Forty Weddings and a Petro
In politics, the little temptations can be the most dangerous. Solon Mayor Robert Paulson applied campaign contributions to his credit card debt. Warrensville Mayor Raymond Grabow allegedly used a police database to look up rivals. Mayfield Mayor Blase Pietrafese rolled back odometers on used cars. All three were busted; all three lost their jobs. Taking…
The Vines
Cynics have cast a wary eye on the media hype around the Vines. It just seems a little too perfect, no? A band from nowhere (or, as they refer to it, “Australia”) that no one’s ever heard of records its first album with mega-producer Rob Schnapf. Within minutes, the group, with a high-cheekboned, reliably off-his-nut…
Mr. One-Man Show
This is the story of David Cross as told only by David Cross, since no one else contacted for this story, this oral history, would comment on the subject of David Cross. That is not entirely true, as no one else was actually contacted for this story; really, who has the time to make that…
Talib Kweli / Jay-Z
Talib Kweli has a welterweight’s agility, and Jay-Z has a middleweight’s saunter, but the rappers have claimed the heavyweight titles in their respective rings. After defining the parameters of underground hip-hop in 1998 as half of Black Star, Kweli has since dedicated himself to shredding those parameters, renouncing the asceticism of minimalist beats and “positive”…
Seniors 1, Goats 0
The Cleveland Play House may not be aware of this, but edgy family drama is not in short supply these days. On Broadway, the domestic disturbance du jour is a play about a man who’s getting it on with a goat. The Tony Award winner ends with a cuckolded Sally Field slaughtering her husband’s horned…
Missy Elliott
The girl just wants to have fun. On her fourth album, Missy Elliott calls out for hardcore folks in the streets and kids in the clubs to get their asses shaking and the dance floors quaking. She spreads love and generally gets the party started right. The deaths of Aaliyah and Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes…
Russo’s on the Rise
It was sometime between the fried oysters and the tagliatelle that the tenor — a regular customer with a yen for opera and good food — took the floor, wrapping his impressive pipes around the notes of an Italian aria with unbridled passion. For an amateur, he sang with astonishing panache, his voice piercing the…
Audioslave
The debut from Audioslave — the alt-rock supergroup that pairs a Zach De La Rochaless Rage Against the Machine with former Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell — shouldn’t have any problem generating the kind of heat the fiery Rage was known for. Only now, it won’t come from pouring gasoline on political fires, per Rage, but…
The French Connection
The high point of a recent holiday in the Napa Valley was dinner at Thomas Keller’s world-renowned French Laundry, a serene little Yountville restaurant where gem-like portions of edible art are the order of the day and securing a reservation is harder than making confit out of kibble. Professional connections cut no ice with Keller’s…
Fatboy Slim
It isn’t difficult to figure out what went wrong with Fatboy Slim’s last disc, the flop Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars. Norman Cook has always been quick to point out that his formula for success is simple — take every one of the conventions that makes dance music catchy and tweak it way…
Crush With Eyeliner
When Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison decided to temporarily step aside from his band and play guitar in the less-grind, more-glam Murderdolls, it was a move that made the Maggots squirm. Jordison could have been reduced from cult hero to pariah in the eyes of the notoriously fanatical Knot fans — who, as it happens, refer…
Rainbow Canyon
Onetime soul drummer and vocalist Buddy Maver wanted a rock band consisting entirely of lead singers. Rainbow Canyon, the pyrotechnic Cleveland five-piece he brought together in 1972, was that and then some. Quickly garnering a rep for their onstage exuberance and showmanship (most often at the old Agora), Maver and bandmates Chester Florence (bass), Greg…
Dancing Fool
Before you even hear a note of Mr. Scruff’s music, the adorable potato-figure doodles on the covers of his albums and their animated versions on his website elicit a smile. Scruff’s sound is equally pleasurable, though it gets considerably deeper. As you might infer from the title of his second album, 1999’s Keep It Unreal…
The Safety Dance
Monica Schneider, a 20-year-old student with a mop of curly brown hair, owns the distinction of being the only woman at the Oberlin library wearing a miniskirt and bra made from one long strip of pink tape. She’s wrapped so tightly that she can’t sit down, let alone use the bathroom. Schneider, who works here…
Metal’s Misfits
We hear Jeff Shirilla’s house before we see it. Tucked back from the road, half-hidden by trees out in rural Chippewa Township, the Abdullah frontman’s cabin-like home would be easy to miss, if not for the blaring metal that spills out of it on a recent Tuesday night. The din renders the doorbell useless, so…
The House of Cards
Back when American Greetings was cool: As a former writer and artist for American Greetings (1960-1990), I was sorry to read more about the company’s financial troubles [“How to Succeed in Business,” October 16]. One line mentioned former talented employees Tom Wilson and Robert Crumb, and said Crumb didn’t fit in. I was in the…
Going Yard
Hey, maybe the Tribe can take a few pointers from local pop-rocker Mike Farley, who seems to be having more success in baseball than the Indians of late. The Houston Astros have just licensed Farley’s song “Play Ball” for use in the team video to be distributed to their fans. Also on the sports tip,…
A Rocker Rolls Home
Ron Ellington Shy plays the crowd like a Vegas showman. With his right hand pounding the keyboard and his left hand juggling a saxophone and harmonica, the 61-year-old nephew of jazz legend Duke Ellington delights in belting out a Brook Benton cover onstage at Pickwick & Frolic. You’ll find Shy flexing his four-octave vocal range…
Rock Rubberneck
As Guns N’ Roses’ first American tour in nine years approaches Cleveland, we’ll admit to feeling a little dirty. Like a freak who’s aroused by auto accidents, we can’t wait to see what is sure to be a fabulous disaster, the rock and roll equivalent of a 20-car pileup during rush hour. Yeah, we all…
Savage Lust, Greed, Etc.
