In the Gateway building, I was immediately attracted to more of Mariam Cooper’s paintings. “Yolk #2″ was another gorgeous bedroom scene. I can’t put my finger on what I love about these so much- they have a voyeuristic quality and there’s a weird disconnect between recognizing the image of a bed but feeling a kind of restless unease. The skewed perspective seems to invite the viewer into the canvas but isn’t exactly welcoming. I also loved “Big Green”, which features these faint boxes on a white background. The whole composition is encircled in a sickly green stripe like a frame encompassing multiple blank canvasses.

In the Black Box space, Holden Brown, Jessica Childress, Travis Levasseur, and Kat Schneider collaborated on “Wish You Were Here” (left), a multi-room installation laid out almost like IKEA model rooms. This was hands-down the most ambitious project I saw this year. Viewers walk through a warren of chambers; starting with a travel agency office, then an armchair against a flatscreen-cum-window. There’s a bottle of Windex discretely placed on a shelf. Its the little. It’s absurd details like the Windex that make “Wish You Were Here” so successful. Most of the gestures here aren’t doing or saying anything new (there’s a room of plastic plants in front of a projection of a CGI forest) but do it so very well. I especially liked the projection of the CGI snow-covered mountain range next to a blasting air conditioner. The least obvious (and most unnerving) piece is a dog kennel with a flesh-toned blanket on the floor. On close inspection, there’s a faint image of a woman’s face printed on the blanket.

Down at the Main Building, I was totally blown away by DeAndre Britton’s assemblages. It’s hard to describe his work, so I’m glad I took lots of pictures. Some pieces exist somewhere between painting and furniture; collapsing the hierarchy of interior decorating into glorious ruin.

I was so struck by how many amazing painters MICA churns out. I think painting can be a daunting medium; it’s so subjective and leaves so much of the artist’s hand visible to critique. MICA reliably instills both the technical proficiency and (most importantly) confidence in young painters to produce impressive work. I was totally awestruck by Emma Fineman’s larger-than-life portraits of ambiguous figures in heavy makeup. Painterly-paintings of painted people is such a good idea it’s crazy. I could’ve spent hours staring at these. Move over Jenny Saville. Seriously.

Another painter I really liked was June Culp. She has to be the most prolific MICA student in the history of the school. Her work was all over campus and it was all so different. I couldn’t pick a favorite, so I chose her bathtub sculpture and painting because it reminded me of George Bush’s bathtub painting but is so much better.

I was super happy to see these paintings by Nicole Dyer. I had seen her work before at Current Gallery’s Odd Logic but was totally overwhelmed by how crowded the show was. Her pieces work much better here with some breathing room. I love her palette, expressiveness, and ability to imply narrative while breaking so many rules of representation. “Please Come In” spills off the canvas and onto the floor with surprisingly un-gimmicky success. I loved all of these.

Upstairs, Flannery Silvia and Chloe Maratta filled a gallery with collaborative objects, readymades and sketches. I wish I could have spent more time with this work; it was surprisingly opaque conceptually for how inviting and casual its presentation seemed. I’m planning to re-visit this over the weekend!

The first piece I saw, immediately next to the check-in tent outside the Fox Building was Miriam Cooper’s “Yolk #1″ (pictured left). This painting is gorgeous. I love the tension between its graphic and painterly qualities, its asymmetrical balance and somewhat creepy tone.

Inside the Fox Building, Annie Rochell’s “Look/Look Away” (pictured left) plays with the cliche of a painting’s eyes following a viewer in a clever way; two images, painted at 45 degree angles from another, show two views of the same boy from different perspectives. It’s weirdly captivating and I found myself pacing back and forth “watching” the painting “move”. It’s oil on canvas for the .GIF generation.

In the adjacent gallery, Justine Kablack serves Lisa Dillin-esque realness (or unrealness?) with a drop-ceiling light sculpture, flooring/astro turf piece, and painting of a sunset through venetian blinds. I’m hoping the similarities to Dillin’s locally well-publicized recent work are deliberate in some kind of meta-narrative of artificiality miming artificiality. (pictured right)

I was really happy to see some amazing sculptural work from the Ceramics Department, which back in my day as a MICA undergrad didn’t get a lot of action beyond the pottery wheel. Olivia Di Benigo’s architecturally-inspired pieces are gorgeous. I love work that has a minimalist aesthetic but subtly shows the artist’s hand in its craftsmanship. Di Benigo totally hits the nail on the head. These are beautiful and so evocative while still remaining the most “quiet” work in the gallery (pictured left).

Downstairs, Emilee Wooten’s figurative sculptures of corpulent women are flawlessly executed and so weirdly creepy. I found it really hard to make eye contact with them and then even harder to break their strangely confrontational gazes. I left the gallery feeling almost embarrassed and that’s an emotion I so rarely feel that I think this work will stick with me for a while. (pictured below)

On the second floor, printmaker Rei Lem’s “Construction” dominates the gallery with its fluorescent palette, large scale and chaotic surface. I really loved her work. So much neon artwork that borrows commercial visual language feels like it’s whisking low-brow culture off to the ivory tower to be sarcastically judged. Lem, on the other hand, seems to be stealing the aesthetic back; returning it to a less-precious, approachable place. Its like a really cute DIY valentine to city life with all its texture and overlapping advertisements, tags, and tiny comedic moments. I was really glad I came for Art Walk and got to meet the artist; her approachable, bubbly personality totally matches what I expected based on her work. She was even giving out free screen-printed posters to visitors! It’s definitely going on my wall! (pictured below)

Across the plaza in the Bunting Center, Jianna Lieberman and Aviva Paley, two graphic designers made these shirts… which I think are hilarious. Despite their patriotic overtones, however, they were oddly enough printed on t shirts made in Honduras.

Lastly, in that same gallery, I loved this painting by Donna Castello “Reflection/ Love Seat”.

