Q&A: Pinche Gringo

Greensboro native Josh Johnson – better known to some as Pinche Gringo – makes a rambunctious, ramshackling mix of distorted garage rock and blues. He’ll play The Cave in Chapel Hill this Sunday. Here, he gives Diversions staff writer Anna Norris some of his off-the-wall thoughts on SXSW, the local music scene and the ultimate dream show. Diversions: You play SXSW this week. What are you looking forward to the most? Josh Johnson: I can’t wait to see all the bands with animals in their name. I generally like them. I heard Pamela Des Barres is gonna be signing books too. I wanna see her. I promised my friend Roth I would get her book “I’m with the Band” signed for her.

Review: Billy Joel, Live at Shea Stadium

Billy Joel Billy Joel: Live at Shea Stadium 2.5 stars My first thought upon being assigned to review Billy Joel: Live at Shea Stadium was, “What exactly can you say about a Billy Joel concert DVD?” The man has been performing for close to fifty years now, so it’s probably safe to say that he has shows down pat. At 151 minutes long, Live at Shea Stadium is almost the length of a “Lord of the Rings” movie — and with aerial shots from a helicopter, a rotating-disappearing-reappearing piano platform and an absolutely massive LED backdrop — probably on par with the budget. The spectacle continues as Joel hosts a parade of guest performers: Tony Bennett, Garth Brooks, John Mayer and Paul McCartney.

Movie Review: "I Am Number Four"

I Am Number Four When a film that’s based on a book is shot before its source material is even written, it’s generally a bad sign. Without a way to gauge the public’s interest in the material, filmmakers will aim to give it as much mass appeal as possible. The end result is often something like “I Am Number Four:” bland, superficial and dumb.

Album Review: Yuck, "Yuck"

Yuck Yuck 3 stars If Yuck was an ice cream flavor, it would be cookies ‘n’ cream. It’s sweet and satisfying, but the taste in your mouth at the end of the record is a little bland. The band’s self-titled release is pleasurable, but nothing unexpected, and while it’s entirely palatable, it won’t likely set your senses off in fireworks. The band blends punk, pop and garage rock. Guitar riffs build and slam with solid chords on some tracks and fade into fuzzy dreaminess on others. Songs on the album fall into two major (but cohesive) categories — slow rock ballads and energized rock tracks. There is power to Yuck’s sound, but it’s nothing that will blow your clothes off.

(Belated) Hump Day Bump Day: February 10, 2011

Schoolboy Q – Setbacks Well if your stuff isn’t selling on iTunes, give it away. That is what Schoolboy Q has done with his latest album, Setbacks, which is now in mixtape format. This dude sounds mad. He puts more emotion into the songs than the bitches he raps about in his songs. The guys drops names more than a 15-year-old girl in the locker room, Shady this, Dre that, Obama here, Steve Nash there. It doesn’t get old, but I’m trying to hear about his opinions on drugs, bling, money, and women, which eventually come. The guys is relatively new to the big-time mixtape game and only has a few of the unheard guests, which don’t add much, except an annoying hook on “Whats the Word.” I’ll give the guy props, he spits truth and doesn’t humble himself on “Druggy’s Wit Hoes.”

The Movie Trail: February 8, 2011

Quality full-length trailers are pretty much non-existent this week, as most studies seemed to invested all of their time and money in 30-second spots during the Super Bowl, so this week I’ll be running down the ones that amused me most. First up is “Captain America: The First Avenger,” and the Super Bowl spot is the first look at it audiences have gotten beyond a few stills from the set. I always though Captain America was basically just a guy in tights who threw his shield at people but apparently I was wrong; he does have a shield, but he also shoots Nazis and blows a ton of stuff up. To top it all off, it’s got two of my favorite actors, Tommy Lee Jones and Hugo Weaving, in supporting roles, so as long as it doesn’t get severely hindered by a PG-13 rating you can almost certainly bet I’ll be there to catch some mindless superhero action. Also, Chris Evans apparently signed on to play Captain America in six films, so clearly Paramount has a lot invested in this one.

