All in the Family
In any good marriage, communication is key. So you’d think that the husband-and-wife duo of singer Karin Bergquist and multi-instrumentalist Linford Detweiler, who form the band Over the Rhine, would be the ideal couple, since communicating with others is the way they pay their bills. But as Detweiler reveals, being in a band with your…
The Sign-Offs
It’s fitting that the cover of the Sign-Offs’ latest demo is a shot of the band outside the Rock Hall, the day it played the Scene Music Awards in June. That night, the Sign-Offs had something of a coming-out party, damn near stealing the show with an attitudinal, curled-lip set. The band already had a…
The Best Man in Cleveland
Inside a scruffy soccer arena in Warrensville Heights, Denny Ciornei directs traffic in front of his goal, instructing like a coach. This wouldn’t be unusual, save that Ciornei is a third-string goalie who’s played in but 11 games over his seven-year career. At age 34, he’s AARP-eligible by the athlete’s clock. There is no upside…
Invisible Man
DJ Mick Boogie steps from the booth, gleaming with sweat after two hours of spinning and mixing hip-hop records, when a nightclub patron comes rushing up from the dance floor with an urgent request. “If you’re going back up there, could you ask the DJ to play something? He hasn’t spun it yet tonight.” “Sure,”…
Ekoostik Hookah
The Grateful Dead’s last great idea came around 1970, when the group routed its rarefied hippie mysticism through the common byways of country music. Thirty-two years later, the same idea also fires this self-reliant Columbus jam band’s seventh album. Not that Ohio Grown is close to the level of Workingman’s Dead, but it’s a marked…
The Whisper Years
Please forgive Robert Thurmer if he seems a bit underwhelmed. The number of paintings of flowers and windmills is up at this year’s People’s Art Show. The “dick count,” on the other hand, is way, way down. “In previous years, we had several dozen penises,” says the curator of the Cleveland State University Art Gallery.…
Reunion Rundown
Like fruitcakes and reindeer droppings, reunion shows are an unfortunate by-product of the holiday season. We don’t know if it’s all the Christmas cheer or what, but every year around this time we’re deluged with reunion gigs — most of them as unwanted as that handmade sweater Grandma spent the last nine months knitting. At…
Pitchman
When they met five years ago, the white pitchman from Canton and the black celebrity trainer in Southern California might have seemed an odd pair. Paul M. Monea had staked a claim in the Wild West of direct marketing. He used a convincing infomercial to sell a dubious pain-relief device by the hundreds of thousands.…
Shot Down
“The only wreckage I saw at the Guns N’ Roses concert on Sunday was your article falling to pieces!” That was just the first letter critiquing our recent column, which took down the new GN’R lineup. “You should print an apology for your article because the show kicked ass and Axl’s voice was amazing,” went…
Quality Is Job 753
Pity poor Ford. The nation’s second-largest carmaker has lost $6 billion over the past two years and received more bad press than any organization since the Huns. Its much-maligned Explorer may as well be dubbed the Rollover. The troubled Focus, unveiled just three years ago, already has been recalled a whopping 11 times for design…
Tony Bennett
‘S wonderful, ‘s marvelous that Tony Bennett should still belong to us. From the jazz singer’s fellow World War II vets to Gen X hipsters, everyone now grants this 76-year-old institution tender goodwill for his openhearted musical conviction. “C’mon, listen,” his hushed phrasings seem to suggest. “This one is beautiful.” Even so, where Frank Sinatra…
Buggy Whippings?
Major labels can’t handle technology: Jason Bracelin’s points are right on the mark [“Rooked in Advance,” November 6]. The labels are reacting to the new technologies as if they made buggy whips at the turn of the last century. The scary thing is, maybe they do. Only the small labels seem to have the flexibility…
Scarface
To say that Scarface’s latest, The Fix, is his most commercial album to date is sacrilegious. It’s almost like saying the man has sold out — and that’s the last thing any Scarface fan wants to hear. He’s one of the original Geto Boys, for chrissakes. The man has made it a decade in the…
Rainbow Warrior
Kate Mulgrew, the actress wife of Tim Hagan, headlined the Cleveland Stonewall Democrats’ get-out-the-vote rally at Bounce Night Club. She took no introduction. Instead, with “Copacabana” as her cue, she stepped up to the riser and began to dance. A crowd filled the stage, following her lead. By “Car Wash,” even Common Pleas Judge Thomas…
The Dillinger Escape Plan
Spouting gibberish and screaming like a B-movie bimbo about to meet her demise, art-damaged luminary Mike Patton is a one-man crazy train. Patton’s bands Fantômas, Mr. Bungle, and Tomahawk are no slouches, but no players keep him from going off the rails like New Jersey avant headbangers the Dillinger Escape Plan, with whom Patton collaborated…
Sugar Shacks
Pat Murphy has found the sweet taste of success — in a batter of flour, sugar, and dark molasses. After she was hired as executive director of the Oberlin Historical and Improvement Organization in 1993, she created an annual tradition in which local residents are invited to design and build gingerbread and graham-cracker houses as…
Train of Love: A Tribute to Johnny Cash
While the Man in Black’s recent take on Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus” may sound like blasphemy to die-hard fans, Cash aficionados are about to get some salvation. Though Cash’s declining health has made touring unlikely, local country crooner Terry Lee Goffee offers the next best thing with his wonderful tribute “Train of Love,” which premieres…