There’s something about the Seven Deadly Sins that brings out the best in artists. Kevin Spacey, Brad Pitt, and Gwyneth Paltrow’s head made a hell of a movie based on the wicked septet. Kurt Weill composed a stirring ballet about them. And now writer Dan Savage has written a hilarious book, Skipping Towards Gomorrah, in…
Deke Dickerson
At first glance, it can be hard to take Deke Dickerson seriously. When a guy adorns his website with pictures of himself in a wrestler’s robe, his reputation as a joker seems well earned. Chuckles aside, this West Coast roots-rock specialist earns his rep as a world-class practitioner of the art of rockabilly, Western swing,…
Hi, Jinx!
Ah, Halle’s berries. Don’t care much for them personally, as they’re components of an actress (bane of the thinking man), but those golden globes are shifting loads of Hollywood product these days, the latest dose being Die Another Day, the 20th official entry in the 40-year-old James Bond franchise. As svelte American operative Jinx, Ms.…
John Digweed
If Fatboy Slim personifies the guy who drinks too much, parties too hard, and takes every joke too far, then John Digweed is the laid-back yin to Slim’s overindulgent yang. Digweed, a superstar DJ in name but not personality, takes to the turntables and starts slowly and subtly, letting the momentum build naturally. His progressive…
After Schlock
The advantage to making a Christmas movie is that, no matter how mediocre your final product is, it’s all but guaranteed to show up on at least one TV station, at least once a year, in perpetuity. Awful or not, however, it must be noted that the majority of holiday movies make the season look…
Alvin Youngblood Hart
This ought to shut them up. Some critics haven’t been kind to Alvin Youngblood Hart ever since they employed their heaviest hyperbole in praise of Hart’s 1996 debut Big Mama’s Door. Hart, it seems, has had the audacity to stray from the down-home, all-acoustic blues of that first album. Territory, his follow-up, not only added…
Kevin Klean
Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Hello, Mr. Hundert. If we can judge by the new Kevin Kline vehicle The Emperor’s Club, the notions remain alive (if not particularly well) that a self-sacrificing boarding school teacher can enrich the lives of his students while subsisting in relative emotional misery himself — and that the terrible furies of adolescence…
Idol Worship
It was a bad cliché that actually delivered good television: two kids with a dream and only one ticket out of the Rust Belt. Ryan Thompson, 19, and Jackie Bell, 21, both grew up singing and dancing their way through high school plays. He was an elfin blond with a boy band smile and Rod…
Bongzilla
Bongzilla likes to smoke pot. The band also likes to pen songs about how much it likes to smoke pot. In fact, that’s all Bongzilla writes about. That this monomaniacal lyrical approach hasn’t gotten boring yet is a tribute to the power of Bongzilla’s riffs, which are huge and crushing. In fact, the group’s latest,…
Moore and Less
Writer-director Todd Haynes’s loving re-creation of a 1950s-style Hollywood melodrama (think Douglas Sirk) is a puzzling affair. Watching Far From Heaven is like taking a trip back in time — not to the real world of 1957, but to the reel ’50s, as personified by such classic “women’s films” as All That Heaven Allows and…
Out of Sync
It’s a scene right out of Spinal Tap, but with less spandex and lots more hair gel. We’re trailing handsome rocker Connor O’Brien and his burly manager, Rick Smith, who are lost in a Cincinnati mega-mall, a sprawling monument where you can grab a taco on one floor, a high colonic on the next. We’re…
Tori Amos
From the adoring to the despising to the indifferent, we can all agree on this: Tori Amos is loonball crazy. She’s obsessed with fairies. She does creepy-ass film noir covers of Eminem songs. She makes unbelievably cryptic statements in interviews (“When it’s your own work and you’re the mother of it, the DNA adds up,…
Confessions of a Virgin Protester
It’s been a long time since Dennis Stuehr hoofed for a cause. So long, in fact, it takes a few hard shakes of his brainpan before the memories drop out. “It musta been 15, 16 years ago, something like that,” he says. “Now what the hell was it for?” He pauses, squints. “There were like…
David Berkman
In a case of the hometown boy turning some heads in the big city, Cleveland native David Berkman has managed to make a splash in the often-choppy waters of New York’s downtown jazz scene. Since moving to the Big Apple in 1985, the pianist-composer has performed extensively with a growing list of jazz luminaries, including…