STAY TUNED FOR PART II

David Eberhardt, 72,  was a member of the Baltimore Four, who poured blood on draft files in Baltimore to protest the Vietnam War in 1967. For that he spent 21 months in federal prison, mainly at Lewisburg, Pa. He is a poet with three books of poetry. He is retired from 33 years of  social work (directing Offender Aid and Restoration) at the Baltimore City Jail. For more information visit davideberhardt.webs.com

Reflections on Hit & Stay

By Dave Eberhardt

The documentary movie, Hit & Stay, directed by Joe Tropea and Skizz Cyzyk,  played at the Maryland Film Festival last week.

Six years in the making, the 100-minute documentary is about anti-draft board actions–spanning 1967 to 1973– to protest the Vietnam War. The film begins with the Baltimore Four (of which I was part) and progresses through the Catonsville Nine, Milwaukee 14, Chicago Eight actions and many other actions (there were approximately 120 in all).

The movie describes how these actions were organized and progressed  from the first–where four of us poured blood on draft files in 1967 in Baltimore and waited to be arrested (hence “hit and  stay”)– to what is perhaps best known action, the Catonsville Nine, where, 45 years ago today, nine individuals burned draft files with homemade napalm. Despite the title, the film also addresses actions where persons would not wait to be arrested (“stay”) but would instead disappear (“run”).

Participants appear in the film speaking frankly and often humorously about their roles in the plots and schemes to break into and pile up and destroy a myriad of draft files. The actions are always creative but, in some instances are ruined by informants or the FBI. Humor abounds, for example, as she “cases” a draft board building, Ms. Dougherty spends the night watching the progression of lights on and off in the wrong building. Tom Melville gets great laughter as he describes seminary and the priesthood as perfect training grounds for prison. Weatherperson Bill Ayers says he finds religion a “bummer,” but praises the many clergy involved in the draft actions. Jim Forest muses over the drill sergeant side of Phil Berrigan’s personality.

As the actions progressed, they became more and more secular and youthful. Jerry Elmer states that Phil Berrigan was suspicious of him at first because of his age.

Though it consists largely of talking heads and interviews, the film creates a gripping narrative arc, thanks to Tropea and Cyzyk. The participants seem to provide glue to hold the the narrative together and interspersed is commentary by such luminaries as historian Howard Zinn and scholar Noam Chomsky.

The “other side” of the picture, that is those opposed to these actions, is well represented by a prosecutor, a judge, retired FBI agents, draft clerks, and church goers.

As Daniel Berrigan leaves a church having given the morning sermon after he decided to go “underground” instead of reporting to jail, a member of the congregation comments, “Oh that’s what it’s about? He’s supposed to be in jail with his bother?” And another says, “Well, he’s entitled to his beliefs but I don’t share them.” Another says, “I think destroying draft cards is un-American”.

Given the youth of the directors, I fully expected an amateurish work and was pleasantly surprised by the over all professionalism–thus leading to hopes of some wide distribution or play on PBS or another more established venues (the hard part).

All of us participants learned a great deal about the other actions previously known only in fragmentary fashion. To have big appreciative audiences as well as friends present to watch the movie was very moving.

Sadly, a number of crucial actors, such as Tom Lewis, John Grady, Phil Berrigan, and others have passed on. Dan Berrigan’s 92 birthday fell on May 11, the date of the second showing of Hit and Stay.

To me, Jim Harney of the Milwaukee 14 and the “weather person” Laura Whitehorn give the most moving summaries and analyses of what we were trying to accomplish, what we meant and “were about,” and what needs to be done. Because of such statements as theirs, the message is a plain and clear one, making the movie as relevant now as it will be in the future of war-making America.

For the most part, the trails of these groups were railroad jobs–as they continue to be today in the case of the Plowshares group. Plowshares actions took off as the draft-board actions stopped, specifically targeting nuclear war. The same week  Hit and Stay premiered, three members of the Transform Now Plowshares group were found guilty of sabotage for  “interfering with or obstructing the national defense” and “depredation of government property” (we of the Baltimore Four  got the same charge in 1967) at the Oak Ridge nuclear facility, where they had poured the actual blood of  Baltimore Four and Plowshares member Tom Lewis, which had been preserved since his death, on the walls of a building containing enough enriched uranium to end life on the planet. They had hiked a mile to get there, going through four fences, the last three in “Kill Zones” where they could well have  been shot.  The three Tranform Now Plowshares activists, one 82 year old nun, Megan Rice, were treated as terrorists.

At the “Transform Now” courtroom in Knoxville, the jury and judge were as leaden and dead as their counterparts were in the trials portrayed in Hit & Stay; but hopefully this movie will reach out to “middle America”  and not  just those of us who are a minority of exiles in our own country.

I came to Rooms Fall Apart: A Serious Play, a descendent of the Copy Cat Theatre’s Rooms Plays, now put on by Socially Engaged Arts and Performance Projects (SEAPP) as part of the Transmodern festival (though it runs through this weekend), with a bunch of reasons for not liking this non-play, non-performance art piece, and most of them still hold true. I mean, it’s hard to discern a serious idea, and there’s no serious sense that anything serious is happening. And it calls itself a “serious play.” Is this really serious? Is it serious with quotation marks?

But then I realized that starting from either assumption would get me in deep water, so I just headed upstairs.* At the top of four floors, we were crammed into a small room where everyone had to sit on everyone else’s laps. There was a ghoul taking notes, and obviously trying to figure out what to do with everyone once they arrive in.

I looked around. I didn’t know anyone there, not even a competing theater critic. Doing this with nothing but strangers – and for the first time – made this more affecting.

I was picked with two other strangers by a transsexual stripper, and I was slowly urged to crawl through what seemed like a labyrinthine large intestine. Now the people in front of me – a female socialist and a queer socialist (at least this is how they identified themselves in another room) turned a corner and disappeared. I panicked, crawled down another length of large intestines, and found what looked like an exit, which I then realized was a window of said fourth floor. That exit was not an option. Then I found myself back where I had started, but realized that another group of four people was starting their own journey. I was in danger of blocking the large intestine. I was supposed to be heading through this with a critical eye, remember.

Luckily, I persevered, and somewhere ahead of me, found what looked like the shoes of the person I had started with. I didn’t grab them, but found myself released in what looked like a gigantic igloo/cave, with a light slowly let down, and strange voices on either side baiting me and encouraging me to turn the light on. I did, and two faces poked out of the pink wall, scribbled with bathroom graffiti.

