BLOGSKI

Polish Hill’s own The Frantic Heart of It is a punk-pop (or is it pop-punk?) band; you might have heard them play at last year’s arts festival.  This week, the band is on the cover of the City Paper.  The cover and article are on the occasion of the release of a joint 10″ record with the band Playoff Beard.  The Frantic Heart of It will also be playing a show at the Mr. Roboto Project (5106 Penn Ave in Bloomfield) on Saturday, February 2 at 7 pm.

Read the CityPaper article about  The Frantic Heart of It, hear some songs, or watch a video of a performance.

Oh, and here’s an article in the Post-Gazette, too.  Go, TFHoI!

Find out more about Mr. Roboto Project here or here.

Slim Cessna (+ band) will be playing at Gooski’s on Friday December 21.  Opening will be Wammo, former frontman of the Asylum Street Spankers.   The show will probably start around 10:00 p.m.

If you haven’t heard Slim yet, take a moment to check it out — links to songs are on the front page of the website.

A “One of Its Kind” celebration will be held on October 21 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of John Paul Plaza, the senior 70-unit high rise at 1005 Herron Avenue in Polish Hill.  John Paul Plaza, named after Pope John Paul ll, was built in 1982 under the direction of Rev. John M. Jendzura, C.S.Sp, former Pastor of Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, and Sister M. Coleman Conroy, OSF, and Sister Veronica, OSF.

Presently, the Plaza is under Housing Management Services, and Sister Eileen Magill is the Executive Director.  The property manager at John Paul Plaza is Sister Lorita Kristufek, a member of the School Sisters of St. Francis from Mt. Assisi Convent in Bellevue (North Hills) PA.

To mark the 30th anniversary of John Paul Plaza, a special Mass of Thanksgiving will be celebrated on October 21 by Rev. Joseph Swierczynski at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church.  The festivities will continue at the Plaza; to highlight the occasion, Johnny Angel and the Halos will perform a concert at 3:00 p.m..  Tickets for the general public are $10 per person at the door.  There will be no pre-sale tickets.   For more information, call John Paul Plaza at 412.683.5850.

On Thursday evening Lili Coffee*Shop will welcome back Stephanie Nilles, who played there last year and whose performance made a big impact.  Her music is ole-time-y, but with more quirk (and more profanity) in the lyrics.  For another take on Stephanie’s music, we’re going to borrow this great description from a local events listing website:

“Hailing from New Orlean jazz/punk/barrelhouse musician Stephanie Nilles is possibly the most compelling jazz piano/lounge punk singer since Tom Waits started chain smoking and singing about sailors. Rolling Stone literally said that she’s like ‘Ella Fitzgerald on speed beating the s**t out of Regina Spektor.  She hustles around the United States, Europe, and Canada (except from 2009-2010 for legal reasons), averaging 150 gigs a year, captivating unsuspecting listeners with a voice that would make Jelly Roll Morton look orthodox and Ma Rainey look sober.”

To hear some of Stephanie’s songs, click here.  The show is all ages, BYOB, and admission is sliding scale — pay what you will.

We’ve been going through the pictures from the arts festival, and an online search has turned up a few videos.  The video above, of Lungs Face Feet, is by Mark Knobil.

This one of Timbeleeza is very short:

And this one of Lungs Face Feet is very long:

If anyone has video from any of the other great acts that performed at the festival, please let us know!

