Cover Story
The Bartisans
I don’t go to bars. I go to bartenders. —Dale Degroff * This summer, bartenders along my usual drinking route were talking about something called “Tales of the Cocktail,” an annual bacchanal and craft cocktail convention in New Orleans. The five-day, nonstop event collects celebrity mixologists and assorted industry folk in the hopes of advancing…
Penny Sparkle
Penny Sparkle is a sauntering, galloping bliss factory named after one of singer Kazu Makino’s horses, an irony considering one trampled her following 2000’s Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons. Here, Makino’s voice is frail and ghost-like, while twins Simone and Amedeo Pace keep their singing and playing intimate, stark and tasteful. Originally an experimental noise…
Wilderness Heart
Black Mountain is as consistent as turkey and mashed potatoes, and hearing their albums resembles eating Thanksgiving dinner: a ritual you engage in once every winter when you gorge yourself on thick, sludgy goodness. Consistency is a coin, with the tails side showing a paint-by-number exercise — riff, spooky harmony, bulging chorus, repeat. The band…
Phosphene Dream
No mysteries here: The grand teleportation back to the paisley (or is it Velvet?) underground continues. Boiling in a stew of psych and noir lyricism, Phosphene Dream is an evil cathedral built on the smoke leftover from Jefferson Airplane and The Doors. Ideal nighttime listening. This time, the five Austinites briefly break out the soul…
Comedy: The radical Kate Clinton
Kate Clinton is a workhorse. After nearly 30 years on the comedy circuit, you think she’d take a break — at least long enough to drum up some new material. But Clinton admits she never has a shortage of things to say — as long as there are newspapers for her to pore over, her…
The Grape Escape: Êtes-vous un oenophile?
To reinvent an old joke about engineers, “Not long ago, I didn’t even know what an oenophile was, and now I are one.” It might surprise you to learn that one of the most frequently asked wine questions I field is, “What’s the fancy word for ‘wine lover’?” The obscure and rather formal term is…
How little we know
We don’t see each other any more unless someone dies or gets married, and people aren’t getting married so much anymore, not at our age. So, it was a reunion, of sorts, a mixer, even, with all of us who knew the decedent trying to make sense of our gathering. Our friend had died, by…
Film: Short Film & Video Show gathers the best in state
Despite a diverse array of work that juxtaposes grainy, silent films with cyborg-populated electroclash music videos, the program for this year’s Kentucky Short Film & Video Showcase is remarkably fluid. The third edition of this rooftop fest features 13 homegrown selections that include an ethereal, dialogue-driven narrative; a doc about bringing clean drinking water to…
Red Dirt Jazz
Brian Haas grew up in Tulsa, Okla., listening to a creole of rusty country, folk, punk rock and experimental music. A metropolis of about 1 million people, Tulsa was a stopover for touring bands of all genres, making it an aural playground for Haas. Haas didn’t pick up the guitar first. He’d been playing piano…
Cleavage Wars: Hooters vs. Tilted Kilt
Well, well, well — Hooters has some competition in its previously uncontested milieu. You know: laid-back environment, pub grub, cold beer, multiple TVs ablaze with sports. Oh yeah, and cleavage. Lots of cleavage. After hearing the buzz about the Tilted Kilt, 6201 Dutchmans Lane (the former Ernesto’s building, Oldenburg before that), I considered checking it…
Video TapeWorm
THIS WEEK’S TWIN PEEKS: JOY 1983; $29.95, R Our buds at Severin Films dug up and restored this wonderful art-house nudie from “the screening room of a Paris brothel” just for you, dear readers. Basically a rip-off of “Emmanuelle,” it stars the nipples of New Mexican delight Claudia Udy. Hanging like Silly Straws from her…
Mandatory fun
On a grassy Hoosier hillside, a towheaded young lad rode his Tonka truck into the perimeter of a puppy that was tethered to a stake. When he rode through, the puppy went mad, barked his puppy throat hoarse and ran circles around the boy, causing him to hop off the truck, trip on the tether…
’Round Midnight
