My last committee-related post for a while, I promise (with special bonus announcement)
I’ll confess: I’ve been hitting these committee races pretty hard this week. But I want you to know that I could quit any time. Starting right after this post. You’ll be interested, I swear. And even if you’re not, stayed tuned to the end of this blog for a special announcement. Anway, remember Dennis Regan?…
WPTS 92.1 FM Recording Contest
Pittsburgh bands have just two more days to enter the recording contest sponsored by University of Pittsburgh radio station WPTS 92.1 FM, Machine Age Studios and Pittsburgh underground heroes Modey Lemon. The deadline is 5 p.m. Fri., March 19. The contest is geared toward “all those great Pittsburgh bands that haven’t had a chance to…
Silver Eye Fellowship Award show
Like the opening band that upstages the headliner, occasionally a runner-up in an art competition outshines the winner. I’d argue that’s the case at Silver Eye’s 2009 Fellowship Award Exhibition, which closes this Saturday (www.silvereye.org). The winning collection is Katrina M. d’Autremont’s Si Dios Quiere (What God Wants), a series of 26 color images of…
MP3 Monday: Big Hurry
Darling party people: it is Monday and that means a new MP3 courtesy generous local bands and the occasionally hard-working CP music section. This week brings us a track from Big Hurry, a poppy rock band that released its first EP last year. Their next show is Friday, March 26 at Brillobox with another poppy…
Kevin Acklin is a Democrat now … and he’s likely to be a committeeman too
In the space of a little more than a year, Kevin Acklin will have gone from Republican stalwart, to independent mayoral candidate, to Democratic committee member. As reported here late last week, while the upcoming May primary will be dominated by races for Senate and governor, there’s plenty of action on the undercard as well.…
Ringling Redux
Once you’ve caught a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the circus, you never see it quite the same way again. And once you know someone in the circus, you see it a lot more often. Prior to writing CP’s Nov. 2008 cover story, “The Greatest Job on Earth? Pittsburgh Musicians Jeremy Papay and Steve Palko Join the…
The Microscopic Opera Company
Opera isn’t a genre we often turn to for something new. Aside from the occasional new work at the Pittsburgh Opera (like 2008’s The Grapes of Wrath), we’re mostly talking about work from the 1800s and earlier. Which is swell, especially with the wealth of talent on display in these parts, also through the likes…
HiTEC spins the wheel once more on Saturday
A little more than a year after its Pittsburgh show, experimental orchestra HiTEC — short for “The Histrionic Thought Experiment Cooperative” — will perform again, and likely for the last time. Just don’t expect a reprise of what you experienced before: the event is described as an “uncert” or “uncertainty concert.” The project is the…
Political storm brewing in Ward 19
Anthony Coghill is back. And this time it’s personal. There is a political maelstrom developing in the city’s 19th Ward, the sprawling South Hills district that has long been the preserve of the noted Wagner family. And Anthony Coghill — whose break with the Wagners helped define last year’s city council district 4 race –…
Recommended: “Proud Mary.” Not recommended: “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
Just a quick note to inform you that Rusted Root’s show tonight and The Clarks’ show tomorrow on the Gateway Clipper have both been postponed because of imminent flooding. Rusted Root’s show is being made up on April 10; The Clarks are playing on the big boat next Friday, the 19th. Also, ten bucks to…
PR Watch: Conservative front group targets Altmire, health care reform
It’s not easy being Congressman Jason Altmire. Lefties hate him for not supporting Democratic healthcare reform proposals. Meanwhile, he’s now being targeted in an ad that is trying to kill off the reforms entirely. The ad, which is highly similar to this one, uses lots of storm imagery — hurricane satellite photos, lightning strikes –…
Two Downtown University Galleries
Here’s a note on two visual-arts venues, one brand-new and one that might as well be. The technically new one is Point Park’s, located in Lawrence Hall. The entrance is on Wood Street, just before the Boulevard of the Allies; walk through the lobby, skirting a lounge area (with its own art display I’ll get…
Noteworthy Figures
Pittsburgh’s movers and shakers: With the possible exception of Luke Ravenstahl, it’s hard to imagine them cutting loose at the end of the day, and turning up the stereo like the rest of us. So in an effort to help humanize those lofty figures perched high atop local society, we asked four well-known Pittsburghers to…
Art Rock
When artist/musician Jeff Schreckengost builds a guitar, the pick-ups have literally been picked up
For the Record
A trip through the stacks with BusCrates
Facing the Music
A local club reconciles with music-licensing agency
Advance Bookings
Highlights of the upcoming music season
City Paper 2009 Music Guide
“You don’t work, you don’t eat, but when you’re doing what you like to do it’s actually easy,” says Boaz.
