Paul Faaaaag!
Paul Feig remembers everything about his childhood you want to forget about yours–the ass-kickings, the name-calling, the overwhelming smell of a classmate’s vomit commingling with the odor of the red sawdust used to sweep it up, the tingling sensation down there brought on by climbing a rope in gym class, the humiliation of being made…
The Streets
If nothing else, Mike Skinner proves that not every sensation-stirring, young white rap artist is the same. The 22-year-old became a pop star in his native U.K. by ingesting as many drugs — and exploring the thrill of macho violence with as much gusto — as Eminem, and doing it all with a gift for…
Bebop Bard
At the intermission of Much Ado About Nothing last Friday, few desperate theatergoers were lined up at the bar. It was a good sign. After all, several recent offerings by the Great Lakes Theater Festival — say, its charmless, slacker Peter Pan or the Romeo and Juliet pointlessly obscured by dour Ingmar Bergman-worthy symbolism –…
Christina Aguilera
Christina Aguilera’s problem has always been overcompensation. On her debut, the young waif was so eager to show off her pipes that she mostly sounded horribly overwrought and warbly, like Mariah Carey hopped up on diet pills. On her sultry new second album, Aguilera is just as eager, only now it’s to distance herself from…
The Legend of Billy Jean
Billy Jean is the titular character in Black Girl, J.E. Franklin’s ghetto take on Cinderella. But unlike her fairy-tale counterpart, Billy Jean’s aspirations lie not in the happily-ever-after fantasy of bagging her own prince, but in the far more true-to-life dream of escape — escape from the naysaying family, the impoverished neighborhood, and the societal…
Rush
Can’t you find someone else to make fun of? Is there not someone more deserving of your scorn and ridicule? Don’t you know a couple dudes with a higher voice than Geddy Lee? OK, so you don’t. Next year marks Rush’s 30-year anniversary. Yes, you’re that old. As is Rush. But the dinosaur-rock shtick suits…
Lunching Pads
Hey, we may be one of the fattest locations in the nation, but apparently it ain’t all bad. Even in this lagging economy, our passion for the plate has been fueling a mini restaurant boom. Just look at downtown’s Vivo (347 Euclid Avenue; 216-621-4678). While businesses haven’t exactly flourished on this end of Euclid, the…
Röyksopp
If the dance section of your local record store is any indication, clubland has frozen over. That’s what all those “chill out” compilations would suggest, anyway. So why not put yourself in the hands of someone who actually knows a thing or two about wintry landscapes? Norway’s Torbjörn Brundtland and Svein Berge started making music…
Kid Stuff
Danny Boy’s Italian Eatery is the kind of joint that food fans want to love. Small, friendly, and denim-casual, with an ambiance that’s one part pub, one part diner, and one part shrine to the Chairman of the Board, this 55-seater oozes personality from the moment guests walk through the faux-vine-covered screen door until they…
Mountain Goats
Listening to this sad-sack song cycle about a tumultuous marriage in crisis, you’d think Mountain Goats’ main man John Darnielle dreamed up the album after watching Cops. Darnielle — sounding like a latter-day Tennessee Williams who’d grown up listening to John Denver — both damns and loves his beautiful losers. Here, he journeys on an…
Kent’s Curse
The most respectable and cursed football coach in all of Ohio isn’t working in Columbus. He isn’t stalking the sidelines for Mount Union. He isn’t developing high school phenoms in Massillon. On a humid weekday afternoon, he is here: standing on a torn-up practice field, dressed from head to knee in gold and navy blue,…
Too Fast for Love
You will never make out with one of the Donnas. Sorry. You’re a chump. Chump clothes, chump lingo, chump taste in liquor. Ain’t no way you’ll get your hands on these four bombastic California lasses, who’ve somehow evolved from a cutesy indie-rock girl group to an ass-kickin’, name-takin’ arena-rock monstrosity that’s like Mötley Crüe with…
Tomee Spitshine
Brandishing a broadsword and garbed in gladiator gear for the back cover of his debut, Tomee Spitshine promises to explore an untapped vein of goofy gangster-rap metaphors. But after the spoken-word intro, he drops the conceit, simply working every angle of mainstream hard rap, from slow-flow street gangster to quick and cheesy booty bounce to…
Unpleasant Meadows
They call it Caucasian Falls. No one knows exactly how the name arose, but no one seems offended by it either. It is, after all, a white town. Former Mayor Bob Quirk taught in the Cuyahoga Falls schools for years and never had a black student. Today, the city is about the size of Lakewood,…
Pathfinder
On the day last summer when Clarence Bucaro and his hiking partner split up in the mountains of western Virginia, he ran into seven bears and one rattlesnake. He was less than halfway through a 2,200-mile hike up the Appalachian Trail, which he and an old high school buddy had started together in Georgia. And…
Agitated
As Smog Veil founder Frank Mauceri points out in the liner notes to this, his latest document of nascent Cleveland punk, the Agitated’s one-year career was as short, chaotic, and heedless as their 60-second blasts of gutter thrash. With singer Mike Mohawk slurring and spitting his way through a trainwreck of rapid-fire riffing, breathless drumming,…
Italian Bread
Few cash in during the season of political fund-raising like Tony DiIorio, owner of Massimo da Milano, a restaurant that brightens the otherwise blighted corner of West 25th and Detroit. Mayor Jane Campbell toasted her campaign staff here last year and throws herself an annual birthday bash at Massimo. In the last few weeks, Cuyahoga…
Waking Life
Slug stares blankly through eyelids at half-mast, drool dribbling from his gaping mouth. Underneath his sunken eyes are half-moons, dark with sleep deprivation. The camera clicks, capturing the driver’s-license-from-hell mug shot that will adorn the cover of his hip-hop duo Atmosphere’s album God Loves Ugly. Soon after, Slug finally crashes, after three straight days of…
Laugh Along With Whitey
Under the harsh blue spotlight, funnyman Mike Baker looks like a cartoon. His smooshed bald head is a pale shade of pink. He’s clad in all black, except for his sandals. And his perfectly round, protruding gut casts a shadow worthy of Elmer Fudd. It’s a disconcerting look: part giant baby, part cat burglar. But…
The Guitar Shredder
Michael Kolar’s living room looks like hell’s Barnes & Noble. On wooden bookshelves that span an entire wall, there’s more than 500 creepy tomes, with such titles as The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Blood Curdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre, and — perhaps most unnerving — Delta Style, the autobiography of husky actress Delta…
What’s a Brother to Do?