Pluto’s World
Sportswriting is often done by the numbers. Too many stats can drain the passion from the writing. But Terry Pluto rarely breaks out his calculator. In fact, the longtime Akron Beacon Journal columnist is one of the finest sports scribes in the country. He’s been nominated twice for a Pulitzer Prize, and he’s snagged the…
Patty Larkin
It’s a testament to the singer-songwriter’s broad and slavish fan base that she can confidently tour to support an album closing in on its third birthday, 2000’s Regrooving the Dream. In all fairness, Patty Larkin’s current set is likely to be peppered with songs from her upcoming 2003 album, tentatively titled Tail of a Kite,…
That‘s Better
Robert De Niro always did love an acting challenge, but lately those challenges have been less along the lines of “Can I convincingly play a boxer?” and more like “Can I alone be good enough to make this formulaic mess worth watching?” Yes, it was impressive that he played a half-paralyzed stroke victim in Flawless,…
Angie Martinez
“I’m like the only Latin woman in hip-hop,” declares radio personality/rapper Angie Martinez. Hmmm, what about fellow Puerto Rican rapper Ivy Queen? “Maybe this will make it easier for her,” Martinez concedes. “Her time hasn’t come yet.” Martinez believes in the importance of role models, so maybe that’s why she takes a bite from Lisa…
Memory Lame
The French word for turkey is le dindon. With this in mind, it’s fair to say that French New Wave auteur Jean-Luc Godard’s latest movie, In Praise of Love (Éloge de l’Amour), is basically fricassée du dindon — and none too tasty, either. Snoots will no doubt rally to its cause, trotting out such threadbare…
Skeleton Key
Talk about real industrial metal music. These New York-based “junk rockers” are just as likely to play a battered coffeepot, frying pan, or Radio Flyer wagon as their “normal” instruments. With their synthesis of clang-and-bang sounds and the gloom-and-doom lyrics of singer/bassist Erik Sanko, the Keys are equally at home in a modern art gallery…
Prozium Nation
Transcribed verbatim from the DVD commentary track of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, here’s an informative sci-fi concept from director George Lucas: “As we go through the movie, there’s all little funny moments, like Jango bumping his head because in Star Wars one of the Stormtroopers bumps his head as they leave…
Toni Braxton
Neither diva nor neo-soul sister, Toni Braxton has always aimed for the crossover radio-and-club hit. And like fellow pop-R&B anachronisms from TLC to Michael Jackson, Braxton updates this old-school strategy with jittery electro beats and brittle sound effects, courtesy of hot producers ranging from the Neptunes to Manny Fresh. The tinny futurism suits her, too,…
One-Act at the Watering Hole
The play Lone Star is only 40 minutes long — just about the right length for your average lager-swillin’ philistine. Set in a Texas bar, it’s the latest site-specific theater offering from the Charenton Theatre Company, which once again bravely takes free theater to average folk sitting around in public places, minding their own damn…
Cody Chesnutt
Recorded entirely in the singer’s Los Angeles bedroom — “The Sonic Promiseland,” he calls it — Cody Chesnutt’s self-released double-album debut, The Headphone Masterpiece, has been likened to the White Album, but it’s much cruder than that. The set is more like a beautifully messy tour of Chesnutt’s vast influences, from acoustic folk to first-wave…
Big Fun, Too
Three out of four famished East Siders recommend Dottie’s to diners who dig fun. But beware of the fourth. She’s the wild-eyed, sputtering brunette we spotted on a recent Saturday morning, stomping toward the door after a hungry thirty-minute wait for a breakfast that never came. Unfortunately, even two months after it first opened, that’s…
Richie Hawtin/Sven Väth
Richie Hawtin’s work is rarely sentimental. While most musicians would bristle at his calculated approach to creativity, Hawtin’s forced detachment has kept him well clear of solipsism and artistic stagnation. Strange then, that his latest release, a tag-team mix CD compiled alongside German techno deity Sven Väth, entitled The Sound of the Third Season, is…
Bacchus’s Buddy
Funny, for a master sommelier, John Unger doesn’t seem all that intimidating. In fact, he exhibits not a whiff of snobbery aimed at bullying us into a wine we hate, at a price we can’t afford. As he glides across the floor at Lockkeepers (8001 Rockside Road, Valley View), assisting guests with selections from the…
(Smog)
Lo-fi troubadour Bill Callahan has been recording under his (Smog) moniker for more than a decade, and Accumulation: None is his first compilation album. But far from being a greatest-hits exercise, it’s an album full of rarities, non-LP singles, and the odd unreleased cut. It’s not the best way to draw in a new audience,…
Clash of the Titans
It’s a decision as off-putting to metal heads as Supercuts and sobriety. This Friday, two of the most anticipated trad-metal shows of the year will be taking place on the same night, at different venues. Longhairs must decide between seeing the Cleveland debut of German power-metal favorites Blind Guardian (along with Yngwie Malmsteen devotees Symphony…
Sondre Lerche
Call him precocious or wise beyond his years, but Sondre Lerche is hardly your typical 19-year-old songwriter. While most barely legal bards are likely to bang out three-chord tunes about girls, drugs, and the burden of being perennially misunderstood, Lerche has come up with a collection of luxurious, grown-up pop songs. Armed with a velvety…