Used to be that street dates meant long lines of salivating customers, cash (or credit card) in hand, waiting outside the record store. When the clock struck midnight and the doors opened, the cash and music flowed. Those days might be here again. On Monday, Sept. 20, ear X-tacy will reinstate the long-since-dead ritual of…
Staffpicks
Wednesday, Sept. 15 All Tiny Creatures Zanzabar 2100 S. Preston St. • 635-ZBAR www.alltinycreatures.com $3; 9 p.m. Thomas Wincek likes to stretch. That’s probably why the songwriter from Madison, Wis., let time be damned on the 17-minute piano epic “Segni,” the opener on the debut EP from his current project All Tiny Creatures. A past…
Louisville’s Bartisans
ADAM UNDERWOOD Village Anchor Pub & Roost www.villageanchor.com Adam Underwood began his career as a “drink slinger,” a term he invented to differentiate between a professional bartender and someone who stands behind a bar and dishes out rum and Coke after rum and Coke for a nightly crowd. His job was to serve drinks…
Jerry’s kids
The announcement that former mayoral candidate Tyler Allen crossed party lines to endorse Republican Hal Heiner has split progressives and could have serious ramifications in the race for mayor of Louisville. For those following the lead of Allen, co-founder of 8664, there’s a general dissatisfaction with Democrat Greg Fischer’s vague positions, particularly when it comes…
Left in the dark
Correction appended In early May, Sharetha Martin received a letter from Louisville Gas & Electric saying a billing error had occurred with her utility account. As a customer participating in the federal Low-Income Housing Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), Martin, 27, was supposed to receive a $400 credit to her utility bill for the previous winter.…
Fields
José Gonzalez has said in the past that talking about a Junip album was like talking about “castles in the air.” Formed long ago in current hype machine terms (around 1998), Gonzalez, keyboardist Tobias Winterkorn and drummer Elias Araya seemed proficient only at getting sidetracked: Winterkorn with art studies in Scandinavia, Gonzalez with his platinum-selling…
Castle Talk
Born out of the basement scene of New Brunswick, N.J., Screaming Females’ sound hasn’t stayed there. Rather, the trio’s material has morphed into the exact opposite: glossy but unsanitized of punk’s grit. Singer Martha Paternoster might wear a dress, but delicate in word or riff she is not. Three minutes into “Laura & Marty,” sister…
Art: A horse off-course
Horses are ubiquitous around here. You can’t avoid them — even if you live downtown, you might see one trotting past, pulling a carriage or carrying a police officer. And if you still manage to miss the real ones, you’re likely to spot horse statues, paintings or photos — like the ones in Elena Dorfman’s…
Inbox — Sept. 15, 2010
Where’s the Outcry? In response to your article “The kid stays in the picture” (LEO Weekly, Sept. 8), we are in a state of emergency. Our country is in a recession, and our people are facing depression. New data from the Metropolitan Housing Coalition shows us the number of homeless children in Jefferson County Public…
Plugged In
Wed. Sept. 15 11th Frame: Karaoke with Allen; 9 p.m., free (R) BBC 4th Street: Songwriters showcase with Ashley Burchett; 7 p.m., free, (R) The Bard’s Town: Karaoke w/ Teri French; 9 p.m., free Bearno’s Highlands: Open Mic with Sirens; 8 p.m., free Blu: Big Poppa Stampley; 8:30 p.m. (R) Buffalo Wild Wings, St. Matthews:…
$2 Pistol
A wise friend once said that the mere existence of a music scene doesn’t mean it’s good, and that “art for art’s sake” emphasizes creation over quality. He’s right, and he was talking about this record. Beyond the first 50 seconds of “Baptized,” Switchmen’s $2 Pistol is a scripted freefall through the trap door of…
Bar Belle: Things that make you go grrrr
Whenever I’m going through an emotional crisis — sometimes known as PMS, which stands for Please Mind Sara (or She’ll Pistol-Whip Your Unborn and Run Over Your Cat) — I lash out at the world in a passive-aggressive fashion. This also happens often when you take my beer away, so consider this a warning. I…
The religion lie and its consequences
More recent readers don’t remember that the genesis of this column was a highly publicized conflict I had with local ministers and members of their flocks a decade ago. The issues in question (police brutality and merger of city and county governments) were not fundamentally religious, but political. It didn’t matter. My inevitable interaction with…
