Trophy Wife Politics
Think of the U.S. House as a football team. There’s a handful of stars. A handful of yeomen guards and fullbacks who get things done, but don’t get the credit. There are even specialists — those who play small but useful roles in key situations. Yet this team has 435 members, which means the majority…
Top of the Pops
Not all musical enigmas use masks, reclusive behavior, or elaborate lyrical schemes to create illusions of mystery about themselves. Consider the case of James DeWees, the Get Up Kids keyboardist and Coalesce drummer, who also helms smart-ass class clowns Reggie and the Full Effect. When asked how audiences attending this year’s Vagrant Tour react to…
Various Artists
On Hot Women, infamous comic-illustrator Robert Crumb curates a remarkably cohesive collection of early 20th-century songs from his collection of 78 rpm records handpicked for their obscurity and his subsequent joy in discovering them. For him, “torrid” refers to chanteuses from places such as Mexico, Brazil, Africa, Greece, and Tahiti, areas where steamy temperatures and…
Mayor Martyr
Mayor Martyr Cain’s loss may be Lakewood’s gain: Just want to congratulate Pete Kotz on the best analysis I’ve yet read about outgoing Lakewood Mayor Madeline Cain and how she went wrong [“Cain Mutiny,” November 19]. I once worked for Madeline at City Hall. Prior to that, I had voted for her, advised her as…
Cold to the Touch
In Adult.’s world, we are all human wrecks, nausea is as common as breathing, gluing eyelids together is preferable to viewing the banal horror we call life, love is impossible, pressure suits are part of the wardrobe, paranoia reigns supreme, and the body is a repository of repulsive molecules. For proof, check out these lyrics…
Roué
Late last year, we tagged Roué as one of Cleveland’s most promising young acts to watch in 2003. With the release of Fuckin for the Future, the band has lived up to the hype and then some. Equally cerebral and vengeful, Roué’s sound comes with lacerating guitars and even sharper wit, as evidenced by such…
Gospel According to Nam
Siri Sat Nam doesn’t mince words: Langston Hughes had the right idea when he wrote Black Nativity; he just had one too many acts. The Los Angeles-based director is in town to stage Karamu’s African-inflected retelling of Jesus Christ’s birth. In the first act, Mary gives birth while being serenaded by a gospel choir and…
Die Laughing
The relationship between metal and mirth can be strained at times. Bands that seem too happy to embrace irony and self-mockery (or too happy, period) risk being labeled parodies. This Is Spinal Tap is a tour-bus staple, and a generation of metalheads has grown up laughing at it, but coming off as too Taplike is…
Phestur
Phestur’s new LP is the musical equivalent of an aging mullethead telling you he’s into the hot new stuff — “You know, like Nirvana.” Kurt Cobain killed himself when he realized that, rather than obliterating bands like this, he was influencing them. The hard-edged modern-rock troupe is only three years old, and while its third…
This Week’s Day-By-Day Picks
Thursday, December 4 Tilda Swinton has four different roles, ranging from computer-generated sex predator to mousy research scientist, in Teknolust. Jeremy Davies, Spanking the Monkey’s incestuous protagonist, plays a very incompetent copy-shop employee. They hook up in this 21st-century take on the Frankenstein mythos, in which a biogeneticist creates a trio of “self-replicating automatons” from…
All That Jazz
Deyampert Giles dreams in German. After leaving America at the age of 19, the Cleveland-born musician and producer spent the next decade abroad. He toured Italy, played bass and guitar in an Australian funk band for three years, and eventually landed in Berlin, where he picked up a new language and a promising new career.…
Moe Better
Moe singer and guitarist Al Schnier isn’t being facetious when he says that his group’s latest album, Wormwood, is the Buffalo jam band’s The Bends . . . and that it still has a Kid A in them. The Radiohead comparisons are kinda apt, in fact. More than any other combo that likes to noodle…
‘Hammer Time
Fronted by Integrity mastermind Dwid, new hardcore troupe Sledgehammer has signed to Martyr Records, a New York-based label, whose roster includes releases from NYHC vets Madball and thunderous thrashers Murder Weapon. Sledgehammer’s first release, an as-yet-untitled EP, is slated to come out in early 2004. The disc will feature six songs and a video for…