I was of two minds. On the one hand, I approached this with skeptical nonchalance (you want serious criticism? I’ll give you criticism), but on the other hand, I didn’t want to muck things up, having already gotten lost in a large intestine. I saw myself as a participant in a rudely staged experience…and even as I went through 22 rooms, losing a sense of direction and even reason for being there, there was no question that, in the end, I was not only a point of interest, but the only thing that held this experience together.

In fact, as the emcee helpfully put it, I was the single dot at the center of the universe, through which subjectivity and objectivity – and the awareness of space – flow. I was being asked to navel gaze, even as I was being prodded, baited, encouraged, offended, humored, and entertained.  The somewhat detached observation point – amused, but never involved enough to really care – served as a nexus for this creative smorgasbord.

This strange comfort zone, once achieved, was an excellent starting point for the rest of the Transmodern festival. This was about process. The intestinal tract was the focus and not what we came out with at the end.

This was a serious experience. That’s all I can say. Again, “serious experience” seems like a phrase that means little by the time you forget what being serious feels like. So the only three pieces of advice I would give if you go this weekend are: Don’t do it if you’re a devout Catholic, over 300 pounds, or on a bad acid trip. But, to be honest, I can’t wait for the next Rooms Play.

*This post initially stated that the production was not handicap accessible. We regret the error.

City Paper spoke to Nathan while he was in Toronto for the festival (see our feature story in this Wednesday’s paper) and he explained that he came to Baltimore to study painting at MICA and started 12 O’Clock Boys, his first film, on a whim. Soon, he was obsessed and he was offered the award and a $3,000 cash prize for “his capacity to capture rare insight and recognizing strong characters in a complex maze of urban stories.”

After appearing at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March, 12 O’Clock Boys was picked up for North American distribution by Oscilloscope Laboratories, the company, co-founded by Beastie Boy Adam Yauch,  that released the Banksy-directed Exit Through the Gift Shop.

Right off the plane, I got an email informing me that I had won a ticket lottery to see Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, which meant the first thing I did was one of the big moments of the week for me... I was a little surprised he was playing the NPR showcase, and was afraid he might be toned down... however, I shouldn’t have worried. He did not disappoint, performing bawdy, offensive tunes like Stagger Lee (featuring frequent discussion of various types of sodomy), which seemed to surprise most of the crowd at Stubbs. He performed the “hits” as well though, including his well-known track Red Right Hand, which caused even the most random of crowd members to raise a fist, and he did a rousing performance of the somber track Mercy Seat.

Photos and text by Josh Sisk.

Click on images to see full-size.

After the horrific tour bus accident that critically injured most of Baroness - Baizley, the singer & guitarist received serious arm damage, drummer Allen broke several vertebrae - the future of the band seemed uncertain. But on stage at the North Door during SXSW, Baizely confirmed both that their future is sound and that he is committed to moving himself in a new, more personal direction. He brought out a set of stripped down, yet spaced-out songs with introspective, personal lyrics, including at least one interesting choice of a cover tune (Townes Van Zandt? Wow!) More than anything, though, it was good to see the man on stage, in one piece, playing guitar again.

After a long, brutally hot day of walking, this was the perfect release - the Grim four-piece, without any pomp or circumstance, simply walked on stage and cut loose - delivering an hour of blackened thrash metal. While they have none of the pretensions of some other modern NYC black metal bands, their set was legitimately transcendental.

Baltimore's own Roomrunner briefly sparked life in what was otherwise a sleepy stage area as they delivered a great set of their grunge-tinged rock. Singer/guitarist Denny cracked wise about the increasingly corporate nature of SXSW from the stage, but this crowd was all music fans, excited to simply see a great band cut loose.

The very last set I caught, but one of the best. Beerland is among the best places to see a SXSW show in Austin - partially because they are no frills, and don’t care if you have a wristband or a badge, a fact spelled out on the sign at the door. Thee Oh Sees didn’t even bother with the stage, instead setting up on the sidewalk patio outside and played for the street, various onlookers crowding around to get a peek, and when 2am rolled around, they just kept going! A great high point to end the long week on.

The largest band in terms of number of members that I saw at SXSW, also the one that played the most shows, probably. This six piece band from Nashville seemed to have six people on guitar alone, all constantly soloing in triumphant rock god poses and generally exhorting the crowd to cut loose and have a great time... which they did.

Every year at SXSW, there is a punk show hosted illegally on a pedestrian bridge that spans Colorado River, and it's always been one of the highlights of the trip. This year was no different, with Tampa's Merchandise playing along with one of the heavily buzzed bands of SXSW, Parquet Courts. Merchandise really impressed me at this show, though like most good live shows, the crowd was as much an important part of the moment- exploding around them, dancing, making out, moshing, throwing fireworks. This year, the cops didn’t even come.

Simple, pure, SoCal punk with a metal tinge - this band ripped into a set of short, brutal anthems, including a sloppy cover of Ace of Spades. The singer dominated the space - doing laps on top of the bar, scattering people (but hopefully not their drinks), shoving the mic into surprised onloookers faces, and general creating a time that was surprisingly fun and raucous for 2pm. We stumbled into this place simply to get out of the heat, but it ended up being one of the more fun moments of the week.

These North Carolina country & garage tinged psych rockers impressed me at Hopscotch Festival last year when I walked into a random bar and they were playing, and I was stoked to completely randomly catch them again under similar circumstances - this band deserves to be more well known than they are.

A bit of a departure from the other bands on this list, Boy delivered a quiet, earnest set of Americana-tinged indie pop... even though they are Swiss-German! Bonus entertainment was found when the singer Valeska Steiner spoke between songs, not in the Southern twang of her songs, but in her native Swiss accent. This was a fun break... watching Austin’s skyline roll by and enjoying the cool Colorado River breeze.

This band was a fresh discovery for me, even though the late Jay Reatard was once a member., They played several shows at SXSW but their set closing down the last night of the Beerland stage, was their best I saw - great onstage antics, fast, catchy (yet dark) songs, and they managed to whip a crowd exhausted from days of partying into a frenzy, including yours truly.

