The Fayetteville FEED_August 2010

august 2010 a free publication

Among Saints Evans City Saints rebuild after the loss of bass player Brandon Roden.

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Your Voice, Our Choice.

[Singing Competition Type Thing]

The Little Help From My Friends Music Festival August 21st • 3:00 p.m.

J.P. Riddle Stadium

Got talent, or at the very least a dangerous mixture of self-delusion and ego? Have we got the competition for you! Register to compete in The Fayetteville FEED’s Your Voice Our Choice singing competition so that our carefully selected judges can pick apart your fragile sense of self-worth...

Don’t worry, it’s for a good cause.

You could professionally win...

• A professionally recorded three song master CD by Digital Wave Recording.

• A bio and photo-shoot provided by the pros on The Fayetteville FEED staff (we spelll good-ish!)

• An unearned sense of self-importance.

For more information go to the FayettevilleFEED.com

st, r u H is r h C , ia n a M h is it Br With performances by ils Band v e D l a r e v e S e h T d n a , Atlantic Groove Courtesy Photo

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What’s inside

Publisher

Paddy Gibney

paddy@fayettevillefeed.com

Director of Public Relations Chesney Wilson

chesney@fayettevillefeed.com 214.886.8860

Editor

James Johnson

jjohnson@fayettevillefeed.com

Head Correspondent Jaymie Baxley

jaymie@fayettevillefeed.com

Photo Editor

Raul Rubiera Jr.

raul@fayettevillefeed.com

Art Director Jeff Nihiser

jeff@fayettevillefeed.com

Business Manager Jessica Corona

jessica@fayettevillefeed.com

Intern

Victor Torres

Contact us at 706.421.FEED The Fayetteville FEED is published twelve times annually by The FEED. Address: P.O. Box 87950, Fayetteville NC 28304, Phone: 706-421-3333, Web site: www.fayettevillefeed.com.

The FEED, LLC, P.O. Box 87950, Fayetteville NC 28304.

Published twelve times a year. ISSN applied for. No part of this magazine may be reproduced without written permission.

Copyright 2010. All images copyright The FEED, and Raul Rubiera Jr., unless specified otherwise. Publication of an advertisement in The FEED does not constitute an endorsement of the product or service by The FEED, dba “The Fayetteville FEED.” All manuscripts submitted should be accompanied by a self-addressed envelope and sufficient return postage. While reasonable care will be taken, the publisher cannot be held responsible for unsolicited manuscripts and photographs. The FEED is a registered trademark used by The FEED, LLC. All rights reserved.

36

EVANS CIT Y SAINTS

AUGUST 2010 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 7

Printed by Angstrom Graphics, Hollywood, FL.

2 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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4 6 7 12 20 24 26 34 41

JEREMY STROTHERS

42

FEEDback From the Editor Music and Events How to Build a Following Birds of a Feather Downtown 2012 Piece by Piece Ask a Ninja The Bile On the Dial

BEARD EATS FACE

16

48 50 52 54 56 58 58 60

Music Review Book Review Game Review Thoughts From Abroad Pint With the Publisher Crossword Puzzle In Me Wick Next Month

August 2010 | fayettevillefeed.com | 3

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FEEDback We can’t print everything we get, but we at least look at them. Send your praise, your pity, and your prattle to P.O. Box 87950, Fayetteville, NC 28304 or comments@ fayettevillefeed.com

Book Critic Receives Rave Reviews You hit a home run with your review of You’re a Horrible Person, But I Like You, (and) you hit a grand slam with Big Hair and Plastic Grass. You’re batting a thousand. Having had to relocate from Nashville due to floods and such, reading your (book) reviews feel like home.

Thank you.

David S. Herman via e-mail Wow – that is an alarming number of sports puns...If Marv Albert were alive today, he’d be jealous (he is dead, right? Someone ask Harry Caray). Thank you, David. We here at the FEED are wildly proud of critic Tasina Ducheneaux.

She is among the few FEED staff members who is literate – the rest of us writers have specially trained dictation monkeys.

The FEED

The Patriot Act

(Responses to Editor James Johnson’s column, “America, F**k Yeah” from the July edition of The Fayetteville FEED) Great article! And on point! Again, I say we are all just human beings none any better than the other. I subscribe to that and the FEED of course.

Christina via Web site Patriotism, like so many of the good and bad in any society, is primarily a learned behavior.

Occasionally there will be an event (like 9/11) which forces a collective response in national pride and unity, but for the most part it is something which is learned through teaching and observation.

If we want our children to love and know what it means to live in this country, we have to let them know that it is exceptional. We must not let peer pressure or any other negativity keep us from demonstrating to our young and each other that it is proper and required to at the very least stand erect when the flag passes in a parade, that it is not only okay to sing the National Anthem, but to get emotional when doing so, and that there are certain duties and responsibilities of being a citizen of this great land.

Some of our young soldiers may not fully understand that, but it is not entirely their fault.

These civic lessons which should be passed on by parents have fallen by the wayside and regrettably they have been replaced in our schools by irrelevant multiculturalism, which does not serve to preserve our society, it merely dilutes it.

How sad that there are a measurable percentage of people in this country who do not know from which country we fought to become independent from.

Stephen W. Klingensmith via Web site What is far sadder is when someone confuses xenophobia with patriotism. “Irrelevant multiculturalism”? Dude, America is multiculturalism. You’re holding a magazine which is published by an Irish man, for a city that was built on the backs of Scottish immigrants.

There’s nothing irrelevant about that.

Still, you are correct – being a patriot is a learned behavior. Have you learned it? Can you learn to love your country, warts and all? Can you love the poor, the rich, the huddled masses, and also that jerk that won’t stop texting while driving?

Saying that a true patriot pays attention in history class, stands straight when a flag is passing and gets choked up by the National Anthem is like saying that your boyfriend only truly loves you if he remembers what you wore on your first date.

Love, just like patriotism, isn’t about romantic gestures or memorizing facts but about appreciating every aspect. Our multiculturalism is one of our greatest aspect – love it, or leave it.

The FEED

Random Displays of Affection Great article this month (July) from Paddy.

Just want to say, it’s hard to be the new kid on the block, but I think keeping the magazine progressive and young, by sheer demographics you’ll have success. People want something new, edgy and intellectual.

Up & Coming Weekly is tired and old (not to compare) but honestly we don’t pick it up anymore because it’s the same grand-standing issues over and over.

What we like about The FEED is that it’s progressive, interesting and different.

The only thing that is constant is change.

Without it we die.

4 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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OXOX

Darcy via e-mail Thank you, Darcy. We should hire you on as The FEED’s official pep-talker. In the defense of Up & Coming Weekly, there are some talented people over there and we wish them the best.

XOXOXOXO The FEED july 2010 | a free publication

type privately owned businesses. Thus began the elimination of the middle class. So now corporations have more influence in this country than the people do. It’s sad. We are living in the early stages of fascism and corporatism.

Joel Gregory Highsmith via Facebook I fear the government for things like the Air Force not being aware of the fact that it’s shipping a nuclear warhead on a plane. I fear big business for things like the recent Gulf of Mexico oil fiasco and the malfunctioning accelerator pedals in Toyota’s cars. A healthy amount of companies with freedom to operate makes sure that competition moves innovation and research forward.

A well-functioning government implements intelligent safety standards to ensure that corporations aren’t profiting from harming its citizens.

Checks and balances. Good thing we have our friend the media to sort everything out and make sense of it all.

David Harris Via Facebook We sit down with electro-pop band Cassis Orange to discuss the inspirational power of loneliness.

Folk singer Manquillan Minniefee, film maker Tony Murnahan, The Ra Ra Riot and more...

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The Big Response

6/28/10 5:02 AM

(Last month we let FEED contributors Ash Smith and Albert Stichka debate on the topic of whether or not big government was to blame for our country’s woes, or big business. Not surprisingly, this received a lot of attention.)

Capitalism is pretty much the greatest idea ever. It is when the government mismanages capitalism (high taxes, trade restrictions, high minimum wage, tariffs and stopping tax cuts for ANYBODY) that things start getting a lot harder than they need to be.

the countries whose better forms of government provide for their citizens better than America? The truth is he has no clue. Bigger government hinders the freedoms and the order of natural selection that (has) made this country the greatest in the history of civilization.

I encourage him to travel the planet and live at the mercy of any other country’s healthcare systems, or judicial systems for that matter. He obviously has a problem with the self-sufficient being successful...Being “motivated by profit” is how his employer pays him to maintain his particular level of comfort.

If he happens to be self-employed and providing jobs for others as I am then he can’t possibly be motivated to lose money or give his profits to those who will not work to provide his business the income necessary to continue. This country needs to wake up fast to the fact that our current administration is spending more money than any other in history and our debt is unsustainable. They can’t tax us enough to pay it off in a hundred years without leaving us all in the poor house and at the mercy of government ‘entitlements.” This is America; you should be entitled to nothing more than life liberty and the pursuit of happiness ...at your own expense, NOT MINE!

Tony Harrison Via Web site

Drew Pierpont via Facebook

Who knew our readers had become so jaded? Jaded or not, most of our readers had really smart points to make on the topic.

So why can’t Mr. Stichka actually name

~ FEED

It is big business and free market capitalism controlled by the private sector that made our country so great for so long. Then our federal government assumed power it didn’t have, became big government and got in bed with big business. Together they made up regulatory institutions that made regulations so rigid and expensive that only the established corporations could survive... Thus began the elimination of competition, and the elimination of “mom and pop” August 2010 | fayettevillefeed.com | 5

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From the editor

Lowering the Price of Change

by James Johnson

Photo: Chris Chun

James Johnson

This month’s issue of the FEED features a story that we have wanted to publish for a while, “Fayetteville 2012.” In the story, we openly theorize about the type of downtown Fayetteville deserves in the hopes of inspiring some local entrepreneurs, property owners or socially minded gypsies to take action. Now many of the ideas proposed (music venue, baseball diamond, electronics shop, etc.) may just seem like what scientists commonly refer to as “pipe dreams,” (in latin, “pipio somnium”) considering the expensive costs of opening up a business downtown in the first place. But where would our society be without irrational and overly optimistic dreamers? … Or pipes for that matter?

BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure) is no longer just a funny sounding acronym; it is an ongoing reality, and as such it is now our responsibility to be taking steps to make downtown Fayetteville competitive with the downtown areas of bigger cities, like Raleigh and Charlotte. We need more than a few extra roads and parks, we need business – and the only thing getting in the way of our wildest dreams coming true is our own cynicism, sentimentality and greed. Mostly the greed.

Unfortunately, some of the things that helped downtown get to the place it is now are also a large factor in preventing its growth.

Downtown property owners seem to (even in today’s economy) be insisting that potential business owners pay increasingly extravagant prices, not allowing downtown to actually grow to a point in which these prices make sense – and while the downtown historic society have helped maintain our old fashioned charm, their regulations are often so strict as to make moving one’s business downtown seem like a bad idea.

Certain regulations are helpful and ensure that business owners don’t leave broken windows covered with cardboard, or trash in the middle of the sidewalk, but for the most part our regulations and ordinances serve to discourage businesses from wanting to open downtown.

If the city absolutely must have an intrusive and entirely unfair regulation, why not regulate something that is actually hurting downtown far more than any tacky neon sign ever could? : Rental prices. Lower prices mean more businesses, more businesses mean more jobs, more jobs mean more customers and more customers eventually – can translate to higher rent prices. Downtown property owners have

put the cart before the horse and by doing so have slowed our downtown’s development to a crawl and shot themselves in the foot.

It seems like many property owners are hoping that if they have high prices, then they’ll have businesses which will charge their customers high prices and that will mean that the customers will consist of person’s with higher incomes, therefore keeping out the dreaded lower class. This plan sounds fool proof until you take into account that those with higher incomes make up such a small portion of our city’s population that they can’t possibly sustain our downtown with enough business to allow it to grow beyond one happenin’ street.

Our city’s greatest buying power belongs to young people, particularly men. They are our economic backbone and they are being ignored by the part of our town which is supposed to represent our town the best. Antique shops are nice – for Southern Pines – but this is Fayetteville, our downtown should have a GameStop, a comic book store or any number of businesses that are actually used by the persons who make up the majority of our city’s population.

Here is the deal downtown property owners: If you cut your rental costs by at least 50 percent this year and e-mail the FEED to make the announcement (Chesney@ FayettevilleFEED.com), we will promote your properties in the next issue of The Fayetteville FEED magazine. Consider it an investment in unclogging our city’s pipes.

6 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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Nobody Does It Better.

Home For Sale

SOLD

Jay Dowdy A

L

L

A

M E R I C A N H O M E S YOUR NEW CONSTRUCTION HEADQUARTERS

6920 Cliffdale Road

910.868.1976

6200 Ramsey Street

910.488.1976

6448 Yadkin Road

910.864.6298

Each Office Independently Owned and Operated w w w . p r u d e n t i a l a a h . c o m

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Schedule

The Rock Shop Music Hall

128 South King Street, Fayetteville, NC, 910-321-7625 Aug. 1, 8 p.m.

Aug. 2, 4 p.m.

Aug. 3, 7 p.m.

Aug. 7, 8 p.m.

Aug. 8, 8 p.m.

Aug. 14, 6 p.m.

Aug. 18, 8 p.m.

Aug. 25, 7 p.m.

Aug. 28, 6 p.m.

BATTLE OF THE BANDS w/Aquience, Fearless In Red, Nightmare Apparatus OVER THE LIMIT TOUR w/As Blood Runs Black, Oceano, Arsonists Get All The Girls, The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, Thick As Blood, Burning The Masses, Circle Of Contempt, Blind Witness, This Is The Apocalypse, Betray Your Own THE SEXTREME BALL 2010, Lords of Acid, My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, Blownload, DJ Deathwish, Fractured Fairytales Rock 103 presents Vanilla Ice, Schmegma, 151, Nephilym The Rocketz, Hotrod Hillbillies The Pretty Things Peepshow, Bonnie Voyage, The Miss Fits Betray Your Own, Phuket Underwater, Cipher, Ammas Saving Abel, We Are The Fallen, Taddy Porter Wrestle Rock Aug. 29, 8 p.m.

AI and The Black Cats

Aug. 11

Itz Entertainment City

Aug. 27

4118 Legend Ave., Fayetteville, NC, 910-826-2300 Aug. 1

Aug. 4 Aug. 5 Aug. 6 Aug. 7 Aug. 8

Live Unplugged/ Acoustic Music

by DL Token in the Cigar Bar “All Request Show” with DJ Shawn on The Patio, Shows at 7 & 10 p.m. in The Comedy Zone Pre-band request show on The Patio with live music All Request Show with DJ Shawn on The Patio Party Night, Dance Club open, Ladies Night Party Night, Dance Club open w/Love Tribe Live Unplugged Acoustic Music

by DL Token in the Cigar Bar All Request Show

Aug. 13 Aug. 14 Aug. 15

Aug. 18

Aug. 20 Aug. 21 Aug. 22

Aug. 25

Aug. 28 Aug. 29

with DJ Shawn on The Patio, shows at 7 & 10 p.m. in The Comedy Zone Pre-band request show on The Patio with live music, All Request Show with DJ Shawn on The Patio Party Night, Dance Club open, Ladies Night Party Night, Dance Club open Live Unplugged/Acoustic Music

by DL Token in the Cigar Bar, All Request Show with DJ Shawn on The Patio, shows at 7 & 10 p.m. in The Comedy Zone Pre-band request show on The Patio with live music, All Request Show with DJ Shawn on The Patio Party Night, Dance Club open, Ladies Night Party Night, Dance Club open Live Unplugged/Acoustic Music

by DL Token in the Cigar Bar, All Request Show with DJ Shawn on The Patio, shows at 7 & 10 p.m. in The Comedy Zone Pre-band request show on The Patio with live music, All Request Show with DJ Shawn on The Patio Party Night, Dance Club open, Ladies Night Party Night, Dance Club open Live Unplugged/Acoustic Music

by DL Token in the Cigar Bar, All Request Show with DJ Shawn on The Patio, shows at 7 & 10 p.m. in The Comedy Zone

Via 216

216 Tallywood, Fayetteville, NC, 910-486-7832 Aug. 6, 9 p.m.

Aug. 13, 9 p.m.

Aug. 20, 9 p.m.

Aug. 27, 9 p.m.

July 30 9 p.m.

Shovel Tooth, Oakcrest, Modern Day Relic, Romeo Falls New Machine, The Second Seen, No Mercy, Method To Madness, Ophir Drive The J.O.B. and The Scenic Roots The Reason Your Listening, MTV Premier Band - Endway The Animal Beat, S.I.N.N., 100 Yorktown, Enemy of Mine A Few Inches Short, A.Z., Ordain, Disco Machine Gun

Fayetteville was built on an ancient Indian burial ground, which itself was built on top of a toxic waste dump ... The result? Mutant ghosts!

Each month we scour the Internet for shows and events, but we just know we’re missing something. Shoot us an e-mail and set us straight: Comments@ FayettevilleFEED.com.

We trust that the information we have received is accurate when we publish it, but anything can change.

Mavericks Saloon

2606 Raeford Road, Fayetteville, NC Aug. 27 & 28

GRAND OPENING

8 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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Live country DJ, Dancing

Huske Hardware

405 Hay Street, Fayetteville, NC, 910-437-9905

Aug. 15, All Night Aug. 19, 10 p.m.

Aug. 20, 10 p.m.

Jester’s Pub

Aug. 22, 10 p.m.

6577 Fisher Road, Fayetteville, NC, 910-423-6100 Aug. 5, 9 p.m.

Think Thursdays, Driven, Elysium, Last of a Dying Breed Aug. 6, 6 p.m.

Local Hip Hop, R&B, Rap Artist DJ Action, Tommy Gee from Foxy 99 Aug. 7, 7 p.m.

Sick Puppies, Janus, It’s Alive Aug. 13, 8 p.m.

Sintonic, Dark Water Rising, Token Black Experience Aug. 14, 6 p.m.

Death Proof Aug. 15, 6:30 p.m. National Recording Artist NAPPY ROOTS Aug. 21, 7 p.m.

BoBaFlex

Paddy’s Pub

2606 B, Raeford Road, Fayetteville, NC, 910-677-0055 Aug. 5, 10 p.m.

Aug. 6, 10 p.m.

Ethan Hanson Autumn Nicholas, Paddy & Bill Aug. 8, 11:30 p.m. Paddy & Bill Aug. 12, 10 p.m.

Ethan Hanson Aug. 13, 10 p.m.

Autumn Nicholas, Paddy & Bill Aug. 14, 10 p.m.

Autumn Nicholas,

Aug. 26, 10 p.m.

Aug. 27, 10 p.m.

Aug. 29, 10 p.m.

Paddy & Bill Paddy & Bill Ethan Hanson Autumn Nicholas, Paddy & Bill Autumn Nicholas, Paddy & Bill Ethan Hanson Autumn Nicholas, Paddy & Bill Paddy & Bill

The Doghouse

3049 Owen Drive, Fayetteville, NC, 910-339-2404 Aug. 1, 2 p.m.

Aug. 2, 9 p.m.

Johnson Kinlaw Open Jam w/ Silver State, Guy Unger, JD and All Your Favorite Musicians in Fayetteville Aug. 3, 9:30 p.m. Karaoke w/DJ Scotty Aug. 4, 8 p.m.

Mike Odonell Aug. 5, 10 p.m.

Dollar Night, Live DJ Aug. 6, 10 p.m.

Silverstate Aug. 7, 8 p.m.

Led Zeppelin Tribute Band - Led Head w/ Special Guests Aug. 8, 2 p.m.

Johnson Kinlaw Aug. 9, 9 p.m.

