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Music Feature

This Is Your Brain On Music

by Peter Soscia

Listening to music can have all sorts of effects on the mind and emotions. Music can pick you up when you’re feeling down, pump you up at the gym, and set the mood in the bedroom. While it’s clear listening to different types of music may have different effects on your mindset, could listening to certain music actually make you smarter? The simple answer is: not exactly.

Music Feature

Do-It-Yourself or DIE trying!

by Jeffrey Czum

Do-it-yourself or DIY is nothing new in the music industry. Punk musicians of the late 70s and early 80s, who were consistently rejected by major labels booked their own shows, paid for their own studio time, pressed vinyl or cassettes of their music, made and sold their own tee shirts and gave a big “fuck you” to the record industry.

Music Feature

Face the Music

Meet 15 Local Music Acts You Must Hear in 2015

Music Feature

Queen City Music Lottery puts bands together from scratch

by Peter Soscia

Forming a band is no easy task. If you’re lucky you know three or four other people who all play different instruments and are willing to commit the time and energy it takes to produce a crowd pleasing sound. Otherwise it’s off to open-mic nights, looking over social media in hopes of finding your new band mates. Participating in the Queen City Music Lottery is one way to eliminate this dilemma and get down to creating music.

Music Feature

Build Your Buzz

by Nina Lapres

At some point you’ll need to show that people other than your Mom like your music. Below are some outlets where you can send your stuff in order to beef up your press kit.

Beer Feature

Beer and Music

by Brian Campbell

Music is a surreal art form; one that has the ability to conjure memories regardless of time passed. It can elicit emotion in a matter of seconds and transport listeners to a place in time they hold dear. So too can beer, making for perhaps the most powerful sensory pairing imaginable.

Sports Feature

No Holds Barred

by Peter Soscia

Buffalo gained its second roller derby league late last year with the formation of the Nickel City Renegade Rollergirls. While the Queen City Roller Girls are not going anywhere the Renegade Rollergirls hope to bring a new vicious and violent style for the city’s roller derby fans.

Puck Stop

Sabres "Blueprint" Goes the Distance

by Andrew Kulyk and Peter Farrell

At stake was a guaranteed berth among the top two picks in the 2015 NHL draft lottery, which now becomes a 20 percent chance to land Connor McDavid and an 80 percent chance of getting the rights to pick Jack Eichel. Both are regarded as generational players, superstars to build the franchise around, and most importantly to the ownership and front office, to market the team to the fan base, season ticket holders, suite holders and sponsors.

Artvoice B.O.O.M!

Round 4, Week 1: P.A. Line vs. Uncle Ben's Remedy

Welcome to the ninth installment of Artvoice’s Battle of Original Music—a contest we call BOOM, for short. Visit boom.artvoice.com to listen to this week’s contestants, P.A. Line and Uncle Ben's Remedy.

What's Brewing

Presented by Consumer Beverages

by Paul Marko, Marina Christopher

Dieu Du Ciel Herbe à Détourne, Wolaver's Wild Flower Wheat

Art Scene

Found art on display at TGW Gallery

by Jack Foran

One work in the collaborative artists Robert Then and Richard Rockford current show at the TGW Gallery is called King Richard. A horizontal slab of lovely rust-red-brown iron, on edge, and gently curved and gradually tapered. I think to myself, what King Richard? The poet king--more poet than king--Richard II?

Classical Music Notes

A Lost American Composer

by Jan Jezioro

So, how do the Friends of Vienna follow “Cello Power”, their recent sold-out, standing room only event that featured four BPO cellists? Well, when you invite BPO associate concertmaster Amy Glidden and Eastman School of Music pianist Alison D’Amato to perform a recital and you give them carte blanche to come up with an interesting program of their own choice, it is pretty much guaranteed that your audience will be in good hands.

Film Review

True Story

by Jordan Canahai

Brian De Palma once said “the camera lies all the time—it lies 24 times per second.” I imagine he would have done a much more interesting job directing True Story than British filmmaker Rupert Goold has. The new mystery drama based on Michael Finkel’s memoir, True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa, is told from Finkel’s point of view and details the recently-disgraced journalist’s relationship with Christian Longo, a man on trial for murdering his wife and three children.

Film Review

Merchants of Doubt

by Jordan Canahai

The new documentary Merchants of Doubt, based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, takes dead aim on the professional liars behind Washington think tanks—the slick suits appearing on TV or before congressional and senate hearings to stoke confusion over matters science has long settled in the name of protecting the corporate interests of their big business backers, exposing a long series of their lies on major issues and implicating the system that sustains them.

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Graphic Traffic

Sex Criminals, Vol. 1: One Weird Trick

by Carolyn Marcille

With such an incendiary title, readers might not be expecting the relatively tender story that unfolds in this book’s colorful pages. Suzie and Jon both have a unique ability; time freezes after reaching release during sex. For a long time, both believe that they are the only one capable of achieving such a feat.

Offbeat News

News of the Weird

by Chuck Shepherd

In March, a New York public school art teacher, writing in The Washington Post, complained that his coveted “effective” rating one year had dropped to “developing” simply because his school’s student math score had fallen. Furthermore, since he is now “developing,” he must file plans for improving his performance (i.e., how, from art class, he can raise math scores among students he does not teach).

Horoscopes

Free Will Astrology

by Rob Brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): The California Gold Rush hit its peak between 1849 and 1855. Three hundred thousand adventurers flocked to America’s West Coast in search of gold. In the early days, gold nuggets were lying around on the ground in plain sight, or relatively easy to find in gravel beds at the bottom of streams.