Short List: Week of March 11 – 18
Over the years, Pittsburgh-based Squonk Opera has established a reputation for topping itself, with each production by the musical phantasmagorians seemingly more elaborate than the one before. It couldn’t last. So with Mayhem and Majesty, Squonk takes a step back. Gone is the massive scaffolding of its most recent production, the sci-fi themed Astro-rama. Gone…
She’s Out of My League
Native Pittsburgher Kirk (Jay Baruchel) has no life goals, works as a TSA screener, is scrawny and awkward looking, and drives a Dodge Neon. But, he’s also kinda funny and nervous-puppy cute, which is why a smokin’-hot babe such as Molly (Alice Eve) decides to go out with him. John Field Smith’s comedy — punched…
Remember Me
If I were actor Robert Pattinson, a.k.a. Edward Cullen, I’d use my time off between Twilight vampire flicks to tackle something new. Unfortunately, this melodrama from Allen Coulter casts our bed-headed boy as yet another brooding, sensitive young man who struggles to meet his family’s expectations. (Except here he’s perpetually scruffy instead of sparkly skinned.)…
Police, Adjective
Despite pressure from his superior, a small-town Romanian police detective named Cristi is reluctant to book a teen-ager for a petty hashish offense. (The kid merely lights up on the way to school.) Cristi fears the punishment will outweigh the crime and ruin the young man’s life; it is not something he wants on his…
Alice in Wonderland
I did wonder whether Burton has exhausted his bag of tricks. Preening Johnny Depp in a fright wig? Lady-love Helena Bonham Carter in supporting role? Colorful but off-kilter sets? Danny Elfman score? Check, check, check, check.
I could have forgiven it all if this film hadn’t been so boring. Yet despite appending bookends about Victorian…
The Pittsburgh Jewish-Israeli Film Festival
The annual festival offers films from Israel and around the world, representing Jewish experiences from the comic and dramatic to the inspirational.
The Bar at 2132
The menu here is an intriguing, idiosyncratic take on bar food
Maple Sugaring
As our friend the maple tree awakens from his long winter slumber, the time has come to welcome him back to the world — by tapping him with a spigot and draining his sap. And, explains Tammy Watychowicz, a naturalist and horticulturalist with the Allegheny County Parks Department, as long as you do it right…
This Just In: March 11 – 18
Highlights from the local TV news: The Truth Laid Bare
Bad Timing
Some G-20 defendants get charges dismissed, others get fines
Creative Nonfiction begins life anew as a quarterly magazine.
Now the publication has the newstand-friendly dimensions of Esquire — though with 90 two-color matte pages, not 140 glossy, full-color ones.
Duquesne law professor Ken Gormley discusses his definitive new book about the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.
“We need leaders who understand that this slash-and-burn approach to government is a dangerous thing.”
The Mercy Seat
If it was LaBute’s desire to upstage 9/11, he needed something stronger than unfunny characters expelled from a Ray Cooney farce.
“The Proposal” & “To Hell and Back”
It’s a soaring, heartbreaking piece, an incredibly beautiful — and painful — bit of theater.
Fe Gallery satisfies with a water-themed group show.
Other works evoke our relationship with water — especially large bodies of it — more lyrically.
Calliope’s Center Stage series brings acoustic concerts to the East End
“People who might feel intimidated about going to a club or bar find that by the time they get to the venue, they’ve already run into people they know.”
On the Record
Music has always been part of city councilor’s life
Life after WAMO
Traditonal, online outlets trying to fill void left by loss of historic station
Tuvan throat-singers Alash return to Pittsburgh this Friday
Even the musicians themselves seemed almost surprised as the otherworldly whistles and guttural rumbles came out of their mouths.
A Conversation with Megadeth’s David Ellefson
“When I was a kid, Christians, they burned all the records I listened to, so I had complete disdain for Christianity as a movement.”
Savage Love
I am a girl who sabotaged my relationship. My real issue was a store of repressed childhood trauma, and I was working it out on the closest person to me, my BF. We had something magical, and I destroyed it. I am now willing to give 110 percent to fix it. We no longer have…