Fit to Laugh
12/5-12/7 Stand-up-comedy veteran Kathleen Madigan approaches current events the way a jazz musician approaches the melody of a standard: She looks for opportunities to ply her art. She excels in finding humor in even the touchiest of subjects (“I don’t understand how you can wear a sheet all day and not be prone to naps,”…
The Cynics
Veterans of the first neo-garage-rock revival of the mid-’80s, the Cynics’ had early records that were snarling psych-pop rave-ups and slew forgotten contemporaries such as the Fuzztones and Marshmallow Overcoat when it came to songwriting. Then, in 1990, the Cynics really flicked the kill switch with the supremely loud and decidedly super-fuzzed Rock’n’Roll, an album…
Cool Club
TUE 12/9 Thirty years ago, the thought of a Jamaican named Alton Tinker learning how to ski was about as far-fetched as a bunch of fellow countrymen jumping into a bobsled and competing in the Olympics. But sure enough, the Jamaican bobsledders made history as the first minority team, and Tinker learned how to master…
“Sauce Boss” Bill Wharton
Bill Wharton, aka the Sauce Boss, gives new meaning to “Dinner and a show.” When this Boss performs, a large cooking pot stands on stage, in addition to the axes, amps, and mic stands. And it’s more than a prop: Between tunes, Wharton’s stirring up his trademark gumbo, which he serves to the audience at…
Good Golly, He’s Jolly
12/6-12/20 Ann Jacobs can’t remember how many years she’s been planning the menu for Santa Fest, a breakfast-and-visit-with-the-Big-Man combo at Mapleside Farms. All she knows is that 300 kids look forward to their day with Ol’ Saint Nick every December. The morning starts with a spread of eggs, bacon, sausage, and French-toast sticks, which Santa…
DJ Ender
Face it. If it weren’t for cats like Miles Davis, Art Blakey, and Freddie Hubbard, white folks would never know what they’re missing. It was black musicians such as these that inspired Helsinki’s Hannu Nieminen, aka DJ Ender, to take a hand in the growth of the Finnish music scene during the late ’80s and…
Snow Days
12/5-12/13 Cindy Jamison won’t ever forget her first Northeast Ohio snowfall four years ago. She had just moved to Lakewood from Jacksonville, Florida. “I was downtown on Public Square on a Friday night, and it just looked as magical as I thought it would be,” she recalls. That’s why Jamison is so into Winterfest, a…
Robbie Fulks
Here are three good reasons to dig Robbie Fulks. First, after self-important alt-country poster boy Ryan Adams booted a fan for shouting a request for Bryan Adams’s “Summer of ’69,” Fulks offered a ticket price’s worth of merchandise to anybody else who annoyed Adams. Second, Fulks is allegedly working on a Michael Jackson tribute record.…
Spring Forward
THU 12/4 Jim Lauderdale’s such a structured, methodical songwriter that his collaboration with jam band Donna the Buffalo, Wait ‘Til Spring, shouldn’t work. The North Carolina native eases into songs with a clear-cut end in mind; the New York sextet rambles onstage and on record, searching for a perfect groove in which to settle. “When…
Lifesavas
There is an austerity to the Lifesavas that some will find off-putting or atypical of underground hip-hop acts. This Portland trio has little use for the capitalist-minded mentality of most radio-driven rap, instead choosing to model themselves after “conscience” artists such as the Roots, Mos Def, and their mentors, Blackalicious (whose Chief Xcel produced one…
White Dork Down
In his career as a Hollywood action figure, Tom Cruise has been dressed in some pretty hip outfits — a macho fighter pilot’s sleek leather jacket, a NASCAR driver’s logo-speckled fire suit, assorted silken Armani sports jackets, even black cape and fangs. So it’s a bit unsettling to see the Cruiser stuffed inside an oversized,…
Sick of It All
According to an informal count, press releases accompanying four out of five hardcore albums this year have referenced mid-’80s New York Hardcore, the movement that spawned NYC’s Sick of It All in 1984. Tattooed, close-cropped, and pissed, SOIA helped keep the hardcore flame alive between the end of the golden age in 1986 and the…
Dream Weaver
