Ask any veteran of the summer concert-festival circuit, and chances are that they’ll be more than willing to recall any number of stories about overflowing portable toilets, 100-plus-degree weather, overpriced festival food, violent rainstorms and countless bad vibes. It’s enough to keep a sane person away. But the first Vortex Music Festival offers something else […]

In the summer of 1966, in Washington, D.C., a mysterious drug called LSD was receiving scrutiny from Congress. In Chicago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was confronting discrimination on a scale that rivaled what he’d seen in the Deep South. On television, the nation was about to encounter the primetime sight of a character […]

Filmmakers throughout the region will soon have their chance to get their Spielberg on. (After Crystal Skull, however, perhaps an alternate model might be advisable.) The 48 Hour Film Project returns for its fourth consecutive year in Asheville (the competition itself is 8 years old), taking place during one action-packed weekend. Starting at 7 p.m. […]

Hair balls and elegance may seem incompatible, but Loran Scruggs’ “Hair Ball Gown” lends an unexpected grace to the nickel-sized spheres decorating a gossamer, flesh-colored shift. And it’s just one example of how this exhibition, the Penland Gallery’s challenging Either Side of the Skin: Work Inspired by or Responding to the HumanBody, is filled with […]

These days, it seems like everyone and his brother is a musician. If they’re not toting guitars around town and launching concerts on street corners, they’re cranking out albums on their laptops and releasing them over the Internet. It’s almost too easy. If you can’t stand the heat: A gentler Capleton has emerged, but this […]

In 2006, The M’s had the buzz. You know: a new album on taste-making label Polyvinyl, choice slots at the South by Southwest festival, gigs opening for Wilco and indie love from Pitchfork Media. Even filmmaker Jonathan Demme was getting all fanboy about the group, aiming to shoot a video for the Chicago quartet. Near […]

It would take serious effort to miss all the buzz about the collaboration between Led Zeppelin’s front man (turned solo act) Robert Plant and Union Station front woman (turned producer) Alison Krauss. The unlikely duo’s Raising Sand (Rounder) dropped last fall and has been a subject of much philosophizing and rhetoric among music critics and […]

All throughout my sophomore year in high school, I had The Breeders. Their loopy, lighthearted-but-slightly-weird-around-the-edges alterna-pop seemed to relax my often-frustrated teenage mind. Keeping it together: The Breeders, fronted by ex(ish)-Pixies bassist Kim Deal (pictured) and her twin sister Kelley, have survived everything from the highs of mainstream success to the lows of drug conviction […]

Blurt out the name URTV quickly, and instead of hearing the individual letters U-R-T-V, what smoothly rolls off your tongue is either the phrase ““You Are TV” or “Your TV.” Either way, it works. Camera? Check. Lights? Check. Cardboard robot dancing for guy on couch? Check. Welcome behind the scenes of Asheville’s public-access cable television […]

The Feral Chihuahuas take the business of being funny very seriously. From their modest beginnings performing at “The Shed,” a small garage transformed into a tiny black-box theater, to the launch of their second summer season at Asheville Community Theatre, the sketch-comedy group is on the prowl, ready to conquer the city of Asheville one […]

Purple, though most often favored by 12-year-old girls who also love unicorns and Hello Kitty, occasionally finds its way into fashion. There was a time when local Old Farmer’s Ball regulars (male and female) sported purple socks with their contra-dance apparel. It’s been associated both with the psychedelic 1960s and the MTV-obsessed 1980s. Poet Jenny […]