big hair and plastic grass

Y’all, if you’re a baseball fan who lives in the Triangle, get yourself out to the Regulator Bookshop in Durham today at 2pm to catch Dan Epstein’s reading from Big Hair & Plastic Grass. Dan’s funny and brilliant and knows absolutely everything about baseball in the ’70s, so go even if it’s just to ask…

the butchies @ cat’s cradle

Sometimes you just need to go out and watch a bunch of badass women play pop punk. Sometimes that is, in fact, the answer on a Wednesday night. (I tagged along to the Butchies’ reunion show with Ash, and it was fantastic.)

baseball: columbus clippers @ durham bulls, july ’10

baseball: columbus clippers @ durham bulls, july ’10, originally uploaded by minervacat. Thirty five. I am baffled by the Columbus Clippers. They are very, very good — they’re dominating their division in the International League by a fair margin — and yet their parent club, the Cleveland Indians, are very, very not good. (The Bulls…

baseball: usa national collegiate team vs. south korea

baseball: usa national collegiate team vs. south korea, originally uploaded by minervacat. Thirty four. Our Bulls mini-plan has turned out to be full of delightful surprises; trading the tickets on nights we don’t want to use them — I say, “Could you get us something near the visitor’s bullpen, on an aisle?” and the nice…

counting crows traveling circus & medicine show

Koka Booth is such a weird little venue; I’m not sure what possessed Cary to put a gorgeous, beautifully acoustic-ed 5,000 seat outdoor amphitheatre somewhere that it would attract big rock groups — only to have the town tell the bands that they couldn’t play louder than a certain decibel level. (Adam Duritz was Not…

twin tigers @ local 506

Athens’ Twin Tigers fall somewhere on the musical spectrum between drone and shoegaze and electro-pop — depending on the song, and depending on the spot in the song. There’s a lyricism to frontman Matthew Rain’s raspy, repeated lyrics that moves them out of the drone category, but enough fondness for noise, for shambling diversions into…

one for sorrow, two for joy

August And Everything After is 17 years old this year. I think, for a lot of people close to my age, that album was formative. I was 13 when it came out. I loved it relentlessly and fiercely and as though it was something entirely my own, despite the fact that the video for “Mr….

chatham county line cd release show for ‘wildwood’

There’s no doubt in my mind that Chatham County Line are one of the best traditional bluegrass bands working today; even more so because they’re much more than a trad bluegrass outfit. They’re a group of guys who know the lineage their music comes from, and who recognize and draw from that, all while being…