I watched from my vantage point on the side stage as Mac DeMarco, full of energy, bounced around above the crowd, eventually performing most of one of his songs hanging upside down from the lighting above the stage, people’s hands and cameras outstretched all around him.

Brian Recher, who, along with brothers Steve and Scott, transformed the venue from a billiards room in 1998, said the move is a sign of the times.

“The scene now is DJs,” Recher told City Paper. “The live music scene is still good, but it’s down. . .  This was strictly a business decision.”

The brothers began the transformation in December, when they turned the 2,000-square-foot “Green” room and patio into the Torrent Lounge. The room quickly took off in popularity, affirming the family’s decision to make a change.

Band performances will continue until the end of March, when construction will begin. The goal, says, Recher, is to reopen right when students at nearby Towson University are coming back to campus in the fall.

“I’ve had 15 years of incredible memories here,” says Recher, recalling shows by national headliners like Iggy Pop, Bob Weir, and Phil Lesh, and locals like Jah Works and the All Mighty Senators. One thing he will not miss, says Recher, is having his name on the marquee.

“My brothers and I never wanted to use the Recher name,” he says. “Two promoters at the time told us that was the thing to do, so we did it. I like being under the radar. I don’t need my name in lights.”

Coupled with the closing of Sonar last year, the demise of the Recher means a lot of bands, particularly the heavy bands and jam bands favored by both venues, might have a hard time finding a place to play.

As City Paper contributor and local music fixture Josh Sisk tweeted as the news spread, the closing  “leaves a big hole for medium size live music rooms in Bmore.”

– Katherine Quinn

A couple weekends ago, boxer Manny Pacquiao lost a fight to Juan Manuel Marquez, in a non-title bout that had no technical effect on his professional standing, but had a huge effect on his public image: literally overnight, his name went from being synonymous with kicking ass to being synonymous with getting your ass kicked. Hip-hop has always been well equipped to respond to headline news, and does so faster than ever in the Twitter era: the following Monday morning, less than 36 hours after the knockout punch heard ‘round the world, Baltimore rap crew The Gritty Gang previewed a snippet of a hilarious new song called “Pacquiaoed.” And this week, the full song finally hit SoundCloud.

The Gritty Gang is a large, rotating cast of Baltimore rappers affiliated with Ogun and Architects Recording Studios, that’s been releasing mixtapes together since 2006; their latest, Gritty Gang Takeover, just dropped in November. “Pacquiaoed” is performed by Gritty Gang members Eddie H, Jitter B.U.G. and Play Boii, but also credits Ogun, Rockwell, Maintain and Dreko with “creative contribution(s),” which conjures the mental image of a half dozen MCs hanging out for a weekend coming up with their best Pacquiao jokes and one-liners about getting knocked out, and cramming them all into one song.

For more information visit: http://unbooking.tumblr.com/

It’s been nearly a decade since Godspeed You! Black Emperor last came through town. The cult band weathered a six year hiatus that ended in 2010. Times have changed since Godspeed played the Masonic Temple back in 2003, but despite post-rock’s recent dormancy they still drew a large crowd. The apocalyptic never goes out of style, at least not for long.

It felt a bit odd walking to the show through the theme-park-like Power Plant Live. Outside of Rams Head the Orioles game played and a band covered a very Cake-y “Staying Alive.” Inside the mood was somber and crowded, the venue packed all the way up to the theater seats on the second level.

While the use of drones connected Godspeed to the opener, Baltimore’s Zomes, the bands ultimately functioned very differently. Zomes featured layers of drones, the blanket of sound on which meandering scalar runs snaked through. The duo took their time, it wasn’t until thirty minutes in that rhythmic structure debuted with sampled hand drums and a four note riff. Their music was mesmerising but largely uneventful, for better or worse. The crowd was attentive at first but eventually, as more people packed in, the anticipation of Godspeed and, for some, the drama of the last day of regular season baseball distracted as the chatter grew.

Godspeed started similarly with a seasick bass drone that rattled the venue. They took their time to gradually enter, joining the drone. The sound shifted in timbre and grew, getting gradually more aggressive until fifteen minutes later toy piano and drums entered, bringing rhythm. The word ‘hope’ appeared across the bisected screen of abstract projections. It jumped about on the screen, scrawled and squiggly.

On paper the eight-piece band can seem highly esoteric. Songs last at least twenty minutes with plenty of ambient intros and outros. There are no vocals and the band does not chit-chat with the crowd. But the music is actually pretty easy to grasp. Riffs and melodies are repeated ad nauseum while the mass of sound builds higher and higher until the music’s emotive drama is inescapable.

Hope is an interesting word to introduce such a dark band. Rarely do they let light in on their bleak symphonies. The band was arranged in a semicircle, mostly seated. The stage was all dark save for blue and red LEDs from amps and effects pedals which offered a constellation for the band’s mythic music. It was clear that your attention was to be given to the projections, which often played with the edges of film, the holes forming patterns shifting in time with the music.
It wasn’t until an hour in that the band let a little joy and triumph shine. A muted slide guitar sang, rising through the murk, but it didn’t last long. Most of the time the music sounded desolate and dismal, punctuated with weepy vibrato.

About two hours after they entered, the band gradually exited leaving behind loops and feedback. The audience clapped for more, but it was a bit half-hearted and after a few minutes the lights went up. After all, two hours of doom and gloom is probably enough.

There was a slight chill in the night air as Thrill Jockey and Baltimore cuddled up for a long night at the Ram’s Head this past Thursday to celebrate Thrill Jockey’s twenty years in the business (to read more about Thrill Jockey and Baltimore’s ongoing affair head here). The night started off with two of area’s finest purveyors of the riff: Pontiak and Arbouretum. Pontiak’s Carney brothers evoked the uncanny with nearly identical thinning hair and appearance. All three sang in one voice when other bands would harmonize, punching the refrain through with brute force; their tightness and seamless transitions bred of… well being bred together.

Arbouretum offered similar divinations with an added theme: Now With More Guitar Solos! Their spiritual dirges and offerings to His Noodly Appendage were well led by Dave Heumann’s emotive voice, evoking Will Oldham and Daniel Higgs. The rest of the band adeptly laid down the grooves and provided the underbelly for his lyrical guitar work.

