Cher
In the winter of 1987-’88, Cher glowed on movie screens across the nation as the star of Moonstruck, her most perfect pop success since the summer of ’65, when Sonny and Cher hit the top of the charts with “I Got You Babe.” Her awards both at Cannes and the Oscars confirmed her mastery of…
Caddies for Daddy
“Some folks say it’s too big/And uses too much gas/Some folks say it’s too old/And that it goes too fast.” So says Bruce Springsteen about the Cadillac (a pink one, no less). But Robert Knight of Bay Village disagrees. “It’s a great car for driving,” he says. “And it’s a nice-looking car.” Knight’s 1947 black…
N.E.R.D.
After one listen to N.E.R.D.’s debut, we immediately thought of something Mos Def told Spin a while back. Something along the lines of “Fred Durst so wants to count in the ghetto, and he just can’t.” The same could be said for all the white kids who grew up with Beastie Boys posters on their…
Swing Your Partner
Brian Keating was leery of the town’s gay nightclubs. “Too many of us on the queer side of the fence go to those dark gay bars,” he explains. He wanted — needed — something different. And he found it in the Cleveland City Country Dancers, a gay and lesbian square dance club that’s put a…
Korn
Getting all misty-eyed in heavy metal was once frowned upon. But when Korn’s Jonathan Davis wept while reliving his childhood abuse on his band’s 1994 debut, his tears helped wash away the stifling masculinity that had turned metal into something of a caricature in the mid-’90s, when mucho manly death metal reigned supreme. At the…
Bourne to Run
The plot of The Bourne Identity is astonishingly straightforward. It is bereft of twists (instead, we’re offered tangible explanations), free of the gaping plot holes that swallow confused viewers, and absent the cynical machinations of filmmakers who believe that, to entertain, it’s necessary to also bamboozle. This adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s 1980 novel, written by…
Oakenfold
Paul Oakenfold is one of the most successful globe-trotting producer-DJs in the world, thanks in part to his skill at transforming pop-rock into prime-time party material. The ease with which he turns out mainstream-friendly remixes of U2, Madonna, and the Cure makes it a no-brainer that Oakenfold would eventually attempt the dreaded “artist album,” showing…
Bad Dog
We’ve only ourselves to blame. Our love for the detritus of popular culture has led us here — once more, into a theater screening a multimillion-dollar adaptation of a cartoon that always looked like it cost $4.93 to make. We’re knee-deep in the big business of nostalgia, which seeks to transform the most trivial bit…
Green Day
If Shenanigans is the neatest title for a B-side collection since the Who’s Odds and Sods, in part that’s because it suggests more than Green Day might intend. Eight years after Dookie, Billy Joe and company no longer strive for anything greater than this colorful noun, which Webster’s defines first as “mischief,” then as “deceit.”…
Native Tongues
The opening credit sequence of Windtalkers — a montage of Monument Valley — instantly evokes memories of the opening of John Woo’s immediately previous film, Mission Impossible 2, in which Tom Cruise was dangling off a rock. It is the last moment of similarity between the two. Windtalkers is a World War II epic, based…
Grandmaster Flash
Let’s face it: You don’t run out and buy a Grandmaster Flash DJ mix for the dopest new beats or for the latest hot jam. No, you get a Flash mix to check out the first superstar DJ’s adventures on the wheels of steel — primitively scratching record to record and tying genres into groovy…
Bad Case of Burnout
In the posters Linda Scheutz saw as a girl, the nurses wore angelic smiles. “Their white caps on, their nice starched uniforms. To me, it was a big thing,” she says. Scheutz speaks of those days with a faint sigh. She became a nurse, but she doesn’t feel she belongs on a poster. Twenty-five years…
Pere Ubu
The Northeast Ohio punk scene of the mid-’70s encapsulated American punk’s midpoint, a transition between the neolithic howling of early ’70s Detroit and the art-damaged clatter of late-’70s New York. But no matter how influential the Electric Eels and the Bizarros may have been, Pere Ubu was the better band. Howling and arty from the…
Hard Reign
