On a nondescript April afternoon last year at the Durham home of Letha Rodman Melchior and her husband, Dan, the couple’s parakeet, Glen, was holding court. Avocado green with a canary-yellow head, he’s a sociable fellow. Out of his cage, he greeted new visitors adeptly but cautiously, with gentle encouragement from his human parents. “Lord […]
Chris Toenes
Posted inCulture
John Hope Franklin Center Gallery hosts Freedarko basketball art show
A view of the Freedarko John Hope Franklin Center gallery The Freedarko collective blog has always taken an intense view of professional basketball and its heroes. Taking the whole of the NBA in their sights, Nathaniel Friedman (under the name Bethlehem Shoals) and his co-writers, sporting such tart nicknames as Dr. Lawyer IndianChief, Silverbird 5000, […]
Posted inMusic
Signal: What electronic music fans call home
Signal takes place Sept. 22–26 in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. A limited number of $40 festival passes are available at Cat’s Cradle Sept. 22 and at Talulla’s Sept. 23. See www.signalfest.com for details, including the full schedule. Download MP3: Nick Catchdubs’ mix of Greg Nice’s “Motherf#ck@s In Space” About five years ago, an American couple […]
Posted inMusic
The Butchies return
The Butchies play Cat’s Cradle Wednesday, July 21, with openers Pink Flag and Tami Hart. The show kicks off with ping pong at 7:30 p.m. and costs $7–$8. Kaia Wilson and her Durham-based bandmates in The Butchies have long shared a love of punchy rock ‘n’ roll. Since Wilson returned to Oregon five years ago, […]
Posted inMusic
Live: Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited
Cold as it was last night, walking into Duke Coffeehouse’s transcendental dance vibe was wholly warming. The room filled up to a comfortable crowd, and as Mapfumo, “The Lion of Zimbabwe,” led his band in songs both traditional and fused with the funky, dancing spread from person to person like fever. The Blacks Unlimited, Mapfumo’s […]
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Live: Dean and Britta test Warhol at Duke
Dean and Britta Thursday, Feb. 18, 2010 Duke University, Durham It could have ended up just another lesson in how the visual cannot be married to the musical easily, or vice versa. But there Dean and Britta were, with band members Lee Waters and Matt Sumrow, delicately balancing the two and winning. The project was […]
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DJ Ripley at Fuse Friday for C.H.A.T. digital media festival
Oakland-based DJ Ripley comes from the branch of digital investigators like Wayne Marshall doing as much research on beats, ethnomusicology, or copyright as they are with their mixing skills. So, it’s natural she would be here for the C.H.A.T. festival, hosted by UNC’s Institute for the Arts and Humanities this week. As the organizers put […]
Posted inMusic
Chapel Hill drummer Lee Waters keeps the beat for new, live scores of Andy Warhol’s silent films
Read about Dean and Britta’s 13 Most Beautiful … Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests A decade ago, in a half-lit, mostly cluttered living room just off Chapel Hill’s Rosemary Street, Lee Waters screamed. One of the bands he was in at the time, Cobra Kahn, was laying down some brutal agro at a house […]
Posted inMusic
Dean and Britta bring their 13 Most Beautiful … Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests to Duke
Read about Chapel Hill drummer Lee Waters, who’s performing with Dean and Britta at Duke That Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips will bring their 13 Most Beautiful … Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests to Duke Thursday isn’t an accident. The concert at Reynolds Theater is co-sponsored by Duke Performances and the Nasher Museum of […]
Posted inNews
Marching on
Only the city’s natives know what it really means to be from New Orleans. But for those of us who grew up in Louisiana, Mississippi or Alabama along the Gulf Coast, New Orleans was the bigger, more cosmopolitan sister city, where we went often for outrageous experiences, otherworldly food and, if we were lucky, a […]