The crowd thinned a bit by the time Future Islands took the stage, but Samuel T. Herring owned it. He bounced around, jabbing his finger into his chest; he flung sweat off his brow, which caught the stage lights and swung uppercuts to the sky, emphasising snare hits. All this despite, or perhaps enhanced by, taking pseudoephedrine to combat illness. He belted out his lines, oscillating between a quirky croon and growl suited for metal. The crowd went nuts, dancing all about– the perfect culmination of a fantastic evening of music. It was a testament to our fecund music scene and Thrill Jockey’s commitment to excellent music.

The Huntington Beach, CA all female electro-sleaze pop trio the Millionaire$, Guantanamo Baywatch, and others played the last ever show at Sonar on Sunday, July 8. “Talking Dan” McIntosh, the venue’s principle owner, could not be reached for comment at this time. We reported in May that McIntosh was prohibited from attending Deathfest at Sonar because of the $30 mil­lion, cross–coun­try pot-conspiracy case, in which he is a defendant.

Photos of the show depict staff and regulars dousing each other with champagne and beer in bittersweet celebration.

War on Women played the last show at the attached Talking Head club, named after McIntosh’s previous venture which also closed in 2007.

Whatever other issues are involved (stay tuned for further reports), the closing is a big blow to lovers of live music in Charm City.

A large part of Height‘s appeal as a rapper is his fraught, heady flow, not necessarily angry or urgent but ticked enough that you know business is meant. I’d have a hard time calling Height, Dan Keech to the government, a party rapper, at least in the bubbly, sprightly AK Slaughter sense. You won’t find that Height flow lacking on “The Woods,” but it’s surrounded by a veritable forest of deft, forward-thinking production–ringing guitar, dubbed in rhythmic vocal loop, meaty bassline. Very nice. The track is off Height’s forthcoming Wham City album Baltimore Highlands, which has an extensive production cast including PT Burnem, King Rhythm, Mic Free, Jones, and Height himself, hence the “with friends” adjunct. Height calls out PT Burnem in the track (“two friends crunching leaves/ out in the wilderness”) so I’m guessing that’s who does the production on this one.

Stream “The Woods” here.

Strained under the pressures of maintaining a band long distance and many, many solo/side projects, the too-brief psych-noise quartet Wzt Hearts are disbanding, according to an e-mail sent out this afternoon by member Jason Urick. “The challenges of staying active while being physically displaced from one another eventually took it’s toll as we all have been involved with other aspects of our life as well,” he writes. “We are extremely thankful to all those who we’ve met, played with, and worked with over the last four years and we hope to continue those relationships as we all move onto other projects.”

He goes on to outline the many various places we can now find the Wzt Hearts alumni:

Jeff Donaldson is currently on tour in Europe doing sound for our good friends These Are Powers, as well as remaining very active in the 8-bit world (both audio and video) with his NoTendo project and will be performing shows with fellow ex-Wzter Mike Haleta at the Cakeshop in NYC in November and December.

Shaun Flynn is currently playing in various formations in and outside of Baltimore (included the just wrapped-up Round Robin Tour w/ David Zimmerman [ex-Ecstatic Sunshine] and Mark Brown).

Mike Haleta is planning a record with Voltage Spooks, his trio with Rick Reed and Keith Rowe (of AMM), as well as continuing his backbreakerneckbrace project with his wife, Dawn.

Jason Urick is currently finishing a solo full-length under his long-dormant moonstealingproject alter ego as well as a 12-inch and a split 7-inch (with Jason Willet of Half Japanese/Leprechaun Catering) under his own name. He is also currently working on a set with David Zimmerman to be performed at the Baltimore Museum of Art [on Dec. 5] in response to Franz West’s sculpture exhibit.

If there was ever any doubt as to the effectiveness of the Ottobar’s air conditioning and ceiling fans, their worth was amply proven on Wednesday night. When the house is packed, the room inevitably heats up until the ceiling is dripping with condensation. But at a sparsely attended show–the performers and their friends, basically–it can get downright chilly when the AC is firing on all cylinders and there are few hot bodies around to balance things out. Meanwhile, the show itself was one of those carelessly booked all-local bills where none of the three bands appeared to have any common ground, from MT6 bedroom noise to wispy acoustic music to rowdy riff-rockers.

The bedroom noisemaker that opened the show was Engine, a kid with an Orioles cap tucked firmly over his face who stood at a table full of pedals and synths, squirting out woozy soundscapes and wordlessly warbling through at least three layers of vocal effects. And he was literally a kid, or at least a minor–the club put X’s on his hands so that the bar wouldn’t serve him, and it appeared that his parents were in the audience. But the kind of shapeless yet restlessly creative tones that Engine makes are fun for all ages of anti-pop miscreants. It just wasn’t clear exactly how out of place he was on the bill until the next band took the stage.

The Raspberry Campaign, a Rockville-based quartet that formed just six months ago, played its second show ever on Wednesday. But the band, who swaps instruments between songs and trades vocals between three of its members, has already built up a large enough catalog of songs for a 45-minute set, though the quality varied wildly from song to song–the bespectacled bassist’s one lead vocal was uneventful, while the male guitarist and the female cellist each sang some promising tunes, and some terribly dull ones. With most of the songs revolving around some combination of acoustic and electric guitars, bass, and keyboards, with occasional cello, Raspberry Campaign’s mellow college-rock sound was fully fleshed out save for one crucial element: drums. It’s possible RC’s lack of percussion is a deliberate aesthetic decision. But if it isn’t, here’s hoping they find a drummer fast, because the majority of the band’s songs were just dying for a little bit of timekeeping.

