Friedel’s Scam
Okay, so we’re all supposed to be excited about Brad Friedel, the Bay Village guy who kicked ass and took names for the U.S. World Cup team. He recorded the first shutout by an American goalie in 52 years. He led a surprising run by the U.S., which finished last in the 1998 World Cup,…
Danzig
Perhaps the most ironic thing about a form of music as testosterone-driven as heavy metal is that, for decades, it was more about sacrificing virgins than deflowering them. Beginning with Black Sabbath, metal has been the Black & Decker of music: loud, overpowering, and more often than not, sure to send females fleeing. But Danzig…
Planty Raid
A few weeks ago, about $10,000 in shrubs and flowers was stolen from the Cleveland Cultural Gardens in Rockefeller Park. Now that’s a lotta petunias. Concerned residents suspect either a shady landscaper short on supplies or a professional plantnapper who could fetch a pretty price for boxwoods on the black market. Whoever it was, the…
Sonic Youth
It takes only one spin of Murray Street to conclude that the recent addition of underground composer, producer, and guitarist Jim O’Rourke to Sonic Youth’s lineup isn’t big news. Actually, O’Rourke was far more prominent last time out, when he was simply the band’s producer. On 2000’s Nyc Ghosts & Flowers, his ambient noises and…
Public Access Elephants
Eight years on the air must count for something: We were very disturbed by Thomas Francis’s article “Public Access Denied” [May 23]. He chose to write about public access without even consulting the elephant in the living room. Our nonprofit Liberation Brew Productions produces five hours of programming for Adelphia, and we’ve been doing it…
Papa Roach
If Korn’s expansive Untouchables slammed the coffin lid shut on narrow-minded nü metal, Papa Roach’s second album — released just one week later — pounds in the nails. An abrupt turn away from the rap-rock that characterized the band’s triple-platinum debut, Lovehatetragedy is a sleek, punk-inflected rock record that’s a necessary step forward for these…
Drive-In Groovy
There were two golden ages of drive-in theaters: the ’40s and ’50s, when suburban families watched dancing hot dogs extol the virtues of the concession stand; and the ’60s and ’70s, when teenagers tried to score as horror flicks unspooled before them. But for Bill Jelen, who grew up in the east Ohio town of…
Jerry Cantrell
There was a discernible aura of uncertainty surrounding Jerry Cantrell’s 1998 solo debut, Boggy Depot. It was certainly not manifested in volume or presentation; Cantrell is as visceral and concussive as anybody in hard rock. The undropped shoe in Cantrell’s life was the specter of Alice in Chains and the obvious question of the band’s…
Life After Dead
Phil Lesh is grateful that he’s not dead. The erstwhile Grateful Dead bassist underwent a liver transplant three years ago, and “the experience transformed me,” he says. “[It made me] realize what is really important.” He’s talking, of course, about music. It’s been the vehicle of the long, strange trip that he began in 1965…
Scratch
We’ve always been perplexed by how few hip-hop albums take advantage of the art of beatboxing. With the exception of bohemian jazz guru Bobby McFerrin and ’80s rap sensations the Fat Boys, very few have attempted to produce beatboxed records. But after listening to the debut from Scratch, a member of Philadelphia’s Roots crew, we…
Dirty Deeds
Talk about trading down: Adam Sandler now stands in for Gary Cooper, Winona Ryder for Jean Arthur, screenwriter Tim Herlihy (The Waterboy, Billy Madison) for Robert Riskin (It Happened One Night, Meet John Doe), and director Steven Brill (Little Nicky) for the immortal Frank Capra. The mind reels at the possibilities hinted at by Mr.…
Killswitch / State of Being
Goth Night at the club can be a predictable affair, with black-clad regulars moping about to the standard favorites. But every so often, you’ll do a double take at the mohawked girl who just walked in. The local musical projects spawned from this scene evoke a similar response: Too often they’re predictable, but unexpected elements…
Practical Matters