Album Review: North Mississippi All-Stars, "Live in the Hills"

North Mississippi All-Stars Live in the Hills 3.5 Stars “Times done been won’t be no more.” It’s a haunting and all too true refrain from “Horseshoe,” by the NorthvMississippi Allstars. With Othar Turner, R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough dead and gone, few of the original apostles of the north Mississippi blues style remain. Luckily, the half-revivalists, half-archivists that are the Allstars work full-time to keep the “hill country” sound alive, and that’s just what they’re doing again on this “official bootleg” from last year’s annual Hill Country Picnic in Potts Camp, MS.

The Brew Ha Ha: January 28, 2011

When it comes to beer, I’m a pretty tolerant guy. If you like weizens, that’s cool. If Porters and stouts are your thing, I’m down with that too. The beauty of beer is in its diversity. We have at our disposal a spectrum of malts, hops and spices, textures and colors and aromas innumerable, like a scratch and sniff culinary rainbow building us a high road to Valhalla where we all spend the rest of our days drinking blissfully with the gods. Even the girlie purveyors of fruit beer and the pudgy partisans of deep-frying have a place at that table. The world of brewing is wide, my friends, and that means we can all have our favorite beers, and drink them too!

Hump Day Bump Day: January 19, 2011

CurT@!N$ – Killer Tape (Tagless) CurT@!N$ makes Ke$ha look like an English major with ampersands, exclamation points, and half uppercase, half lowercase lettering all just to spell out his name. His “Killer Tape” was released to a fair amount of hype towards the end of December, maybe because he flipped sick beats by established rappers the day they leaked and released his freestyle the next day. CurT@!N$ takes more of an album approach to “Killer Tape,” saving the sick beats for his consumption, and selectively featuring the recently Dr. Dre touted Kendrick Lamar. The dude’s flow is ludicrous; he brings the energy on every track similar to the ATL-afro stoner Ludacris back in the day when he was rapping about fantasies. He is calling out big time rappers such as Kanye West, N.E.R.D. and Cee-Lo Green (just to name a few recognizable beats).

The Movie Trail: January 19, 2011

When I posted the teaser trailer for “Battle: Los Angeles” a few months back, I was somewhat underwhelmed. After all, the alien invasion genre is pretty packed, and it’s hard to make a new addition to it stand out from the pack. The full trailer for the film provides a certain amount of hope that “Battle” will be unique enough to watch, taking hand-held camera techniques reminiscent of “Cloverfield” and combining them with a much more somber tone. This trailer also gives us a better look at the protagonists of the film (Michelle Rodriguez and Aaron Eckhart, among others) and the aliens they’re up against. Assuming it’s not randomly converted to 3D at the last moment or something, it could be some pretty entertaining stuff.

Brew Ha Ha: 1/15/11

Welcome to a new year and a new semester at the Brew Ha Ha. Hopefully everyone had a blessedly intoxicated winter break. We’ll kick off our first few weeks with themed beer investigations, starting with “angry” ales this Friday, and turning to India Pale Ales next week. After that, who knows what’s to come? Our first “angry” ale this week isn’t so much angry as it is sour. In fact, it’s just that: a sour ale from Fullsteam Brewery in Durham. At the moment Fullsteam has on tap something they’re quite creatively (and deceptively) calling their “Sour Mashed Sweet Potato Ale.” The story behind this limited-release beer has nothing to do with sour mash whiskey, sadly, but derives its name rather from Fullsteam’s regular “Carver” sweet potato lager. From what I apocryphally gather, the grains normally used for the Carver were recently infected by a strain of bacteria known as lactobacillus under mysterious circumstances, and this soured the wort. When that wort was then reused, it turned into a sour beer, and thus a star was born.

Review: Young Prisms, "Friends for Now"

*2.5 Stars Ambient/Rock* Chillwave or shoegaze? Young Prisms decides to take the middle road when paving the way towards their debut album — chillgaze.

Review: "Season of the Witch"

Nicolas Cage has never chosen movie roles with the gravitas of an Oscar-winner, but in what can only be excused as a desperate attempt to finance his notoriously lavish lifestyle, “Season of the Witch” emerges as the low water-mark of the acclaimed actor’s career and prompts the question of whether the tide is going out for good.