The Polish Hill Arts festival, which is next Sunday, July 8, has a lot of good stuff in store.  One of the biggest attractions of the festival is the live music, which goes all day and all of which is completely free.  Here’s this year’s lineup:

12:15 – 1:00         Zout (klezmer avant fusion)
1:15 – 1:45            The Committee for Getting Attention (solo folksinger Kayla Slicker)
2:00 – 3:00          Dragging the Stone Big Concept Band with Steve Pellegrino (Americana “with a twist”)
3:15 – 4:15            Truth and Rites (reggae)
4:30 – 5:30           Timbeleeza (Brazillian samba drumming)
5:45 – 6:45            The Frantic Heart of It (pop/punk)
7:00 – 7:45          Lungs Face Feet (Cumbrian-influenced brass band)
8:00 – 9:00          Jayke Orvis and the Broken Band (country/roots/Americana)

(Above:  Lungs Face Feet, at the 2011 Polish Hill Arts Festival.  Photo by Leslie Clague for the PHCA)

FOOD is a band with strong Polish Hill ties, comprising one neighborhood resident (Ed Crawford, formerly of fIREHOSE, Whiskeytown, Southern Culture on the Skids, and Grand National), one former longtime resident (Eric Vermillion, formerly of Gumball and Steel Miners), and a brother of a well-known neighborhood personage (Mike Quinlan, formerly of the Cynics and other bands, and brother of Tim from Gooski’s).  That’s a lot of talent in one band; now FOOD is releasing their first record.  The EP, titled Four Pieces from Candyland, will launch with a show at Gooski’s on Saturday.  The show starts at 10:00 and is $5.   If you didn’t catch their set at the arts festival last summer, this is a good chance to see this excellent band.

The Pittsburgh City Paper has a great article about Ed and FOOD in the current issue.  You can read it online here.

(Above:  Eric Vermilion, Ed Crawford, and Mike Quinlan of FOOD in front of the Mother’s Bread ghost sign on Dobson Street, photo by Leslie Clague)

Polish Hill resident Kenny Haney’s Avant Klezmer Fusion will play at Lili Coffee* Shop on Sunday, December 18th at 5:00 p.m.  For those who aren’t familiar with the term klezmer, according to Wikipedia it’s “a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe.  Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations”.  If you’re having trouble imagining what an avant klezmer fusion might sound like, consider stopping by Lili to listen — the performance is free.

There are a couple of other musical events scheduled at Lili Coffee* later this month. On Thursday December 29  at 7:30 p.m., it’s  Alex Stanton and Friends, and on Friday December 30 at 7:30 p.m., Spinster will perform.

(Photo of an old-time klezmer band from this blog)

Lungs, Face, Feet, the Polish Hill-based, Cumbria inspired gypsy brass band that played at the arts festival this summer (seen above), is part of a show at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland this Saturday October 22.  They’re appearing with Common Visions from Asheville (described as “a hard to describe music experience”) and The Eggplant Faerie Players, who present “Welcome to Homo Hollow– 17 Years of Queer Country Living Celebrated through Music, Satire, Juggling  and Drag”.

The Eggplant Faerie Players are a vaudeville circus troupe based at the queer community of Ida in the buckle of the Bible belt in Tennessee.  Eggplant uses juggling, unicycles, stilts, satire, dance and drag to engage,
challenge and electrify young and old alike. Picture Dame Edna and W.C. Fields doing Shakespeare.

“Welcome to Homo Hollow” tells the history of Ida through a rotating series of pieces, which may include delights such as “Drag Queens with Chainsaws” (a juggling piece); “The Supremes”, a stiltwalking sketch which looks at the high and mighty ways expanded police powers and racial profiling challenges our civil liberties; “Dueling Mandolins” a medley of instrumental tunes; and “The 6-foot Unicycle of Death”, featuring TomFoolery and some sharp machetes.

This is a lot of good theater for one evening, and all for just $5- 10, sliding scale.  The show starts at 8:00 p.m.  at the Paramount Theatre, 1727 Blvd of the Allies, in Oakland.

Polish Hill’s own Mindcure Records is one of the producers of the Pittsburgh Vinyl Convention, taking place this Saturday, October 8th, at 162 Sheridan Avenue in East Liberty.  General admission is 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. and admission is $3.  In addition to local vinyl sellers such as Mindcure and Jerry’s Records, dealers are coming from Atlanta, Buffalo, Baltimore, Richmond.  There will also be a performance by Pittsburgh’s own Spanky Wilson.  Click the link above for more information.