LOCAL
“I ALWAYS KNOW EXACTLY WHAT I WANT FROM THE SONGS.”
BEAT
{BY KIMBERLY OLSEN}
If shouting the sweet poetry of your melodramatic youth is your thing, or if you’re nostalgic for the era of Instant Messenger and painfully slow Napster downloads, there’s one night a month that will satisfy that yearning for the days of a pre-Ashlee Simpson Fall Out Boy: Emo Night Live! (Full Band Karaoke) at Altar Bar. The live-band event is the perfect platform for those karaoke enthusiasts looking to express themselves in a way other than “focusing on their art.” The set list, culled from Facebook song requests, includes a wide range of artists, from Dashboard Confessional to Thrice. The band members — drummer Cory Muro, bassist Matthew Fuchs and guitarists Nate Hall and Andrew Agostini — have learned around 50 songs since the event debuted in August. At each show, guests choose their requests from a master set list — most popular are songs from Brand New, Paramore and Taking Back Sunday — and an MC keeps things moving; this month it’s comedian Shannon Norman. Lyrics appear on laptop PowerPoint slides, manually managed by Drusky Entertainment’s Josh Bakaitus. After the success of emo DJ night at Lava Lounge, Bakaitus created its karaoke counterpart and, to his knowledge, Pittsburgh has the only emo live-band karaoke in the country. “It’s pretty awesome to be able to play at Altar Bar, [a place] that has had a lot of these bands play there, like Bayside and Saves the Day,” says Bakaitus. And the karaokeists? “Surprisingly, everyone’s really good. I think these songs are just so embedded in people’s heads from their youth that they just know them.” Indeed, the twenty- and thirtysomething crowd can recall a time when emo peaked not only as a music genre, but also as a subculture for the misunderstood, permeating everything from movies to MySpace to the mall. Adds Muro: “It’s kind of turned into something that’s way more of a hit than we thought it was originally going to be. I think a lot of people come who aren’t trying to sing, who just enjoy the vibe of the night — living in the early 2000s again, loving every second of it.” INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
EMO NIGHT LIVE! 10 p.m. Thu., Oct. 22. Altar Bar, 1620 Penn Ave., Strip District. $5. EMO DJ NIGHT. 10 p.m. Thu., Oct. 29. Lava Lounge, 2204 E. Carson St., South Side. $3. www.emonight.com
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A singer takes the stage at Emo Night Live! {PHOTO COURTESY OF FRANK VILSACK}
NEW TEARS
LONE FORCE {BY CARALYN GREEN}
J
OAN ARMATRADING is a formidable
woman. If not for her warm British lilt and a gracious chuckle served after each matter-of-fact remark, she might even seem cold. Her words are straightforward, unsentimental. There’s a directness to Armatrading’s manner that feels both at odds with her introspective music and aligned with its no-nonsense nerve. That a woman must be either all teeth and nails or else flesh and blood is fallacy, made palpable by Armatrading’s vast catalog of more than 40 years of hits that seep past any emotional binary: “Sing me another love song, but this time with a little dedication” (“Love and Affection”). “I’m not the sort of person who falls in and quickly out of love, but to you I gave my affection right from the start” (“The
PITTSBURGH CITY PAPER 10.21/10.28.2015
{PHOTO COURTESY OF JOEL ANDERSON}
Me Myself I: Joan Armatrading
Weakness in Me”). And “It’s not that I love myself, I just don’t want company” (“Me Myself I”). “It’s not a narcissistic thing,” says Armatrading of the latter, a 1980 single. “It’s not just because I love myself. It’s just
JOAN ARMATRADING WITH MARTI JONES & DON DIXON
7:30 p.m. Wed., Oct. 28. Byham Theater, 101 Sixth St., Downtown. $45-65. 412-456-6666 or www.pgharts.org
that at this time, it’s nice to be on your own and it’s nice to enjoy your own company. I enjoy my own company. It’s a really nice thing to be on your own. There’s a lot of
people who seem scared to be on their own. I don’t know why.” Currently in the midst of the second leg of what is being called her “last major world tour,” Armatrading is, at age 64, very much alone on stage. She’s performing her songs solo this time around, without her band. “I’ve never done a world tour on my own before,” says the singer-songwriter, who arranges and produces her own music and, on her past three albums, played every instrument with the exception of drums. Does “last major world tour” mean last tour, ever? Not at all, says Armatrading. But it does mean shorter tours for the artist who will play nearly 250 concerts on this particular trek. “I think I deserve to have less road time,” she says. Born in Saint Kitts, in the West Indies,