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(02/18/00 5:00am)
J Snack bounces from one turntable to the other, transfixed like a child playing with his toys, absorbed by a magical world where there are no rules, no pressures, no questions. His body swerves to the pounding, tribal beats, punctuated by electronic explosions and smooth, shimmering breaks. He's weaving a sonic narrative with his mixer, tweaking, stroking, molding every second of two records that he knows as well as the streets he grew up on. Like a mad scientist, he's the master of this sonic concoction, bringing the room to life under the hazy blacklight glow.
(02/11/00 5:00am)
Too many guys aren't romantics, and they know it. Their ideal date runs something along the lines of taking the lucky lady to some 15-501 chain restaurant and hitting a movie-it really doesn't matter, since their main goal is generally getting laid.
(02/11/00 5:00am)
Vinnie Amico is somewhere in Gainesville, Fla, enjoying a couple days of R'N'R with his bandmates in moe., a quirky, funky jam band from Utica, NY. If you haven't heard of moe., that's no surprise. They're a well-kept secret, a band whose lackluster album sales can't begin to reflect their slavish tour following. Because of their overwhelming tour popularity, the band is doing two shows at the Cat's Cradle Feb. 17 and 18. Jonas Blank talked to Vinnie about the perils and rewards of touring with moe.
(02/04/00 5:00am)
I'm angling my car to work on a frigid Tuesday morning under the haze of a heavy post-party hangover, thinking about life and unrecognized opportunities. Crooked Fingers is playing on the car stereo-not cranked, but at a mild, pensive volume perfectly suited to the melancholy of an ambivalent morning. Crooked Fingers is that kind of album, the kind that makes you want to sit back, reevaluate, take a nice, long drag on a menthol cigarette and let your mind wander where you probably don't want it to go.
(01/28/00 5:00am)
Ever heard a band that sounds like a cross between Fugazi and Prince? That's how one fan described the wacky harmonics and funky, wild live show of Washington, DC rockers The Dismemberment Plan. The band is coming to Go! Studios on Thursday, Feb 4 in support of their stunning new release, Emergency & I. There aren't many opportunities to see art-punk you can actually dance to, but at a DP show, dancing (from both band and audience) is a sure thing. A Plan show is more than a concert-it's a spectacle, complete with flailing, rapping and occasional fire-breathing. Recess music editor Jonas Blank caught up with singer Travis Morrison to get the skinny on the exuberant, exceptional Dismemberment Plan.
(01/21/00 5:00am)
Unless you count the occasional appearance of barbecue at the Pits, the Duke experience is not a Southern experience, culinary or otherwise. We're a campus teeming with Long Islanders and Californians chomping Alpine bagels and groovy burritos, chasing it all down with incalculable gallons of café mocha and cookies 'n' cream fro-yo. There's scarcely a full car's worth of whisky-swilling good ol' boys among the masses of SUV-pimping carpetbaggers. Eating on West is like eating at the mall-you've got the generic Chinese place, the sloppy Tex-Mex and the questionable sub sandwiches, with greasy burgers, pizza and fried "chicken" sandwiches competing for your heart disease dollars. Off-campus, it's more of the same. If you grew up in the South (the real South, not Atlanta or northern Virginia), the mallish selection can bring a tear to your eye.
(01/21/00 5:00am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>If there's one thing I love about Durham, it's the food. Sure, we don't live in downtown Manhattan (and I'm thankful for that), but Durham has a generous number of fine restaurants for a city its size. It's not just pricey places, either: Almost every establishment competing for the serious eater's dollars around here is actually good. Try to find anywhere else that can make that claim. For instance, take a saunter through downtown Savannah, GA-a much more tourist-friendly city-and find reams of high-cost, low quality establishments. It's not an overstatement to say that Durham's culinary offerings give Chapel Hill a run for its money. The city's established names read like a Who's Who of top-rated southern restaurants: Magnolia Grill, Nana's, Parizade-the hit list goes on.