Real men don’t run with gangs: It was with extreme eagerness that I read your article on East Cleveland’s Tribe Gang [“Game Over,” September 18]. Being that I grew up in East Cleveland, dated a member of the gang, and have a best friend who has children by another member, I felt compelled to comment…
The Ripper Returns
Judas Priest frontman and Akron native Tim “Ripper” Owens is back in the area, performing with nü-metal cover band the Sickness, which takes on the likes of Limp Bizkit, Godsmack, and of course, Disturbed. According to a report from Blabbermouth.net, Owens will perform with the band “for as long as he can stand it.” Apparently…
Flaming Feet
Apparently, Clevelanders can’t get enough of Riverdance. The high-stepping PBS mainstay has come to town something like half a dozen times since its 1995 Dublin premiere. And it’s returning Tuesday for 16 more performances. By now, we all know the story of Bill Whelan’s cultural celebration of Irish music and dancing. We all know of…
Paul Oakenfold
You can peg British DJ Paul Oakenfold five ways: as record producer, remixer, A&R man, label head, and gasbag. Though he is notoriously big-headed, Oakie’s reputation as one of the major engines behind global club culture is honestly banked. From the days of his early-’80s residency as a teenager in West Harlem to the bass-heavy…
Debased on the Series
There are TV shows made into movies that turn out to be asinine: Uma Thurman in a catsuit is a great idea, sure, but 1998’s The Avengers is still an incomprehensible mess. Then there are TV shows made into movies that are just useless notions to begin with: Leave It to Beaver, anyone? And now,…
Radio 4
There’s been a lot of talk about New York rock lately, but maybe too much of it has been blind cheerleading. Denying NYC’s rock renaissance would be foolhardy, with the Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Interpol, Liars, and Fischerspooner all making waves. But thus far, these bands have proved to be more chic than consequential, as…
Fly Spy
Now here’s an innovative narrative: Two shticky goofs of different races get stuck with a ridiculous mission and must overcome their mutual antagonism to save the day. Been there? Done that? You bet! Yet somehow, amazingly, the new I Spy dishes out fresh and funny antics while simultaneously spewing forth the routine conventions of the…
Musiq
Stevie Wonder has spent most of the past three decades winning accolades — but few disciples. But on Juslisen, Musiq’s second album (his first, Aijuswanaseing, was released under the more fulsome moniker Musiq Soulchild), this Philly-based singer-songwriter is all about Stevie. Musiq’s rubbery melisma and sighing organ, his gracefully wandering ballads, his attention to the…
Ho-Ho-Huh?
The Santa Clause, released at the height of Home Improvement’s popularity, played like a Very Special Holiday Episode of that now-defunct series — what might have happened if an eggnog-saturated Tim Taylor fell asleep with visions of sugarplums in his head and woke up sporting a white beard and a suit made of red felt.…
Bob Dylan
These days, new releases by most ’60s rock icons are nothing but biographical footnotes, suggesting that perhaps the times made the men more than the men made the times. Then again, the three major exceptions still occasionally releasing exciting albums — Neil Young, Lou Reed, and Bob Dylan — also had moments when their music…
Queen of Pain
With Frida — the story of profoundly passionate and uncompromising Mexican-Jewish painter Frida Kahlo — it’s evident that a few folks in marketing know how to work the demographics (it’ll be extremely PC, possibly mandatory, to gush in adoration over it), but that’s the first and last cynical comment of this review. Frida is sensational.…
Lambchop
At first blush, this may not appear the most charitable characterization of a band, but here goes: Lambchop is the circus freak of indie rock. In a scene where the general get-with-the-program design is for (usually) four or five people to make as much noise as possible, Lambchop, headed by that ol’ contrarian Kurt Wagner,…
Auto Pilot
There’s an invigorating, inspiring film about a famous dead person opening in a few days: Julie Taymor’s Frida, which is loving, but never unconditionally so, and every bit as rousing as its subject matter, painter Frida Kahlo. Taymor is a visionary, making movies through kaleidoscope eyes, whereas writer-director Paul Schrader, the maker of this week’s…
David Gray
David Gray is an affable fellow. He writes pleasant songs. He’s quite earnest. But he’s no rock star. And he’s not a very distinctive singer-songwriter, either. He’s basically a folkie with modern inclinations (a drum loop here, skittering electro-rhythms there). And his fifth album, A New Day at Midnight, not so surprisingly is an affable,…