If youth is wasted on the young, idealism certainly isn’t. Who, other than those of meager years, could afford to be idealistic in the face of the multiple vicissitudes of life, such as crushed hopes for personal fame, the misery of dead-end relationships, and chronic back spasms? This is why, even as we gaze in…
Anthrax
In recent years, Anthrax has received more press for its unfortunately timely moniker than for its new releases. The erstwhile shredders now stomp at a slower speed, playing melodic, mid-paced metal without compromising intensity. This year’s We’ve Come for You All proves that the group’s longtime lineup fixtures (guitarist Scott Ian, drummer Charlie Benante, and…
Dance This Mess Around
Honey is one of those movies you will see, swear you’ve seen before in several other guises and incarnations, and then immediately forget you ever saw to begin with. Its story, about a would-be dancer trying to plot her escape from mean streets (or mean movie sets and back lots), has been told countless times,…
Motion City Soundtrack
Sticking with cheap rent and tolerating non-ironic trucker hats has finally paid off: With the underdog might of a Tribe victory over the Yankees — or a Browns win over anybody, at this point — the Midwest has fought off NYC to become the hip hot spot for rockers to come from. The latest entrant…
A Complimented Backhand
Splash and Wall Street, two big movies in the 1980s, feature racquetball scenes. Actually, in Wall Street, the devious stock-trader Gordon Gekko routs his acolyte in a game of squash. Nonetheless, both movies reflected the day’s gusto for racket sports played in cubes. For Shane Vanderson, a recent graduate of Baldwin-Wallace College, who plays racquetball…
Three Women, One Gem
Now and then, it’s worth the trip to a theater just to see a particular performance. Because when an actor is able to thoroughly inhabit a role, the effect can be transcendent. Such is the situation now at Ensemble Theatre, where Bernice Bolek is portraying an arrogant, selfish, and complex woman teetering on the brink…
The Offspring
Give the Offspring credit. Built on a suspect hook and issued in a genre that had yet to establish its commercial viability, the band’s 1994 smash single, “Keep ‘Em Separated,” had all the makings of a one-hit wonder. The California punkers’ 15 minutes have now lasted a decade. After Smash, the band signed to Columbia…
Gravy Train
For nearly two years, Cleveland’s only downtown shopping center has borne the telltale signs of a mall on the skids. It started when Dillard’s pulled out in January 2002, leaving Tower City Center without a department store. Then the Disney Store and the Nature Company left. Express was replaced by an embroidery shop. This summer,…
Comics From the Front
Maybe you know the feeling. Maybe it struck you one morning as you stared in the mirror before trundling off to the job you hate, or maybe it hit you so hard one night it woke you from your sleep like a prowler in the bedroom. It’s that feeling of: I am useless. I contribute…
Westside Connection/Biz Markie
Hip-hop’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind philosophy makes successful comeback albums a rarity. Nostalgia for the genre’s golden age of the early ’90s, however, has ushered in a recent wave of rap resurrections. And two of the latest prove that the old adage “You can’t go home again” is only true some of the time. The debut of…
Cop Shortage?
Police union chief Bob Beck didn’t make the strongest argument on behalf of his soon-to-be-unemployed troops last week. In fact, he exposed some of the fatty in the city patty. Mayor Campbell’s proposed elimination of 700 jobs would shed 263 police officers. The mayor has tried to soften the blow by noting that Cleveland employs…
The 12 Gifts of Christmas
Got gourmets on your holiday shopping list? We’ve got a dozen ideas for gifts to make them drool, at prices that range from princely to mere pittances. And best of all, each present is something that draws upon Northeast Ohio’s notable culinary resources — chefs, restaurateurs, farmers, and more. A gourmet’s tour of Italy with…
Pearl Jam
There are worse ways to end a long and fruitful career at a major record label than compiling 31 hard-to-find B-sides, outtakes, and other rarities. But it’s hard to imagine Pearl Jam, whose decade-plus relationship with Epic Records ends with the release of this new double CD, choosing any of them. After all, since debuting…
