The county commissioners met Tuesday morning to discuss the next years budget for many Athens County offices, resulting in two offices seeing their employees receive increased salaries.
The Bobcats lost to Northern Illinois on Tuesday in their final game at Peden Stadium this year
Trans vigil to end week of trans awareness for the LGBT Center.
Three months after police officer Darren Wilson shot unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, protests have shown no signs of slowing down.
Researchers use advanced technology to see how dinosaurs breathed
The city gave an update on the fire aftermath Tuesday afternoon.
Ohio travels for the first time this season to take on Florida Gulf Coast in Ft. Myers on Wednesday
Three days after the fire that devastated some businesses on West Union Street and displaced 40 Ohio University students, authorities are still picking up the pieces and planning their next moves. We are too.In the past three days, we’ve published 11 stories on our front page. Every one of them has been related to the Uptown fire.Normally, it would be ludicrous to devote that much front-page real estate to one topic, but in this instance, it’s a no-brainer.The fire is the talk of the town and has a larger residual effect on our readers than anything we have reported in recent memory.From the local businesses that were decimated and the city officials responsible for cleaning up the mess, to the students without a home and the school administrators finding housing for them, many lives have changed since Sunday morning.Just like those affected by the fire, we’re in this for the long haul. We’re committed to covering the aftermath of this tragic event until the displaced students find a new sense of normalcy and West Union Street is reconstructed.Stick with us along the way.Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
Safer Spaces is trying to reduce harassment situations by training bartenders to intervene.
The second decade of the new millennium has brought many new musical trends. Trap music emerged from the hip-hop underground to prom night dance floors everywhere, and surf rock made a west coast comeback into the hearts and minds of us all (e.g. Wavves, Fidlar, No Age, Best Coast, etc). Hell, even Weezer put out a decent album for a change.Yet one of the most fascinating — and seemingly random — sonic trends of the 2010s is the reincorporation of saxophone into chart-topping pop music. Not since the 1980s has the shiny brass instrument picked up so much traction with the cadre of hit-makers in the commercial music industry. Since Jason Derulo could not be reached for comment, I’ll take a crack at explaining this one on my own.Invented in 1840 by Adolphe Sax, the saxophone rose to prominence in classical music and later jazz — a genre most closely associated with the single-reed woodwind. Many jazz greats possessed a mastery of the instrument in between scoring fixes and giving dirty looks at the drummer (“This isn’t experimental timing, Chester!”). Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins are some of the best examples of the utilization of the instrument to its artistic zenith. But could you ever imagine any of them playing in an Ariana Grande studio session?It seems pop music is stealing from the 1980s. Today, the genre and its producers — who, let’s face it, are the real people behind the hits — are developing a fond nostalgia for the 1980s when saxophone reigned supreme on the radio.Dozens and dozens of pop standards from the ’80s, such as INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart,” Men At Work’s “Who Can It Be Now,” LL Cool J’s “Going Back to Cali” and Springsteen’s “Jungleland,” all featured heavy use, the last of which may be the most popular rock song featuring a saxophone ever, giving Pink Floyd’s “Money” a run for its … well, money. Even ’80s punk rock — a deviant’s genre with a great distaste for instrumental deviation — incorporated saxophone with songs like Fear’s “New York’s Alright If You Like Saxophones.” Later, punk-act NOFX, which formed in the mid-’80s, would also include saxophone in many of its songs, including 2009’s “I Am an Alcoholic.”Fast-forwarding through the grungy, detuned sound of the ’90s and the bubblegum essence of the early-2000s Britney Spears era, some of this current decade’s biggest songs are using catchy saxophone and saxophone samples to either back their hooks or provide a catchy filler (many times arranged to the style of trap music).Macklemore’s 2012 anti-consumerist hit, “Thrift Shop” was arguably the catalyst to this trend, along with the catalyst to a haircut trend that’s 3edgy5me. The single’s massive success — it went 7x platinum, which is 7x more platinum than I will ever have — most likely led to big-name producers realizing that a single sax sample could tie a whole song together (Big Lebowski, much?). Everyone knows that an older sample can act as the basis to any successful tune but a saxophone sample? It makes people want to dance. It puts the dance back in dance music. The jazzy full spectrum sound is able to stand on its own or be thrown into the mix to give a track that certain brass flavor that makes us endure Ryan Seacrest’s ramblings each Sunday morning.Following the success of “Thrift Shop,” many other artists hopped on the proverbial bandwagon loaded with saxophones down in the baggage hold (along with my cell phone which I accidently left in there when I was packing).Before Macklemore, Lady Gaga made room for a saxophone solo on “Edge of Glory,” played by the late Clarence Clemons of The E Street Band, causing people to start to notice the woodwind before it was poppin’ tags. Katy Perry also used a sax solo pre-Macklemore on 2010’s “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.),” played by