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EVENT CALENDAR |
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July 2009 |
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Music -
CD Release
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Thursday, 18 June 2009 |
 Photo: Wes Naman Faced with unexpected and heavy life issues, one bandleader turns to his fellow musicians for focus
By Todd Eric Lovato
”You can’t play the blues until you’ve paid your dues.”
—Unknown
For Nick Pena, guitarist and singer of the popular local rock/reggae/hip hop band, La Junta, the above adage is as poignant as it is emotionally painful. The months leading up to the release of Slangin’ Dirt, his band’s second studio release, have proven to be a struggle, to say the very least.
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3rd Annual Happy Hour Guide |
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Features -
Cover Story
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 |
 Photo: Wes Naman written + compiled by stacia lamb + sebree — photography by wes naman
It’s hot. You’re thirsty and hungry. You want nothing more than to sit in a comfortable chair in a cool atmosphere and just ... be. Ya know?
So when the mercury rises and the clock strikes five (better yet, four), it’s all about finding happiness. For the third year in a row, Local iQ feels you. If our readers aren’t happy, we’re not happy. Hence, the 3rd Annual Happy Hour Issue, a fairly comprehensive guide to many area watering holes and their drink and food specials during the highly sought after hour we like to call “Happy Hour.”
Before you read on, remember that the following bars listed are ones that actually have a so-called “Happy Hour.” If your favorite bar or brew pub isn’t listed, it’s probably because their drink and food prices are never lowered as a lure for you to stop in and order a cold one. No worries. You’re still happy, right? Again, it’s all about being happy. Cheers!
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Film’s sharp focus seen by very few |
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Film -
Review
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Wednesday, 27 May 2009 |
Note: This movie contains graphic images of the dead and dying.
By Jeff Berg
Though originally released nearly two years ago, the subject of this
documentary remains as unattended as it was in 2007. Or, for that
matter, as it was in 2004, when the story of The Devil Came on
Horseback begins.
The subject is Darfur, an area of the African country of Sudan, where
conflict has raged in some form or another for the past 5,000 years.
The title is a chilling translation of the term Janjaweed, which refers
to all of the militias and paramilitary groups involved in the current
fighting in the region, many of whom ride on horseback.
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Music -
On The Stage
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 |
BY GABE GOMEZ
From slightly modified guitar riffs to the more blatant and obvious use of sampling, contemporary music is unabashedly derivative, which so often makes it easy to dissect. But unlike smoking weed to enhance incredulous scenarios, regurgitated sound is tolerated as long as it is augmented in some way.
Still, one of the greatest disservices that results from this incessant
“compare and contrast” culture of music is best embodied with Neko
Case, a musician who is so panoramically talented that the knee-jerk
reaction is to over-classify her music — Americana, country noir,
honky-tonk — and thereby over-simplify its beauty.
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Music -
CD Release
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 |
 Photo: Wes Naman Five years after the release of a stellar debut recording, local indie pop foursome
finds itself charting new musical territory
By Michael Henningsen
In the interest
of full disclosure, it should be stated that near the end of 2004,
local rock foursome The Oktober People released their debut record,
which I gushed about in a very public forum for roughly the ensuing
year. Five years later, the group is set to release their second
effort, Explore the Sky Too. Once again, I find myself compelled to
again become so ebullient about the music of this band, I make my
official pick for “Album of the Year” six months early. I’ll stop short
of doing that, but just barely.
You’ve been warned.
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Arts -
Theater
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Thursday, 21 May 2009 |
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Small stage production has grandiose and uncomfortably true-to-life implications
BY ERIN PENNER
Now
in its second year, the Mother Road Theatre Company continues to
positively and impressively contribute to the Albuquerque theater
scene. Mother Road’s current production of Keith Reddin’s, Life During
Wartime at the tiny, quirky Filling Station is a well-crafted and
imaginatively staged piece.
The writing is quick, funny and clever, yet the
dialogue rings with uncomfortable truth that is almost embarrassing to
watch. Tommy (Ryan Jason Cook) is the story’s young protagonist, a
25-year-old baby-faced salesman cutting his teeth on a job for a small
company that sells home security systems. The play opens with Heinrich
(Vic Bowder) and Sally (Kristin de la O) playing a charade for Tommy to
demonstrate how he ought to sell his clients on the home alarm systems.
