The News Hole Is a brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai a drug trafficker? Nobody seems to know for certain, not even the feds who say they don't have solid evidence that Ahmed Wali Karzai is involved in drugs. But a story by The New York Times, which appeared Oct. 4, quotes various White House sources as saying that U.S. officials strongly believe that Ahmed Wali Karzai, chief of the Kandahar Provincial Council, is dealing in heroin and that his brother is protecting him from investigation. The story sa ... [MORE]
The News Hole Wayne Morris, a 22-year-old African-American man, was found guilty of 18 charges on Aug. 27, 2008 including second-degree murder, robbery, and assault. According to the State's Attorney's Office Morris kicked down the door of Robert Lee Atkinson's home in the 1400 block of Kuper Street on April 20, 2006. During the course of the robbery, Morris pistol-whipped one person in the house and assaulted two others including a pregnant woman, and shot and killed Atkinson, a 47-year-old African-American ... [MORE]
Noise Los Solos is a new monthly performance series featuring--you guessed it--solo performances. The twist here is that the series presents only women, pairing a local and an out-of-town artist on each bill. Pulling from the experimental undergrounds of dance, music, theater, and, video, Los Solos is programmed by curators-cum-artists Jackie Milad and Bonnie Jones. The series kicked off in September with electro-psych improv performances from Baltimore's Whispers for Wolves and Philadelphia's Fursaxa ... [MORE]
Noise With some 60 people removed from the upper ranks of Baltimore's music-making population for the Baltimore Round Robin Tour, music, especially local music, is a little thin around town. It's like fishing season in a small coastal town. But, still, there's no reason you need to stay home: FRIDAY: Adam Gonzo and Mark Brown's Served dance party gets an extra kick tonight from Philly's DJ Sega, spinning his unpolished rock remix-heavy take on Baltimore club at the Windup Space. 9 p.m. $5. Helios Cre ... [MORE]
The News Hole When Ira C. Cooke's 2004 California conviction for helping to bilk a mental health clinic's money was overturned on appeal in 2006, the former lawyer/lobbyist declared himself ready to be reinstated to the Maryland lobby game. He was, and this year represented the interests of the bail-bonds, sedan-service, and parking-garage industries before Annapolis legislators. Now Cooke wants his Maryland law license back, too, which he surrendered shortly after the since-overturned conviction. Yesterday, ... [MORE]
S/Hitlist Today through Sunday are the final four dates to catch the American Opera Theater's imaginative interpretation of Georges Bizet's workhorse Romantic opera Carmen. Featuring a new book by AOT artistic director Timothy Nelson, Le Cabaret de Carmen takes as its inspiration an unorthodox 1981 version of the opera as imagined by innovative British stage director Peter Brook--who directed the famed 1966 English version of Peter Weiss' The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed b ... [MORE]
Noise Of all the iconic alt-rock bands to have reunited and hit the touring circuit in the past couple years, there's probably none with a comeback story as harrowing and dramatic as that of the Meat Puppets. After the band fell apart in 1995 due to bassist Cris Kirkwood's heroin addiction, he entered a lengthy downward spiral, which included his wife's overdose and death and a 2003 altercation with a security guard that resulted in Kirkwood being shot, hospitalized, and sentenced to two years in pris ... [MORE]
S/Hitlist A few weeks back J Shoes, whose corporate offices are based in Owings Mills, offered the Maryland Institute College of Art's Fibers Department the opportunity to re-purpose single shoes left over from its design samples. The proposed question (as articulated in a press release): "Could a contemporary shoe be transformed into an entirely different object with an entirely different purpose?" The shoe manufacturer proposed this first collaboration as a design contest with cash prizes, with judges t ... [MORE]
S/Hitlist It's an expectedly hit or miss showcase of works, but the reception for MICA's annual Faculty Exhibition is today, Thursday, Oct. 2, from 5-7 p.m. in the Pinkard, Meyerhoff, and Decker galleries. Some of the faculty pieces are very familiar--Don Cooks's Emily Dickinson-inspired architectural views, Mina Cheon's dresses, Raoul Middleman portrait studies--but there's still plenty to revisit with fresh eyes, such as Jacqueline Schlossman's photography, Whitney Sherman's illustrations, Maren Hassing ... [MORE]
Noise For whatever reason, Hot Chip canceled its show at Rams Head Live for this upcoming Tuesday on short notice. (Too short notice to pull the listing out of this week's print edition of the City Paper, that is.) You'll have to trek to either Washington or Philadelphia now for the band. Refunds are available at point of purchase. The good news is that Tax Lo grabbed the opener, Growing, which is presumably a little less keen on taking a day off, and re-booked the excellent swirly guitar duo at the T ... [MORE]