Open Jam w/ Silver State, Guy Unger, JD and All Your Favorite Musicians in Fayetteville Aug. 10, 9:30 p.m. Karaoke w/DJ Scotty

Belle Curve 910-829-1200 www.belle-curve.com 231 Franklin Street • Fayetteville, NC

August 2010 | fayettevillefeed.com | 9

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Schedule SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 4TH, 2010

We Ride For Those1stWho Can’t Annual

Remembering Our Nation’s POWs & MIAs Yet To Come Home

Registration Begins at 9:00a.m.

Ride Begins at 11 a.m. for Hotrodz Return to Hotrodz at 1:30 p.m. $20 per Bike $10 per Passenger First 150 receive a limited edition POW/MIA Challenge Coin!

Bikini Bike Wash Door Prizes 50l50 Drawing Stunt Show Lunch Trip to Vegas Drawing at 3 p.m.

MUST BE PRESENT TO WIN

Visit

www.rollingthunder-nc1.com for details

Aug. 11, 8 p.m.

Aug. 12, 10 p.m.

Aug. 13, 10 p.m.

Aug. 14, 8 p.m.

Mike Odonell Dollar Night, Live DJ Bender All Girl AC/DC Tribute Band Backseat Confidential Aug. 15, 2 p.m.

Johnson Kinlaw Aug. 16, 9 p.m.

Open Jam w/ Silver State, Guy Unger, JD and All Your Favorite Musicians in Fayetteville Aug. 17, 9:30 p.m. Karaoke w/DJ Scotty Aug. 18, 8 p.m.

Mike Odonell Aug. 19, 10 p.m.

Dollar Night, Live DJ Aug. 20, 10 p.m.

Reactor Aug. 21, 8 p.m.

Rebel Son w/Automag Aug. 22, 2 p.m.

Johnson Kinlaw Aug. 23, 9 p.m.

Open Jam w/ Silver State, Guy Unger, JD and All Your Favorite Musicians in Fayetteville Aug. 24, 9:30 p.m. Karaoke w/DJ Scotty Aug. 25, 8 p.m.

Mike Odonell Aug. 26, 10 p.m.

Dollar Night, Live DJ Aug. 27, 10 p.m.

Reflections II Aug. 29, 2 p.m.

Johnson Kinlaw Aug. 30, 9 p.m.

Open Jam w/ Silver State, Guy Unger, JD and All Your Favorite Musicians in Fayetteville Aug. 31, 9:30 p.m. Karaoke w/DJ Scotty

SpeakEasy

3983 Sycamore Dairy Road, Fayetteville, NC, 910-323-2400 Aug. 6, TBA Aug. 13, TBA Aug. 20, TBA Aug. 27, TBA

Toucan Jam Autumn Nicholas Toucan Jam Autumn Nicholas

Cats Cradle

Missingmen, Wye Oak The English Beat, Bad Manners, Chris Murray Aug. 25, 8:30 p.m. Tarrus Riley, Gramps Morgan, Duane Stephenson, Dean Fraser and The Blak Soil Band Aug. 27, 7 p.m.

Paul Thorn Aug. 24, 7 p.m.

Local 506

506 W. Franklin Street, Chapel Hill, NC 27516, 919-942-5506 Aug. 4, TBA Aug. 5, 9 p.m.

Aug. 6, TBA Aug. 7, TBA Aug. 10, 8:30 p.m.

Aug. 11, 9:30 p.m.

Aug. 14, 9:30 p.m.

Aug. 16, 9 p.m.

Aug. 17, 9 p.m.

Aug. 18, 9 p.m.

Aug. 19, 8 p.m.

Aug. 20, 9:30 p.m.

Aug. 21, TBA Aug. 22, 8 p.m.

Aug. 23, TBA Aug. 24, TBA Aug. 25, 9:30 p.m.

Aug. 26, 10 p.m.

300 E. Main Street, Carrboro, NC 27510, 919-967-9053 Times listed are for doors opening, shows begin one hour after

Aug. 2, 8 p.m.

Boris, Russian Circles, Saade Aug. 7, 8:30 p.m. Here We Go Magic, Beach Fossils Aug. 9, 6:30 p.m. Cynic, Intronaut, Dysrhythmia Aug. 11, 8:30 p.m. Dax Riggs Aug. 12, 8 p.m.

Brave Combo, Killer Filler Aug. 13, 8 p.m.

Mission Burma Aug. 15, 8 p.m.

Memory House, Twin Sister Aug. 18, 8 p.m.

Chiddy Bang, XV, K.O. Kid Aug. 19, 8:30 p.m. Lou Barlow and The

Aug. 27, TBA Aug. 28, TBA Aug. 29, TBA Aug. 30, 9 p.m.

Aug. 31, 8 p.m.

Dizzy Smith EP Release Show, Wylie Hunter and The Cazadores, Luego, Lizzy Ross Band Dark Water Rising, Inflowential The L In Japanese Dance Party FREE, Screaming Crayons, Gabriel Reynolds FREE, Psuedo Blue and The Majestics The Legendary Shack Shakers Evan Garmon and Friends, Miles To The Clouds Dead To Society, Bad Idea Warpaint, Old Bricks Miniature Tigers, Animal, Jordan and The Sphinx The Delta Mirror Wembley Music Trivia Night Funkton Rio Bravo FREE, The Second Take A Tribute to Elvis Costello and The Specials w/This Year’s Model, Archbishops of Blount Street Twelve Thousand Armies, The Houstons Honored Guests, Schooner, Calico Haunts Jon Lindsay, The Small Ponds FREE, Jacqui and The Woodsides, The Lake Isle Josh Hoge, Keaton Simons, Matt Duke

10 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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August 2010 | fayettevillefeed.com | 118/5/10

10:24 AM

By James Johnson

Since our very first story (”Paddy’s Guide to Being a Rock Star”), we have attempted to be more than a publication for lovers of art - but a publication for those who make said art. In that spirit, we offer you the most important tool a performer needs to go from starving to slightly less starving (food is expensive): Public relations. First - let us get a bothersome myth out of the way for all those idealistic doe-eyed kids out there: you are not, nor are most artists, being paid for your talent. Shocking stuff, right?

12 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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Truth of the matter is, you could be the greatest thing to happen to music and it just wouldn’t matter to the venue that is paying your bills. If a venue pays a band $300 to play and the venue only manages to sell $25 bucks worth of beer to the seven people who attended the gig, do you expect that band will be making $300 the following weekend? While you’re figuring that one out, we have some 6th grade math homework that needs addressing.

Venues don’t care what you play or how well you play it. They hire you based on the following you have, because they figure your following is bound to get thirsty. This is why it is not uncommon for a new or unknown band to be paid absolutely nothing for their first few months of performing - if the band doesn’t have an audience, then the band isn’t doing the job the venue needs them to do to make back the money the venue just spent on said band.

Okay - so how does one get this elusive following we speak of?

1. Know your worth.

You can count it by the number of heads bobbing in your audience.

If it is zero - that’s exactly what you charge the venue for your performance, because that is exactly what the venue stands to make back by the end of the night. Don’t worry though. Free shows, like good equipment, are an investment. That takes us snugly into the arms of our second tip.

2. Do an insane amount of free shows.

I know, it sucks to work so hard only to go home with empty pockets, but it helps you grow as a musician (rehearsals only make you really good at rehearsing), it helps you learn to control an unresponsive audience and most importantly, it helps you build that magical following that you need in order to start demanding the greenery...Note - you can always ask for free beer.

One way to make sure your free shows aren’t wasting your time is to call up bands that have already built big followings and offer to open for them for free. If your music is similar to their genre - then you’ll have an audience predisposed to enjoying your sound.

3. You don’t have gigs, you have events.

Whether free or paid or whatever, a gig should never just be a “gig” to your audience. Jester’s Pub, The Rock Shop, Via 216, etc., put on an estimated 2 billion shows a year (give or take a few billion).

This is why you absolutely cannot depend on the venue to market your event for you - because to the venue patron, all those 2 billion events being marketed at them at once can become a lot of white noise.

When you have a gig, no matter if it is out of town or if it is merely one of many you are doing that week, you have to push it as if it is the last time you’ll ever be playing live again. Your family should be there, your friends and co-workers should be there, your dog should be there, your dog’s friends should be there… and the list goes on. Flyer up the city (hit colleges, festivals, coffee shops, old folks homes), do a count down on your Facebook/ MySpace, post teaser videos online, play short street shows and remind every person you know that if they don’t attend, you’ll assume they hate you. Make your shows special so that, by the time gig night comes, there is no question that the venue will be packed with paying customers.

4. Be rare.

Rare isn’t always the best way to have your steak (blood is an acquired taste), but it is a damn good way to ensure that your following isn’t overfed (your music, by the way, is also an acquired taste). That isn’t to say you starve your audience either. Start off by forcing yourself down people’s throats as much as possible - perform, perform, perform - then once you actually have a following that is expecting you to come out and serve up dinner, make ‘em beg. So long as you can spread out your following (build followings in multiple towns), this should keep the events feeling special to your fans while at the same time not hurting your pocketbook. Don’t oversaturate a single town with your music , or else it will become impossible to turn those “gigs” into “special events.”

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5. You-Twit-Face.

6. Sponsorship.

This is dangerous and usually untouched territory - but if done well, it can almost guarantee your life will be made easier, though if done badly, it can make you look like a sell out (try not to overdo it, if you care about such things).

You are going to be doing some major marketing to gain that following, so why not market for two? Speak with a business that you believe would benefit from your audience and get them to help you out with paying for flyers for your event in exchange for their logo being printed on the flyer. You can do this with multiple businesses and not just with flyers - radio ads, magazine ads and even billboards can be made much cheaper by partnering your marketing with a business that is also looking to market themselves. Three cheers for mutual self interest.

7. You’re an artist - be creative.

The goal is to have a following , usually by being heard, but how can you be heard by those who never go out to live shows? Don’t think outside the box - take the box out back and have it shot.

Make videos which demonstrate your music and post them to your networks requesting that fans share ‘em. Talk to local businesses (locally owned are more flexible) about playing your music over their loud speakers in rotation with their usual background noise (subconscious marketing is powerful stuff ) or, better yet, get with a business that is already advertising on the radio and offer a song of yours for free to be used in the background of their ad. The same can be done with local television ads.