The past always has a way of shaping the present. The industries that developed along Lake Erie recruited artisans who could put their skills to practical use: fabricating steel, making paper, working with enamels. It made sense, then, that when some of these workers and their descendants turned to the finer arts, they used familiar…
Getting Taken
What’s most surprising about Nine Queens, a wry if awfully derivative caper come-on from first-time feature director-writer Fabián Bielinsky, is how easily it suckers you into its swindle. After all, you know from the jump that something’s up. You’ve sniffed out this con before in the films of David Mamet, where no one is who…
Game Daze
The Grand Dining Room at Westlake’s Dave & Buster’s is beautiful in much the same way that a catalog lingerie model is beautiful: artfully contrived and mostly inauthentic, but a scintillating piece of eye candy nonetheless. As is the case throughout the 58,000-square-foot entertainment complex (home to $15,000 billiard tables, tournament-quality shuffleboards, and the Million…
Latin Love
After eight months of intensive remodeling, La Tortilla Feliz (2661 West 14th Street; 216-241-8385) has reopened as a paragon of rustic charm, with handsome tilework, artful faux finishes, and colorful table linens. The restaurant now has two dining rooms, a full bar, and 30 additional seats. The small menu has also been expanded to include…
The Risk Takers
P. Exeter Blue is taken with 70-foot spoons, prep-school garb, and run-on sentences. But perhaps it’s only fitting that the Deadsy frontman name-drops Claes Oldenburg (the famed pop artist who created enormous, larger-than-life spectacles out of everyday objects), dresses in rich-kid regalia, and has the tendency to speak in rivers of words. The gregarious offspring…
Radio Grows Up
In the future, radio won’t be beamed from rusty old antennae. That’s so analog, so last-century. The future, as we all know (so shut up already), is digital, and more and more of it is being beamed down from space via the satellites floating above us, dangling from invisible threads, watching us. And they’re not…
New Engagement
A little over a year after leaving Cleveland for Los Angeles, former Disengage guitarist Mike Callahan is back in town, and he’s brought his new home with him. “That’s really my house,” Callahan says of the grumbling red-and-silver tour bus parked in front of the Odeon. “We just got off a run of seven shows…
The Pornographer Next Door
Pale light streams through tapestry hung over a window in a mostly empty room. Mariah, wearing a lacy bra, panties, and high-heeled shoes with sparkly straps, sits with her legs spread before a video camera. A television monitor displays her half-naked body as seen by dozens of anonymous men somewhere in cyberspace. Next to it,…
The Styrenes
As punk becomes retro, debate rages over the originals — like the Styrenes. Were they the Sex Pistols? No way. Were they the Ramones? Closer, at least in “official” histories. Fronted by Paul Marotta and Jamie Klimek, the Styrenes were far more underground and far less fashionable. Born in Cleveland, the band has been living…
Mean Street
When summer arrived on Fowler Avenue, the children came out to renew old rivalries. Cory Talmadge — who is white — and the Heaggans sisters — who are black — traded barbs on the muggy afternoon of May 30. It ended with Cory allegedly saying, “Why don’t you nigger bitches go home?” They did go…
John Selway
Apparently at some point during the late ’80s, God decided that the techno scene was a little too easy to navigate, so He gathered all the DJs and studio freaks together and said something like “Why don’t you all start your own record labels? You know, shake it up a little.” The motivational speech worked,…
Best of Show
For the third year in a row, Scene was named Ohio’s best non-daily newspaper. The award, announced June 21, was part of the Excellence in Journalism Awards competition sponsored by the Press Club of Cleveland. The annual contest, judged by out-of-state journalists, recognizes outstanding work throughout Ohio. The Scene staff won a total of 19…
LL Cool J
If you want to be as brutal as a good battle rhyme, you could reduce the story of modern mainstream hip-hop to two rappers: LL Cool J and Jay-Z. There was plenty of great hip-hop before LL tossed his fat gold chain into the ring in 1985, but if Run-D.M.C. invented rap’s “new school,” with…
