Other than “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” Vivian was unfamiliar with eight of J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories. But we’re reading them nowit’s one of the few things that can still be rectified. Vivian and I met a little over a year ago on a warm spring morning. I sat on a bench, she in her […]
David Klein
Bio: David Klein lives in Chapel Hill with his wife and two sons. His first book, If 6 Was 9 and Other Assorted Number Songs, is available at his website.Link: http://www.if6was9thebook.com/Twitter: http://twitter.com/DKleinandFall
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Live: The Direct Delight of Eleanor Friedberger in Carrboro
Two and a half years ago, when Cat’s Cradle opened its small-capacity Back Room, it was Eleanor Friedberger onstage. Last Saturday night, as my pal Peter and I leaned against the bar, we surveyed the sparse crowd and started listing other shows we’d seen there where the 160-capacity room was only one-half or one-third full. […]
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Justin Vernon and Megafaun Reunite to Cover the Grateful Dead … With Bruce Hornsby?
Dia de los Muertos usually falls at the end of October, but it comes early this year with the release of Day of the Dead, a five-CD, fifty-nine-track Grateful Dead tribute album that drops in May. Organized by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National, the project’s proceeds will benefit the AIDS/HIV-fighting Red Hot Organization. […]
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A Table for Two
During the last week, two crucial figures of twentieth-century culture died. George Martin, the patrician producer of Beatles records, and former first lady Nancy Reagan may seem as similar as chalk and cheese. Perhaps his most famous production featured the line “I’d love to turn you on.” Her most famous quote, on the other hand, […]
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Bowie Ball: A Glam Dance Party Returns to Durham Saturday Night
A glam rock dance party with a focus on David Bowie is natural, like rhinestones and lightning makeup. In the early seventies, glam rock celebrated theatricality and camp over the era’s self-serious singer-songwriter ethos, and it suited Bowie exquisitely, providing him with his most indelible personae. Glam had a limited shelf life, but Bowie spent […]
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Q&A: Seamus Kenney Recalls the Quirks of SNMNMNM, Reuniting Monday
After putting in roughly a decade as a band, the four-piece SNMNMNM (as in, S and M and M and M) split up after 2007’s Crawl Inside Your Head. Since, tuba player Mark Daumen has kept busy with several area bands including Lost in the Trees. Lead singer and multi-instrumentalist Seamus Kenney now leads the […]
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Record Review: Conjuring Big and The Beatles, Brett Harris Delivers the Excellent New Up in the Air
BRETT HARRIS UP IN THE AIR Hit the Deck Records Even on a stage packed with the pros, legends, and indie rock heroes gathered to perform Big Star’s Third, Brett Harris often elicited the “Who’s that guy?” response from audiences and critics alike. Harris just seemed to know how to bring out the ache in […]
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Live: Booker T. Shows His Mastery at The ArtsCenter
Two songs in to Friday’s Booker T. Jones concert at The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, during “Hang ‘Em High” from the spaghetti western of the same name, I thought of James Honeyman-Scott. The original lead guitarist of the Pretenders had an expression for the kind of florid guitar soloing that was all the rage in the […]
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The Byrds’ Roger McGuinn To Be Honored by UNC for Folk Music Preservation Work
As a founding member of the Byrds, Roger McGuinn helped shape the sound of the sixties with lysergic guitar solos, bewitching harmonies, and the meshing of country and rock into a lasting hybrid. For that, he holds an esteemed place in the firmament of rock and membership in its Hall of Fame, too. And on […]
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Special Delivery
You think you’re doing a good deed by taking in a shelter dog, but it’s not altruism that comes to the fore at the facility. Sure, you’re doing the animal a major favorbringing it in, saving it from death, surrounding it with central heating. Still, it’s like buying a used car. You’re going to kick […]