The repetition of having your song heard on the radio or television will pay off when an audience you’ve never played for before recognizes one of your songs right off the bat.

This page is made with special flavored ink. Go on ... Lick it ... We’re not here to judge.

The above obscure Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien reference pertains to the three headed dragon known as online social networking...Honestly, it is such a tedious and complicated activity that tossing $50 a week to a fan to maintain these giant time-sucks might just seem well worth it … However, they have become an all too necessary evil as they are the best possible way to keep in constant contact with your base, give venues an idea as to your pull and send your sound across the world … Plus, the price is right. But how do you utilize them?

Well, shut up and we’ll tell you.

MySpace: This is the online equivalent of a business card. If you can’t design a MySpace that looks professional, then get someone who can. People are shallow and if they see a bunch of cheesy animated gifs, your horoscope or misspellings, they will click away before your first song has a chance to play.

MySpace is for appearances , not really for fan interaction. Most of the people you friend on MySpace or get friended by will be self interested businesses or bands. Humans have since moved on.

Facebook: This is your soap box.

For the FEED, Facebook has proven to be our greatest promotional tool for two important reasons. 1.) Your fans are 98 percent human. A band that promotes itself to other bands can only get so far. Those fleshy, meat bags are where its at. 2.) Everything you postphotos, songs, random comments, videos - gets posted to the pages of all your fans.

If you do this frequently then you can stay on their minds. We once interviewed a band that posted video blogs from the road, every week - brilliant.

You do need to build your Facebook fan following, here is an easy way to do it : Make every member of your band an admin of the fan group (except for the tambourine player, ’cause those guys can’t be trusted), then ask each one to invite everyone they know. Simple, yeah, but that’s not all. Obviously most of your band mates will know the same people you know, so you’ll have to be a pest. Ask friends of yours who are already fans of your group to invite everyone they know, then keep at it. If you don’t have more than 2,000 fans by the end of the month, you suck at life.

Twitter: Twitter is your final line of defense. No one needs a Twitter, it is just nice to have as a way to pester those fans who can’t find time for Facebook or MySpace, but appreciate getting cell phone text messages at odd hours. For the record, Twitter is stupid. Scientific fact.

14 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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16 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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By James Johnson Photos by Raul Rubiera Jr

At 6’0, the gangly, bearded and bespectacled Myke Strickland resembles an eccentric art teacher. He’s not. In fact, you probably don’t want this man anywhere near your kids.

Strickland, a current resident of Tabor City, North Carolina (also known as Razor City) is an artist who in Fayetteville is usually only whispered about by other artists. For many, Strickland is one part performer, two parts beat maker and three parts escaped mental patient. In these art circles Strickland goes under another moniker. He is Beard Eats Face, but who is he, really?

Ask around local venues and you’ll get an array of vague descriptions, most of them followed by either knowing smirks or pained winces. His sound is the musical equivalent of a mad man’s ravings; the type of stuff you imagine loops in the mind of actor Gary Busey. Some would describe the sound as industrial, experimental or drum and bass – but Strickland, sneers in the face of selfimportant genre names and cheerfully describes the music in the simplest terms, “noise.”

“It is every f**king thing that you did when you were a kid to piss people off. You’d bang pots and pans together just to create a racket,” said the August 2010 | fayettevillefeed.com | 17

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31-year-old Strickland in a recent phone interview.

“That’s what this is. I record doors slamming, traffic, conversations and even children’s toys. I use it all to create beats and that’s all my sound is, man. It is noise … I’m sorry, what were we talking about?”

If his music is best described as noise, then his live performance might just as easily be described as chaos.

Strickland wears an Asian sun hat over a modified painter’s respirator that has a microphone built into it.

To add to the spectacle, Strickland will often use a grinder during performances to cause sparks to rain over his audience.

“I remember the first time I used the grinder, it was at the Huske Hardware House,” said Strickland.

“There were some people up there who didn’t know what was going on when they saw me setting up. I didn’t care. I grab my f**king grinder and I started grinding and everyone f**king stopped what they were doing … There’s just something about shooting f**king hot steel particles in people’s faces that puts everyone in a good mood. Who doesn’t love that?...Most of my shows - ...Hey, hold on again, okay? WOOOOAH!!...Sorry ‘bout that, I’ve got some crazy redneck neighbors.”

Strickland, a sound tech and engineer by day, has always been an audiophile. He jokes that his experience working sound has negatively affected his enjoyment of live performances by some of his favorite artists, as his ear is far more sensitive than most to flaws within mixing.

Before the Beard Eats Face experiment, Strickland was the lead vocalist for a band called DuelEvo, which had also specialized in the experimental. After the band’s eventual burn out, Strickland bought sound equipment on Craigslist at a steep discount and has been creating noise ever sense.

“I have almost always opened for metal acts and I don’t think the audiences knew what I was doing before but now they’ve started to embrace it,” said Strickland. “If you aren’t into it, it can be annoying stuff. Most crowds will only put up with 45 minutes of it.”

Currently Strickland is preparing to release two albums by the start of next year. One entitled Numbers: A Disc for Counting will consist of rhythms and beats created using only vocal recordings, and the other will be a full length album entitled The Electric Orange Peel Banana. The latter will also include DVD quality film of the Beard Eats Face live performances.

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birds of a feather...

By James Johnson | Photos by Nick Helderman, Courtesy

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Since forming in 2006, American nu-folk artists The Bowerbirds have become among the most talked about bands in the North Carolina music scene, even being named by the News & Observer as one of the “Great Eight” bands to watch in 2008. The band is comprised of guitarist/vocalist Phi Moore, accordion player/vocalist Beth Tacular and a rotating gallery of drummers (Spinal Tap has more consistency). Currently the famously environmentally conscious girlfriend/boyfriend duo is promoting their latest album, Upper Air, and getting set to perform in the first annual Hopscotch Music Festival, happening September 9 – 11 in downtown Raleigh North Carolina. Among the other artists performing are Public Enemy and Broken Social Scene - so yeah, they’re in good company.

We sat down with the kids to discuss their new album, touring and their precious mother nature.

Fayetteville Feed: How does it feel to be the band with buzz?

Phil Moore: Uh geez, I don’t know that I think of it that way. I don’t know that I feel the buzz first hand. Maybe people are reading into it? ...I don’t get that sense.

F.F.: You’re traveling in a van, right? Are you guys keeping green? Is it running off of vegetable oil or perhaps good intentions?

P.M: It is just a Dodge Caravan. We can’t really afford a touring van. It is just an old van I’ve been using for years.

F.F.: Sorry, we had to ask...Do you find that because you guys have been outspoken about our environment that people have unrealistic standards for you to live up to?

P.M.: I don’t think... - well, yes, maybe. But then I don’t blame them. Before we started touring, we lived those green lives...or whatever...But yeah, we don’t get a lot of backlash or criticism. It is a necessary evil, gasoline. People are pretty much understanding.

F.F.: Do you think America is on the right path?

P.M.: Uh, no...But I don’t think that is any fault of any political person, it is just human

nature. We just got off the path and haven’t really been on the right path for years. I’m not being cynical, just realistic. I’m not really – like, I think I have a pretty high standard for how things should be like. But I don’t really think that uh, I don’t think that it is realistic that we’ll get back to a hunter/gatherer society.

F.F.: Do you guys enjoy touring?

P.M.: I do to a certain extent – I like playing shows, that’s my favorite part. I do like the places we get to visit. Beautiful places we go that we can’t really experience on its own terms, without clubs.

F.F.: Is it hard to get alone time as a couple when you’re on the road?

Beth Tacular: Yeah, it is really hard actually. At first it was more of a struggle, but

we’ve gotten used to it. We bring people who we’re very close to – so it is not like we get to hold back. It isn’t like we get our own hotel room. We hang out non-stop when we’re back from tour.

F.F.: This Hopscotch is just one of many musical festivals you guys have played in.

You guys have played South by South West, the Pitchfork Music Festival and just recently the benefit This Machine Kills Cancer. With all those festivals under your belt, you guys must be sick of funnel cake.

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P.M.: (The Pitchfork Fest) was awesome.

It was a lot of fun, and a lot of really cool bands were there. We had a day off after that and so we got to watch more bands.

B.T.: There was an audience of 4-5 thousand people watching, which was more than we expected.

F.F. Why do you think this album (Upper Air) has attracted so much attention from national publications?

B.T.: I think the first one was attracting

attention too – but no one knew who we were, and now we have distribution, so it is in stores. The new album is more complex musically and more diverse.

I think that there are different things that appeal to different people throughout the album. It is kind of cool. It is more diverse and we’re using more instrumentation and more harmony.

F.F.: Would you say that your music

is the product of the North Carolina music scene, broader music culture, or something else entirely?

B.T.: ...I think there is a lot of really good

music in North Carolina. It is a very supportive scene. There is a lot of cross pollination. There are definitely influences from different scenes in our sound.

Some NC bands I like are, well, I really like The Rosebuds. They are really good, we toured with them. Their new album is awesome. Also, Megafaun, Lost in the Trees - we were just listening to them. Midtown Dickens, Bright Young Things …

F.F.: What goals have you yet to meet?

P.M.: They’re always changing, I guess.

I just want to get better and better at writing songs. I’m not sure what that means to anyone else or to me, but I want to keep working at writing songs. I don’t know that I can get more specific than that.

F.F: Okay, for our own amusement. What is the prettiest thing you’ve ever heard?

P.M.: Probably – um … Well, I imagine the ocean, I guess.

B.T.: Hmm...Let’s see...I mean it has

to be someone singing. I don’t know.

Maybe like, Joanna Newsom. Her voice and that harp...Mmm.

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Contributions by James Johnson and Jaymie Baxley

“Revitalized�is a word tossed around a lot when business , owners and politicians begin waxing on about Fayetteville s beloved yet largely unpopulated , downtown area and while the word is apt, the job isn t quite , done yet. We at The FEED hopped in our Delorean (it s a rental) and traveled , to a possible future, where downtown s hobos have been replaced with hobo-bots, bluray players can be found in , antique shops and cars still don t fly, to get an idea of just what kind of businesses would provide downtown enough pull to compete with the big box retail centers just up the hill.

