• Donkey Musicians’ Open Stage, 9-11 p.m. Donkey Coffee and Espresso. (During finals week at OU, Donkey will remain open 24 hours, though not much entertainment is scheduled during this time.) • Ladies Night with DJ Ace. 19 South. • Open acoustic jam night. Thursdays at the Nelsonville Eagles Lodge bar. • Karaoke from 8:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Thursday nights. Lakeview Tavern, 3718 Enlow Road, Athens.
AHS drama troupe bites off tough topic for fall play
Written by Athens NEWS Staff
Thursday, 19 November 2009 10:40
To say the least, the Athens High School Drama Club has chosen a highly sensitive topic for its fall production this school year at the high school.
“Bang Bang You’re Dead” was written by William Mastrosimone in response to many school shootings, especially the incident at Thurston High School in Springfield, Ore., in 1998. The play is largely based around those events, and the main character, Josh, is based on Kipland Kinkel, the student who killed two and wounded 25 others in the mass shooting (along with his own mother and father earlier that day).
Here’s another Athens Ear Buds for your reading/listening enjoyment.
It’s plenty big enough but there aren’t any left over for next week, so if you have something in mind and have been holding back for whatever reason, now’s the time to send it to
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.
Also, you might start putting together your year’s best list – or, crap, now that I think about it, the decade’s best! (Where did the decade go? Before we know it, we’ll be having millennial parties for the year 3000.) We’ll plan to run that special “best-of” AEB sometime in mid-December. As usual, Haffa’s the local outlet for record purchases and special orders. — Terry Smith, Athens Ear Buds czar
Greg Bikowski, bassist for the Bob Stewart Band and the Bikowski Jazz Trio, paramedic for SEOEMS: It’s been over a decade since guitarist Jimmy LaValle established The Album Leaf as a musical experiment. Ten years and five albums later, LaValle continues the experiment. To get a good taste of The Album Leaf, check out “Into the Blue Again” (Sub Pop, 2006). LaValle plays most of the instruments on the album and does the singing as well. It’s mostly an instrumental album of post/quasi rock that creates a brilliant musical landscape. His vocal talent is raw and honest, which adds a slight edge to the album's vocal tracks. Check out his style on "Always for You," "Writings on the Wall" and "Wherever I Go." If you dig this album, The Album Leaf has a new one coming out in February 2010.
I’m starting a series of columns today that focuses on area businesses that deal with music in a variety of ways. Since first thinking about this concept, I have been floored by the proliferation of such tradespersons as reside in this area. We are as rich in the musical support trade as we are in the music scene here. That shouldn’t come as such a surprise, but I am still pleasantly amazed.
As this is my first foray into this region, you’ll have to give me some room to find my legs and allow me to explore the rich terrain. This week’s attempt keeps me close to home and close to my heart, Blue Eagle Music.
Local author's book recounts 'miracle' year caring for father with Alzheimer's
Written by Jim Phillips
Thursday, 12 November 2009 10:26
When a parent gets Alzheimer’s disease, children can face not only the pain of watching a loved one’s faculties disintegrate, but the burden of providing, or paying for, care.
When John Thorndike’s father, Joe Thorndike, began to suffer from Alzheimer’s, John and his siblings made a decision – rather than pay a caregiver to tend their father, or put him in a home, they would use their father’s assets to pay John (who writes, farms and owns rental properties in the Athens area) a salary to move into his father’s Cape Cod, Mass. home and make caring for him his full-time job.
Artist returns to Passion Works to help create project
Written by Megan R. Moseley
Thursday, 12 November 2009 10:23
Local artist Pat Mitchell is working in collaboration with Passion Works Studio to create an alternative and unique art project to be on display in January.
The Ohio Arts Council, a state-funded agency that supports art experiences in Ohio communities, is sponsoring Mitchell’s involvement with Passion Works. Mitchell has traveled to various places both in Ohio and elsewhere through the program. Her area of specialization, she said, is working with mixed media, and acting as an artist consultant for organizations to help design programs and build studios.
Athens Ear Buds hit a bit of a rough patch this past week with hardly any submissions over the weekend. That, combined with the fact that I didn’t have anything held over and nothing stored in the AEB larder, translated into an endangered music feature.
Since my duties here have increased to the point of putting me in a perpetual frenzy, truth be told I wasn’t that disheartened to see AEB maybe breathing its last breaths. But, no, stupid me had to go and send out a mayday, and just as has happened many times in the past, the Ear Buds came flooding in. Thanks a lot, people, you just won’t let this thing die, will you?
Do you suffer from paraskavedekatriaphobia? I’m not too sure what it means because I have a 10-syllable limit to any words I might encounter or make up, but I think it has something to do with a fear of movies named after a traditionally unlucky day, or a fear of hockey masks or people named Jason, or something like that.
A letter in Monday’s paper got me to thinking about the most glorious of all maligned days, Friday the 13th. I have long held to the story as introduced to me by my hero Robert Anton Wilson and put forth by numerous folks who like to look under the hood of history and discern the inscrutable. Monday’s letter claimed that it is the devil who put the fear of Friday the 13th into us, and upon reflection of the varieties of information I have slogged through, I may be more inclined to believe such a claim — the devil is in the details and all of that.
The Ohio University chapter of the NPPA (National Press Photographers Association) is presenting an evening with the Athens Photographic Project.
This Tuesday at 7 p.m. in Walter Hall room 145, the Athens Photographic Project artists and staff will discuss the impact that their award-winning photography program has had on personal lives, the region, and on the visual representation of mental-health conditions.
The Ridges Building 19 may seem like an unlikely place for an art exhibit, but Ohio University Planner Pam Callahan has transformed its walls into a timeline of campus maps collected from the OU Archives.
Callahan, who retired last week, says she has been collecting the maps for about five years. She received an architecture degree from OU and has worked at the university for more than 25 years.
Stuart’s Opera House is hoping for a good showing at what it’s calling the facility’s “most important night of the year, the annual fall fundraiser this Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
This year’s fall fundraiser will feature an evening of entertainment from Portland, Ore.’s Vagabond Opera. The evening includes European cabaret, vintage Americana, Balkan belly dance, neo-classical opera and Old World Yiddish Theater, according to a news release.
Over the years, Athens has seen a few local bands make a splash in the wider musical pool; at the moment, for example, locally spawned outfits Southeast Engine and Skeletonwitch are both drawing national attention.
Some 20 years ago, however, an Athens trio called the Snapdragons scored what may rank as the biggest coup ever for a local band.
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