Hump Day Bump Day: December 1, 2010

Lexicon – Almost There Here’s a project from a fellow Tar Heel. Lexicon, a.k.a. Lex Jordan, a current junior at UNC, released his latest mixtape “Almost There” right before Thanksgiving break. The six-song EP is a prelude to his album dropping later this week. Lil B – Evil Red Flame This spoken-word/hardly-rappin’ artist starts out by apologizing to Kanye West by crediting him a genius. What a plug. He previously threatened on Twitter to beat up West if they met in person and he didn’t collaborate with Lil B. If you have never heard of this cat, I’m surprised — he is the self-proclaimed “Based God”. Trump Gees – Watching Me Closely For the big-name features that Trump Gees have enlisted on “Watching Me Closely,” he certainly doesn’t live up to the hype. Curren$y has put out two of the best rap albums in 2010, Gucci Mane is Gucci Mane, and Freeway is an established name in the rap game. Trump Gees really brings it when he throws down a verse, but doesn’t capitalize on the beats he should be.

Q&A: Josh Kimbrough of Butterflies

(Belated) Brew Ha Ha: November 24, 2010

I offer my profoundest and most humble apologies for the lack of brew news last week, and will make up for it this week with a Brewhaha smorgasbord. So let’s get started. First up is a heads up to all those deal-hounds looking for good-to-decent beer at awesome-to-awesomer prices. Last week I scored a 12 pack of Redhook’s Longhammer IPAs at the Harris Teeter (a.k.a. the Hairy Teat) in Carrboro for roughly $8. I was so stoked about that price that I forgot to be skeptical about, well, that price, and bought the pack without a second thought. Longhammer, though much maligned by my friends as a sub-standard IPA, is not a bad beer. I admit, it’s not particularly strong or adventurous, but it’s easily drinkable and has more than enough hoppiness to justify a $ 0.66 dollar/beer price. The catch with that, and the beer generally, though I didn’t realize this until I got home, was that the IPAs were roughly three months expired. Whoops. It turned out that didn’t really matter, as they were still plenty drinkable and not stale at all. So word to the wise: the Teat might not be sold out. If you can stomach a mediocre IPA for rock bottom prices, hit ‘em up and tell ‘em the Brew Ha Ha sent you.

Music Review: The Fooligans, "Love Songs for the Apocalypse"

The Fooligans Love Songs For The Apocalypse 3 Stars The Fooligans are the little engine that could of the Triangle. The band isn’t polished and it doesn’t have the best sounding material, but brute talent and a raw rock ‘n’ roll sound keep the band trucking up the mountain. Love Songs For the Apocalypse can attest to The Fooligans’ determination.

The Movie Trail: November 16, 2010

Hey look, another trailer for “Skyline!” No? “Cloverfield 2,” then? Still wrong? Maybe an “Independence Day” remake? No, it’s the trailer for “Battle: Los Angeles,” and it looks remarkably like every other alien invasion movie made in the last ten or so years. Admittedly, it has a more somber tone and it doesn’t aggressively point out the presence of its stars Aaron Eckhart, Michelle Rodriguez, and, uh, Ne-Yo. In fact, you’ll probably have to go through frame by frame to spot any of them. I confess that my interest in the coming alien invasion is gradually fading, and “Battle: LA” hasn’t perked it up much. Hell, who says the invading extraterrestrial hordes have to be more advanced than humans and determined to wipe us all out time and time again? I’d rather see a fresh take on the subject. But I don’t direct movies, I just criticize them. Check out the trailer below.

Troika Recap

Review: Trophy Wife, "Patience Fury"

Trophy wife Patience Fury Punk Rock 4/5 stars It seems as soon as a band is described as “female rockers,” there’s an instant barrier in people’s minds. It’s as if rock music by women always brings that cringe-inducing “chick rock” connotation, like Alanis Morisette’s whine. But luckily, Trophy Wife is here to fix all misconceptions, with a sound nowhere near as demure as its moniker.