Kenny G. So the reemergence of the instrument had been floating around some time before 2013 and 2014’s saxophone renaissance.Jason Derulo released “Talk Dirty” in late 2013, which featured a lone saxophone as an interlude following the hook — easily the best part of the song. And in 2014, Ariana Grande dropped one of her biggest hits, “Problem,” which features a groovy sax riff.Other recent but lesser-known examples include Childish Gambino’s 2013 song “Worldstar,” and M83’s 2011 late-night-driving jam “Midnight City,” which features a prominent sax solo as an outro.But with all this in mind, the real question is: will saxophone and saxophone samples continue to appear on the radio? Or are they just another musical fad like autotune? And if this trend continues, will musicians in 2030 bring back autotune to get that classic 2010s feel?Despite its extensive use in the past, the future of saxophone in pop music is unknown. Everything in pop culture gets recycled eventually, but nowadays it seems like the process is moving much faster and “15 minutes of fame” has turned into 15 seconds.Only time will tell if the lovable brass instrument claims a permanent place in the pop world or is thrown to the wayside like Robin Thicke or dancehall (I’m looking at you, Sean Paul. You cheated all of us by not making anything as good as “Temperature” and for that, I will never forgive you).Whatever happens, I’m interested to see what other instruments are pushed into stardom. My fingers are crossed for a tuba trap song to drop within the next year.
An event sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Athens County Monday night sought to tackle issues of unfair political representation in Ohio — or at least make them easier to understand.As the state prepares to redraw congressional and legislative districts, some say that the process, if not handled correctly, will result in further political bias by allowing the major party — which would be the Republicans — to construct districts in their favor. District maps are redrawn every ten years. The event featured Ann Henkener, a board member at the state chapter of the league. About 35 people attended the meeting at the Athens Community Center, 701 E. State St.“I look at Ohio as a very 50-50 state,” Henkener said, “I look at Ohio as a battleground state … Where did the battle go?”Henkener said that there has been a decrease in competitiveness in Ohio politics due to biased appropriation of congressional districts to favor the majority party in Congress — a technique known as gerrymandering.She explained that gerrymandering happens when members of the state’s appropriation board set up district lines so that there are more districts that will vote for the majority party, rather than the minority party. The board is composed of the governor, secretary of state, state auditor and a democratic and republican appointee.Henkener provided examples of several past attempts to prevent gerrymandering, including a plan proposed in 1981 by former Athens resident and Ohio State professor David Horn, which would have required that each party draw up their own district lines, with the most competitive party winning.The measure drew opposition from the state legislature, but Ellsworth Holden, a co-president of the League of Women Voters of Athens County, said he thinks it could have passed if there had been an interim period between when it was passed and when it was enacted.Mary Costello, a co-president of the League of Women Voters of Athens County, said she thought the event helped to clarify a murky issue to Athens locals.Henkener said that she wants to make the issue clear enough so that a person could have a conversation about it with someone on the way to his or her car in a parking lot, although she admitted that was no easy task.“You either have it done by people who are good and kind and generous … the bipartisan angels … or you have very strict regulation,” she said. “We’re working on the angles, but we haven’t found them yet.”@wtperkinswp198712@ohio.edu
A faculty member is able to treat patients from Circleville while still in Athens thanks to technology.
The sounds of the coughs are chilling. Audio files of the 911 calls related to the massive Sunday fire across five structures on West Union Street detail what those in the buildings were experiencing. The calls, obtained by The Post, detail panic, worry and desperate pleas for help. Names of the callers were not obtained by Athens County 911 because they were fleeing the area when they called, authorities said in an email. The audio files are on our website. Here’s a partial transcription of those calls:
Dan Gates provides opportunities for low-income youth to play hockey.
Thanksgiving season has a different meaning for students. For some, Thanksgiving is the light at the end of the tunnel after a long semester. It might be a time to remember what you are especially thankful for. Or perhaps it’s the start of crunch time to get applications in for coveted internships or even — dare I say it — jobs.
Members of OU organizations support member affected by West Union Street fire.
To the Editor,I am an ALS patient, and recently while shopping with my wife, I fell in a Wal-Mart parking lot. Immediately, several people came to help, and my frustration caused me to cry. After they got me up and back in my car, I couldn’t thank them all personally. Now, in this world of everybody for themselves, it warmed my heart knowing that Athens has some pretty damn good caring people in it. Thank you all.Dave Bertagnolli is a resident of Athens, Ohio.
Gates had been convicted of felonious assault in August.
Last Thursday, a 52-year-old woman had too much to drink and paid the price on the escalators at Baker University Center.
Solutions by The State News