Tommy is impressed with Heinrich’s fast-talking sales pitch, and
Heinrich tells him, “Fear sells itself.” Tommy’s first sale, though,
isn’t made because of fear, but sex, when he arrives at the home of an
older divorcée (Gale, played by Beth Bailey), who is more eager for a
boy-toy than she is for the alarm system she buys from him.
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Food -
Review
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Wednesday, 06 May 2009 |
 Photo by Wes Naman Forget steakhouse relics like salad bars and loaded baked potatoes, all a steakhouse really needs is perfectly cooked steaks (and a great wine list)
By Logan Greely
In the last few years, steak houses in Albuquerque have done some growing up. A handful of new steak houses, including Marcello’s, Vernon’s and Gruet, have eschewed the idea that a steak house must have a mile long salad bar and baked potatoes the size of a baby’s noggin loaded to the gills with “fixins.” And though it would be fun to have a steak house in the city where local carnivores can attempt to eat 72 ounces of porterhouse in order to get their meal gratis, we are probably better served by steak houses that holds quality high above quantity and substitute killer wine lists for a salad bar.
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PROFILES -
Profile
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Friday, 08 May 2009 |
Aspiring ABQ model released from reality show with a better sense of self, much shorter hair
By Kendra Tuthill
At 5 feet, 8 inches tall, 19-year-old Albuquerque model Felicia “Fo”
Porter, at least in the world of high fashion, is
vertically-challenged. Sure, she can easily appear to be 6 feet tall in
high heels, but that wasn’t enough to help her out last week, when the
judges of the highly popular CW reality show, America’s Next Top Model,
eliminated her from the competition.
The brainchild of ex-supermodel Tyra Banks, the reality series
auditions inexperienced young women with modeling aspirations and
proceeds to run them through a ringer of brutally harsh critiques and
highly competitive fashion-related challenges that work to introduce
them to the often onerous path to becoming a supermodel. It’s drama at
its finest.
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Music -
CD Release
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Thursday, 07 May 2009 |
One-man hip hop phenom utilizes music, design to create a positive, productive message
 Photo by Wes Naman By Todd Eric Lovato
The first few moments of a Zack Freeman performance are a revelation. Part a cappella chorister, part beatbox B-boy, the lone Freeman, all shiny pate, gap-toothed smile and saggy jeans, steps onto the stage, lifts up a shoebox-sized device — an electronic looping sampler — and straps it around his shoulders, his silhouette vaguely resembling an old-timey ballpark peanut vendor.
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10 years later, ‘truckers’ make pit stop |
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Music -
On The Stage
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Wednesday, 06 May 2009 |
 Photo by Wes Naman By Michael Henningsen
It was around the dark of the moon on the sixth of June, about a decade
ago, when Breaker 19 — that’s one-nine not nineteen, for those too
young to remember the CB radio craze of the 1970s — first rolled out of
the garage and onto Albuquerque’s music scene. But while their shtick,
which included stage names like “Texas Shade” and “Jimmy Mac,” Kenworth
mesh trucker caps, sleeveless Wrangler shirts, redneck drawls and Pabst
Blue Ribbon endorsements, may have initially taken the driver’s seat,
it was the band’s gleeful, sincere embrace of trucker music at its most
heartfelt, that resulted in its overwhelming popularity and staying
power.
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Arts -
Profile
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Tuesday, 29 April 2008 |
 Photo: Wes Naman Local style guru and retail maven turns recycled materials into one-of-a-kind art
By Nancy Harbert
When it comes to recycling at Kenny Chavez’s house, he is often
his own recipient of the stuff most people throw away: bottle caps,
aluminum cans, postcards, even license plates. Especially license
plates. Especially the old ones that were so thin they can be cut up
with scissors.
“I have bags at the back door for newspapers,
bottles and cans and I recycle my own bottlecaps,” Chavez said in an
interview with Local iQ. “And when I come home from work, I
find bags of bottlecaps and tin on the front porch that people leave
off for me. What I don’t use, I pass on to someone else.”
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