Lockkeepers’ Key Addition
If Morgen Jacobson cooks half as well as he talks, prepare to be dazzled. The well-spoken chef, a native of Missoula, Montana, and alumnus of some of Manhattan’s most celebrated kitchens (including the Quilted Giraffe and Bouley), recently joined the team at Lockkeepers (8001 Rockside Road, 216-524-9404) as executive chef. He’s been a busy guy…
God Save the Queens
If God is in the stereo, flipping through the stations, as the Queens of the Stone Age contend on their latest album, then the devil is behind the drum kit, trying to give the Good Lord something worth listening to, for a change. “It’s been 10 years since the last musical revolution, and it seems…
Teutonic Twist
When Alexander Barck says that his group is “really bad with names,” it’s really no surprise. He’s a member of the six-man German DJ/producer team Jazzanova, whose time-traveling, globe-trotting sound — a deft amalgam of hip-hop, jazz, funk, soul, samba, house, and drum ‘n’ bass — thoroughly defies description. In Between, the group’s aptly named…
No More Tears
Skyscrapers are in Jason Byers’s blood. Almost literally. A glance at the wrists of the Disengage frontman reveals a collection of tattoos of famous buildings ranging up and down his forearms — a constant, indelible reminder of his love of skylines. Byers is so into architecture, in fact, that the singer, who doubles as a…
U.S. Maple
Verging on post-rock, U.S. Maple’s more-tension, less-release catalog can be challenging if not inscrutable, but a thorough examination of the band’s repertoire turns up covers of AC/DC’s “Sin City” and Dion & the Belmonts’ “The Wanderer” — albeit aggressively deconstructed takes on the tunes. So we asked the Magic 8-Ball, “But is it art?” And…
The Wal-Mart Menace
When you’re the planet’s largest retailer, you’re fanatical about numbers. You’re No. 1, after all, and you want everyone to know it. So it is that Wal-Mart touts sales and expansion figures with the same relentless, glad-to-see-ya cheer as its greeters welcome customers into stores. To be specific: That’s 3,300 stores in the United States…
Gaelic Storm
Pat Murphy spent three years drinking (his own admission) at the bars around University College in Cork, Ireland, before bolting for Santa Monica, California — a place as far removed from Ireland physically and spiritually as one can get and still be in the so-called Western world. That was in 1992. A few years later,…
Conflicted Senator
State Senator Jeffry Armbruster’s timing couldn’t have been worse. The executive director of the Ohio Turnpike Commission, Gino Zomparelli, spent August and September of last year reveling in perks from the companies feeding at his toll-funded trough. He and his family enjoyed Browns tickets courtesy of National City Bank, Indians tickets from Independence Excavating, and…
Richard X. Heyman
Richard X. Heyman is a New York City boy who’s been making independent, original records with trophy genes since the late ’80s. In love with the British Invasion, Heyman records in his living room (“Tabby Road Studio”), building on the sounds of the Beatles, the Searchers, the Zombies — the high end of classic British…
My Left Foot
The luckiest guy on the field is the one standing alone on the sideline with the dainty face mask, stretching his legs like a ballet dancer. He needn’t worry about missing the game-winning field goal. He rarely needs to hit or be hit. And unless he really, really sucks, he can slip by unnoticed, especially…
Money Mark
Many listeners may not recognize this keyboard mercenary, but a quick gander at Money Mark’s résumé will reveal that the former L.A. Lakers ball boy has had a hand in a host of well-known productions. He helped transform the Beastie Boys from a party band into semiserious musicians; lent his textured keyboards to Carlos Santana’s…
Hit From the Rough
“Tour of Duty” was a sweet stroke: My weekly trip through Scene started like any other week [July 31]. I usually enjoy reading Pete Kotz, and his queer piece was no exception. From there, the magazine usually takes a dive, and this week was no different. Laura Putre’s “Hoop Jumping” was not terrible, but failed…
Eve
Eve has some good shit. She has sass. She has style. She has the crown on her head that says she’s hip-hop’s latest queen. But she also has a problem on her new album. She has settled so comfortably into the role of pop’s cameo girl that she’s lost some of her bite. She still…
Mud About You
Bill Plessinger knows the best way to experience Lake County up close: close enough to feel its water in your shoes, its mud on your legs, and its brambles in your hair. It’s called the Grand River Eco-Adventure Race, a 25-mile trek through rugged terrain, in and around the Grand River, that involves biking, paddling,…
Primal Scream
Primal Scream, one of the great rock bands, doesn’t make it easy. The Glasgow group works hard to communicate its anger sonically, but doesn’t emphasize the verbal; Scream demands that you submit to its sound, that you drown in it over and over, and it often isn’t pretty. Take Evil Heat, a high-energy, heavily layered…
Everybody’s Stalking
In Swimfan, Erika Christensen plays Madison Bell, a new girl in town who gloms onto the star athlete after a one-night stand. Things get ugly soon after. Madison has a lot in common with Fatal Attraction’s Alex Forrest: Both have dalliances with two-timing guys, both become a bit too preoccupied with their flings, and both…
Damon Albarn, Afel Bocoum & Friends
Before delving into the musical contents of Mali Music, a bit of background information: Mali is a small country in West Africa, home of one of the world’s most fascinating music cultures. Damon Albarn is a British musician famous for being the frontman of Blur and Gorillaz. Mali Music is the result of Albarn’s eight-day…
Cuckoo’s Nest
As heroes go, the two just-released mental patients struggling to make a new life in Peter Næss’s touching social comedy Elling are notably short on glamour. When we meet him, the shy, middle-aged title character, portrayed by an exquisitely subtle actor named Per Christian Ellefsen, is a quivering bundle of phobias who, two years earlier,…
Layo and Bushwacka!
U.K. breakbeat techno duo Layo and Bushwacka! have finally returned, after two years of escalating hype and a label bidding war brought on by their highly acclaimed debut, Low Life. Their sophomore effort, Night Works, is a highly cinematic affair, filled with the type of mood-enhancing sounds that DJ Food is known for. Strangely enough,…
Bobby Love
Like Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro is one of those guys who can make just about any material inherently enjoyable. Also like Clint, he will sometimes make you wish he’d pick roles that are a little more challenging. His recent record of relatively disposable films speaks for itself: Tough-yet-sensitive cop (Showtime), tough-yet-sensitive jewel thief (The…
Sean & Ian
One of the giddy pleasures of the 1996 flick I Shot Andy Warhol was the way it portrayed Warhol’s famous art collective, the Factory, as a casual refuge from a judgmental society, in which sensitive misfits and dilettantes could languidly indulge their unreflective whims. The joke was that these bumbling bohemians permanently burst so many…
Season of Discontent
Callers to the Cleveland Play House hear a recorded message welcoming them to “America’s first professional theater.” Founded in 1915 in a spirit of urban progressiveness that also created the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cleveland Orchestra, the Play House has been as influential in theatrical circles as those institutions are in theirs. Unlike…
Live Long, Prosper
One day long ago–or not, because no one except he and a rare few know the precise date–an actor dove into the ocean to save a drowning boy. He did not want to do it, but he had no choice. They gave him none, those who gathered around and expected him to do it. After…
Tough Love
Cozy little Arthur’s, with its white tablecloths, friendly staff, and moderate prices, is the kind of place a diner wants to love. Even from the outside, the crisply maintained building gives off neat and tidy vibes, from its dark green awnings and tiny wrought-iron-enclosed patio, to the strands of twinkling lights encircling the doorway. Once…