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A Record Store

Sure, it may not sound like much, but trust us, there’s a drought in Fayetteville when it comes to independently owned music stores and downtown is good farmin’ land.

Though CDs have pretty much been antiquated by the series of tubes we lovingly refer to as the Internet, vinyl is on its way back in a big way … No seriously.

Vinyl sales have been up across the country, with some stores even reporting that their vinyl has been selling out.

In 2008 vinyl sales went up a staggering 89%, while CD sales continue to go down. Even modern artists, such Destroyer, Elvis Costello and Arctic Monkeys are taking advantage of the sudden surge in interest by releasing albums exclusively on vinyl.

Plus, let’s face it: a record shop would make a great companion store to downtown mainstays, the Cameo Art House Theater and the Rude Awakening Coffee Shop. It’d be like the holy trinity of pretentious shopping experiences.

the Fayetteville Museum of Art

On May 31 Fayetteville’s only dedicated museum of art closed its doors due in large part to economic woes, and considering their location, it’s no wonder. The city may have forgotten about their promise to the Fayetteville Museum of Art, but we haven’t. Some hidden street just off of Bragg Boulevard was no place to hide an art museum that could yield Fayetteville thousands of potential visitors a year.

Honestly, a well-placed art museum could make all the difference downtown. Art is something people actually travel to see. It adds culture, it challenges, it... well, in terms our city government may best understand: It attracts money.

The leafy greeny, spendy kind o’money...

Music Venue

Traditionally, areas surrounding universities have music venues that cater to the refined (read: elitist) tastes of young people. We conducted strenuous research (we asked three entire people!) and we were alarmed to discover that Fayetteville students and soldiers, just like people in every town in America, love music.

Therefore, logic dictates that a local music venue in the center of Fayetteville’s artistic hub would make a killing downtown.

Someone needs to pull a Kevin Costner and build this thing.

Youth Oriented Clothing Stores

Sure, there are already a handful of clothing boutiques scattered along Hay St. but these shops have zoot suits in their display windows and for some reason that’s just not very enticing to those locals who don’t aspire to open up a 1970’s brothel. A clothing store disconnected from the mall that sells the type of clothes that our college students and young soldiers wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen wearing in public (a la Pac Sun or Urban Outfitters) would thrive downtown.

The fact o’ the matter is, Fayetteville’s main export is young dudes and there are few things young dudes love more than gadgets, flat-screen televisions and video-games. Plus, this would complement downtown’s Apple store N2 quite nicely, while bringing Fayetteville up to date with the rest of society.

Skate Parkl Ice-Rink l Baseball Diamond

It seems like every few months the city tosses money toward Parks and Rec’, and we are rewarded with another patch of green land, with yet another overpriced fountain. Truly, we in Fayetteville have proven our mastery of the science of spewing water uselessly into the air. But what if we spent some of that money building something downtown that people will actually use – like a skate park, an outdoor ice skating rink, or a baseball diamond, which would really go well with that whole “All-American City” vibe we’ve been trying to push … Anything but another traffic circle.

By-the-Slice-Pizza Joints If you haven’t noticed by now, our city is populated by, what can best be described as, “young dudes.” Take a guess what the number one fuel of young dudes everywhere is.

Downtown needs more than a single by the slice pizza joint – it needs ‘em in multiples. When doing the Saturday night bar hop from Huske Hardware to Lidos, our young soldiers shouldn’t be able to walk five feet without a delicious slice o’ the greasy stuff being thrust into their faces. It should also serve to sober them up between bars so that they can keep the party going all night long.

Speaking of all night long...

Late Night Hours

Considering our population, Fayetteville’s businesses have the most self-defeating business hours known to man.

Okay – so you have a billion young guys and college students with paychecks in hand and a total lack of fiscal self-restraint and you think these kids are all going to bed at 11 p.m.?

If a business stays open past 6 p.m. downtown it is a miracle, but as a whole Fayetteville’s businesses tend to close long before most of Fayetteville’s residents are likely to go to bed. Meanwhile, corporate owned businesses like the Waffle House, Taco Bell, McDonalds and Walmart are taking countless Fayetteville dollars out of our town each weekend once the clock strikes 11.

It isn’t easy to maintain late night hours when you’re the only one doing it, but if downtown’s businesses could get together(perhaps through some kind of wacky “alliance” or something) and decide to all stay open past 11 p.m. on the weekends then we could satisfy a whole crop of unsatisfied customers and keep some of that Waffle House money flowing through our own households.

The truth is, Fayetteville is a young town and if our downtownhopes to compete for that young person’s dollar, then Fayetteville will have to start acting its age.

An Electronics Store

While a store full of shiny gadgets and doohickeys could potentially clash with the folk art dealerships and wine shops that currently propagate our downtown, we’re confident that patrons would respond positively to a dedicated electronics store.

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Art

Piece by Piece

In award winning artist Shane Booth’s series “Spirits” the controversial local photographer hopes to illuminate and disassemble the savage preconceptions people have about HIV/Aids.

Booth is the assistant professor of art at Fayetteville State University. His photography has been featured in various galleries across the United States.

We met with Booth at his campus office and asked him to privy us to the intentions and inspirations behind some of his favorite pieces from the exhibit.

By Jaymie Baxley

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FRANTIC Shane Booth: This seems like an appropriate piece to start with. Each piece in the gallery is about HIV and the stigmas that go along with HIV so this particular piece is about the panic that sets in when someone discovers they have HIV. A lot of people who have HIV don’t have a face. They are treated like numbers. I think it’s probably the most feared thing in the world. This piece communicates that.

Fayetteville FEED: Do you feel most people are able to interpret the intended message behind this piece?

Shane Booth: Yes. Because of the title I think people have been able to infer the meaning

of the piece.

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Ignorance Is a Pointy Hat #1

Shane Booth: This one I put in a show downtown (“Unity in the Community”) that was all about community. Oftentimes my work is the only boundary pushing stuff downtown. At the show this man came up to me who was supposed to be very knowledgeable about art and he asked me what in the world this piece had to do with community.

I asked him if he read the title and he said “yes,” then I said “well, your reaction is exactly what it’s about.”

It’s about ignorance and not talking about HIV within the community.

I wear a dress in this piece but not because I’m a cross dresser. It’s sort a signifier of an ambiguous, asexual disease. My grandma is a big influence on my work and this was her dress. It’s from the 1800s.

Also, I don’t intend to emulate horror movies but the figure here sort of looks like Pyramid-Head from Silent Hill. I love that movie. It was subconscious but it works because Pyramid-Head is sort of the epitome of male frustration. A lot of people stumble on the nude body but there’s nothing blatantly sexual about this. I just love the human form.

Fayetteville FEED: In what ways did this particular work stand out from the other pieces in the “Unity” show?

Shane Booth: Everything else in that gallery was about topics that people actually like to talk about: Just your stereotypical “everybody wants to get along” type stuff.

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Shane Booth: This one is influenced by Joel Peter Whitkin.

He once did a piece where he took a body and separated it with black bands so it sort of looked like the body was cut in pieces. I wanted to do the opposite thing.

People with HIV really feel like they are falling to pieces. It’s all they can think about. It consumes them.

There’s a definite S&M aesthetic to this piece because I love the look of black leather and the pure aesthetic properties of the things S&M people wear are really interesting to me.

Blinded By Faith

Fayetteville FEED: What made you decide to be your own model for these photographs?

Shane Booth: I’m easy access. Often, when I do a photograph I want to do it immediately and I just love doing self-portraits as a way of exploring myself. It makes you more self-aware.

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Piece of Me

Shane Booth: HIV is spreading because of religion. People don’t talk about it. They preach abstinence instead of condoms and of course people are going to keep having sex anyway.

I met with a man earlier up at Duke. He was HIV positive and on medication, but otherwise, completely healthy. He joined a Pentecostal church and they told him that the HIV was a demon and that they could pray it out of him so he went off his medicine and died.

I’m not attacking religion here in anyway. People just forget about science.

Fayetteville FEED: Would it be inaccurate to say that this piece possesses a “torture” quality?

Shane Booth: The torture of homosexuality. A lot of folks can’t accept it. You torture yourself by pretending you’re going to get married and have kids. So I guess it is about the torture of your religion.

Shane Booth: This one is about feeling helpless and it’s about how people make you out to be a monster when you have HIV. In Europe, when someone has HIV you immediately feel sorry for them. In America you discover that someone has HIV and you want to know how they got it. It’s such an organic disease that we haven’t got a grasp on yet.

Here I’m growing out of the ground like a fungus to symbolize that.

Fayetteville FEED: Do you feel like we’ll be able to shake preconceptions about HIV in America anytime soon?

Shane Booth: It’s pretty far out.

Education is going a long way toward changing people’s preconceptions but I still see it as being very far off

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By Staff Reports

(our lawyers would like us to point out that this column has no affiliation with the popular Internet vlog of the same name ...They added, “cough, cough,” then proceeded to wink.)

Ah the noble ninja, outside of zombies and pirates, ninjas are possibly the coolest thing we ever secretly hoped to grow up to be. Every now and then one of us frustrated adults takes that extra step to turn hope into a reality (other examples include musician Keith Richards, who has successfully combined both the dream of being a

pirate, and that of being a zombie). One such adult is Hakim Isler, instructor of Fayetteville’s own Elite Training Center (located at 129 Hay Street). We sat down with Isler to learn the ins and outs of being a sneaky super assassin.

Each month we’ll be asking Isler a new ninja related question, and if we ever become desperate for relationship advice

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Congratulations! You win free Fayetteville FEED magazines for life! We should probably mention that this applies to everyone.

again, we’ll be sure to ask his opinion on how to score a “cougar”. (Quick guess: blow dart gun).

This week we ask: How can ninja skills help out when you are in the military?

Hakim Isler: Didn’t you see Ninja Assassin in “G.I. Joe”?

Any military commander would love to have at their disposal a ninja who could destroy multiple opponents armed with guns and the latest technology, using only a sword and

an unlimited supply of shuriken (throwing stars).