However, the last band of the night, 2 Time Quitters, were a reminder that a band with a drummer isn’t always better than no drummer at all. Granted, it might be churlish to knock the chops of a band that humbly describes itself on its MySpace page as “4 good friends and 4 mediocre musicians creating music we like to play and hear.” But it was truly painful to watch the Quitters’ drummer struggle to hold a tempo, and time and time again attempt an ambitious fill that would cause his shaky coordination to fall apart entirely. Still, the band, apparently previously known by the slightly better name of the Sub Wookies, clearly enjoyed its time onstage, running through its set of endearingly generic alt-rock originals. One of the band’s only songs that was catchy enough to be worth putting on your iPod was, helpfully, titled “The iPod Song,” and instructed you to do just that. If these guys practiced a little harder, and maybe started getting good and drunk before their shows, they could be a kick-ass party band. As it stands, however, they were just another so-so band at the Ottobar, on a night when the best reason to be there was to stay out of the summer heat.

If you had a festival pass and a reasonable sense of humor, British duo Quiet Village‘s “show” on Saturday night was good comedy. For 20 minutes we waited in line to get into Metropolis’ smaller subvenue Savoy to see one of the Quiet Village’s first shows this side of the ocean. At a quarter past midnight, the room opened its doors, and we were surprised to hear as “filler”/pre-show music a track off QV’s just-born debut, Silent Movie, a wide, true-school Balearic grin of self-aware disco-funk cheese that is oh so awesome; you should run, not walk, and buy it now. Consider it the leopard-print babymaking–yes, even more so–companion piece to Hercules and Love Affair’s debut.

On the screen was a kind of psychedelic/pornographic collage film. The room filled quickly, and the minutes continued to pass. A friend remarked, “Isn’t it strange that they’re playing the album before the show?” It took partway through the next track and a few silent minutes of watching the movie projection to understand that we were, in fact, watching the show. We were getting our “silent movie.” You had to feel kind of bad for the couple waiting in line with $41 tickets for just this one show of the night, but, really, no matter what kind of a fan you are of electronic music, you gotta admit that most of the time a “live” set is one or two white men in front of laptops mousing and tapping the space bar. We’ll assume it was an intended comment. So we did what most anyone would do at a sleazy ’70s cocktail party–”I feel like we should be putting keys in a hat,” observed another friend–and mingled, while taking note of the porn collage turning into a slow-motion playback of The Cube, that Jennifer Lopez Hellraiser-lite drug trip.

The night changed right quick afterward with the Field getting, oddly, into updated if throwback arena electronica in the next room, performing as a three-piece band instead of awkward Axel Willner with a laptop. This lineup performed epic, vaguely New Age–you were waiting for wind effects to kick in–pieces instead of the pop-friendly minimal techno everybody fell in love with last year. Lasers started shooting from the ceiling like a rave-fashioned rainstorm, and I ducked out to find an ATM.

Instead, I found out that a large percentage of the ATM machines in downtown Montreal don’t take Visa cards and wandered around through a circus swarm of Canadian post-clubbing college-tards. It was to the extent where you had to walk down the middle of the street to get anywhere. And walking down the street to avoid Canadian college-tards is apparently OK, as a police officer politely asked us, in French, “Would you like to walk down the street?” Though I’ve misunderstood before, and he may have said, “Walk down the street and I’ll shoot.”

By the time we got back to the club–3 in the morning? 4?–it was full -on peak time, rave-up megatechno party, and the undrugged of us were quickly singled out and led out the door by our better sense and growling stomachs.

One last dance:

Every Sunday the city of Montreal hosts an afternoon rave on an island in the St. Lawrence River, Picnic Electronik (photo). You will not see white people with these kinds of dancing skills this side of the Atlantic, anywhere. This included at least three senior citizens with more moves than we deployed all week in the space of Turkish DJ Onur Ozer‘s all-vinyl boompity house set.

The good news is that all of the Talking Head staff will be moving as well, and most of the shows booked at Talking Head, save for “a couple,” will be saved, too. The bad news is that, well, Baltimore is losing a classic space, one that’s held three of the city’s best rock clubs (the Ottobar and Chambers being the other two). “It’s been a dirty rock club for something like 25 years,” Savage says. But Savage promised that he’ll be at work right away to “start bringing the [Talking Head] vibe back” after the move. Well, good, but it just won’t be same without the tree-fort staircase.

In principle, the South by Southwest festival is as much a trade show as New York’s massive CMJ Music Marathon, which sort of made us throw up in our mouths a little last fall. The difference is that SXSW is cloaked in the best/biggest party any lover of music, Tex-Mex food, or free domestic beer could possibly hope for. The scope of it–somewhere around 2,000 performers over four nights and most of them playing multiple shows–is enough to make your brain start bleeding.

As Mike McGonigal pointed out in his Good/Bad list, one of the assholes of the festival is the persistent feeling of missing something, somewhere. And, boy, if you happen to be one of the g-d knows how many music journalists at the festival, this is like 10 times worse–because, you know, we’re working, too.

So, let’s get it out of the way: We missed the excellent Baltimore acts Ponytail, Lexie Mountain Boys, and Wye Oak. At least. Why? Well, looking back through the fog, it’s hard to say which minutes of wasted time are to blame. Wandering around a dark neighborhood looking for a rave that was actually on East Sixth Street, not West? Drowning in pitchers of margaritas, a little too thrilled by the 80 degree weather? Watching Blitzen Trapper? In line somewhere? Whatever the case: all apologies.

But, we did see plenty of good music, some bad music, and even some music from Baltimore.

Thursday Early morning flights are good for nothing. I envy the person that can fall asleep knowing he has to catch a train to the airport at 4 a.m. I am not that person, and, subsequently, tonight was experienced through the delirium of no sleep and the resonant anxiety of being on an airplane, which is not cool if you’re afraid of heights, tight spaces, and technology–which is why tonight’s list of bands seen is so pathetically short: We copped out somewhere around midnight.

This is inexcusable, but when someone tells you, “Man, you look fucked,” and you’ve had all of two beers, it might be time to call it a night. So I saw two bands at the “Fader Fort,” which is one of the many, many RSVP-only hipster parties that dot Austin continuously throughout the week of SXSW. It’s basically a big, old warehouse-type building with a bunch of tiny rooms taken over by various sponsors and a big backyard for bands to play in and people to ignore them and lavish their love all over free bottles of good beer and brightly colored drinks made with Southern Comfort. The two bands in question will go unnamed–only in part because we don’t remember–but one sounded like Franz Ferdinand and the other was so young, hip, and attractive we got embarrassed and left.

