors, reported each year are synovial — and slow growing, as symptoms can go undetected for years, according to cancer.gov. How these tumors originate is unknown but believed…
Selena’s brings comfort to Willow Lake
An old, popular East End country dive bar, closed for years, reopened about a year ago as Selena’s and has been drawing crowds ever since, owing its growing popularity to bountiful food, friendly service and a relaxing atmosphere. “A tradition since 1979,” read the black awning over the entrance to what used to be the…
‘Welcome to Costco, I love you’
To: Faceless multi-national conglomerates From: Faceless Consumer #7348-3c Subject: Please stop trying to sell me things. Please. I know I couldn’t have chosen a more inconvenient moment to ask. It’s almost Christmas, the economy is a train wreck, and CEOs the world over are being asked to wipe their own asses and accept crippling cuts…
On the front lines
The downtown streets are mostly empty, and the sidewalks are free of the city’s office drones on this recent Saturday morning. But near the corner of First and East Market streets, a battle is already brewing outside the EMW Women’s Surgical Center, Louisville’s only abortion clinic and one of only two in Kentucky. The sun…
Culture: Derby City Chop Shop is a cut above
I had only been to an honest-to-God barbershop once in my life. It was with my father on a trip to New York City. I remember being in awe of the uncensored honesty that made up the conversation of the men getting haircuts, beard trims and shoe shines. They talked about everything from fellatio to…
Video TapeWorm
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS: ART OF LOVE (ARS AMANDI) 1983; $29.95, UR Now fully restored: this once-thought-lost final chapter in art-smut king Walerian Borowczyk’s unofficial trilogy of passion (along with “Immoral Women” and one of our all-time favorite flicks, “The Beast”). Eulogized as “a genius … who also happened to be a pornographer,” Borowczyk sets…
Chronomega
If the rusty patina of bulky abandoned industrial-era equipment had a sound, it would be something like the heavily distorted guitars of Black Cobra. The tone is so thoroughly textured you may wonder if your speakers have suddenly developed a distortion problem, but the clear drums and shouty (at times shrill) vocals will reassure you.…