Seriously though, ninja translates into “one who endures or perseveres.” Thus, ninjutsu is the art of endurance and perseverance. Our art is not the art of kicking and punching but one of adaptability and success. Our name dictates that we have both form but stay free of form, that we understand being outside the box, inside the box, the box itself and even the thought of drawing the box. We learn and teach the art of winning.

When you’re looking at the combat aspect

of ninjutsu (the fun stuff), we have a list of things we need to be proficient in to receive our black belt: striking, throwing, grappling, joint manipulation, stick combat, knife combat, sword combat, firearm combat (teppo jutsu and hojutsu), throwing blades, fitness, combat strategy and more.

A soldier can benefit from every aspect of a ninja’s training, because we’re trained to win against all odds.

And now you know - and knowing is half the battle.

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Story by Jaymie Baxley | Photos by Raul Rubiera Jr

Local alternative rock group Evans City Saints have quickly become one of the most accomplished and recognizable acts in Fayetteville. In under a year they have opened for national recording artists such as Cracker and Evans Blue, played Fayetteville’s largest annual event, the Dogwood Festival and were nominated for a Carolina Music Award in the category of “Best Rock Band/ Group.” Unfortunately, success seldom comes without heartbreak.

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From left, guitarist John Bradford, vocalist Jacob Smotherman, drummer Nick “Fuz” Tamez and the group’s newest member, bass player Ernesto Rivas.

It’s early Saturday morning and I am ringing the doorbell of an old, painted blue house in Tennessee, about 30 miles north of Nashville. Evans City Saints bassist James Brandon Roden spent the majority of his life in this house, but Brandon is not here today.

He is lying in a casket three miles west at Austin & Bell funeral home.

His wife, parents, friends and band mates, however, are sitting behind a long patio table in the backyard, exchanging their favorite Brandon stories. They pause intermittently between reflections to quietly acknowledge the fact that they will never see this person again.

Countless other Brandon stories were traded yesterday, when droves of faces from various points in the 28-year old’s past gathered for his memorial service.

“So many people were here, teachers, high school band mates, old baby-sitters, one guy even drove all the way from Florida on a motorcycle,” said Brandon’s wife, Patricia Roden.

Patricia and Brandon’s relationship was especially tragic- they had only been married for 11 days before he died.

“The big turnout didn’t surprise me, as someone who loves Brandon I know how easy he was to love.

He never made an enemy.” After

Patricia says this, the conversation stops and the table goes silent.

Brandon’s mother, Tammy, attempts to distract everyone from the overwhelming gravity of the situation by reminiscing about Brandon’s childhood, particularly his early love of music.

“He had some type of musical instrument in his hand ever since he was about 10-months old, he even used to beat on his pillows and pretend they were drums,” she recalled. “Brandon’s first guitar was a Christmas gift from our family’s next door neighbors, they used to buy him more Christmas gifts than we would!”

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Brandon developed his talents playing gospel standards with his church group. His brother, Matt, is also a skilled musician. Later, Tammy leads me into a small office room and plays me a video of Matt performing an original song he had written as a tribute to his sibling, entitled “You Will Not Be Forgotten” “We’ll remember you by the love and the laughter you gave,” go the lyrics. But what was cathartic for Matt is devastating for Tammy and halfway through the song she begins to cry and excuses herself from the room.

After the video ends, I wander into the family’s kitchen where drummer,

Nick Tamez, is sharing pictures taken during the group’s June 29 performance in support of Cracker with Brandon’s father, Bob Roden. Bob stares blankly at each photograph for several minutes.

He did not lose a son with unrealized potential; he lost a son whose potential was only beginning to be realized.

According to his parents, Brandon was overjoyed to be involved with a band that was actually taking off.

“He hadn’t looked that happy since he was a teenager,” said Tammy.

Brandon certainly did seem excited when I interviewed him and the other members of Evans

City Saints two weeks earlier.

“I feel like everything is really coming together,” he said.

Our second meeting was postponed after Brandon was hospitalized on July 10. He had been complaining of intense headaches for three days before he told Patricia that he was experiencing dizziness. The newlyweds rushed to the hospital where doctors immediately began to administer tests. A CAT scan revealed a large tumor in his brain.

Doctors’ informed Patricia that they would have to perform surgery but, on Sunday morning at 6 a.m., Brandon slipped into cardiac arrest. He clung to August 2010 | fayettevillefeed.com | 39

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life support for several hours until it was determined that there was nothing left that could be done and Brandon was gone.

Tonight, back in Fayetteville, its Brandon’s birthday and the three remaining members of Evans City Saints are organizing a benefit concert to help Patricia handle her late husband’s medical expenses. They are going over ideas and arrangements for the show at The Rock Shop Music Hall, where Brandon worked part-time as a bouncer.

After several long weeks of grieving, the band is determined to make this event a celebration.

“He wouldn’t want us to be out here playing a bunch of sappy songs,” said lead singer, Jacob Smotherman.

The group insists that they do not intend to exploit Brandon’s death.

“We’re going to play one show to help Patricia with the medical bills and that’s it. I refuse to use this situation as a crutch,” said Tamez.

“Brandon was a solid musician and just an all-around solid guy. We’re all very torn up about this,” added lead guitarist, John Bradford.

Confident that Brandon would want Evans City Saints to carry on, the band have decided to search for a new bass player, though they admit it will be a difficult transition.

“It’s still painful just to walk into practice, let alone even talk about hiring a new bassist, we felt complete with Brandon,” Smotherman said.

“Whoever we recruit, we are going to hold them to the standard that he left,” added Tamez.

Patricia approves of the group’s decision. “I think it’s awesome, I want them to continue...Brandon would want them to continue,” she said.

Even after the band finds a replacement, they recognize that things will never quite be the same.

“It’s hard to fill a void that someone fit so perfectly,” confessed Tamez.

Evans City Saints plan to release their self -titled debut E.P. later this month. The Benefit Concert for Brandon Roden

Brandon Roden 1981-2010 will take place on August 21 at The Rock Shop Music Hall.

The evening will feature performances by The Fifth, The Influence, The Several Devils Band and Evans City Saints, with more artists to be announced. At press time it was announced that bass player Ernesto Rivas would be officially joining the band. For up to date details on the event and the upcoming E.P., go to MySpace.com/evanscitysaints.

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Opinion The Bile On The Dial

Modernizing Fayetteville’s Radio Review by Jaymie Baxley

Jaymie Baxley is the head correspondent for the Fayetteville FEED.

What do Vampire Weekend, The National and LCD Soundsystem have in common?

This year each of these bands released critically acclaimed albums that debuted in the Billboard Top 10 chart. Oh, and you will never, ever hear them on Fayetteville radio.

It’s no secret that the state of FM radio has been pretty bleak. Most local stations stopped paying attention to new music shortly after 1999 (it’s tempting to imagine local DJ’s as balding Matchbox 20 fans who still drink Brisk iced tea and scour eBay for rare Tamagotchis).

Many opponents of local radio I’ve spoken with have taken Rock 103 to task, feeling the station grossly misrepresents modern rock ‘n’ roll, being as it rarely ever plays modern rock ‘n’ roll (as of this writing, the last three artists played on Rock 103 were Metallica, Pink Floyd and Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers … ) Of course, LCD Soundsystem’s disco infused indie-rock doesn’t provide the ideal soundtrack for hanging sheetrock or repairing washing machines. A blue collar community needs a radio station that plays music that appeals to blue collar folks and Rock 103 satisfies this niche.

Criticizing the station for ignoring credible new artists is like writing an angry letter to the CEO of Hardees for not introducing fruit parfaits and vegan cupcakes to the restaurant’s menu. It’s a conflict of formats.

Can you imagine a DJ at Rock 103 sneaking the latest single from Of Montreal into rotation with the likes of Nickelback, Tonic or 3 Doors Down? Not a very appetizing combination.

In order to accommodate trendy modern music, Rock 103 would have to completely change their format and swap one demographic out for another, which would be counter-productive.

Fans of cutting edge music in other cities traditionally get their fix from the local college radio station, but we don’t have one of those strange considering Fayetteville has three colleges.

Oh wait, I forgot about the Fayetteville State University station, WFSS … which plays almost exclusively smooth jazz. Fun fact: College students adore Kenny G. They can’t get enough of him.

The WFSS station would have a much easier time switching formats than Rock 103, as they only stand to lose seven listeners.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a campus radio station that the denizens of said campus

(*gasp*) actually listen to? Allowing students from our three local universities to program the content ensures that our generation’s tastes are being accurately represented.

I recognize that the majority of folks (me included) dissatisfied with the state of contemporary radio have already moved onto the greener pastures of satellite and iPod, but FM still has one clear advantage over those devices: local personalities. People who are in step with what’s going on in the community and who frequent local music venues in search of upstart talent. For the most part our local personalities (shout out to Al the Van Man and Jeff Davis) are awesome people, whose hands are tied by the giant corporations they work for.

Still, the only time I hear Fayetteville radio personalities talk about the community is when there’s a car accident slowing the flow of traffic on MLK and the only time I bump into them at rock shows is when their respective station is presenting the concert. If local radio personalities don’t want to be replaced by mp3 players, they need to be more visible at music venues (even when off the clock) and passionate about local and modern music.

One last piece of advice: Local radio stations please stop trying to win listeners over with beer cozies. I have never been encouraged to consume something based on the endorsement of a glorified sponge.

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JEREMY The Chronicles of

STROTHERS Story by James Johnson | Photos by Raul Rubiera Jr

Rock star, [rok stahr] - Noun 1. An energy drink that is only purchased when the retailer has run out of Red Bull or Monster 2. A person who is celebrated or distinguished for their talents in the profession of popular music. Attributes usually include good looks, charisma, above average songwriting, singing or instrumental talents, frequent participation in parties or debauched behavior, enthusiasm for recreational drug use and of course, obsessive fascination with members of the opposite sex.