Then we went to see the Cool Kids at the Daystage, which is a room inside the Austin Convention Center that looks exactly like a room in a convention center should–lots of gray, Formica, and fake walls–so seeing the Kids do their throwback party-hop in there just hurt. On the plus side, it did nothing to harm White Williams, who put on its best show we’ve seen it do. The band works much better with a live drummer–and when Joe Williams shows actual personality. And all it took was playing a show in a room with absolutely no personality.

After some rest, we made it to the roof of a parking garage for No Age and free Keystone Light. That’s right, free Keystone Light. There was also a bunch of weird games and shit scattered around the roof: shuffleboard, video games, and maybe pinball. Contrary to the whole SXSW steez, whoever was throwing the party apparently wanted you to stay at that party for the night. That’s missing the point.

No Age is a fantastic band, a standout among a growing field of noisy lo-fi punk groups. The duo’s thing is basically setting up various scenarios in which it teases you with pleasant enough indie rock, like riff-heavy Pavement-y rock, and then not-so-systematically wrecks it with punk fuzz. We liked it in a sweaty, crowded Depot last fall better, but against the Austin’s modern redeveloped skyline, we had to appreciate the irony.

And then we ate deep-fried avocado tacos and slept like the dead.

Friday The blur starts at Beerland with Eat Skull and tall boys of High Life. Eat Skull–a descendant of the fantastic disaster no-fi/no-wave outfit Hospitals–absolutely kills, a garage-punk, fuck-your-face-with-distortion mess led by a woke-up-drunk dude who swerves and snarls like a proper totem of impeding anarchy. And that’s a rarity here, where everyone, however connected they are to the freak world, appears to be auditioning for something in the straight world. The beer wasn’t free, but we couldn’t care less.

Eat Skull didn’t set us up well for caring about Billy Bragg, who played to a handful of people at a small, hip bar a few blocks away. He speechified for a bit in the vein of illegal downloading equals bad–painfully missing the point of SXSW, the biggest celebration of live music going–and played a few numbers that made the faithful in the crowd absolutely crap themselves. The beer was free. So were the sandwiches.

Then SXSW got awesome–fully and completely awesome. I’m not sure where else you can get the Black Ghosts, Cut Copy, Blaq Starr, Simian Mobile Disco, Matt and Kim, Amanda Blank (with Spank Rock), Diplo, Switch, and Drop the Lime all together in the same city, let along the same rooftop, but Mad Decent and iheartcomix made it happen for their showcase, and good g-d, was it like the best show ever. Spank Rock rapping “shake it till my dick turns racist” is one thing, but Spank Rock rapping “shake it till my dick turns racist” from a rooftop in Texas made us beyond giddy. As did Blaq Starr clubbing out “We Are Your Friends,” and later telling us all what, exactly, he was going to do to our pussies.

Somewhere in between all of this, we made it up to the pool-deck “VIP” area. A great deal of SXSW involves sneaking into or schmoozing your way into places you’re technically not cool enough to be. To wit: We got loaned a Staff badge and found ourselves in the land of free food, free (and freely accessibly) whiskey, people far hotter than ourselves, and (a lot of) people on cocaine.

Scottie B played this thing, but it wasn’t really a dance setup: too quiet, and the layout had people thinned out around the edges of the pools or at the bar or in the bathroom snorting cocaine. The Death Set followed Scottie and attracted a 10 or so person crew of hoppers and not-quite-moshers. After some three shows already at SXSW, Johnny Sierra sounded like his throat was an open wound but didn’t hold anything back in making it even bloodier–or climbing some seriously sketchily stacked amplifiers or hanging, sketchily, from the support cables of the stage-covering tent.

Sometime close to dawn we bullshitted our way into a giant Red Bull party/circus, and we–now a strange and obliterated crew of old editor friends from Seattle and new friends from Baltimore–drank ourselves into tremors on vodka and Red Bulls. Whoever the hell booked a honky-tonk band to play rave hours should be fired at once.

(Oh yeah, somewhere today is Blitzen Trapper, who played to a surprisingly thin crowd at a place on Sixth Street.)

And then we ate IHOP and went to sleep.

Saturday Weather on planet Earth doesn’t get better than 80 degrees, clear skies, and a cool breeze. Hence, we can’t be blamed for spending the latter part of the afternoon on the patio of a Mexican restaurant with pitchers of margaritas and plates full of grease, cheese, and beans.

Sometime after dark, we caught No Age again in a packed backyard, which we only ended up at because we gave our cab bad directions. A lot of shit at SXSW happens in backyards, but this was the first one that felt like a backyard. Like, you could just walk in and hang out without waiting in line and getting your name checked off a list. It does something for the vibe (good), and it was probably more appropriate than the roof insofar as people were actually getting excited and paying attention (read: crowd surfing and bouncing). The songs didn’t come through the mass so well, but it’s not something you need to hear perfectly again and again. Someone here gave me a pickle.

White Rainbow played one of the best sets I’ve seen Adam Forkner play in a really long time. Touring with Atlas Sound, he’s getting some actual, well-deserved recognition, and it comes through in his songs. Rather than the Eno mind trips he’s been playing for the past couple of years–and which made up last fall’s Prism of Eternal Now album–he went into something heavy and polyrhythmic, cutting and fading guitars and electronics in and out into some seventh-dimensional, cathartic tribalisms. Eyes crossed and heads swayed. We forgot about where we were supposed to be and who we were supposed to be listening to (Sightings, our original destination). Then we ate grilled cheese and went to sleep.

The Metro Gallery, an arts and live music space in the Station North Arts District, plans to add a bar this spring thanks to its recently acquired liquor license. Noise sat down with Metro Gallery owner Sarah Williams earlier this week to discuss what the future holds, including a series of free one-band-bill shows.

City Paper: What was involved in the process of obtaining the liquor license?

Sarah Williams: We opened in June of last year. We knew we wanted to be able to sell alcohol because we are a multi[use] space. The first idea, since Baltimore City doesn’t create any new liquor licenses anymore, was to open a café in here. I managed at Joe Squared for a while. I’ve dealt with managing a restaurant before, but I was more in charge of the bar. I know a lot more about that as opposed to cooking.