Even with the tough competition, Four Square Restaurant sits well abreast of its rivals. Located on Chapel Hill Road, the antebellum-style mansion radiates serenity, quality and class amid much more modest surroundings. The interior décor matches the restaurant's exterior reserve. There's a lot of clean, varnished wood and crisp, white linen in sight, along with tastefully arranged local art (a guide is available upon request). The minimal ornamentation, similar to that of the Magnolia Grill, gives the restaurant the proper focus-the food.
Four Square's contemporary American fare strikes a delicate balance between the eclectic and conservative. The menu is unsurprising-no wacky burritos or questionable fruit purées on the list-but it is presentation and taste, not exotic dishes and ingredients, that make a good meal. The wine list reflects a commitment to quality over pretense; for every high-priced selection, there's a worthwhile $20 bottle to match. The diversity and consistency of offerings show the place to be as comfortable serving slabs of meat as they are a delicate pasta or fish fillet. Diehard meat and potato fans, as well as vegetarians, won't be left out: There's a grilled beef tenderloin accompanied by mashed potatoes and fried onions on the menu, right below an exquisite vegetable lasagna with oyster mushrooms, baby fennel and pea purée. For the more adventurous eater, Four Square offers a pan-seared duck breast with duck confit cannelloni, garnished with dried cranberries and a porcini scented duck reduction. Of the four seafood offerings, the bacon-wrapped sturgeon (caviar is made from its eggs) wins the prize for originality, while the pan-seared salmon with artichoke, caper, dried tomato and calamato olive ragout and wild rice takes a spectacular variation on the traditional.
All of the food proved exceptional in both appearance and flavor. Four Square's emphasis on presentation gives its offerings the touch of elegance that justifies the high price tag. The service was extremely attentive and personal-all of our entrées were served simultaneously by separate waiters. The service was there when we needed it, invisible when we didn't. As for the food, it was garnished with equal flair and attention. It's almost hard to eat a meal that looks like artwork; with fried leeks riding atop my rubbed veal chop, with sprinklings of parsley flecking the plate's white space, the entrée made me feel like I was eating a Renoir. The 'sandwich' of portobello mushrooms and creamed leeks that accompanied the veal was divine, dripped with a port wine cream sauce that also gave a subtle edge to the meat.
Dessert is one area where some Durham restaurants fall flat, but Four Square triumphed there as well. Along with a selection of homemade ice creams and sorbets, the dessert menu boasted delectable winners like white chocolate pistachio brittle cheesecake and a roasted banana cream tartlet with peanut nougat and spirals of dark and milk chocolate sauce. The special was a generous serving of apple cider ice cream wedged between two giant oatmeal cookies-my guest didn't leave an ounce on her plate.
New restaurants like Four Square show that Durham's tradition of fine dining endures. Its top-notch service, unique location, refined presentation and consistent quality make it a superb choice for a quiet dinner with the parents or that crucial third date. The restaurant is fine enough to impress somebody, but abandons the ostentation and pretense that could scare people away. Mainstays like Nana's and the Magnolia Grill should watch their backs-Four Square is going to make it a tight race for dominance in the Durham restaurant scene.
(12/03/99 5:00am)
Beastie Boys
(12/03/99 5:00am)
Art reflects life. The gloom-to-bloom story of the economy in the 1990s is mirrored by the decade's musical offerings, which ran the gamut from grunge to gloss in a span of ten years. As factories closed and pessimism reigned over the earlier part of the decade, Nirvana and like-minded bands ushered in a wave of authenticity, shredding the slick images and hyperproduced fluff of bands whose glitter didn't match the general melancholy of the moment. In a breath and a scream, Cobain shook rock music to its knees with a blaring, punk-informed brand of music that tore away everything but the essentials. The band's success opened a window into the life of the man who became the world's greatest anti-rock star-an anti-macho punk, an articulate high school dropout with a gnawing pain in both his stomach and his soul. Kurt Cobain turned flannel to gold, but true to his ethos, he didn't want to live to see his work become fodder for mindless TV commercials.