3. Jeremy Strothers.

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F

or many in Fayetteville, few artists fit the rock star mold quite as well as Magnolia Beach Texas born singer/ songwriter Jeremy Strothers. He is, in many respects, the quintessential frontman and on August 20 at Itz Entertainment City on Legend Avenue, he intends to prove it when he reunites with the men who formed the original lineup of the band that started it all, DL Token.

DL Token was born in the fall of 2000 when Strothers, who had been recently stationed at Fort Bragg, was nearing the end of his military career. The band consisted of Strothers on vocals, Guy Unger on lead guitar, Brian Shaw on bass, Stephen Lauderbach on drums and Charles Starcher on rhythm guitar.

“Jeremy is – well, he’s a performer. He is just a good frontman,” said Unger who is now playing with the band Silverstate . “He connects with the audience, he is involved.

I work with him any chance I get.”

DL Token caught on quickly among area music lovers and began booking gigs every night of the week. In today’s music, a full band being able to sustain a schedule that packed is nearly unheard of. To this day, Strothers performs seven nights a week, only taking Monday’s off. Near the end, the band had even managed to attract the attention of executives at Sony Records who had sent a representative to one of their performances.

Unfortunately, the strain of a nightly work schedule, family responsibilities and good ol’ fashioned exhaustion all conspired to put an end to the band’s original lineup, when in 2005 it was announced that DL Token, as Fayetteville knew it, was over.

“Over four years, guys got married, children were born, values changed … the pace that the group was having to operate at to sustain notoriety was just not possible for everyone,” said Strothers.

“Everyone still loved it and cared for each other.

We just all started to grow in different directions as far as what we wanted as artists and as people.”

Undeterred, Strothers continued to perform under the name DL Token, though with an inconsistent lineup of revolving musicians.

Strothers is a walking, talking human contradiction. Among those who know him, he is famous for his relaxed attitude, love of partying and passion for life on the beach. This reputation is in stark contrast with the type of man whose self-discipline and high work ethic has helped him become one of the only musicians in the area who sustains himself entirely through 44 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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his music career. For that, he credits his time spent in the military.

“It really just enhanced everything about my character, you know?” said Strothers. “I remember when I approached music as a career I started working with people with no background like that and there were people who didn’t have any knowledge of punctuality.”

One downside of Strothers constant performance schedule is the lack of free time he’s had for recording. Nonetheless, despite having to wait for the stars to align in order to get time in the studio he has somehow managed to compile enough music, both from unreleased recordings done with DL Token’s original lineup and more recent work, to prepare an album which will likely consist of more than 30 songs. The album, titled American Songwriter,

will be made up of two CDs. One will contain all of Strothers’ acoustic work and the other will contain that which was recorded with a full band.

As if that wasn’t ambitious enough, Strothers hopes to coincide the release of his L.P. with a documentary that will give fans a peak at life on the road.

“The album is kind of autobiographical,” explained Strothers.

“I write about things that have happened in my life. Most of the songs are inspired by something that has really happened, and so I put the songs on the album in a sort of chronological order. This is my story, but in a way, it is everybody’s story, you know?”

For Strothers, telling a relatable story is the whole point of his music.

Music, he says, is and always has been, about uniting people.

“In Fayetteville there are a lot of

people who come to our shows and are missing loved ones. These people need what we’re able to put into an evening.

They need an escape,” said Strothers.

“They need that which connects us all.

Music can do that. It connects us.”

Good looks, a great voice and charisma can open a lot of doors, but for Strothers, the most important qualifier for a true quintessential frontman is simply the ability to connect.

“Performing has nothing to do with the sound or the trends or whatever. It is the energy, the soul of it,” said Strothers. “These stories we tell on stage, they are the kinds of stories that unite us all.”

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Music The Roots: “How I Got Over” 2010, Def Jam Recordings Review by Jaymie Baxley

Jaymie Baxley is the head correspondent for the Fayetteville FEED.

How I Got Over, the latest album from Philadelphia hip-hop stalwarts, The Roots, is an introspective record that radiates with smoky cool.

In stark contrast to the humid claustrophobia of The Roots’ two previous Def Jam releases, the first half of How I Got Over consists of chilly, spacious songs that recall the harrowing jazz/soul of Gil Scott-Heron. In these early tracks, rapper Black Thought meditates on weighty subjects like isolation (“Walk Alone”), urban discourse (“Radio Daze”) and wavering faith (“Dear God 2.0”).

Six songs in, the album shifts toward a brighter, more uplifting direction, a turn initiated by the exhilarating, Curtis Mayfieldchanneling title track. Throughout the second half of the album, rapper Black Thought and guests sound more hopeful and determined to overcome their economic obstacles, to “get over.”

How I Got Over is The Roots’ nineth album overall and their first release since the group became the official house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Luckily, the rigors of a daily job haven’t stifled the band creatively and many of How I Got Over’s songs rank among the group’s most adventurous, such as the glitchy closer “Web 20/20” or the trippy and beautiful “Right On,” which features vocal contributions from freak folk darling Johanna Newsom.

Much has been made of this record’s collaborations between indie-rock mainstays like Newsom, the Dirty Projectors and My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, but How I Got Over is by no means a shallow bid for coffee shop appeal. The

surprisingly soulful nuances in these guest voices are exposed under the direction of producer/ drummer Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, so in context, they don’t sound so out of place.

Cohesion has always been something that has separated the Roots from their contemporaries; since the beginning they have taken extra care to craft albums that flow seamlessly as a whole and How I Got Over is no exception. In fact, this may be the band’s most consistent offering since 1999’s classic Things Fall Apart.

4/5

NewsWIRE - A Picture is Worth Two Million Words

By Staff Reports

Popular indie rock band Vampire Weekend are being sued for $2 million dollars for allegedly using a photo of model Ann Kirsten Kennis on the cover for their latest album Contra without permission (which orifice the accuser pulled the number 2 million out has yet to be revealed).

Vampire Weekend’s label, XL Recordings, claims innocence, pointing to a release form with Miss Kennis’ signature on it, however Kennis’ people are saying that her signature was forged. Seriously though - $2 million dollars? ... Uh, anyway, Kennis claims the photo was taken in 1983 by her grandmother and that it somehow got into the hands of one Tod Brody, who claimed the photo as his own (who wouldn’t want to take credit for such a masterpiece? ... Sarcasm can be hard to get across on paper).

Contra is the band’s second album and was released in January, debuting at #1 on the Billboard album chart.

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Books

I Know I Am, But What Are You?

Tasina likes to read.

Tasina is also quite critical. Tasina will ruthlessly nitpick any and all fan mail and will respond with a scathing and witty reply. She dares you: tasina72@yahoo.com.

I’m going to become a stalker. It’s going to be awkward, embarrassing and hard to explain to everyone, but let me give it a preemptive shot here. See, I read this book … and I really feel that Samantha and I could be truly great friends … if she would just give me a chance … just one chance or two chances assuming she drops the restraining order.

My new best pal is a correspondent on The Daily Show along with her husband, Jason Jones (who is probably not good enough for her, but I’ll put up with it … for now.) This book is a collection of essays about her life, from childhood to marriage. She talks about everything from summer camp and sexual danger to cats and fashion. I honestly don’t think I have ever laughed out loud quite this often or as hard at any book. I don’t watch TV so I didn’t know anything about her, but from the first few pages I was absolutely hooked.

The author is honest, insightful, smart and side-splittingly hilarious.

Ms. Bee is a Canadian. She grew up a lonely, awkward girl with a bizarre home life. Her parents divorced early and she was passed between them with rest stops at her grandma’s house. She states, “As I was shuttled among three houses, I really started to get stressed about the triple life I was leading.” Each of her caregivers, along with her stepmother, were strong personalities full of quirks and surprises. (I always felt that my life was odd compared to my friends since I did not have the traditional nuclear family. I understand you Samantha. I feel your pain.)

An attempt was made to make Samantha like all the other kids by sending her to summer camp. Such forced socialization was disastrous. After that debacle, her stepmother, Marilyn, decided that the family needed to bond together on camping trips. Samantha spent most of the time in her tent reading Little House on the Prairie books. (Let me add that I read that entire set of books at about the same age. Best friends forever Samantha!)

Samantha next went through a devout phase, much to the chagrin of her Wiccan mother. At the same time she was receiving an alarmingly frank education in a variety of sexual practices by her unusually open mother. At quite an early age she was exposed to a variety of porn and soon became one of the most popular kids on the playground with her ability to

Courtesy: Gallery Books, Simon & Schuster, Inc.

describe sexual practices most adults don’t know about. She also recruited her Barbies, Kens, and G.I. Joes for “Caligula” parties. (I read Justine by the Marquis de Sade at about age 10. Sam ...

Come on … who knows you better than me?!)

Despite this intellectual knowledge, Samantha was awkward, gawky and never really dated in her teens. She spent quite a bit of time with her grandmother and as she puts it, “learned to be old” but never really got to be young. Today she doesn’t mind this influence. Ms. Bee believes that the time spent with her grandmother was invaluable and that she will be able to handle aging with the same grace and quirks as this important woman in her life. (Okay … I didn’t really know my grandma … but we can still be best friends and true friends share grandparents.)

I wish I could convey just how funny this book is, but then this entire review would be direct quotes.

Ms. Bee has an amazing turn of phrase. Her willingness to point her rapier-wit inward with brutal honesty is refreshing and the path of her life – while meandering and off-beat – is as fascinating as it is droll. I need to run out and complete everything I need for my new career as a stalker: Long-range camera lens, map of the stars’ homes, and of course, a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. Run out and buy this book immediately and so that you too can shave your head and dedicate the rest of your life to the worship of one Samantha Bee. And Sam? … Samantha? … Sammy Bee? …

Call me … please?

Every week the FayettevilleFEED.com records an online podcast. Its like reading the FEED with your ears!

Book by Samantha Bee Review by Tasina N. Ducheneaux

5/5

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Games

Crackdown 2

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility - To Wreck Shop Review By D’Juan Irvin

D’Juan Irvin is the owner and Editor-In-Chief of GAMINGtruth.com, where he and his staff write regularly about gaming and the gaming industry.

