Friday, March 23 Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh 7 p.m., signing line with book purchase www.quailridgebooks.com In the nineties, Anna Quindlen won a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her column in The New York Times, so it’s no surprise that, in her many novels, she’s no fantasist, but rather taps into current events and the temper […]
Brian Howe
Posted inCulture
Ryan H. Walsh Digs Into the Making of a Classic and Boston’s Counterculture in Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968
Sunday, March 25 Bull City Records, Durham 4 p.m., free www.bullcityrecords.com Not long after “Brown Eyed Girl” became a hit, Van Morrison was living in New York with dubious immigration status and fretting about the mob, which had taken over his record deal. So Morrison and his then-wife fled to Boston to lay low. There, […]
Posted inMusic
Whether You’re Going Out or Coming Down, Electro-Pop Charmer Porches Has You Covered
PORCHES MOTORCO MUSIC HALL 8 p.m., $14-$16 www.motorcomusic.com One of my favorite albums of the decade we’re winding down is Pool, a 2016 release by New York-based electro-pop charmer Aaron Maine, who records as Porches. Contrasting soft, fumy stoner moods with dance music so sharp it seems etched in moonlight, Maine crafted a record that […]
Posted inBooks
Randal O’Wain Meditates on the Death of Superman in the Voice Rising Reading Series at Flyleaf
RANDAL O’WAIN MONDAY, MARCH 19 FLYLEAF BOOKS, CHAPEL HILL 7 p.m., free www.flyleafbooks.com Each outing of the new Voice Rising reading series at Flyleaf Books pairs an established author with a crop of emerging ones, with the idea that all involved will give a brief reading of unpublished material followed by a Q and A. […]
Posted inCulture
Meet Lump’s New Director, April Childers, Through Her Exhibit at the Gallery
APRIL CHILDERS & MARIA BRITTON FRIDAY, MARCH 16 LUMP, RALEIGH 6-9 p.m., free www.lumpprojects.org There’s been a changing of the guard at Lump, Raleigh’s best gallery for weird art, with Kelly McChesney handing over the directorship to April Childers. To get a sense of the perspective Childers will bring to the gallery, you could hardly […]
Posted inBooks
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cocreator Kevin Eastman Went for a Modest Underground Comics Career. He Started an Independent Pop-Culture Dynasty Instead.
NC COMICON: OAK CITY Saturday, March 17 & Sunday, March 18 $20–$130 Raleigh Convention Center, Raleigh www.nccomicon.com You can’t create a comics dynasty on purpose. In fact, it seems helpful not to try. Spider-Man, Superman, Batmanall were cranked out by middle-aged day-jobbers on deadline. They were intended to fill a bit of newsprint and then […]
Posted inCulture
N.C.-Born Author John Hart’s The Hush Is a Novel of Exile and Friendship
JOHN HART SUNDAY, MARCH 11 FLYLEAF BOOKS, CHAPEL HILL 2 p.m., free www.flyleafbooks.com Though he was already a New York Times best-seller and a consecutive Edgar Award winner, North Carolina-born mystery author John Hart recently got a rather impressive boost when he shared a bill at Meymandi Concert Hall with none other than one-man-thriller-industry John […]
Posted inCulture
With The Bipeds, You Won’t Have to Choose Between Dance Show and Concert. It’s Both.
THE BIPEDS SEASON LAUNCH PARTY SATURDAY, MARCH 10 SHADOWBOX STUDIO, DURHAM 7 p.m., $20 suggested donation www.facebook.com/thebipedsdance Dance show or concert? Dance show or concert? On any given weekend in the Triangle, this dilemma is apt to present itself to those with a diverse interest in the arts. But with The Bipeds, you don’t have […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Seven Ideas Worse Than Getting Drunk and Throwing Axes
Had The Herald-Sun turned into The Onion or had Durham turned into Portlandia? I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who wondered this a couple of weeks ago, when the paper reported that national chain Urban Axes (my god, just the name, you can almost smell the beard wax) is headed for Foster Street this […]
Posted inNews
What the Recent Backlash Against Kehinde Wiley’s Work at NCMA Gets Wrong About Art’s Past and Present
The idea that Wiley’s art is racist and Sherald’s is not objective rests on a patently white supremacist view of what images mean in the context of Eurocentric art history—the very view Wiley and Sherald’s work is calibrated amid and against.