(12/03/99 5:00am)
These are not the ten most influential albums of the 1990s, nor are they the ten most popular. In these ten albums exists a unique combination of influence, emotional power, pure artistic merit and enduring appeal that make them our picks for the ten best albums of the decade.
(11/19/99 5:00am)
ip-hop in the Triangle is blowing up.
(11/12/99 5:00am)
That is real?
(11/05/99 5:00am)
For most of the band's career, Primus has been a sort of hard rock version of They Might Be Giants, combining off-kilter pop songcraft with wacky tales about cracked-out racecar drivers and people named Mud wielding aluminum baseball bats. Like TMBG, this emphasis on the intentionally bizarre has had the effect of limiting the band's audience to adolescent skaters and oddballs and grownups who still like to get silly with it.
(11/05/99 5:00am)
age Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha probably wants you to stop eating pickles. He wants you not to wear Guess? clothing. He wants to free Native American activist Leonard Peltier and convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. He calls cops "pigs" and wants the nation to quake with revolution. He hangs the flag upside down and burns it before his amphitheater legions, dropping science in stadiums and moving units at Wal-Mart. Sony Music, a subsidiary of one of the largest corporations in the world, cuts Zack's check every month. But hey, that's no reason to be cynical. Woodstock '99 was all about revolution-right?-and Rage played that one straight-faced, too.
(10/29/99 4:00am)
Halloween is the only scary holiday. So, on that one occasion, people want to get terrified to the point of incontinence. People get happy about the garish, drunk on the dreadful and give props to everything from mutilation to cross-dressing. Halloween is weird, but we all play along, engaging in the grotesqueness and making it our own.
(10/29/99 4:00am)
People may call her Sporty Spice, but Northern Star shows that Melanie Chisholm is more than a cheeky sideshow act. This album is a 180-degree sound and image makeover that deserves attention. Gone are Mel's track suits and ponytails; these days, Sporty sports a sexy spike hairdo, trimmer figure, nose ring and a touch of attitude. Northern Star doesn't totally abandon the syrup-pop format, but its mix of guitar songs, dance tracks and R&B flavors provides a more variegated and engaging effort than might be expected. It would be remiss to call this a classic, but musically, it is light years ahead of the Spice Girls' cotton-candy fluff.
(10/08/99 4:00am)
Trent Reznor spent five years making The Fragile.
(10/08/99 4:00am)
Fresh from the jaws of Tortoise comes Isotope 217, indie rock's answer to jazz. Composed of three Tortoise members and two other hyper-cool local jazzbos (including renowned cornetist Robert Mazurek), Isotope 217 promises to help rid the Chicago-based cult of funky, jazzy instrumental bands of their nerdy, studio-wank stigma. Although Tortoise is known to noodle, sometimes excruciatingly, in the hazy realms of post-rock, Isotope 217 sticks closer to the point, bringing a smooth, collaborative fervor of jazz to the forefront. The result is extraordinary.
(10/01/99 4:00am)
Air's first album, Moon Safari, was a French pop masterpiece, an electric lullaby of hushed tones and brooding organ musings. To sate the untutored ears of non-French listeners, Moon Safari also included several tracks in English, including the upbeat "Sexy Boy" and unforgettable slow jam "All I Need." Air received a slew of good press for the album-it set a mood so masterfully it could almost have been a way of life. Premiers Symptomes, an EP collection of early singles released on the Mo' Wax and Source labels, foreshadows many of Moon Safari's dreamy pleasures. The only downside to this EP is that Moon Safari is so damn good-for those who don't own that record, Premiers Symptomes is non-essential. Nonetheless, it shows that Air is no one-trip pony-they've got plenty more artsy pop up their sleeves for next time.
(09/17/99 4:00am)
Contrary to what you might have heard, independent rock music is nowhere near dead in the Triangle. Sure, Superchunk aren't quite what they used to be, and Polvo and Archers of Loaf have split, but those big names never represented more than a fraction of the vibrant and diverse music of the area. Music scenes are built on the backs of small, fiercely independent bands-not big-name acts-that do what they do because they love it, in spite of the latest swing or electro fad.