Council President Frank Jackson is one of the most powerful people in Cleveland. He has a say in everything from who lands million-dollar contracts to how many new dogcatchers the city will hire. When he raises an eyebrow or nods approvingly, his colleagues take note. Trim and bespectacled, his temples flecked with silver, he presides…
Built to Last
“I wish I didn’t have any tattoos now,” says Social Distortion frontman Mike Ness, a fellow noted for, among other examples, having the words “love” and “pain” spelled out in tattoos across his knuckles. One word for each hand. “You do things to be different,” he explains. “Things catch on. But I have friends now…
Sucker Punch
Strained and nervous, Parma Policeman Dean Leon took the stand on the fourth day of his felonious assault trial. It would be his only chance to explain why he nearly killed 22-year-old Todd Mey outside the Jigsaw Saloon last August. Prosecutors had already trotted out five witnesses who saw Leon deliver a near-fatal punch to…
All That Jazz
Jason Kibler, better known to jamland as top mixmaster DJ Logic, is chilling on a muggy Big Apple afternoon, discussing the thrills he’s gotten out of introducing some legendary instrumentalists to the art of DJing and its improvisational elements. “I get deep with the older cats, talking to them and playing with them,” he says…
Meltdown at the Free Times
When we last left the Free Times in September, it was caught in a bitter union drive that pitted management against labor, writers versus sales. It was no doubt an embarrassment to this beacon of Coventry Road liberalism, which now faced the unbecoming task of crushing a union — not something pleasantly discussed over brie…
North Mississippi Allstars
“I’m in the mud and the mud’s in me.” So sings North Mississippi Allstars frontman Luther Dickinson near the end of the Allstars’ second album, 51 Phantom. On the one hand, it’s a declaration of loyalty to the band’s Mississippi hill country roots, but it’s also an explanation of what makes this band special. Unlike…
The Persecuted Prosecutor
Mason does his job well: Your article on the prosecutor’s office [“Let God Sort ‘Em Out,” May 9] was truly insightful. I know an alternative paper such as Scene gets points for being trendy, hip, and not approving of anything (just look at your movie reviews, which are hip only to foreign films). I did…
Road Construction
“This is small-time gettin’ big,” sighs a member of ribald Cleveland rappers 71 North. The band’s driving around in circles on the outskirts of campus in Columbus, looking for radio station WCKX-FM/107.5, where 71 North is scheduled for an interview. If they can find the place. Ten people are packed in the weary Dodge van,…
Fresh Prints
The self-proclaimed spinster from West Virginia wasn’t sexy, and neither is her artwork. Her color woodcut prints of flowers and abstract images don’t pulsate with vaginal voids or phallic protuberances; they sing with color. And no lover took semi-nude photos of her cocooned in bedsheets. Maybe that explains why Blanche Lazzell — who probably created…
Get It Straight
Five years ago, this interview would have been such the big deal–the coup of the year, the elusive great white at last wriggling on the hook. At least, that’s how she was treated back then, when she still took her meals in that velvet closet. She attracted the spotlight (some might say she grabbed it…
Homeward Bounds
Proud waitresses at McKenna’s are happy to tell the restaurant’s story, one that has reached near-mythic proportions: In 1990, young Jeff McKenna left his home outside Akron to seek fame and fortune in the larger world. His first stop was Johnson & Wales University in South Carolina, where he earned a degree in foodservice management…
The Fulton Finds Its Chef
There’s a new face in the kitchen at the Fulton Bar & Grill (1835 Fulton Road, 216-694-2122). Brian Doyle, formerly of Lure and Marigold Catering, has accepted the executive chef’s post recently vacated by Steve Parris. Parris was known for his devotion to procuring natural, locally grown produce and sustainable meats, fish, and seafood, which…
Superjoint Ritual
Hey, remember Pantera? Don’t you wish they’d get back together? Well, in the meantime, vocalist Phil Anselmo’s got a few side-project CDs he’d like to sell you. The second album from his Sabbath tribute-act Down was recently released to as much acclaim as a bunch of half-comatose stoners can muster, and now the tattooed, hyperactive…