I was willing to do it because I know we had to get some kind of restaurant beer and wine license. But Joe, he had a tavern license over at Joe Squared. Since he put so much money into his business–if you spend a certain amount of money, the city of Baltimore will allow you to get a restaurant license. He transferred over to that license, and I was able to buy his [tavern] license for this space. Then we had to apply for a transfer of ownership with Joe. We had the hearing [last] Thursday, and it went through. I still can’t serve alcohol till I have the bar built and it’s inspected by the Health Department. We’re looking at [the] middle to end of April for it to actually open.

It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. We listened to a lot of other liquor board hearings while we were there. Luckily I didn’t have any hoops to jump through because I [went] to the community association and asked if it’s OK. I’ve been a pretty active member in the community association for the last couple [of] years. So, that definitely helped.

The liquor board even said they try helping out more gallery and multi-spaces because they know it’s a lot harder to bring in revenue from just artwork–or even with just bands. You are dealing with paying the bands, and [when] you can’t sell alcohol, it’s pretty much impossible to make money in any other way.

CP: Where is the bar going to be?

SW: It’s going to start [in the back] and loop around like a horseshoe. One thing that is important to me is for [the bar] to not interfere with the gallery space. I like places that are like a café and a gallery, but I really want [Metro] to be taken seriously as a gallery. So, we’ll definitely create separation between the two sides of the room.

We’re building a stage, too, which is going to stay up there where [the performance area is] at right now [by the front windows of the space]. We were waiting on everything because we weren’t sure what direction we were going. We would have had to do a completely different model if we were serving food. I really, really didn’t want to be making bagels. I would have done it because we had to, but I am really happy running a bar out of here. It’s going to be a lot easier.

CP: So now that you are building a bar, is the place going to be open every evening or just for events?

SW: We’re not going to be open every evening, at least for the first year. I want to start small and grow from that. It will probably be mainly events, but I can book more events now that there’s other revenue coming in. We’ll probably be open from Wednesday [to] Saturday and maybe some Sundays. I’ve been tossing around a brunch idea.

But, really, what was important for me is to keep the commission down, on the gallery side, for the artists. Now, I am trying out [something] new. I’m still going to have shows with multiple bands playing. But, a lot of out-of-town bands that haven’t been to Baltimore yet and [don't] have a draw–I’m doing free shows for that band for that evening. I can pay them off the bar. No one is really losing money off of it, and [the band] gets exposed to a lot more [people].

In the old Marble Bar, they used to do two-band bills all the time. I never went there, but I’ve heard awesome stories about it. So, I’m trying. There will still be some admission fees if it’s more bands. But it will be a neat opportunity–for people, if they are just looking for a bar and a band shows up, they’re only playing one set, so if you hate it it’s no big deal. But, it’s really going to expose people to music they aren’t used to, which is good. You know, when I opened this place my musical tastes have completely changed because I have heard some really awesome bands come through.

CP: What kind of stuff are you going to be serving in the bar? Is it going to be like, taps for draft beer?

SW: We’re going to have some taps. I’m meeting with the distributors next week. At Joe Squared, I was the general manager, but I was more of the bar manager there. So, there will be a lot of the same stuff I was ordering there. It will be a full bar.

CP: What’s coming up?

SW: Our next art opening is April 4, featuring two artists from the area, [CP contributing illustrator] Okan Arabacioglu and Brian Payne. The show is called Ironing, they have both done illustrations in The Urbanite, the City Paper , and a whole bunch of different places. It’s a really good chance for them. They’ve been doing so much commercial work–being told what sort of work to produce–that [now] they are finally able to do something more abstract.

We have a couple of really good bands coming through in April. We have Scream Club coming through on April 13.

CP: Are they a queercore group?

SW: Yeah. They are awesome. They are playing with this band Boyskout from New York. Then, on April 19, Girl in a Coma. They went around with Morissey. They were his opening band.

CP: His opening band was named after one of his songs?

SW: I know. It’s a three-girl group. I honestly didn’t know anything about the band. I won’t lie. They are on Joan Jett’s record label. I’ve looked through a lot of her stuff, that she has on her label. It’s been pretty cool stuff.

Once May hits we’ll definitely have the bar going. I’m going to start playing with that one-band-a-night idea. Not for all shows, but for a lot of them. It’s going to be free and one band probably playing two sets. We’ll see how it goes.

CP: The bands you just mentioned, it’s mostly girls in those bands. Are you trying to promote that?

SW: Um, no.

CP; Did it just work out that way?

SW: It kind of works out that way. When I first started, I really didn’t have the intention of this being a multiuse space. I threw art shows before and would have bands play the opening, but that was it. That’s what I thought I was going to do with this space.

Then, I started getting into booking and met this band, Pariah Piranha, from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Three women from up there. They were just talking [about] how from being out of town–and they weren’t trying to be all “[This is] sexist”–but it’s really hard for female bands. You play in this niche area, where it’s usually lesbian bands and you can only play at certain clubs.

I end up with a lot of those bands because they do have trouble getting shows at other places, especially if they are newer bands. There aren’t that many female club owners, and I think it’s a little more comfortable for people to book that way. I usually end up really liking it. A couple people have commented on it–that there are a lot of female bands. But, I just pick what I like and I like a lot of their music. Boyskout has played here before. They’re an awesome band. And we’re hosting part of Ladyfest in April, too. We’re hosting the kickoff here.

I’m open to anything, but in Baltimore, you know, it’s the only female-run venue. So, a lot of people naturally come over to here, like Ladyfest, because it’s definitely an open door.

CP: Ladyfest is invested in trying to use women-owned everything.

SW: Yeah. There definitely are so many women business owners, I’m not saying there aren’t. But in Baltimore it’s a little harder to find, especially in a live music thing.

[Ladyfest] is so put together with everything. I’m not saying men aren’t, but the dealings I’ve had with organizations–sometimes I feel it’s a little easier to work with women than it is with men. [With] a lot of my booking, I’m a control freak with it and do it myself, so it has become a trend, a little bit.

Events at Metro Gallery