The original Crackdown was a game that rode a fine balance between good and great. For every great part of the game, there was a part tied to it that was so-so. The game was an absolute blast to play, but was overshadowed by the Halo 3 Beta.

You get awesome powers and online play, but you could only destroy the city with one other agent.

The second game in the series suffers a bit from the same formula but once again, the game is such a good time that it’s easy to overlook the little stuff.

In Crackdown 2, you again play as an agent of The Agency. Set 10 years after the original game, Pacific City is in absolute ruin. The gangs that you ousted in the first game are gone, replaced by two factions: The Cell, a terrorist organization and the freaks, former Pacific City residents that have contracted a deadly virus and are changing into bloodthirsty zombies. Your job is to rid the city of both.

This dynamic has changed the way the game plays quite a bit.

The first game had you slowly chipping away at each gang’s operations, leaving their upperlevel hierarchy open for you to attack and take down. In the sequel, while there is still plenty of destruction going on, its effect isn’t as pronounced on the game world. The lack of multiple gangs changes the game’s feel quite a bit. To counter, there is more emphasis on the day and night cycle, because as we all know the freaks come out at night.

Mutants own the night in Crackdown 2, and they won’t be

Courtesy: Ruffian Games

giving it up without a fight. The in-game engine flexes its muscles when they’re out, as there will be points in which you’ll have hundreds of mindless freaks on screen at once. Luckily, if you’ve got a rocket launcher, the freaks are easy pickings.

The defining feature of the Crackdown series returns in part two and that’s the agent abilities. There are five skill types: Agility, strength, driving, firearms, and explosives. You gain XP (experience points) in each skill type as you use it, so if you throw a lot of grenades, you’ll get an increase in your explosives skill.

Every level of each skill gives you a good boost to it. You’ll go from jumping on top of a police car to jumping halfway up a building in no time. Once you get to the fifth level of any

Courtesy: Gamespy

unlock the wing-suit, which lets you glide across Pacific City like a low-budget Iron Man 52 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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skill, you get a bonus skill. For agility you unlock the wing-suit, which lets you glide across Pacific City like a low-budget Iron Man. The largest upgrade to the game is the multiplayer. Where you could only play online with one friend in the original, in Crackdown 2 you have the ability to play online co-op with three of your buddies.

Not content to just upgrade the co-op experience, there’s now an arena to play in as well. With three game-types so far, you can go head-to-head online in rocket tag, death-match, and team death-match with up to 16 players.

New developer Ruffian Games had a tough task ahead of it when taking on the sequel to Crackdown, and they’ve done a great job at emulating and slightly expanding on the original game. The game is a blast to play both online and off, but the underlying feeling I had while playing Crackdown 2 is “been there, done that” however the fun level is a redeeming factor.

Spending a full $60 on this one is a bit difficult to do if you’ve already played the first Crackdown. When it hits $40 or $50 though, it becomes a no-brainer.

3/5

Courtesy: Ruffian Games

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Thoughts From A Broad Debbi Voisey is a writer and is from the United kingdom. Debbi works in Stoke, England, loves to travel, and is currently writing her first novel.

Pub Hopping

by Debbi Voisey

My connection with Fayetteville is, I guess, music related. I first visited the city in 1999 to see my friend Paddy Gibney, and to watch him perform with Bill Ayerbe. I’ve known Paddy since 1993, when we were both young, freshfaced U2 fans. We may feel a little staler now, but our love for U2 remains as fresh as back then.

Being a live music fan, I was looking forward to hearing Paddy play. Paddy had come a long way and it seemed to have happened behind my back.

My second visit to Fayetteville happened in 2002, during the week of my birthday in December. I went to stay with my friend Donna in Delaware, and she drove us all the way down to Fayetteville in her car. It was a freezing cold winter with lots of snow on the ground (we don’t have snow like that in England any more) and at times the journey was tough, especially when we had to drive through toll booths as it took five minutes to get the window back up again once opened. Her car had seen better days.

Eventually we arrived and I was able to see Paddy perform twice that weekend. One of those times was in Wheelers Pub, which would later become Paddy’s Pub (little did we know).

It was weird being in an American pub. The culture is quite different to what it is back home, or it felt that way.

Maybe because in England (and Ireland) pubs feel older… are older. We have different parts to our pubs – the “bar,” the “lounge,” and the “snug.” Snugs have been around forever and were traditionally where the women were sent to get them away from the men.

Presumably so the men could tell ribald stories and drink their own body weight without getting a clip around the ear.

Also, every night in American pubs (at least the ones I saw in Fayetteville) everyone got to their feet and sang the National Anthem.

America (and I’ve visited often) I see hundreds of flags flying, declaring love for your country.

It’s weird that we don’t do it here. Sure, you’ll see them on castles and some businesses, but your average Joe in the street does not fly the flag in his yard. Here, flying flags is something reserved for when England are in the World Cup Soccer Finals or some other competition. You know it’s that time on the sporting calendar when you see the flags out.

Patriotism is not something we do here.

In fact, people have been known to be stopped by the police when displaying a flag, and cautioned about appearing racist. Apparently, there’s a danger that someone of foreign origin might take offence. The world has gone mad.

I’m not an overtly patriotic person and don’t go in for standing for our National Anthem.

Maybe because for us, the anthem celebrates a person (the Queen) instead of celebrating our nation, our land and its people? In my opinion, stating your patriotism should not be all about being a particular nationality, but rather rejoicing in the country that has given you a home. And that means anyone, regardless of where they are born, should be able to stand up under any flag that they choose.

(Editor’s note: ... Debbi may have been confused.)

You won’t find that in English pubs.

You also will not see the Union Flag flying, or even the flag of St. George here in England. Whenever I come to 54 | The Fayetteville FEED | August 2010

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Charlotte

le l i v tte

e

Fl

ori

da

Fay

Washington D.C.

Live Music!

no wankers

Open Wednesday to Saturday 910-677-0055 . 2606-B Raeford Road . Fayetteville NC 28303

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A pint with the publisher

Jimmy Maher: The Medical Miracle

by Paddy Gibney

Paddy Gibney is also the owner of Paddy’s Pub and can be found there reveling and singing most any evening. He can be contacted at www.paddygibney.com.

My mate Jimmy recently introduced me to a young man named Jack Ward. A native of England, he has just graduated from The Fayetteville Academy and is off to UNC Wilmington this month to begin college on a soccer scholarship. That is exactly what Jimmy and I did back in the late 1980s. We came over to America on soccer scholarships along with our friend Justin. We were three young Irish teenagers sporting funny accents and foreskins on a wild American adventure. Anyway, I pulled out an old scrapbook from our time in college, mainly to illustrate the value of these years to young Jack.

The scrapbook is filled with notes, cards, an application to be a porn star, a condom wrapper (don’t ask) and various other items from the shenanigans of our college years. There are also many different newspaper articles. It’s one of those newspaper articles that I would like to tell you about. The headline reads “Jimmy Maher: The Medical Miracle” and, it’s a classic tale of man’s inhumanity to man.

There were eight seniors from the soccer team graduating in May of 1992, Jimmy, Justin, myself and five others. The newspaper decided to do a story on us all. Jimmy was the last to be interviewed. The reporter called our house several times but, he was either in the library or asleep in an algebra book. He’s one of the smartest men I know but, 2X = 8, X = ? was always like

taking an Ambien pill for him. Anyway, he was taking 22 credit hours during that final semester so he could graduate with us. Consequently, he was far too busy for interviews and other tomfoolery. When the exasperated reporter called early one Sunday morning with a Monday deadline looming, I decided to help everybody out by pretending to be Jimmy on the phone.

After I answered all the generic questions about growing up in Ireland, the reporter asked me what my (or “Jimmy’s”) most defining moment as a soccer star was. Keep in mind, that year Jimmy was a captain of the team. He was also voted All-American, quite an honor for the young math prodigy. It was time to let the secret out.

“I have never spoken of this to anyone at school before but, I was born with my left leg three inches shorter than my right leg,” I explained. “Despite the obvious obstacles, I won a soccer scholarship to the States.

However, shortly after that my left hip gave out from years of wear and tear. I thought my dream was over until I was taken to Chapel Hill where doctors were able to replace the hip and add two inches onto my left leg.

A special soccer shoe was constructed where I could add three insoles for even balance on my feet. The day the doctors told me that I could play again is a day I will never forget.”

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I could hear the amazement in the reporter’s voice. Fortunately, she could not hear the amazement in mine that she actually believed me.

I kept it quiet for days before breaking down and telling Justin.

Several days later, the story was printed and it immediately sent shockwaves throughout the college. I was in bed when Justin came banging on my door.

He had just been kicked out of class for laughing so hard while reading the story. Within a couple of hours Jane Cherry, the international student advisor, petitioned the President of the college to present Jimmy with a special courage award at graduation. Several students, including some of our team mates were seen checking his soccer shoes out in the locker room. Dr. Bill Jordan, our sponsor and American Dad, received calls at his office thanking him from various people who assumed he had paid

for the surgery. All the while, Jimmy still hadn’t seen the story but later recalled people looking at him strangely and waving and shaking their fists in the air.

He arrived late to algebra class. The President had come to the class earlier looking for Jimmy and was addressing the class when the medical miracle came walking in. He tried to sneak up the side of the auditorium but, the President saw him and started a slow handclap that soon had the whole class on their feet and joining in. Jimmy still had no idea what was going on and assumed he was being mocked for his superior math and timekeeping skills.

Alas, the fun had to end. Someone handed him a newspaper. He emphatically denied the story, removing his shoes to prove it. He then set off for home to kick my ass. For some strange reason, he knew I was behind it.

The next day, the newspaper printed an apology and a retraction. I must say, some people can’t take a joke. Big Jim was fine when I convinced him he could get a lot of mileage out of it. However, the reporter, Terra Cashwell was more than a little pissed in the several messages she left on our answering machine. Jane Cherry never spoke to me again. Right up till the present day!

The most amazing thing of all was that almost everyone believed it. Dr. Jordan was probably the only one who didn’t at least consider that it might be true. I guess I missed my calling. I should be selling used cars or maybe a porn star.

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