S/Hitlist Wednesday, a story appeared in the print edition of The Baltimore Sun covering the laudable and, yes, newsworthy Baltimore Round Robin Tour. Figured most prominently in the piece was local musician/comedian/talk show host Ed Schrader (who has contributed to City Paper in the past), who also writes a regular column in Sun offshoot publication b. The piece, which was written by Sun staffer Sam Sessa, who is also a regular contributor to b, did not mention the relationship between the two publicati ... [MORE]
Noise Bad Liquor Pond songs aren't constructed for competitive speed or conceived as incredible displays of technical skill; rather, they're built for sheer listener comfort. The Baltimore-based quartet's songwriting template is strictly midtempo, like a casual cross-country trip astride a baked, easygoing dragon from some metalhead's spray-painted Econovan-mural fantasies. Frontman/multi-instrumentalist Dave Gibson, guitarist Melvis Fargas, drummer Paul Fuller, and bassist Poridge Blackwell mine the ... [MORE]
Feedbag Closed since the beginning of August, Corks, Jerry Pellegrino's 11-year-old restaurant in Federal Hill, is set to reopen Thursday, Oct. 2, with a whole new look, hours, and menu. According to Pellegrino, the renovations designed by Patrick Sutton effect "everything you can see and touch," including a new entrance with a white marble counter and a glowing amber wall Pellegrino calls "the whiskey wall because it looks like a glass of scotch with ice swirling in it." New French doors in the back ad ... [MORE]
Noise A few weeks ago, I was asked to speak at the Making the Right Moves Entertainment Conference, and took no pleasure in reporting that the event fell victim to poor planning and low turnout. Baltimore may not be a music industry city, but there's no reason the more motivated musicians from the area can't organize and learn from each other, and a music conference, if done right, could be a hugely positive force. So it was with nothing but optimism that I went to check out this year's Baltimore Musi ... [MORE]
Noise It's somehow easy to imagine indie-rock folk in, say, Seattle watching this and responding, "Whoa, how'd they manage to clear all the drug dealers off the streets?" And, indeed, it's nice to watch something that will reach a relative mass that captures so well how lovely and dignified Baltimore can be, however chilly and somber the video. Anyhow, this is the first video (finally?) for Wye Oak off its Merge debut, directed by local folk singer/songwriter Caleb Stine, and it's nicely done. Enj ... [MORE]
Noise Nathan Bell @ 2640 is a brief but haunting release from West Main Development, a local label specializing in live recordings and one-time collaborations, with a penchant for tapping Lungfish members (a previous release features Dan Higgs). The label's latest, four untitled tracks clocking in at under 13 minutes, was culled from a live recording of former Lungfisher, Nathan Bell, on banjo during a solo set at 2640 Space earlier this year. On first listen, what amazes is the fullness of sound. It ... [MORE]
Noise Earlier this month, Baltimore got a rare mix of brutality as the Exhumed to Consume tour, honoring the much welcomed reunion of grind patriarch Carcass, made one of its few U.S. stops at Sonar. Seven bands gave fans the opportunity to experience the best and most intricate form of extreme metal, namely grindcore. The often inscrutable genre is a hodgepodge of sound to the unfamiliar ear. It sounds something like a hellish beast of noise, its origins stemming from death metal, early punk rock, an ... [MORE]
Noise It's funny how these weekends take on themes. It's almost like Baltimore's promoters get together in some underground bunker and decide, "This is going to be a folk weekend. Any objections?" This weekend's theme is house. And so house is all over the damn place--the Ottobar, the harbor, Canton. And it's the good stuff, too. FRIDAY:Throw Me the Statue, something of a quirky, sprawling sibling to the Long Winters' indie pop, is at the Talking Head with folky Page France descendant the Cotton Jones ... [MORE]
The News Hole On July 31, 1983 police found William Gibson, a 57-year-old Caucasian man, stuffed inside a metal trash can inside a wooden clothes locker with a mattress propped against it. (The police said the locker was in Gibson's apartment in the 2200 block of East Pratt Street in Butcher's Hill. The State's Attorney puts the locker outside the building.) Gibson was dead and his remains were in such an advanced state of decomposition that police had to wear gas masks. Twenty-three years later, on Aug. 2, 2 ... [MORE]
Noise Baltimore club is one of the few music genres where the producer is the star, and vocalists by and large take a backseat. Usually that's either because the vocals on the track are sampled, or either performed by the producer himself or some anonymous kid who records one party-starting hook and then is never heard from again. But in the pantheon of club vocalists, Jimmy Jones is one of the few with a long, significant career of coming up with chants and refrains for club hits. "Tapp and Tony and ... [MORE]
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