This is the second post in a series wherein I talk about some of the things that got me psyched about Charlottesville arts in 2010. See part one here.
Bloated spectacle
No matter how you slice it, Lady Gaga’s music…pretty much stinks. But even the biggest hater couldn’t have walked out of JPJ feeling unmoved by the Bowiesque spectacle—and surprisingly emotional experience—that was her concert here this September. For a lot of UVA students, seeing Lady Gaga in a glittery Cavaliers tee will be one of their fondest college memories. The rest of us will have to settle for watching Gaga play the power ballad "Speechless" on a flaming piano.
Read C-VILLE’s review of Lady Gaga’s show here.
The last Lady Gaga picture that will appear on this blog in 2010. More below.
Lost highway
Except for the fact that it’s a play, Hank Williams: Lost Highway is much like any biopic about the pitfalls of fame—Ray, Walk the Line, The Doors, The Temptations, the list goes on. But at Live Arts’ production of the play this year, Lynchburg-based songwriter Dallas Wesley didn’t merely act, or impersonate Williams; he embodied a two-dimensional version of Williams who loved his mamma, burped when he drank liquor, and existed exclusively to please an audience. Backed by a crack squad of local musicians (who after the play have come together to perform elsewhere as the Lost Highway) the concerts-within-a-play were, when fictional Hank wasn’t stumbling drunk, among the best of the year.
Click here to ask Dallas Wesley and the Lost Highway to play your wedding.
Read C-VILLE’s review of Lost Highway here.
Leaf and Signal
Walking into a gallery can feel like a lot of things, but rarely does the experience of walking into an empty room with art tacked to its walls feel like walking into a whole new world. But that was exactly the experience that greeted gallerygoers at “Leaf and Signal,” curated by the local artist Warren Craghead, a bright array of art zines that were chaotically wheatpasted to the walls at The Bridge/PAI earlier this year. The art itself was hit or miss—some of it done by kids—but culled from a network of lo-fi zinemakers from San Francisco to the U.K. "Leaf and Signal" made Charlottesville feel like a stop on the circuit of world-wise, handmade, eclectic, cheap, beautiful art.
Read more about that show here.
Instructions on how to make a "Leafs and Signals" comic for yourself are here.
Maximum tuneage
The best song on the Invisible Hand’s self-titled album is the first: "Two Chords" is songwriter Adam Smith’s fond farewell—or is it a fuck you?—to the I-IV progression, the melodic building block for much of pop music. The rest of the Hand’s album avoids the progression for the most part, and the band rewrites a shrieking rock ‘n’ roll that almost makes you wish it’d been the Kinks, and not the Beatles, that were the biggest British thing to ever hit America.
What were some of the best moments of 2010?